Why happiness isn't enough (Voltaire, Aldous Huxley, Robert Nozick)
December 31st 2006 00:01
7.17: Happiness is a good genius or a good familiar spirit. "What then are you doing here, phantom of imagination? Depart, in God's name, the way you came; I have no need of you. But you have come according to your ancient habit. I am not angry with you, only depart."
-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations; 1944 translation by ASL Farquharson
On my travels I met an old Brahmin, a very wise man, of marked intellect and great learning...
Said the Brahmin to me one day: "I wish I had never been born!" On my asking why, he answered: "I have been studying forty years, and that is forty years wasted. I teach others and myself am ignorant of everything. Such a state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable...
The good man's condition really worried me. Nobody was more rational or more sincere than he. I perceived that his unhappiness increased in proportion as his understanding developed and his insight grew.
The same day I saw the old woman who lived near him. I asked her if she had ever been troubled by the thought that she was ignorant of the nature of her soul. She did not even understand my question. Never in all her life had she reflected for one single moment on one single point of all those which tormented the Brahmin. She believed with all her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu and, provided she could obtain a little Ganges water wherewith to wash herself, thought herself the happiest of women.
Struck with this mean creature's happiness, I returned to my wretched philosopher. "Are you not ashamed," said I, "to be unhappy when at your very door there lives an old automaton who thinks about nothing, and yet lives contentedly?"
"You are right," he replied. "I have told myself a hundred times that I should be happy if I were as brainless as my neighbor, and yet I do not desire such happiness."
My Brahmin's answer impressed me more than all the rest. I set to examining myself, and I saw that in truth I would not care to be happy at the price of being a simpleton.
I put the matter before some philosophers, and they were of my opinion. "Nevertheless," said I, "there is a tremendous contradiction in this mode of thought, for, after all, the problem is -- how to be happy. What does it matter whether one has brains or not?..." Everyone agreed with me, but I found nobody, notwithstanding, who was willing to accept the bargain of becoming a simpleton in order to become contented...
... How can this contradiction be explained? Like all the other contradictions. It is matter for much talk.
-- The portable Voltaire (1963), edited by Ben Ray Redman
"... The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or loves to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's [the drug] soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr Savage. Liberty!" He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!"
The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies [sensation movies]."
"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability... Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune... In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic..."
"But the tears are necessary... There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Matsaki. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could -- he got the girl."
"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago."
The Savage nodded, frowning, "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it... What you need... is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here... Isn't there something in that?..."
"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."
"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the VPS treatments compulsory."
"VPS?"
"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenalin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."
"But I like inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right, then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Finally, a quote from The Examined Life (1989) by the late great Robert Nozick. I've provided his conclusions only, and not his arguments (too lengthy) -- though, if you're curious, I'd be more than happy to discuss them in the comments section below.
Incidentally, for those familiar with the experience machine (otherwise known as "The Matrix") from Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), The Examined Life does include some further comments on the idea.
Extract follows:
We have found various reasons for thinking that happiness is not the only important thing in life: the contours of happiness over a lifetime, the importance of some contact with reality as shown by the experience machine example, the fact that other intense positive emotions have a similar status, the way evaluations built into the notion of happiness presuppose that other things too are of value...
Of course we wish people to have many... moments and days of happiness... Yet it is not clear that we want those moments constantly or want our lives to consist wholly and only of them. We want to experience other feelings too, ones with valuable aspects that happiness does not possess as strongly. And even the very feelings of happiness may want to direct themselves into other activities, such as helping others or artistic work, which then involve the predominance of different feelings. We want experiences... of profound connection with others, of deep understanding of natural phenomena, of love, of being profoundly moved by music or tragedy, or doing something new and innovative, experiences very different from the bounce and rosiness of the happy moments. What we want, in short, is a life and a self that happiness is a fitting response to -- and then to give it that response.
This post uses images from the Wikipedia articles Voltaire, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, and Robert Nozick.
-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations; 1944 translation by ASL Farquharson
***
Voltaire at age 70
Said the Brahmin to me one day: "I wish I had never been born!" On my asking why, he answered: "I have been studying forty years, and that is forty years wasted. I teach others and myself am ignorant of everything. Such a state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable...
The good man's condition really worried me. Nobody was more rational or more sincere than he. I perceived that his unhappiness increased in proportion as his understanding developed and his insight grew.
The same day I saw the old woman who lived near him. I asked her if she had ever been troubled by the thought that she was ignorant of the nature of her soul. She did not even understand my question. Never in all her life had she reflected for one single moment on one single point of all those which tormented the Brahmin. She believed with all her heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu and, provided she could obtain a little Ganges water wherewith to wash herself, thought herself the happiest of women.
Struck with this mean creature's happiness, I returned to my wretched philosopher. "Are you not ashamed," said I, "to be unhappy when at your very door there lives an old automaton who thinks about nothing, and yet lives contentedly?"
"You are right," he replied. "I have told myself a hundred times that I should be happy if I were as brainless as my neighbor, and yet I do not desire such happiness."
My Brahmin's answer impressed me more than all the rest. I set to examining myself, and I saw that in truth I would not care to be happy at the price of being a simpleton.
I put the matter before some philosophers, and they were of my opinion. "Nevertheless," said I, "there is a tremendous contradiction in this mode of thought, for, after all, the problem is -- how to be happy. What does it matter whether one has brains or not?..." Everyone agreed with me, but I found nobody, notwithstanding, who was willing to accept the bargain of becoming a simpleton in order to become contented...
... How can this contradiction be explained? Like all the other contradictions. It is matter for much talk.
-- The portable Voltaire (1963), edited by Ben Ray Redman
***
Aldous Huxley
The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insisted obstinately, "Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies [sensation movies]."
"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the price we have to pay for stability... Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune... In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic..."
"But the tears are necessary... There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Matsaki. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could -- he got the girl."
"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago."
The Savage nodded, frowning, "You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it... What you need... is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here... Isn't there something in that?..."
"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."
"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the VPS treatments compulsory."
"VPS?"
"But I like inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right, then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.
-- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
***
Incidentally, for those familiar with the experience machine (otherwise known as "The Matrix") from Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), The Examined Life does include some further comments on the idea.
Extract follows:
We have found various reasons for thinking that happiness is not the only important thing in life: the contours of happiness over a lifetime, the importance of some contact with reality as shown by the experience machine example, the fact that other intense positive emotions have a similar status, the way evaluations built into the notion of happiness presuppose that other things too are of value...
Of course we wish people to have many... moments and days of happiness... Yet it is not clear that we want those moments constantly or want our lives to consist wholly and only of them. We want to experience other feelings too, ones with valuable aspects that happiness does not possess as strongly. And even the very feelings of happiness may want to direct themselves into other activities, such as helping others or artistic work, which then involve the predominance of different feelings. We want experiences... of profound connection with others, of deep understanding of natural phenomena, of love, of being profoundly moved by music or tragedy, or doing something new and innovative, experiences very different from the bounce and rosiness of the happy moments. What we want, in short, is a life and a self that happiness is a fitting response to -- and then to give it that response.
***
This post uses images from the Wikipedia articles Voltaire, Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, and Robert Nozick.
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Comment by Damo
I have always been a fan of Huxley since reading 'Brave New World' and 'Ape an Essence'. Yet even Huxley questioned his own conclusions in a book called 'Brave New World Revisited'. His essays are just as brilliant as his novels.
I think Voltare make a good point. Would anyone want to have a lobotomy to find happiness and is that really happiness or just a high? Psychiatrists complain that patients often refuse medicine that would help them be happy. I wonder why this is so if the malady is so painful to their mind.
Yet I must ask another question. Does being intelligent, educated and perceptive means that you must be unhappy? Can intelligence be used to find the meaning of happiness beyond simple pleasure?
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I must just comment that I think you can use intelligence to seek a path to happiness, but you must go beyond the intelligence of the mind to find it.
Adrian,
Now your talking funny... beyond funny... that's Voltaire.. escpecially his story of Candide and the best ever, when he first met Protestants, or was it Quakers...(?) .. anyway, way beyond funny... (((hillarious)))...
Happy New Year to you both...
... I hope it is all kinds of happiness...
Lilla...
ps I have a magnet on my fridge which says: Happiness is wanting what you have...
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
I loved this post...
What do you think of the notion that some people would be miserably unhappy if they were 'happy'? The addiction of angst is something I have seen in a couple of people I know, one who is addicted, and one who just can't accept happiness for its own sake. They have built a life on misery and made it their identity.
Voices~
Comment by LaurenD
And yes, some smartiepantses are happy being miserable. After a lifetime of knowing many of them, to them I say: Futue te ipsum! Sometimes that's all you can say to those who wallow in their intelligence.
The key I think is what the smarties do with their smarts. Do they channel it or squander it? Does the world shrink to a tight fit around themselves or does it grow larger to encompass all?
LaurenD
Comment by Oblivion
I was not aware of the extracts from Voltaire and Nozick.
The excert from Voltaire really hit home and reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Hemingway: "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." It seems to me that this quote combines Damo's questions and solidifies them into a statement that can be tackled easier.
Oh and Adrian, here is a little New Year's Present: From Bierce's 'Devil Dictionary'-- Australia, "A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commericial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island."
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Have modified the post to include an extract from Robert Nozick, and there's two things I wanted to comment on...
The word "happiness" sometimes means "whatever is best" (or, in Plato-speak, "the good life"). Now, this isn't the way "happiness" is used in these extracts. Rather, the word here refers to some sort of most-desirable state of mind. So it's possible to ask, "Isn't there more to life, or the good life, than happiness?"
Are there people who aren't content with being happy?
-- I think Voices is correct that there are
They choose to be unhappy for any number of reasons -- including whatever motivated the good Brahmin and the Savage. And Voices begins to travel an interesting path, a psychological rather than belief-level explanation, when she speaks of identity and addiction to angst.
I also think that all of us, even the unaddicated to angst, are inclined to rebel against most types of happiness. In a sense, anyway. My next post will be on this topic...
A lot of our joys are short-lived (too much chocolate makes you sick of chocolate), and a lot of our joys derive their value from the contrast with the rest of life (for instance, it honestly is a mistake to think that great wealth can buy you happiness. Epicurus has been vindicated by psychologists. Wealth tends to accustom you to luxury and make you harder to please).
What about people who aren't content with the good life?
-- Well, I think Voices is correct that there are such people also (if she was suggesting this).
Say that someone had grasped, to their own satisfaction, what the "good life" is. Well, the fact is, we often disobey reason, for all sorts of reasons and causes. And a rational conclusion about the good life differs from other conclusions only in being more dubitable, less certain, less persuasive.
Damo asks: "Does being intelligent, educated and perceptive means that you must be unhappy? Can intelligence be used to find the meaning of happiness beyond simple pleasure?"
One classic comment I didn't mention was John Stuart Mill, from Utilitarianism:
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."
Mill does think the good life is the happy life, but he distinguishes between "higher" and "lower" pleasures.
Does intelligence, education, perception necessitate unhappiness? Well, I personally don't see any logical necessity. But Mill would have said "Yes and no".
On the one hand, he would have claimed that these things deny you the sort of contentment, or permanent high, available to lobotomy patients, pigs, and old women who live near Brahmin. Intelligence, in general, makes you less easily pleased, and inclines you (so say psychologists) to thinking you deserve more. Furthermore it's true (as I think Lilla is partly suggesting) that thinking spoils the moment: you lose happiness when you're too conscious of it.
On the other hand, Mill would have claimed that intelligence, education, perception also give access to more valuable experiences, and therefore the opportunity to achieve greater happiness over a lifetime than the pig or the fool...
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Doesn't Tolstoy say something like every happy family is happy in the same way, but every wretched family is wretched in its own way?
Among the smartypants who enjoy being miserable are many artists. Happy is boring; wretched and melancholy are interesting.
Thus some think anyway...
Walt Whitman might be an exception.
Dear Oblivion -- thanks for the New Year's present!
I actually have the Devil's Dictionary on my bedside table, but haven't got around to reading it. Will make it one of my resolutions to do so soon.
Is happiness rare in intelligent people? I'm told that positive psychology thinks, at least, that intelligence (and beauty) are no happiness advantage. But my personal experience on the ratio of happy to unhappy isn't clear. Seems to me, I know plenty of people who are intelligent but happy...
One example might be Voltaire. He (and Democritus) have sometimes been garnered with the title "the laughing philosopher".
Buddhist monks seem, as a rule, to be on happy pills, when they're not on prozac.
And, for what it's worth, various members of the Frankfurt School were sometimes called "smiling Marxists"...
Comment by Damo
Cracks me up everytime.
Comment by JoshZ
Love the story about the savage. Makes perfect and poetic sense.
Happiness isn't jsut feeling good about good stuff. It's being content with what you have.
JZ
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
I tend not to reply back when a question has not been asked of me in the moderator's response to my comment...but I found this while checking out some of my fave bloggers today and wanted to share it with you.
This is from Ash's 'Flash of Memories' blog...
"There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness - Carl Jung"
Voices~
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Epicurus used to tell people to be content with plain food. Because: (a) it meant they were more easily satisfied; and (b) on the rare occasions they had rich food, they enjoyed it more.
Dear Voices, thanks for contributing that quote, and that idea, to this discussion.
It's an important idea I think, though I have to add a note of disagreement... I'd concede that we need some experience of sadness to properly understand happiness, but in general, through our lives, do we have to have sadness in order to be happy?
Or, to rephrase, do we need the lows as well as the highs?
As a society, there's a sense in which we worship suffering -- there are general beliefs that suffering leads to wisdom, and that it builds character.
I don't know how true these are, but I think one should be cautious about accepting them...
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
Regarding your point about worshipping angst, singers, writers, actors, etc. seem to be glorified if they die from an addiction..."They must have been in so much pain...their work is (now) brilliant", not appreciated until their deaths. The truth is that it is a horrible waste of talent in some cases and not at all in others.
As for your other point, yes, I do believe we must go through lows to appreciate the highs. It is human nature to take that for granted, which has come too easily, I think. I also agree that one must be very cautious about wallowing in misery, lest that become an addiction all by itself, making it improbable to enjoy the highs when they come.
Voices~
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
So, using the idea that pleasure is a state that, when experienced, is wanted; and pain is something that, when experienced, is disliked...
You're right that a lot of people seem unable to cope with being happy. But I wonder how many people go out of their way to seek misery. Even masochists experience pleasure in the sensations that give other people pain.
Now, people every day go out of their way to seek happiness... But I don't know if I'd advise them to go out of their way for pain. Even if it does make them appreciate happiness better.
So, perhaps treating suffering as a good is something that one more frequently does in retrospect; and suffering isn't enough of a good for most people to consciously aim at it.
Comment by The Voices in my Head
The Voices in my Head
Well said.
Voices~