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aboriginal cultures
June 2009 
Do you believe happiness is a choice?
Posted on Sep 27th, 2007
by 
tinkonthebrink
tinkonthebrink
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for September 27, 2007:
Well, yes. And no. It certainly isn't as simplistic as that statement makes it seem.
Choosing a perspective, a way of framing experience, is certainly possible. But that ability is informed by things like experience, temperament, intelligence, and personal resources. It really isn't like you can just issue an edict - "Get happy!" - and have your gleeful subjects (including yourself) obey.
And then also, I wonder, is all unhappiness terrible? I'm a pretty happy person, but there are things in the world that I'm not happy about.
I mean, I'm not chewing rocks and cutting myself, but there's definitely some unfortunate stuff happening. George W, Myanmar, Iraq, Afghanistan, persistent racial and gender inequality and stereotyping, the public school system, the standard american diet, irresponsible pet ownership, bad drivers, littering, dismal movies which somehow get studio funding while good films starve on the sidelines, celebrity magazines, capri pants, platform shoes, the sad state of broadband penetration in the united states compared to the rest of industrialized world, the sad state of the industrialized world in general, WalMart, pharmaceutical companies, the medical insurance mafia in the united states, the existence of polyester clothing. Just for a start.
So I'm not sure about that. Personally, I have the resources to select the stuff I want to focus on, but even so, there's stuff I'm not willing to ignore, even if it isn't all cheery.
Then there are those days, the bleak grey days, the emotional rainy days. The idea that happiness is a choice implies that it's a choice that should be made. Are the bleak days really so pointless? Nothing to learn, nothing to experience there? Just buck up, turn that frown upside down, and if that doesn't work, there are meds...
I don't know, maybe happiness is to some extent a choice, and maybe we should exercise care in choosing it over other moods and moments.
I can't see it as being so simple minded.
Choosing a perspective, a way of framing experience, is certainly possible. But that ability is informed by things like experience, temperament, intelligence, and personal resources. It really isn't like you can just issue an edict - "Get happy!" - and have your gleeful subjects (including yourself) obey.
And then also, I wonder, is all unhappiness terrible? I'm a pretty happy person, but there are things in the world that I'm not happy about.
I mean, I'm not chewing rocks and cutting myself, but there's definitely some unfortunate stuff happening. George W, Myanmar, Iraq, Afghanistan, persistent racial and gender inequality and stereotyping, the public school system, the standard american diet, irresponsible pet ownership, bad drivers, littering, dismal movies which somehow get studio funding while good films starve on the sidelines, celebrity magazines, capri pants, platform shoes, the sad state of broadband penetration in the united states compared to the rest of industrialized world, the sad state of the industrialized world in general, WalMart, pharmaceutical companies, the medical insurance mafia in the united states, the existence of polyester clothing. Just for a start.
So I'm not sure about that. Personally, I have the resources to select the stuff I want to focus on, but even so, there's stuff I'm not willing to ignore, even if it isn't all cheery.
Then there are those days, the bleak grey days, the emotional rainy days. The idea that happiness is a choice implies that it's a choice that should be made. Are the bleak days really so pointless? Nothing to learn, nothing to experience there? Just buck up, turn that frown upside down, and if that doesn't work, there are meds...
I don't know, maybe happiness is to some extent a choice, and maybe we should exercise care in choosing it over other moods and moments.
I can't see it as being so simple minded.
Access: PublicTagged with: QaR, happiness, choice, depression, mihalyi csikszentmihalyi, flow, evolution, aboriginal cultures
Beautiful response… I think here at zaadz, sometimes we have to remind folks that it ain't always sweetness and light, no matter how much you close your eyes, tap the ruby slippers, and visualize, “Secret”-ize or whatever-else-ize that figurative Kansas where it's always wonderful and lollipops grow as high as an elephants eye.
(OK, so that's figurative Oklahoma, actually)…
On wellbutrin about five years ago I was always “happy,” as long as you define happy the same way my therapist did. She meant well, but she didn't have an inkling as to why I was sitting on her couch anyway, and it was the most insipid, boring, pointless time I ever spent. I don't think anyone can consider themselves fully alive if they don't at least occasionally visit the outlying fringes of their emotional landscape. My choice is to experience as much of what life lays before me as I possibly can. I guess from that perspective I choose happiness, but never at the expense of any other emotional state.
Does it sound crazy? I want it all.
I think you're right - it isn't simple minded.
well-said.
I'm curious about this rock-chewing phenomenon which you've so wisely eschewed. Hypothetically, if you were to chew rocks, would you prefer a simple limestone chunk or a more egalitarian sedimentary mix?
I missed yesterday's question. When that happens and I read your response first, I am blindsided deaf-ed and dumb in love and admiration for your mind-view. Thank you! There was a great article in the New Yorker last year re happiness here is the link www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/060227crbo_books - 121k - It was called pursuing happiness.
Wow, thank you Farland and thanks for that link - what a great article. The point about anxiety and the negative emotions being so highly adaptive that they are bred into us is really interesting. I wonder a little about it though - throughout that long evolutionary timeline, we only needed to live long enough to reproduce and for females to get the next generation up to puberty. It seems like Ig, sexy risk-taking devil that he was, might have gotten more girls. It also makes me wonder if women have more caution hardwired into them genetically then, since the offspring of the Iggettes would have had a more perilous childhood and fewer would have survived? Anyway, it seems possible that we inherited a mix of traits along the way as long as our predecessors lived long enough to start dating.
And the point about pursuing happiness not working so well as happiness being a byproduct of being absorbed in something else (the reference to Csikszentmihalyi) - that's just right, isn't it?
Nice article, thanks for sending it!
Well, in fact, maybe those adaptive negative emotions are hardwired into women:
Women experience depression at twice the rate of men. This 2:1 ratio exists regardless of racial or ethnic background or economic status. The lifetime prevalence of major depression is 20-26% for women and 8-12% for men. (Journal of the American Medical Association, 1996)
The statistics are interesting - I wonder if, as that article suggested (thanks again Farland!), people living with more focus on survival and less attention available for wondering about their own happiness would report similar rates of depression? Are 6.7% of aboriginal peoples depressed as well? If happiness is a product of being absorbed in something outside ourselves, then is depression a function of having too much time to stare at our own navels and reflect on our emotional states? Like some kind of shrieking positive feedback loop in our collective cultural psyche…
Good article. I wonder if my psych prof was on to something. She said that it might sound counter-intuitive, but that for humans being happy has no more survival value than being good looking and that the proof is that we are not all happy and/or good looking. She several other nuts-and-bolts arguments to buttress this idea but I'll have to dig deeply and try to remember them.
:) wokka wokka?