Happiness Part 2. Discussion with Lokifluff Clarity

Quintessential Sorbet: Hi Loki and welcome to my blog!

Lokifluff Clarity: Thank you Quin, delighted to be here and I must say I like how you have decorated the place. These orange headers on a white background really do work. The orange reminds me of your hair. Not sure about the shade of blue at the top though...

QS: I’m really grateful that you found the time for this interview. Our last discussion in PH gave me a lot of perspective about the things that bothered me with the movie “how happy can you be”. But at the same time it made me think even more questions. As a psychotherapy professional let me start first asking you, how would you define happiness.

LC: Nice to see you start with an easy one then! Happiness is... erm... um... (twirls with her hair and looks vague). This is really not easy. There is happiness the concept, which is used a lot when we talk about happiness, and happiness the emotion, which is something experienced, in a moment and in context. There is also contentment, which many also call happiness. There is also... (is this a PG rated blog?!)

QS: Happy people perform better I have heard people say. Do you think it’s true? Are there other benefits for trying to be happy?

LC: Well I guess if you are entirely unhappy and considering slitting your wrists then sure, there would be a benefit to being happy... living for example might count as one. As for drawbacks... well if you are really happy you might not notice if someone else is slitting your wrists.

QS: Can a pursuit of constant happiness be harmful or even dangerous in some respects?

LC: Absolutely. To pursue constant happiness is an illusion. An impossibility. A futility even! If you experienced nothing but happiness, then how would you know you are happy? You need something other than ‘happy’ to be able to compare ‘happy’ to in order to know that you are indeed ‘happy’. Happy?

QS: The film made several claims about how we could increase our happiness. You recognized quite rightly that the claims are based on the paradigms of positive psychology movement. What is your view about that movement?

LC: Pleads the fifth.

QS: I see people in business building careers and striving for different things. Oftentimes these things are something that should change their life circumstances, but according to the filmthis would not be actually very efficiently spent time in order to become happier…so are many, perhaps most of us in fact living our lives totally wrongly? Being busy with things that actually contribute very little to our happiness?

LC: It depends on how you see it. If you gain your happiness from the journey, from the struggle, from the sense of mucking in and doing things, then the happiness you will experience will be a result of the journey rather than the destination. If you are only focussed on the goal as your source of happiness and not the journey then you are constantly in a state of unhappiness, because you are not where you want to be! However, if you struggle through something (which makes you decidedly unhappy) there is a sense of joy and happiness associated with coming out of it the other side. The point here though, is that happiness occurs in a moment, at particular points in time, not as a constant throughout. Also, to peg one’s happiness in such a way as “I will only be happy if...” means that you will always be unhappy.

QS: I must say that one thing that came into my mind is that since “happiness” should make us more productive and efficient, it occurred to me that the positive psychology movement might have ideological connections. Not necessarily to any specific political movement, but in general to things like consumerism or progressing economical activity just for it’s own sake. What do you think, could there be parallels or is this an overinterpretation ?

LC: Pleads the fifth again. However, what I will say, is that consumerism these days taps into the ‘wants’ of humanity. This has occurred in part because of the contributions of people such as Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew, PR/advertising guru) who managed to change the way products are sold into something that is less concerned with what we ‘need’ and more concerned with what we ‘want’. Adam Curtis in his documentary “The Century of the Self” highlighted how this has meant that what is desirous in itself has also been changed (as advertising changed and sold us stuff that fits in with a concept of a lifestyle and also possible lifestyles we might desire that advertising products would match). So, returning to your question, if we have a vision of what our ‘happy’ lifestyle looks like, is that something that we have bought into because an advertising guru has devised it or because it holds true with our own personal values? I.e. are we trying to get others to like us because of a particular lifestyle we are working towards (which thinking positively can help us achieve) or are we associating with people who like us for who we are (warts and all)? Is the point of us all being here to be ‘productive and efficient’ for the ‘economy’ or someone else?

QS: One thing that bothered me a lot in the film was that couldn’t unhappiness be also a motivating force. Or at least a force that forces us to take a realistic view on how things should be developed. In business I see often too optimistic thinking to make people to belittle risks and underestimate the time and resource requirements, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. And if business goes badly, shouldn’t people in fact feel unhappy ..in order to work getting things on the right track again. I would assume same applies in people’s personal lives too?

I’m kind of trying to outline an idea that wouldn’t unhappiness be a necessary feeling to be able to reflect with correct feedback from the environment?

LC: We’re in a car... it is heading down a hill at full throttle towards a cliff that is looming up in the distance... the brakes are gone... but hey! Let’s think positively about this...! One needs to be realistic when it comes to happiness I think. And I agree with you, unhappiness can be a great informer of things that are or are about to go wrong. Unhappiness sounds useful to me. What is the point of discarding it? Is it really possible to discard it? I think not.

QS: Another thing that bothered me even more in the film is that is it actually ok to try to actively remember just positive things and forget unpleasant ones? What if we have some unresolved knots in our personality? Problems that we have not dealt with…it does not seem right to me that we should just try to ignore the bad things that have happened to us and try to forget them by being overly active in order to pursue a constant day to day happiness?

LC: I cannot remember that time when I was an absolute git on vodka. I am going to repeatedly drink vodka as a result of this because I think when I have vodka I am wonderful. My friends don’t seem to agree with me and now I have no friends. Oh well... let’s forget about friends then. Where does it stop? We learn from our mistakes, trials and tribulations. Integrating them, owning them, and using them, is a fundamental part of being human.

QS: I suppose happiness should contribute to having a “good life”, but what else is there? Or in other words, when can we say we have had a fulfilling life, is being happy enough?

LC: A good life is something you look back on, not something you can see moving forward. As for the goal of life being a good life? I am not convinced. Goals change all the time throughout life and I believe this reflects how we change ourselves. What is good when you are twenty does not seem so good when you are eighty. With whose eyes are you looking forward to when you imagine a ‘good life’? The eyes of the 20 year old or the eyes of the 80 year old?

QS: I have to ask this…Do you think happy people irritate other less happy people and why? And if so, should we hide our happiness in order not to make others even more miserable :-)

LC: Depends on what time of the month it is.