HAPPINESS, RELATIONSHIPS AND THE LOCKDOWN : PART 2

By His Grace and Blessings I Write

In part 2 of the blog (HAPPINESS, RELATIONSHIPS, AND THE LOCKDOWN), we will continue to seek the answers to this enigma called happiness. I hope part 1 was a good read. Here I intend to work upon certain concepts in social psychology, economics and neurosciences in a simple manner to understand various mechanisms involved in attainment of happiness.  Kindly keep reading….

So let’s say you have downloaded a game app. Let’s presume that you have become addicted to an extent that it interferes with your relationships and your work. Your wife deletes it out of anger/ frustration. You feel sad and uneasy. Slowly and slowly within a few days you don’t feel the need for this app at all. It vanishes from your memory and you don’t crave for it anymore.  Where has craving gone?

Take another example. You buy a new mobile handset. You look for options available and make a choice. You choose say One+7. After 5 days, I come to ask you about your satisfaction level with this handset vis a vis the choices forgone on the day of actual purchase. What will be your response?

You have a daughter/son who craving for a toy. You don’t buy it. The child is unhappy. After 3/5 days is the child still unhappy or does he remember the toy?  Now suppose you bought it. After 5 days what is the level of happiness of the child with this toy?

In above 3 situations what is your conclusion. I don’t think answers will be different for any of us.  In the first situation all of us will tend to forget the game app and our anxiety will be considerably reduced after a few days. In the second situation, it is sure that once we have made a choice for a certain mobile handset, we would have anyway settled our brains for this product. We will look for all the positive attributes in this mobile handset and consider it as the best choice that could have been made. In the third situation, the child would have forgotten the toy irrespective of the fact that you bought it or not. Conclusion, the app, the mobile handset or the toy don’t matter. Your brain is an excellent machine which will synthesize happiness in all the situations. Your happiness is not captive to the objects. Happiness is a construction of your brain and it can always be synthesized under all circumstance. Our brains are excellent simulators and we have a psychological immune system that helps us to change our world views so that we can feel better in any situation.

Similar is the problem we face when we tend to overestimate the hedonic impact of a future event. Consider a situation where you expect yourself to win ten million rupees . What is the expected level of happiness? The brain has a tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of all such things which you don’t possess. Close your eyes for a moment and think. This expectation fills you with lots of joy and happiness. Adrenaline rushes through your body. However, fast forward a year after you have actually won this sum. Does this windfall makes any difference to your levels of happiness? Does it match your expected levels? Psychologists at Harvard have found that there is no difference between the happiness of a person who wins a lottery and another who lost a limb in an accident, a year after both the incidents. What it means?  It’s obvious that the hedonic pleasures /distress derived from loss or gain of an object are highly exaggerated.

Now let me modify the situation a little for you for your one+7. Let’s consider that shopkeeper allows you to change your handset within 5 days if you don’t like it. You have a wider choice now. You can get your One+7 replaced within 5 days. How will your brain react? What will be the level of your happiness with the choice that you exercised in the first instance? Experiments  at Harvard have revealed that level of happiness considerably falls once you are allowed to make an exchange .You will not all see all the positive attributes in your one+7 once you know that it can be exchanged within 5 days with no additional costs . You will become indecisive. So more choices means less happiness…

Then how come welfare economists like Amartya Sen call for widening of choices in order to increase happiness. Well it seems the hypothesis that widening of choices will lead to increased individual happiness is wrong. Can wider choices positively contribute to happiness of the individual?  Redistribution of wealth, reduction of income inequalities and social welfare measures can play an important role in welfare of the society at macro level , they have limited impact on happiness at micro levels. So widening of choices is actually an enemy of Synthetic Happiness. And don’t worry Ambanis and Adanis are the least happy of the lot in this country despite widest of the choices available to them.

Once we agree with the above discussion that the happiness can be synthesized irrespective of object and that many choices may not be conducive to happiness, we are confronted with another important question. Why then we accumulate so many things when they don’t contribute to increased happiness? Why we have our closet/houses filled with all sorts of ugly/stressful things when we don’t use them and they don’t contribute to our happiness? Why then people have lots of houses, cars and other things which actually make them miserable rather than happy?

The answer is advertisement which is the biggest polluter of culture and human mind. The corporate know that you can manufacture your happiness. So they keep you engaged into novelty by creating the demands for their products which you actually don’t need at all (through discounts, sales, snob effect, false prestige, making you feel outdated etc). See your closet and dresses you have bought without any need for them. Make a list of items in your house and I can assure you that more than 70% of them have not contributed to your happiness in any meaningful way. Human beings get addicted to things and they are encouraged and influenced to maintain that addiction through information and technology. So in all these desirable objects we are actually looking for pleasures and not happiness. Pleasure is object dependent and is characteristically impermanent. So pleasure based on something impermanent can never bring happiness. Happiness, if it is permanent in nature shall thus be independent of the object outside of you. Happiness then becomes a state of mind which is free of the objects of the senses. Happiness will exist even when one is sad. Happiness then is a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment. It’s a permanent state of well being. It’s what Upanishads call Sat, Chit, Anand. So to attain happiness  understand of the workings of your mind.

One of solutions lies in adopting a Minimalist lifestyle. We will initially crave for more goods but slowly and slowly the understanding will dawn upon us. We will realize the futility of accumulating the objects.  Get rid of the clutter which is source of intense stress in our lives. Our mind is captivated by the novelties and gimmicks of the market forces which seem to hold happiness but never make us happy. A minimalist lifestyle will also save a lot of money, time and create a positive atmosphere for the feelings of happiness. Bertrand Russell once remarked ….” To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness”…It is so true.

I think I will have to continue this discussion in part-3 of this blog considering the fact that it may become a little longer than many people are used to reading now a days. Our span is attention has considerably gone down since the advent of digital age and I feel I need your undivided attention for any meaningful discussion. Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate of Economics remarked in 1977…..”Information consumes attention. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”…….so please keep reading whenever you get time  but read with undivided attention.Your attention is something  for which all of us compete….Have a great day ..….Thanks ..

By His Grace and Blessings I continue to write …..

Dr. Seema Chaudhary