Stearns (2012) History of Happiness Harvard Business Review

Every twenty-four hours I laugh at something I find funny or grin at someone I discover delightful. That rush of well-beingness, a momentary pleasure, is i type of happiness — a happiness that is easily gained and just as easily lost, similar money in the stock market place.

Merely there is a more permanent class of happiness: the kind you accept to invest in, the kind that gives less of an immediate thrill and more of a sustained feeling of emotional well-being. This lasting happiness is something we all covet but often don't stop to think about. Through the ages people have worshiped information technology. The Egyptians built temples to Hathor, their deity of happiness. The Greeks and Romans had Tyke, the goddess of luck closely associated with happiness in the ancient earth. In Japan, there was Benten, one of the seven Shichi-fuku-jin, the gods of luck, fortune, and happiness. Happiness has been something we take hoped for and sought out, just not always viewed in the aforementioned way.

Our thinking well-nigh happiness has evolved. In the West, happiness went from beingness based on luck and chance in the time of the Greek philosophers to being regarded almost as a right in our modern-twenty-four hours lodge. In the Eastward, ancient Buddhist and Hindu philosophers taught that happiness was something you find when you transcend the need for cloth possessions and live the life of the spirit. The current view in the East is slowly edging towards the modernistic Western idea, only the path to happiness is still seen as more communal than individualistic.

Almost 800,000 to 200,000 years ago our human ancestors started to experience more complex emotions, including happiness.According to the Smithsonian, earth's climate was changing every bit the ice age ended; glaciers were melting. Our brains slowly started evolving and getting larger, so that they could take in more information and adapt to the ever-irresolute surroundings. Our larger brains led to more complex emotions and interactions with other beings. The seed of our modernistic agreement of happiness started to grow.

Ane of the traits that sets humans apart from other animals is self-consciousness. As cognitive biologist Ladislav Kováč writes, "Human self-consciousness changes a considerable part of emotions into feelings." Before this stride in development, humans had experienced feelings, but non been able to connect those feelings to themselves. The divergence betwixt feelings, which all primates possess, and emotions, which are special merely to humans, is linguistic communication. Emotions are the way that we draw feelings; they are non the feelings themselves. Put another manner, emotions are the linguistic description or understanding of the feelings, or our physiological heightening of the senses. Early humans may have been able to acknowledge good feelings and differentiate them from bad ones, but they would not be able to sense them as securely equally humans do today or have the cocky-awareness to know that they were feeling happy or sad. This ability to discern complicated feelings, and understand them as emotions, laid the background for the concept of happiness as it is today.

Moving forwards, the next large discernible shift in the philosophy of happiness in the Due west was most 12,000 years ago when agriculture started to be widely practiced. In one case people started farming fewer people were killed past animals, since hunting was no longer the sole food source. People had a more than reliable food supply, which took a major worry out of their lives, so they could cast their thoughts on other things.

Once philosophers had more than time to allow their minds dwell on the subject, happiness was examined more closely. Happiness was then thought to be more than about luck than it is today. R ather than something that you could seek, happiness was something that would come to you if y'all were lucky plenty. You were not fully in control of your own happiness. The ideas of luck and happiness accept probably been around since our human being minds developed, simply they were not fully articulated until human emotions became more complex.

Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato, defended chapters in their writings to happiness. In their view, happiness was based on luck but could also exist achieved past living correctly and doing the right thing. This might involve performing tasks that were in fact painful or unpleasant, such as giving your blood brother the last delicious dark chocolate cupcake even when you sorely want it for yourself. Yous give it to him anyway because it will brand him happy and it is the right affair to do! Happiness was seen equally separate from the feeling of pleasance.

In the East, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies advocated the thought that the happiness achieved from fabric desires was not true happiness but fleeting and soon to exist gone, like water slipping through a sieve. False happiness succeeded but in making one anxious about losing it and creating an unending bike of desire. True happiness, on the other hand, was achieved past transcending the demand for material possessions and becoming one with the universe. Y'all would be truly happy only when you could escape the cycle of birth and rebirth. It was not most you or your trunk, only most unity with everything and everyone around you lot. It could accept many hundreds or thousands of years to achieve this elevated state. Compassion for others and being a productive part of society are large parts of Hinduism and Buddhism.

"True happiness, on the other hand, was achieved past transcending the demand for fabric possessions and becoming one with the universe."

Confucius said that "the one who would be in abiding happiness must frequently change." He set down a few main guidelines to lead people to the state of constant happiness that and then many humans strive to reach. He taught that happiness came from doing things for others, from being successful in what you exercise, from having a moderate amount of fun, and from meeting the obligations that are set out for y'all. This view is fairly different from other Eastern philosophies at the time, which suggested forgetting the concrete and focusing on spiritual happiness. Confucius instead proposed embracing both at the aforementioned time.

In Europe, a change gradually took hold during the Age of Enlightenment. Happiness became less a result of luck and more a human right; something that we could command. Prior to this, if you were fortunate enough you would be graced with the spirit of happiness. It used to be a nifty privilege to be happy; and then information technology became more than of an expectation, a land anybody could attain at some point in their lives if their actions brought information technology about. In his article on the history of happiness, Peter N. Stearns attributes this shift in part to better living weather condition, a modify in thinking, and, most surprisingly, amend dentistry that allowed humans to smile more freely!

This change manifested itself in many realms, even government. The American Declaration of Independence states that all humans accept the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." When this document was written in the 18th century, Western thinkers viewed happiness equally something that could be actively sought rather than awaited.

In the Due east, as the globe has changed and countries have become more continued and intertwined during the past few centuries, the bones thought of happiness has besides changed. Information technology has become more individualistic and at present more closely resembles the Western model. Withal, it is still not entirely about the self. Equally Deborah Consume, a leading authority on intercultural communications, says, "Happiness tends to be defined in terms of interpersonal connectedness and happiness is best predicted by how well embedded the cocky is in a social network." Happiness for people in the East is still somewhat centered around beingness with others, non virtually having things and constantly wanting more.

By and large today's view of happiness is a more than materialistic, individualistic philosophy. This is especially true in the West, only also to some degree in the Eastward. Every twenty-four hour period people spend millions of dollars on things that will supposedly make them happier than they already are. I believe that happiness is not something that tin can exist bought with any amount of money. As Buddha said, "Happiness does non depend on what yous have or who you are; it solely relies on what you think." Happiness has to come from inside of you.

The optimist would say happiness is something you find within yourself: you choose whether you want to be happy or not. Personal happiness is in ane's own easily. Information technology depends on how you choose to see your circumstances. The pessimist tells me that no homo will ever be fully happy; the state of happiness that many strive for may be unachievable. But without happiness driving u.s.a. onward, is there anything left to alive for? Will humans get something else, something raw, something wrong? Is happiness ane of the things that makes us human?

Humanity's views on happiness volition no doubt go on to evolve. In this age, when many feel that there is a recipe for everything, scientists are trying to find a perfect formula for happiness. Some people think it is all about physiological adaptation, a mental shift or change in response to external factors to help you maintain equilibrium. Others remember that information technology is generally about love, an intense physical and emotional connection with others. Nevertheless nevertheless others have a more philosophical approach and say the secret to happiness is about how yous perceive your state of affairs.

The idea of happiness has shaped our world and continues to exercise then as we speak. For, equally Aristotle writes in Nicomachean Ethics, "All human actions serve a common purpose: the pursuit of happiness."

Sources

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_{"Cult of Thyke: Ancient Greek Religion." Theoi Greek Mythology. April 2015. http://www.theoi.com/ Cult /TykheCult.html}

_{"How to Be Happy, Confucian Manner." PsyBlog RSS. January 24, 2008. http://www.spring.org.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland/2008/01/how-to-be-happy-confucian-fashion.php}

_{"What Does it Hateful to Be Human?" "Brains." Smithsonian: National Museum of Natural History. http://humanorigins.si.edu/man-characteristics/brains}

_{Kováč, Ladislav. "The Biology of Happiness: Chasing Pleasure and Human Destiny." EMBO Reports. Nature Publishing Group. April 2012. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3321158/}

_{Mcmahon, Darrin M. "A History of Happiness." Yes! Magazine. October 1, 2010. http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/a-history-of-happiness}

_{Polansky, Ronald M. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Cambridge Academy Press, 2014.}

Ricard, Matthieu. "A Buddhist View of Happiness." Oxford Handbooks Online (2013).

_{Sharma, Rohit. "What's the Differences betwixt Feelings and Emotions?" Quora. Apr 4, 2016. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-differences-between-feelings-and-emotions}

_{Shenk, Joshua Wolf. "What Makes Us Happy?" The Atlantic. June 1, 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/]-makes-usa-happy/307439/}

_{Stearns, Peter. "The History of Happiness." Harvard Business organization Review. Jan 1, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/01/the-history-of-happiness}

_{Swallow, Deborah. "Happiness: E vs West Differences in Perceptions" DeborahSwallow.com. August 2009. http://www.deborahswallow.com/2009/08/19/happiness-east-vs-west-differences-in-perceptions/}

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