History of Happiness

Happiness - History, Philosophy, and Psychology

The so called "Science of Happiness," or Positive Psychology, pioneered by Ed Diener, aka "Dr. Happiness," and Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, is based on the idea that we can enhance our sense of well-being through the empirical study and adoption of certain habits and attitudes shared by "happy and optimistic people." It is now taught in psychology classes on over one hundred campuses in the United States alone.

As many champions of the new field point out, "happiness" is a house with many rooms. If this is so, the great majority of these courses, as well as related stories in the popular media, have only explored a few rooms in the West Wing.

In the United States alone one can trace the roots of Positive Psychology back about half a century to Abraham Maslow, who instead of concentrating on the sadness of sad people, turned psychology on its head by pondering over what caused happy people to be happy.

On the global stage, clear evidence exists that the psychological and philosophical study of happiness began in China, India and Greece nearly 2,500 years ago with Confucius, Mencius, Buddha and Aristotle. If we compare the experiential insights of these thinkers with the empirical approach of the positive psychologists, we discover intriguing points of resonance as well as thought-provoking differences.

Now that we have access to more accurate translations of the Asian classics, as well as the new perspectives of Positive Psychology, we can revisit some key questions: Are we stuck with who we are, or can we actually make ourselves happier in a more enduring way? And if we can, what are the concrete attitudes and lifestyles we should adopt in order to do so?

Let us take a brief look at the core ideas of eight major thinkers, from East and West, who devoted much of their lives to these questions.

Confucius

Isn’t it a joy to study and regularly practice?" "What’s more, isn’t it a joy to meet comrades from afar? "

These are the opening words of the Analects of Confucius, a small collection of sayings by the ancient pioneer of liberal arts education.

The "study" Confucius refers to does not only focus on book learning, but rather on social relationships, and not least, the great virtue of humanity. Learning about humanity, and trying to realize it in our lives, especially in the company of fellow travellers on the great path or Dao, fills us with a sense of joy. Confucius detests the "proper villager" who unfailingly does the right thing. The problem is that the proper villager does it for the sake of social approbation and not self-cultivation. Instead of "rejoicing in virtue" the "proper villager" steals virtue and uses it as a cloak.

Confucius was perhaps the earliest figure to argue that we have the power to transform ourselves.

This was a highly subversive position, especially as he insisted that his followers had the power to become a Chunzi, or Noble Person, a title which originally referred to a son of the aristocracy. For Confucius, it didn’t matter who your parents were. If you did not cultivate your humanity you were not worthy of the title "Noble Person," and not qualified to serve in government.

Mencius

"When they (the sprouts of virtue) are rejoiced in, they will grow. Once they begin growing, how can they be stopped? As they cannot be stopped, unconsciously one's feet begin to dance and one's hands begin to move."

Mencius, who flourished during the Chinese Warring States period about 2,300 years ago, could well be called the pioneer of Positive Psychology.

He lays unprecedented emphasis on human nature and the role of the mind in the quest for happiness. The Book of Mencius provides us with full-length debates on the topic, in which he tries to convince the jaded and skeptical kings of neighboring states that deep within us lie what he calls the "sprouts of virtue." He uses a wide range of colorful stories and "thought experiments" to illustrate this. Among the most celebrated of these is the story of the "child by the well", where he argues that the most callous human would feel alarm and pity seeing a child teetering over a precipice, and the tale of "King Hui and the ox" in which the king cannot bear the plaintive cries of an ox being taken to sacrifice.

According to Mencius, if people nourish these "sprouts" of identification and sympathy, and extend such feelings to broader social and political relationships, they are filled with a growing sense of irrepressible and intoxicating joy ("the feet begin to dance and the hands begin to move").

This linkage between virtue and happiness provides a thought-provoking contrast with the categorical imperative of Kant, who insisted that we try do good only for its own sake, without consideration for personal benefit, spiritual or otherwise. According to Mencius, the more joy we find in the process, the more motivated we are, and the more we grow as a result. "If we do not experience satisfaction they (the sprouts) will shrivel up."

Mencius was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the "lesser self" (the physiological self) and the "greater self" (the moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sagehood and personal fulfillment.

Learn More Here

Zhuangzi

"Instead of running around pointing fingers, why not laugh? Better than laughing, why not go along with things? Then you can experience the mysterious oneness of the Dao. "

Zhuangzi would probably have laughed himself silly, watching the frenzy with which we compete for personal profit in the post-industrial era. He highly prized a good sense of humor. If only for a moment, laughter releases us from the rationality which dominates our calculating lives. Once we are released from the dictatorship of rationality, we are free to "go along with things."

Whereas Confucius places emphasis on human relationships, the Daoists rejoice in nature, and particularly the mysterious Dao, which is manifested through our natural surroundings. For Zhuangzi, a humorous and self-deprecating follower of Laozi, the Old Master, happiness is nothing but wu-wei, the skill of doing nothing against the Dao.

The best way of doing this is by "going along with things" rather like Winnie the Pooh, who didn’t know how to calculate profit and loss, but lived in the moment and found contentment in simple things.

For three of the philosophers discussed, Mencius, Buddha and Aristotle, the role of the mind is critical in the quest for happiness.The Daoists on the other hand, argue that we think too much, for it is our rational mind that has led us away from the intuitive Dao.

An equally popular way of obtaining peace of mind among Daoists, and especially religious Daoists, are special breathing techniques. These techniques are probably the origin of quigong practices in Taiji, which focus on the cultivation of qi, a vital energy that fills the body. It is quite possible that Daoist breathing techniques emerged from Indian yoga, which uses them in combination with various postures for the attainment of bliss.

Buddha

"Life is mental dysfunction (dukkha). The cause of mental dysfunction is craving. There is a way to overcome craving. That way is the eightfold path. "

As the Dalai Lama and his champion Robert Thurman make abundantly clear, Buddha is very interested in the issue of happiness. Those who consider Buddha to be a pessimist have missed the point. He is like a doctor who analyzes the causes of dysfunction and prescribes a detailed program of treatment. The cure is of course the eightfold path, the core of which involves the control of the mind. Buddha is known as the "master of meditation" as this is his primary focus and the key to the attainment of serenity and happiness. In a sense he is one of the greatest yogis, combining the breathing and some of the postures of yoga with detailed guidelines for a compassionate way of life.

Aristotle

"Happiness depends on ourselves."

More than anybody else, Aristotle enshrines happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself. As a result he devotes more space to the topic of happiness than any thinker prior to the modern era. Living during the same period as Mencius, but on the other side of the world, he draws some similar conclusions.

That is, happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue, though his virtues are somewhat more individualistic than the essentially social virtues of the Confucians. Essentially, Aristotle argues that virtue is achieved by maintaining the Mean, which is the balance between two excesses. Aristotle’s doctrine of the Mean is reminiscent of Buddha’s Middle Path, but there are intriguing differences. For Aristotle the mean was a method of achieving virtue, but for Buddha the Middle Path referred to a peaceful way of life which negotiated the extremes of harsh asceticism and sensual pleasure seeking. The Middle Path was a minimal requirement for the meditative life, and not the source of virtue in itself.

Abraham Maslow

"The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short."

The modern era gave birth to a new field, the study of human behavior or psychology. Engrossed in the study of pathology, mainstream.psychologists such as Freud and Skinner did not give as much thought to the sources of happiness as to the roots of unhappiness.

One of the earliest psychologists to focus attention on happy individuals and their psychological trajectory was Abraham Maslow, who is most well known for his "hierarchy of needs."

Inspired by the work of the humanistic psychologist Erich Fromm, Maslow insists that the urge for self-actualization is deeply entrenched in the human psyche, but only surfaces once the more basic needs are fulfilled. Once the powerful needs for food, security, love and self-esteem are satisfied, a deep desire for creative expression and self-actualization rises to the surface. Through his "hierarchy of needs," Maslow succeeds in combining the insights of earlier psychologists such as Freud and Skinner, who focus on the more basic human instincts, and the more upbeat work of Jung and Fromm, who insist that the desire for happiness is equally worthy of attention.

Viktor Frankl

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” Victor Frankl

Victor Emil Frankl (1905 – 1997), Austrian neurologists, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.” His famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He went on to later establish a new school of existential therapy called logotherapy, based in the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of circumstances. Frankl pointed to research indicating a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behaviors, addictions and depression. Without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions. Some may also strive for Suprameaning, the ultimate meaning in life, a spiritual kind of meaning that depends solely on a greater power outside of personal or external control.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people find genuine satisfaction during a state of consciousness called Flow. In this state they are completely absorbed in an activity, especially an activity which involves their creative abilities. During this "optimal experience" they feel "strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of their abilities." In the footsteps of Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi insists that happiness does not simply happen. It must be prepared for and cultivated by each person, by setting challenges that are neither too demanding nor too simple for one’s abilities.

The experience of "flow" is strikingly reminiscent of Zhuangzi’s description of "great skill" achieved by Daoist sages such as carpenter P’ien and butcher Ting, who finds bliss in the art of chopping up ox carcasses by "going along with the Dao" of the ox. It is no coincidence that these blue-collar sages are situated on the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy. They discover the Dao much more readily than Confucian scholars, who, according to Zhuangzi, are studying the "dregs of wisdom" in lifeless books and have lost touch with the world of concrete affairs.

Martin Seligman

"Use your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are."

Martin Seligman is a pioneer of "happiology," not simply because he has a systematic theory about why happy people are happy, but because he uses the scientific method to explore it.

Through the use of exhaustive questionnaires, Seligman found that the most satisfied, upbeat people were those who had discovered and exploited their unique combination of "signature strengths," such as humanity, temperance and persistence. This vision of happiness combines the virtue ethics of Confucius, Mencius and Aristotle with modern psychological theories of motivation.

Seligman's conclusion is that happiness has three dimensions that can be cultivated: the Pleasant Life, the Good Life, and the Meaningful Life. The Pleasant Life is realised if we learn to savour and appreciate such basic pleasures as companionship, the natural environment and our bodily needs. We can remain pleasantly stuck at this stage or we can go on to experience the Good Life, which is achieved through discovering our unique virtues and strengths, and employing them creatively to enhance our lives. According to modern theories of self-esteem life is only genuinely satisfying if we discover value within ourselves. Yet one of the best ways of discovering this value is by nourishing our unique strengths in contributing to the happiness of our fellow humans.

Consequently the final stage is the Meaningful Life, in which we find a deep sense of fulfilment by employing our unique strengths for a purpose greater than ourselves. The genius of Seligman's theory is that it reconciles two conflicting views of human happiness, the individualistic approach, which emphasises that we should take care of ourselves and nurture our own strengths, and the altruistic approach, which tends to downplay individuality and emphasizes sacrifice for the greater purpose.

Ed Diener

"Why is happiness linked to successful outcomes? We propose that this is not merely because success leads to happiness, but because positive affect engenders success."

Ed Diener, alias “Dr. Happy” is widely regarded as a founder of the scientific study of happiness. His life exemplifies his discovery that continuing to have goals that people enjoy working for is a key ingredient for happiness. He has systematically collected data from detailed surveys and conducted experiments to empirically measure the “structure of well-being.” He began taking this kind of approach as early as 1981 employing an experience-sampling method, in which he used alarm watches to signal people at random moments through the day to measure their moods. He has focused on such critical topics as the impact of personality and culture on happiness as well the relationship between wealth and happiness. Diener and his colleagues have come to the conclusion that happy people are likely to achieve success in many kinds of realms such as careers, relationships, and physical resilience. One of his key conclusions is that the major sources of happiness often reside in a person’s activities, social relationships, and attitudes towards life. Tragic events in people’s lives lead to temporary unhappiness, but they tend to bounce back.