Provoke - Season 1 of a series of 4 - Happiness decoded
The economics of progress
Happiness is the primary human quest even as mankind progresses.
Progress happens when people buy things they do not need with the money they do not have.
If that is what causes spurring an economic progress, let us examine as to what is its apparent and actual effect. Progress relies on a Pied Piper creating desire that infuses demand to make you pay for what you do not need and sell you a loan to buy with money that is not yours which you then work your life to pay down.
Progress in that sense is the apparent metaphorical carrot while the real quest remains in the elusive promise of happiness, while the world remains in a certain fog.
Smoke and Mirrors
People either have poor desires or desires that make them feel poor.
Happiness is an arbitrage that settles somewhere between what one has and what one desires.
While it’s the search for happiness that people even wake up in the morning, at best they tend to find placebos to compensate for it even as that search remains quintessential and elusive. To put it crudely, A big car will most often compensate for the lack of libido, while a comfortable car may or may not be big.
I would like to begin by asking, “How much do we need and what for?” Therein ‘lies’ the ‘truth’. ( pun intended: ‘lies’)
We have allowed the “cum hither” solicitations from hoardings to compensate our inability to have heartful conversations or libidinous enough orgasms and in that melee we have replaced happiness with pleasure and orgasms with substance.
One of the hoardings sells; degreased, desalted, dehaired, dried and chemically dyed crocodile skin, in the form of bags and we loose the woods for the trees. Our lives become sweet custard full of pulp.
In that backdrop two eloquent concepts that encompasses life are: ‘Ikigai’ or ‘The Purpose of Life’, as the Japanese put it and ‘Mojo’ with its Afro-American origins is about a “Talisman”
There is a difference between the two; Happiness and pleasure!
I borrow from Dr Robert Lustig’s research summarized in the book “The Hacking of the American Mind”, (2017).
Dr. Lustig enumerates seven differences between the two. I borrow 6 of those. And top it with one of mine.
1. Pleasure leads to a vain attitude, while happiness is born out of gratitude.
2. Pleasure is short-lived; happiness is long-lived.
3. Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal.
4. Pleasure is taking; happiness is giving.
5. Pleasure can be achieved with substances; happiness cannot be achieved with substances.
6. The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction, whether they be substances or behaviors. Yet there’s no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness.
7. Finally and most importantly, pleasure is tied to dopamine (the pleasure biochemical/neurotransmitter), and happiness is tied to serotonin (the happiness biochemical/neurotransmitter).
The slicing of our minds
The challenge that our lives face is the slicing of our minds that has come about as an ode and an astute compliment to multi skilling. That sublime conspiracy was unleashed by MTV where multiple unrelated images were cut pasted in a 2 minute video. It has clipped and shortened our attention spans. While slicing and cut pasting of media, news, social media and films is on, it keeps us running around musical chairs as if the music wont die.
Arthur Conan Doyle, who created the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes waxed on this: In "A Study in Scarlet," Dr. Watson the ADC to Sherlock, expresses surprise that Holmes is ignorant of Copernican theory and the composition of the solar system.
Holmes explains that he does his best to forget any information that is not relevant to his existence. “You see” explains Sherlock, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge or piece of furniture you forget something that you knew before or remove something to make space.”
"But the Solar System!" Dr. Watson protested.
"What of the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my life."
Isnt it true that the Copernican theory is useful to NASA and if it is needed, its available to be accessed.
Lets free our minds and restrain stuff such as whatsapp from sharing with us the secrets of spiders mating or the Seven Wonders of the World. These have nothing to do neither and of no deuce to the price of my onions nor with the room in my attic. The truth is that the female spiders eat the male they mate with.
So let the sun float in its trajectory and imagine that you split the cosmos into two equal halves from where you stand. Or else as we go about the business of life, frenzied and raising dust, until how Shakespeare interjects us, “way to dusty death. Life is but a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”
However, as humans we are in search of an excuse to justify our existence. That excuse and the expansion of our appetite is in keeping with the limitlessness of the universe as we obfuscate and remain in denial over our limited time here.
The excuses for happiness
Our excuses range from new clothes, to the growth of our business to our families and our cars and estates and journeys. These are momentary. These are placebos. Happiness is beyond this. These are tangibles and our thirst for more does not quench as we find ourselves drawn into a self-hypnosis or social media to seek validation for our pursuits. That spiral is like a whirlwind that nearly consumes us with the intensity of a tornado as we get sucked into its vortex. We end up in all that brouhaha in search of that resting place by the sea side or on a sunny mountain top.
It is at that tipping point that 2 questions assume significance, “1. How much do we need and 2. whatever for”. Wrapped in that question lies ‘mojo’ or the talisman and therefore ‘Ikigai’ or the purpose of our life and thence, the mantra of happiness.
If a person can answer those questions, there is a good chance that she or he has taken the first step forward in exacting their lives. Identifying a holistic purpose of life that involves health, peace, family, a limited social circle and an ability to give that are more likely to lead to a sound sleep that accounts for a joyful and happy life.
Answering those questions will reveal the next expanse of Happiness. The eventual purpose of life is to seek happiness and while that does take running around, answering that question above has the potential of stopping our mindless chase and cutting our self hypnosis ranging from the hoardings and the running around the musical chairs.
The sad last famous words I bring to you the last words from four people that we think tasted success. Each of these four strokes, much like cornerstones of evolving humanity and sensibility had their last words that denounce their own existence lost in fog.
1. “I am bored with it all” – Winston Churchill
2. “Money cant buy life” – Bob Marley
3. “Friends app
Before we raise the curtains ahead on the other three essays that sum up invoking, evoking and infusing happiness, I append below the final note from Steve Jobs and a summing up at its end.
4. Wrote Steve, “I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to. At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death. Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth … Should be something that is more important: ‘Perhaps’ relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth.”
Summing up: Provoke
In summing up it suffices to say that even Steve jobs hadn’t achieved the purpose of his life or his Ikigai in his passing away. His mention of wealth alludes to his own final recognition of his own vain self hypnosis and failure. While the world would remember his products for a few more years at best. Though, what about himself?
I shall let this serve as a prelude to the other three essays where we shall deconstruct and then reconstruct life and happiness.
In the 4th season you will split the cosmos into two equal halves from where you stand. I sign off here by provoking, “How much do we need and what for?”.
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