To understand how to be happy, we need to dig a little deeper and grasp what distinguishes humans from animals. After all, only humans can truly feel happiness and unhappiness. Even if animals could somehow recognize happiness, we still want to be happy humans, not happy animals. Since this is all formatted as a wiki entry, we will skip the chains of reasoning that lead to various conclusions. Such “bare” conclusions will be written in italics.
A person differs from an animal in that they are capable of envisioning the future. This is not about the immediate future, where a dog knows where a stick will fly, but rather the ability to construct their own future state.
The ability to see the future developed in humans during the process of evolution to help them avoid troubles and achieve a state of satisfaction by understanding how “the stars will align,” better than other living beings. In fact, more civilized nations are clearly distinguished from less civilized ones by their ability to plan and implement long-term strategies.
An example? Agriculture—it’s necessary to plant part of the crops this year in order to harvest them next year. Infrastructure development—no good road or bridge makes sense if it will be used for less than 20 years. Space exploration began with a vision for a 50-year perspective, and so on.
A person constructs their future from the building blocks of the present, using their current state and experiences to make predictions. People are constantly changing. We are not who we were a year ago, a minute ago, or a month ago. We are our memories and our experiences, which means we are different every second. And different people need different tools to be happy.
A person essentially thinks about the future so that another person with the same reflection in the mirror can experience positive emotions or avoid negative ones. It turns out that happiness is a feeling of carefree anticipation of the future, which, as we have already understood, is characteristic of animals that live entirely in the present?
No, it’s not about carefreeness, but about control. As long as we believe we can foresee things, we want to shape the future in a way that will be good for us. The awareness of having control over our present and future (whether real or illusory) is what happiness truly is.
A person often struggles to distinguish the results of their imagination from reality. We even sincerely consider our memories of the past to be valid, yet they are merely a collection of vivid episodes connected by the logic, presentism, and rationalization of our “self” in the present. Our imagined future also looks very similar to the present.
A person is often unable to see and distinguish many quite obvious things, about which they would confidently claim to have noticed if interviewed. For example — this video clip.
We are not only unable to see the future with sufficient accuracy — what’s even worse is that we cannot understand what we will think about that future once we find ourselves in it. We cannot know in advance what judgments we will make about the situation, or whether that other person with our features will be happy. Our judgments about the future, whether positive or negative, are misleading.
It turns out that one cannot become happy on their own. Our prediction system doesn’t work properly, and the results of our actions aimed at achieving happiness are often not just random, but even the opposite.
So what should we do? Do the same thing that pharmaceutical manufacturers do. Yes, each person’s individual reaction to a drug is unpredictable, but large-scale trials are conducted to understand how the medication will perform “on average.” With results from a large sample, doctors decide whether to prescribe it or not. It turns out that while there is still a chance of individual intolerance, that risk is much lower than the likelihood of dying without taking the medication.
It turns out that to understand how you will feel in the future you aspire to or want to avoid, you need to talk to people who have already found themselves in that future about their feelings and assessments of whether they achieved what they aimed for and how they are living with it. Yes, people will often defend and rationalize their actions, and yes, each person’s reaction is individual. However, beyond rationalization, there are real facts of success and failure, and you need an average reaction rather than an individual one to increase your chances of happiness, rather than ensuring a 100% guarantee of it.
You read reviews from other people before going to the movies, right?
So why not ask a millionaire if they are happy with their millions before striving to become wealthy? Why not choose a university not just based on what you like now, but on what you will enjoy for a lifetime? Why not listen to your parents, at least sometimes? Something like that.