What is Happiness?
Follow-up question: is that even what we want?
Disclaimer: The words that follow are solely the opinion of the author and are inevitably wrong. The best stuff is in the hyperlinks. Please enjoy.
Earlier in this blog series, I had recommended reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. That recommendation stands. It is just plain wonderful what he managed to pack into that text. Maybe you don’t want to read an entire book though. Maybe you don’t want to buy a book. Maybe you’re not even down to listen to an audiobook from your local library. Fine.
At a minimum, you should go to Barnes & Noble, Joseph-Beth, Half-Price Books, your local library, or some mom and pop book shop that somehow survived the plot of You’ve Got Mail and the supreme hegemony of Amazon. Once there, get your hands on a copy of Sapiens, steal away to a corner of the store, and read Chapter 19: “And They Lived Happily Ever After.”
Yuval spends much of the earlier chapters tracing the history of human development. Then he asks the bajillion dollar question: Was it worth it? Why did we do all of this? Are we happier? He points out that many of our political ideologies have been and continue to be based on very poorly thought out working definitions of human happiness.
