How You Can Be Happy in a World Devoted to Selling Pleasure

The confusion between happiness and pleasure is a lie promoted by people who want to take advantage of you.

Happiness is how the universe tells you that you are on track: you are who are you are meant to be, where you are meant to be, doing what you are meant to be doing. Eudemonia, the Greek word for happiness, also translates as serenity, contentment, and subjective well-being. Aristotle called it “the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” It is not something you can buy, although money may provide the freedom to make choices that lead to a happier life. It is not something you can stockpile, like beer or diamonds or reputation. Each moment of happiness is transitory, a reminder (or a warning) that you are (or are not) on your path. But a habit of happiness leads to a life of happiness: a life of contentment and well-being.

Happiness is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure is a transitory reward that leaves you wanting more. Happiness is being content with who you are and what you have.

Happiness is active. It relates to how you live. It cannot be bought. Therefore, there is no profit in providing happiness. Pleasure, on the other hand, can be bought. To get technical about it, happiness is related to serotonin, which serves as a neurotransmitter linking to a set of receptors in the brain as well as serving in other areas. This is why drugs regulating serotonin, in conjunction with therapy, have proven to be a useful tool in reducing depression. Pleasure, however, is linked to dopamine, another neurotransmitter, which gives an immediate “hit” or “jolt” that activates a reward center at the same time it deadens the capacity of the brain to feel a similar response without a greater hit in the future. An item that can induce pleasure is addictive, in a way an experience associated with happiness is not.

Addiction is profitable

Addiction can be very profitable for the person or group providing the addict with his next hit. It can be so profitable that it makes sense to provide the “first hit free” to a potential customer. Drug dealers prey on schoolchildren. The American tobacco industry arranged to provide cigarettes to soldiers in World War II. Facebook gives away its service “for free” — all you provide is your time, your attention, your political orientation, your buying habits, and other important details about your life that can be aggregated and monetized, and then sold to interested parties: corporations, political parties, foreign governments, etc.

It’s important to remember it is not just companies who have an interest in who you are, where you are, and what you want. Governments find this information to be precious:

Governments and political parties, like for-profit corporations, find Facebook to be a useful tool for influencing your “buying” habits.

Facebook may be the ultimate example of the business model of the pusher. It asks “nothing” of us but our time and our attention. At each moment, the price of Facebook is insignificant. Taken as a whole, it can consume your life. When a corporation claims it is providing something for nothing, the product is you.

Withdrawl from addiction is painful. If you’ve ever tried to quit smoking, cocaine, sugar, or your smartphone you know what I mean. The addict grows increasingly agitated, increasingly desperate, increasingly willing to pay any price to restore the lost pleasure. At the same time, until the addiction is broken any action to meet the immediate need reinforces the deeper problem. Even when the immediate temporary pleasure is restored, it does nothing to bring happiness.

(Take a moment for a short thought experiment. Don’t worry about sharing your results, but be honest with yourself. Do you feel happy when you habitually check your smartphone or do you feel compelled by the fear of missing something? If it’s the former, good for you — you are the rare exception. If it’s the latter, you are addicted.)

Confusing happiness and pleasure

Addiction is facilitated by confusing happiness with pleasure, contentment with addiction. Since there is little or no profit in happiness, and a great deal of profit in addiction, there is a strong motive to blur the differences between the two.

The pleasure of immediate rewards is transitory and visceral — the thrill of a casino or a Super Bowl or a strip club. It activates the fight-or-flight system. The heart rate and blood pressure go up. Contentment is lasting and calming — the full feeling of walking in the woods or listening to the surf or sharing a couch with someone you love. It slows your heart rate and lowers your blood pressure. Why do we confuse these things?

We confuse them because it is in the interests of those who want to control our behavior — our purchases, our viewing habits, our votes, and so forth — to blur the distinction. It’s no coincidence that a McDonald’s children’s box — filled with sugar in all its processed items (including the hamburger) and including a trivial prize associated with some larger marketing campaign — is sold as a “Happy Meal”.

Let’s consider a few other examples. Alcohol, obviously, is a chemical with a serious potential for addiction. It produces long-term harm, at least for some, on a par with smoking. Banning it is foolish, of course— but do we have to see ads for beer with every sporting event? Caffeine is addictive, just like cocaine. That’s why when Coca-Cola was prohibited from using cocaine, it immediately switched its formula to caffeine. Speaking of Coca-Cola, perhaps the most popular useless beverage on Earth, sugar is its other critical element. Processed sugar is in almost every commercially-available food — as a preservative, as an inexpensive flavor enhancer, and as a hook to make that food so addictive that obesity and metabolic syndrome are crippling people around the world.

Even substances and behaviors which are not inherently harmful, if used as an unchecked reward, can lead to compulsive behaviors which destroy happiness. It is in the interests of those who wish to manipulate you to encourage a transition to habitual gambling, surfing the internet, sex, and shopping. When taken to an extreme this kind of transition overloads the reward pathway, resulting in depression, impoverishment, and illness.

And while the internet may claim to have “social” networks they are nothing of the sort. Communications, yes. Sociality, no. Real sociality requires proximity. Internet addiction is as real as any other addiction, and just as harmful. It can also be predicted in longitudinal studies by earlier personality traits and childhood dysphoria.

The government will not help you. Most governments have, to some degree, passed legislation and pursued regulations that emphasize national wealth over individual happiness. It took forever to get tobacco ads off the TV. It will take an equally long and difficult effort to take ads for beer, scotch, fast food, political candidates, and drugs off of the public airwaves.

Medicine will not help you. No doctor or pharmaceutical company ever became rich by making and keeping you well. They make money by helping you to manage your symptoms. A healthy and happy person is a lost profit.

If you want to be happy, you can’t buy it. You’ll have to do it yourself.

So how do we maintain the difference?

In one sense we have already identified a key to distinguishing behaviors leading to happiness and behaviors leading to mere pleasure: is someone making a profit on it? If they are, look elsewhere.

There are other indicators. There is substantial research showing what brings happiness and what brings short-term reward. Much of this research was done to find ways to turn individuals and citizens into consumers and profit-centers. But it can also be used to liberate.

A reward is a function of taking. It is self-centered. It is a short-term jolt that leaves no lasting glow. Moreover, the reward declines with each jolt. Unchecked, it tends to lead to addiction and compulsive behaviors. It leads to a sense of losing control over your own life.

Happiness is often associated with giving. It is other-centered — to a child, to a charity, to the world, to a worthwhile project that takes you out of yourself. Unlike the pleasure/reward circuit, happiness can be associated with a condition of “flow” found in complete immersion and engagement with an activity that emerges when you “lose yourself” in a task, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and live on the edge of your mastery while you improve it. For me, flow comes when teaching and the class is just barely under control, asking questions and reaching conclusions with minimal but necessary input from me. Another flow state can be associated with writing, when the words come from somewhere so deep I surprise myself when I see them on the page. For you, flow may come from putting oils to canvas, or guiding a snowboard down a slope, or joining your close friends to play a game. For each of us, it is different. Whatever it is, it’s personal, and it can’t be commodified, packaged, and sold. Virtual reality is, at best, a simulation. Life — a life of happiness, flow, sociality, immediacy — a happy life is real.

What does this mean in practice?

You don't find happiness by looking for it. There is no destination for the journey. The destination is the journey: discovering for yourself what makes you happy. But research provides some signposts for the trip.

First, to be happy take care of yourself. Listen to your body. Eat when you are actually hungry, and stop eating when you are not. Sleep when you are tired. Most of us don’t sleep enough — the exact number of hours and the time of day depends on the person — and if your brain is starved for sleep happiness will prove to be elusive. Cut the sugar from your diet. Exercise. Make a habit of it. Maybe try mindfulness (in case the word “meditation” freaks you out). Rest comfortably, and just be. Listen to the noise passing through your mind from moment to moment, and let it pass. That noise is not you — you’re listening, remember? Let it pass, and note the still, quiet voice of your deeper self. Odds are, it’s been trying to tell you something important.

Second, connect to others. Reach out to friends. Make new ones. Listen to them, support them, and allow them to do the same for you. Religion doesn’t bring happiness, but a religious community can. What do Mormons and practicing Jews have in common? Not much in the way of doctrine. But both communities tend to be happier than average. If religion doesn’t make sense to you, the value in the community is no less real. Find groups where you are comfortable, join them, and get involved. Focus on being an active citizen, not a mere subject for rule.

Exercise compassion. While it may serve some to keep us divided and miserable, to make ourselves happy it helps to give to others: our time, our money, our effort, our empathy. And this has the bonus of making the recipient happier, too, in a world where happiness is in short supply.

Volunteer. You are a unique person with skills and interests and resources unlike anyone else. You may not be able to help everyone, but you can help someone — and in doing so you will often help yourself. Remember that giving is associated with happiness. The most powerful giving is when you have no reason to expect anything in return. If you have a little extra money, give that. If you have some time, give that. But give. You’ll likely feel happier for it. If you don’t feel the glow, give to someone or something else.

(Here’s another experiment. If you live in any city you are likely to be exposed to homeless people. If you aren’t, there is almost certainly a retirement community or a college campus or mall with easy access. Walk up to someone you have never seen before, and expect you will never see again. If it’s someone who looks like they could use a few bucks, so much the better. Give them a twenty. Or a ten. Whatever you can afford. If they question your motives, tell them its an experiment. If they say they can’t accept the gift, ask them to pass it along to someone they’ll see who they think might appreciate it. Now ask yourself — how do you feel? Is that feeling worth the price of a small pizza or a coffee from Starbucks?)

I love to show animals to children at a nearby zoo. The cost to me is nothing, the zoo appreciates the help, and the way the kids' eyes light up when they get to pet a python or a chinchilla carries me through the rest of the day. What I remember most about New Orleans isn’t the beignets or the tourist traps, it was helping the local Red Cross prepare for the next hurricane. What I remember most about Poland wasn’t the cobblestones and gift shops of Krakow, it was the feeling of helping to teach English to excited Polish students. What I remember most about Oxford wasn’t the architecture or the libraries, it was the joy of walking someone’s dog down a canal with old houseboats tied alongside.

Wherever you are, whatever you can contribute, do it. If you feel happy when you do it, that’s nature’s way of telling you you are on your path. If you are on your path, follow it. Your path is yours. I can’t tell you what it is. I can’t tell you where it leads you. But wherever it leads, if you are happy as you walk it, it’s a path you should be walking.