I was falling asleep on a chair the other day when I had thoughts like these.
Happiness, hmm...
It seems like something which a mind creates,
To survive harsh reality from life.
So, there is some hope,
We wouldn't collapse from exhaustion.
A mechanism of survival
To spend a century forgetting hardships
A great invention of nature
to trick me to forget
life as it is.
Happiness...
A virus Guard from my mind.
Another program to counteract, Sadness..
anyone survive in a world without happiness?
It is a good question to ask. Once we understand a world without happiness, we would be able to identify where this genius invention of nature comes from. Hence, we are closer to understand and define it.
What if there is only sadness?
It is true that we all seek happiness since we were born. Let it be satisfaction we get from quench our thirst, crave of taste. Happiness also comes from some deep desires for praise and praiseworthiness. But what will happen if there is no happiness in the world? Can you imagine such a world? It is obvious in such a world you would be labelled as depressed. As definition of depression itself includes lack of feeling happy. If it is no happiness, we would even give up on eating. Who knows we will all be malnourish and be wiped out of the surface of earth in no time. Imagine we all are infected with a covid virus which destroy dopamine system in our brain. It would kill faster than any other illness which weakens our immunity, as it will knock down our main driver for our work.
That there is our definition for happiness.
Happiness is the driving force of our survival. It is the source of our virus guard for inevitable doom otherwise.
What produces happiness?
It is clear that from above that happiness is created by our own mind. It is really unclear whether it is an entity by its own. As when you remove happiness what is left is sadness and depression.
Not everyone would like to see happiness be defined as above. As knowledge of it itself may reduce chances of being happy. However good news is these programs are already coded in our brain so we could not re-program them. You would still feel happiness. Even reading this article, if you looked at it deep down creates a sense of accomplishment, which generate some of it. But you would never do the mistake of looking for it where it cannot be found when your wisdom is grown enough.
Imagine a child in an African country. It seems they suffer a lot when we see it from here from our affluence point of view. However, if you would really live with them for a day, maybe they do create happiness on their own, in their relative world. They may be feeling happy when they get a piece of bread or a bottle of dirty water from a deep earth hole. Just enough happiness to sustain the life.
Thank you for reading Will anyone survive a world without happiness? (definition)
You may also like to read Singer's famine relief argument
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