Photo by Hamed Masoumi

According to research by economists and psychologists, the level of happiness in the population has not changed in almost a century.  In spite of advances in medicine and technology, we are not happier than our ancestors.  Characteristics such as age, gender, income level, and health, do not account for a lot of the variance in happiness between people.  This kind of evidence inevitably leads to the question of why this things that have seemingly improved our lives so much, have not really increased how happy we feel.  It’s important to note first that happiness in these studies was determined by the responses of the subjects themselves.

The first thought I have is that if all these improvements going on externally are not impacting our perceived happiness, then maybe the next step is to go inward.  People tend to rate their happiness based on how much they have externally, so they are in a constant state of wanting more.  I think it is this condition that has persisted over the century studied.  I’ve felt this desire in myself as well.  As soon as a desired improvement, the next step externally, is achieved, we immediately think of something else we have to have.  There are always going to be a million things we don’t have, and this is why this type of thinking will never lead us to feeling happier.  In fact, it is this greed itself that prevents the subjects in these studies from rating themselves the maximum level of “happiness”.  If we always think we have to have more, then even when asked if we are happy, we’ll think “well I could be happier.”  This is why income level was not a good predictor.  The billionaires and the unemployed all want more.

The second thought is that most people’s definition of happiness tends to coincide more with pleasure than contentment or peace.  True happiness either is or is not, there is no “happier”.  So if we are to seek this peace within ourselves, then it is not going to come in the form of a new phone or a more convenient washing machine.  We must go within and sort out the conflicts within ourselves if we want satisfaction.  But none of this can even begin to happen if we first don’t realize our blind rush for “more”.  It’s not going to happen if we don’t realize that we are seeking pleasure, not peace.

It still amazes me when I find that so much of our answers are already right in front of us but nobody seems to notice. Yesterday I was in a Psychology class of at least 100 people while the professor went over the concept of an authentic self and an egoistic self. These are the two components of our personalities according to one theory.

The egoistic self is comprised of what we think is desirable by the people around us and the part that is created by us to gain their approval. The authentic self is what we really are and what tendencies we are born with. Everyone has both of these sides, it is only a matter of what kind of balance each person has created between these two.

It seems to me that most people are heavily weighted in the egoistic self and this is clearly noticeable in how similar our behaviors are. Human beings are naturally social creatures and seek approval from those that are around them, but sometimes it goes too far. When someone is deeply entrenched in the egoistic self, an image that they have created for themselves to be more liked by others, their true self suffers and becomes forgotten. As they get more and more used to this and end up living a life very different from what they really want, they get depressed and maybe start questioning why they’re unhappy. This isn’t necessarily something that happens years down the line, this is something that probably happens to most of my peers as well. The part that astonishes is me that this information is being presented to some of these people in my class and they probably wont give it a second thought other than to copy it down and memorize it for an exam.

Even as you’re reading this, think about the qualities that you’ve tried to emphasize in yourself. Did you want to be more funny? smart? good-looking? strong? popular? I know I have. As we try to show these qualities that aren’t naturally a part of who we are, we step farther and farther away from the people that we really should be. To put on the show for the rest of the world can be a great burden. This burden will undoubtedly affect the clarity and freedom of your mind and actions.

A lot of the unhappiness in ourselves can be solved simply by questioning our motives and finding out who we really are outside of our social images. If we are able to live according to what we truly want, whether or not this is something that will make others like us, then we can improve our well-being as people. Who knows, we might even be able to effect change in other parts of our lives with this new found awareness.

I’ve always been very critical of how people are programmed from day 1 to operate a certain way in our society. I had never really thought of the benefits this may have until this summer. I was back in India and had a lot of time to kill during the day so I decided to try and teach basic math to our maid. I spent about a week trying to get her to understand the concept of multiplication and it seemed as hopeless as ever. She could replicate answers to previous problems I gave her, but she couldn’t figure out any new ones for herself because she didn’t really have an understanding of how it all worked.

This made me think of how part of the conditioning society provides for us is our education. After seeing the poor display by our maid, this made me a little glad that I had been exposed to higher learning and had the luxury of thinking about the bigger questions in life. It’s hard to imagine someone who isn’t able to understand math being able to understand other abstract ideas. I think there is some point in our learning where the law of diminishing returns comes into effect. For example, getting a PhD will not affect my ability to reason as much as my kindergarten class did. So I assume that there is some necessary level of education that human beings should have which will afford us the luxury of thinking for ourselves and analyzing the ideas that govern our thinking.

The trick is to learn as we grow up but not take everything at it’s word. Instead of going to school and memorizing information to spit back at our parents, professors, and future employers, we should try to learn and understand the material for ourselves and think of what it means to us. That is after all, at least I think, the benefit of humanity’s ability to reason. If we don’t do this, then we really aren’t getting as much as we can out of our learning and instead of something that can help bring us to a higher plain of consciousness, we let it hold us even more tightly in the cages of society’s programming.