Finding Happiness in an Overstressed World

My Ebook Publishing House

• Publisher: My Ebook Publishing House
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781310144790
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Salute mentale e benessere

In our plugged-in, fast-paced world we've lost touch with the tools we need to overcome loneliness, stress and problems - the skills that permit us to truly FEEL happy and pass that feeling on to others.
This book draws from the latest discoveries in the biology of human emotion, emotional intelligence and attachment to bring us a groundbreaking new vision of why our lives often feel overwhelming yet empty at the same time.
The book is packed with fascinating observations.

2. The standard of the world: Evil is prevalent in relation to welfare.

The standard of human nature: Happiness is defined only by tranquility, inner peace, and lack of tensions. The man satisfies his wishes in relation to the world. This can be seen as an immense recipient with positive possibilities (chances of satisfying our desires), a source of joy and pleasure, but also negative- chances of breakdown, of failure, sources of pain, unhappiness, and suffering. Happiness, joy or sufferings are affected by the world configuration. If the world is kind to us, if the potential good is preponderant in relation with the evil, then also in the man’s life, pleasure, satisfaction and joy will tip the scales.

However, if the world in unfavorable to us, if evil is the one that dominates the world, then our life will also be filled with misery and unhappiness. If the world is kind to us (the amount of good prevails the one of evil) a distinct consequence will devolve. Trying to satisfy his wishes, the man will obtain more satisfaction and joy than dissatisfaction and suffering. But the good is not always present in the world. On the contrary, it is often guided by evil. Because of this cosmic imbalance in favor of evil, a paradox arises: the more desires the man has, the greater the proportion of the misery and distress will be; the more the man strives to satisfy them and the more importance he grants them, the more unwelcomed and negative the obtained results will be. The one that has the most desires is the most exposed, the most vulnerable. His non performances are greater. And in reverse, the less you want, the less you have to lose.

The less importance you give to pleasures, the more bearable misery become. In this Ascetic definition of the man’s report with his world, another assumption is involved: his helplessness before the environment. We cannot fundamentally change the world we live in, and we cannot reverse the balance of evil and good. The man is more of a sweet or bitter fruit of the world gatherer, than a cultivator, a transformer of it. The man can only be active in one respect: subjective. He is active only in relation to his desires and aspirations. He can want more or less. He can receive to heart or take it easy. The results of his actions will be exclusively decided by the world’s configuration. The solution of this difficult problem in which the man is found in is renouncing. Happiness is attained not by maximizing joy, but by minimizing suffering. The man is in the position of a player that luck does not favor. In consequence, his strategy will be not the maximizing attempt of the gain, but loss minimizing. The unhappiest man is the one that wants to increase his pleasures and satisfactions. He, at his requirements towards the world, will also have some satisfactions. But non performances, pain will be much more numerous. The balance between joy and suffering is, in his case, much more negative than of the one who has lesser requirements towards the world, which wants less and expects less.

Happiness defined as satisfaction maximization is impossible in a world like this, with such a philosophy. The only happiness possible is the happiness as a lack of pain, as spiritual tranquility, self-pacification, lack of tension, inner equilibrium, resulted from the elimination of pain and misery. Therefore, the fundamental rule of life that leads to happiness is renouncement. Such a rule, as can now be foreseen, has its rations in a universe defined as malevolent and averse to the individual. Modern psychology has shown that human necessities don’t represent unalterable givens”. They are dynamic: they can increase or decrease. In order to designate this variation, the concept of aspiration level is utilized. Someone can hope for less or more. The level of aspirations is a psychological state and depends in a great measure of ourselves. It is double-edged. On one hand, it motivates action, it mobilizes energies, and sustains efforts. You cannot realize something special if you don’t aspire, if you don’t have a strong desire.

Therefore, the elevation of the aspiration level energetically motivates and sustains action. The decrease of the aspiration level also decreases the inner motivation and support. However, on the other hand, high aspirations are disastrous in case of failure. The one who desires very much for something will go through a great deal of psychological distress if he won’t get what he wants. If he doesn’t desire it too much, the chances of obtaining it decrease, but also the sensitivity to failure diminishes. And, in fact, psychology has proved that the level of aspirations is influenced by circumstances. When the circumstances are unfavorable, the level of aspirations lowers, psychologically protecting and immunizing the man to loss. It is an affair of probability. If the probability of gain is mighty, then the best strategy is the one of impetus; the level of aspiration advances; the motivation and the energetic support of performance also augment. If the probability of loss is higher, then the strategy of retraction is the recommended one: the level of aspirations is lowered, increasing the failure immunity.

If we reflect a bit, we will realize that such a technique becomes, in certain circumstances, current in the life of the man. Very often, the man adjusts, consciously or unconsciously aspirations to possibilities. Many times, we give and get advices such as: ”you want too many things”, “it’s not good to desire too much”, and “you have to be content with less.” So, the level of aspirations represents an essential tool of human action. But he is utilized with discrimination, fluctuating according to the configuration of circumstances. In favorable conditions, the elevating of the level of aspirations ensures the development, realization and human growth. In unfavorable circumstances, the lessening of the aspiration level only ensures adjustment. The strategy of asceticism, of renouncing defines happiness as an equilibrium, but not a state of balancing of a system that is developed and in a permanent growth, but as one made possible by simplification, at a primitive level, slightly differentiated. It is the balance of a voided existence, not of one rich in valuable significances. The decline of the level of aspirations can be effectively realized with the aid of various ideological, rationalizing techniques.

These techniques, essentially, seek to diminish the importance assigned to desires, necessities, and the aspirations in question. They are exquisitely illustrated by the lecture of the fox and grapes fable: because they are located too high, the fox considers the grapes as being too sour. It is not an occurrence that in various philosophies or religions, that have promoted the strategy of resignation, the lack of value, of human desires importance are at large motivated. Christianity is a significant example: all the rare consumer goods , difficult to obtain-wealth, fame, health- are assimilated to the inferior nature of the man, of the body; they are not only declared “empty”, but also an obstacle before the real human realization, which is the spiritual one, and more accurately, the one attained by faith. Faith is a good abundant. Everyone can obtain it.

Therefore, it is not a “good” problem. Everyone can want it and have it. So, the first imperative of Christianity is: Seek to want nothing. In psychology terms, the level of aspirations lowers towards zero. In fact, such an effort has as a result, a gradual, continuous decrease of the level of aspirations, even if it reaches an absolute zero (the state of the desire-zero”) cannot be reached. The second principle of the strategy of asceticism is referred to psychological reorientation towards the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In modern psychology it is discussed about tolerance to frustration. Not satisfying human necessities generates a specific psychological state of dissatisfaction, of frustration. This state also, such as the level of aspirations, has a double meaning: a positive, active meaning –mobilizes the energies in order to enhance the effort of obtaining favorable conditions, of counteracting aggressive external factors. In this case, the frustration mobilizes and energetically sustains action. A negative, passive signification. When the action is not possible, when the attainment of the necessary or the elimination of the threat has minimum chances of succeeding, the frustration contracts another note and another function according to the dynamic of behavior. It appears as helplessness, bitterness, despondency, desperation. In this quality, it leads to a psychological imbalance, disorganizing personality. Because of this, the psychic has developed an adaptive mechanism to the state of frustration, of dissatisfaction: tolerance.

This mechanism consists, in the main, of the reduction of the negative reaction to frustration. This mechanism is a component of the process of accommodation in the given circumstances, which cannot be changed. In our daily life, the situations in which we become conscious of the necessity of “getting used to difficulties, shortcomings, troubles” are frequent and they are a part of our adaption process. We must get accustomed to difficulties, to learn to stoically tolerate shortcomings, difficulties when it is not in our power to eliminate them. Where the risk of difficulties is enhanced, education has an important task, and namely, the one of forming tolerance to frustration. In this case also, we encounter a profound psychological rule, whose results and consequences cannot be avoided.

We cannot be susceptible to joy, satisfaction, pleasure, gain but insensitive to suffering, dissatisfaction, loss, pain. And here, the two states intertwine and inter-condition. The one that will accentuate the importance of satisfaction, pleasure, will equally be more vulnerable to failure, deficiency, and difficulties. Because of this, the solution that we can find in ascetic ethics promotes not only the enhancement of tolerance, of insensitivity to pain, suffering, but simultaneously, as a price of it, a renunciation (a development of insensitivity) to pleasure, to joy. The Indian moralist recommended a “spirit equality”, an indifference towards the results of the facts, either good or bad. The solution is once again, a regressive one. The renouncement at everything that sets in motion the human existence at a primitive level of development, lacking in aspirations, insensitive to joy and misery, dragging on to the simple stage of biological survival, the only spiritual human activity being self-negation and regression by will-power. How much can be done in this manner is difficult to say based on the knowledge we dispose so for now. The modern society is impressed by the psychological techniques of self-control developed by the Indian tradition and justly wonders if they cannot be “recovered” from the ascetic ethics program and utilized in another project of the human progress and fulfillment. However, from a sociological point of view we can know more precisely in what conditions such an ethic has crystallized and became influential.

The ethic of the ascetic renouncement accentuates the adaption to society, the acceptance of the imbalance between right and wrong, as it is given. So, it expresses the point of view of a static or in decay society, found at a lowered level of resources and that cannot imagine active ways of changing the disadvantageous situation. Ancient societies, for many centuries, have confronted with chronic difficulties. No resolution hope of the serious problems that affected them took shape. It is not casual that for the Indian that lived in such a society, the only chance seemed to be regress in a primal existence, with minimum requirements towards society, but that had the advantage of ensuring a certain inner balance; in a wise indifference towards a fundamentally threatening society. A similar experience, but much more intense and brief has been lived by the Greek-Roman society in the Hellenistic period. After an extraordinary prosperity, the Greek-Roman society enters a chronic declension. The balance of the world, which was favorable to man, becomes more and more negative. The sources of satisfaction quickly diminish, leaving room for the dissatisfaction ones. Stoicism was constituted as an attempt of adaptation and survival, of salvation in these circumstances of rapid degradation of the ancient society. The ascetic ethic of renouncement doesn’t represent a simple abstract and theoretical project. Or, more exactly, it mustn’t be understood as devolving from a pure philosophical or religious theory and therefore, being evaluated according to its value. It represents a logic hypostasis of the man reporting to society, a facet of human existence: the passive and adaptive attitude to the given circumstances. It is, within certain limits, a rational and necessary attitude in certain condition averse to the man. It is correct that the man has become a man not by such an attitude, but on the contrary, through an active intervention on the reality exterior to him, humanizing the world he lives in by its continuous transformation. That is why an ethic of renouncement has no chance of becoming a universal ethic. With such a life choice, humankind would have remained in the stage of a primitive society of hermits. Most likely, it was the chance of existing in certain particular circumstances. Besides, it has the merit of having formed with clarity a series of mechanisms that are part -not completely, but relatively- of the current instrumentation of human existence. These mechanisms help the man to adapt to the situations he cannot change. Adapting aspirations to circumstances, tolerance to frustration, are processes that every normal human being needs in order to face some situations or others from life. What is currently called “a stoic attitude towards life” represents an inalienable part of human wisdom. Nevertheless generalized, transformed in a unique way of life, these mechanisms lead to the impoverishment of human existence, to the attainment of a primitive and passive balance of the man with his society.

3. The philosophy of the sack: More, so better?

Cornered by the multitude of unsatisfied needs, the man was able to imagine that happiness consists of acquiring as many consumer goods as possible. So it was established, what an author appointed to be, “the philosophy of the sack”. In fact, here appears a less theoretically elaborated ethic, but practically and strongly affirmed, which is established on the image of the “receptacle-man”. The man can be considered a recipient, an empty sack. The idea of hollow represses the entirety of the unsatisfied, unfulfilled needs, which lack the corresponding consumer goods .

The life of the man is fulfilled by satisfying needs, by assimilation of consumer goods . The fullness of life, the degree of happiness in life, is therefore a direct function of the amount of goods with which we can fill the “sack of life”. The sack of the man can be full, or just half-full, or can survive only with a few goods on his bottom. The human existence, a fact valid in the entire humankind history until now, was characterized by the “lack” and the rarity of consumer goods . The human effort, not random, was oriented towards the manufacture of goods necessary to man. The productive activity was fundamental, all the other domains of human life depending on it. Of her level, in an effective manner, was conditioned, beyond any philosophical disputes, the degree of life fullness. Preindustrial societies, with their limited productive possibilities, quested to obtain the enhancement of consumer goods quantity by the force of the weaponry from the weaker neighboring societies. In this manner, the great empires that ensured an abundance of consumer goods to a limited elite, were born.

The industrial societies have discovered an internal source of abundance enhancement: the technological development and the growth, on its basis, of work productivity; namely, the capacity of producing more goods. The industrial revolution was constituted in capitalist forms. Capitalism represents the model of an economical centered society. The orientation towards the attainment of goods was materialized in the mechanisms of commodities manufacture and market. The central effort of the collectivity was oriented in the field of the economic activity. The hero of this society is the business man- the one that knows to utilize economical means in order to obtain a larger profit as possible. His philosophy “of having” appears here in her most clear modality.

What the man is supposed to do is to obtain money, regardless of the means used. Money represent the universal asset, because through his instrumentality, any goods can be obtained. New standards of success crystallize. The ancient philosopher is replaced with the “economic speculator”, with the “finance and industry cavalier”. Human success is measured in terms of economic success and is concretized in the amount of attained economic consumer goods . For several centuries, capitalist industrial societies have deceitfully hoped to maximize their happiness through the “economic growth” of this manner. The concept of economic growth itself is significant in here. It represents a fundamental element of this society’s ideology, replacing from the very beginning of this century the classical concept of social progress. If in the 18^th century, the philosophers were especially interested of the social progress, seeking to understand its mechanisms and its laws, the direction of perfecting the entire social life that ensures a progressive satisfaction of human necessities, in the 20^th century, in the fever of the spectacular economic development of capitalist countries, the initiative was taken by the economists. The concept of social progress has begun to sound as an old-fashioned romance. Economic growth has replaced it, hoping that it would also mechanically develop a revolution of human condition that will automatically lead to wel...

Table of contents

• How can the amount of happiness be increased?
• The standard of the world: Evil is prevalent in relation to welfare.
• The philosophy of the sack: More, so better?