The Myth Of Sustained Happiness

The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Joy

Firstly, a word on need. As living beings we are in a near perpetual state of need. We aren't like a stone statute that can remain relatively unaffected by its environment and be relatively unaffecting to its environment. We constantly take and give to our environment, as the continual process of obtaining what satiates our need to fulfill lack, and giving away the excess we need to dispel.

Secondly, it's necessary to understand what sensation, whether pleasant/joyful, or some degree of pain/discomfort, is based on. Sensation is based on internal and external things interacting with our body-nervous system. Perhaps sensation that is stored by our brain-body, but not consciously experienced, may just be done so in terms of the collection of internal/external data, but when consciously experienced, it's always felt in the form of need or the temporary cessation of need.

The sensation of need can be described using words anywhere from minor discomfort to agonizing pain.

Pleasure is the sensation that comes when our body feels we should be aware of the temporary cessation of need. Pleasure can't be self-sustaining.

Thirdly, it's important to understand, that while need or the temporary cessation of need is what conscious sensation is based on, that doesn't mean that we always feel our needs or cessations of needs.

Just because we feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of a need, doesn't mean that we had previously felt the need that has now temporarily ceased. For example, we may feel pleasure when receiving a shoulder massage. This pleasure is due to the sensation of the cessation of tension in our shoulders. But, it doesn't mean that we had ever noticed that tension. Whether we did or didn't doesn't necessarily have a correlation between the pleasure we feel.

Then just because a need has been temporarily fulfilled doesn't mean we feel pleasure because of this. This is true whether we had previously felt that need or not. For example, if we feel hungry and eat, we will feel pleasure at the temporary cessation of that need. The reason is to keep us eating, because without the pleasure we may not bother. But, we can possibly be given food through a tube, and fill no pleasure in the process of becoming full.

Fourthly, we may look at the myth of near indefinite sustained joy itself. The idea is that one can keep experiencing one pleasure after another or the same pleasure continuously without significant pain or discomfort ever interrupting. But, with the above in mind we may see how this dynamic would be essentially impossible. Pleasure/joy is what follows need, therefore the only way that pleasure can be continuous is for us to not consciously experience our needs, while often consciously experience those needs' temporarily cessations. I don't know if that system is even hypothetically possible, and doubt it is, but let's look at what the cost would be should one manage to maintain it:

If our needs are not consciously experience, but simply always taken care of without our conscious attention until upon their temporary cessations are conscious awakens just for the short time that cessation lasts, then the part of our brain-body responsible for conscious thinking would atrophy. We might experience nothing but pleasure, but we may ask what we'd make of make of it, or how such pleasure would feel; basically like if an ameba was awakened every time it fed, we wouldn't know what to do with our pleasure. And that cost/pitfall, isn't even the most relevant when one looks at the useless sheltered life that would result from that system.

No, our pleasure gains meaning and intensity because we consciously experience the need for which's temporary fulfillment the pleasure represents. Great pains leads to great pleasures, but let's look at it a slightly different way: Great needs if regularly temporary fulfilled lead to great pleasures, but those great needs must generally be felt; felt as great pain.

Lastly, I'll mention two things. First, it's worth mentioning that while over time our degree of pleasure can rarely exceed our degree of pain, we can maintain an approximate balance, which I call contentment. I'll discuss that further in the other essay just below this one. Second, while pleasure can't be self sustaining, pain can. If we reverse the system described earlier in this essay and avoid consciousness during pleasure, or more realistically simply always have new needs impede on the short times we can experience pleasure, then pleasure may essentially never be felt.

Being that most of our development before we're fully grown is done unconsciously, once grown we already exist in side of complex beings, that may have a long way to go in losing-complexity/decaying before death. We may experience this spiral downwards, while I'm skeptical of the reverse. During a downward spiral our conscious minds have already reached a state of complexity that knows what to do with this pain - knows how to feel it or in other words; simply can feel it. During a spiral upwards, which is mostly commonly in living beings as the time from conception up to being full grown, one starts with an undeveloped consciousness as one starts with an undeveloped body, and therefore this great process of health, which is the years in which the development of the body takes place, can hardly be characterized as being experienced with an excess of pleasure.


The Myth of Near Indefinite Sustained Personal Peace

The above essay covered most of what would be in this. Here I just want to explore an aspect of the more broad idea of happiness as opposed to the more simple idea of joy. That aspect of the idea of happiness, as opposed to others which are generally covered in the above essay, is that of personal peace, for which's fullest conceptualization is that of achieving a state where the majority of one's worries will be gone, and one will have accomplished virtually all that one has sought to accomplish, and have all that one has sought to have, and live in a state of near bliss, only occasionally interrupted by minor discomforts.

To see through that myth we must look at human nature. It's not to seek a certain degree of comfort and then settle, but to continually grow when possible. If we feel deprived of something, then if we manage to satiate that deprivation, we'll feel happy for a while. But then we'll begin to want more. Historical examples are numerous of this, but are there are few, if any examples of the reverse. People can settle, they can meet a long lasting state of contentment, but that contentment does not equate to happiness, it's a state between happiness and sadness. Generally a highly compromised existence, tending more towards what people commonly would be more likely to call a sad existence than a happy one.

Think about the joy one experience after working very hard for very long then going on a quality vacation. In this case what has happened is that the need to rest has grown and grown, and once on vacation that need is being satiated. But once we have rested all that we need, then we can rest no more. To sit in one place on the beach all day and stare at the ocean stops being an act of rest from hard work and becomes a test of endurance in itself. It becomes a test to maintain self control amidst mounting pressure to begin activity again.

We have many over-arching needs in our lives, that we can spend years trying to relieve, and there's not necessarily any reason we shouldn't try. But, it's helpful to understand that once the needs are fulfilled, other needs will come.