Sure there is. How to live well, be happy, have fascinating and engaging experiences, make the difference you want to make, create a reality for yourself in which there's meaning and depth and nuance and thrills and realization, and finding a way to stay ahead of realism/depression and the whole pointless crazy joke of it all, is indeed the "problem of life".

You're on point today.

To me, it makes little sense for any theory of happiness or it's sources, to downplay the importance of unhappiness - to happiness. One is meaningless without experience of the other, and yet we live with the intellectual dogma that 'most are usually happy'. What does this even mean?

If 'most are usually comfortable' has become the same thing for you as 'most are usually happy', then you likely dont even know what it is to experience happiness. To devalue it to this extent is more a reflection of the depravity of your own experience than an accurate theory of happiness.

"The more refined one is, the more unhappy". Anton Chekhov

Periphrasing the question, who is more refined?

What is this "dopamine theory" of which you speak? The "way I used it," to be clear, was as what the experts call "pithy snark." I'm just curious about what you think this "simplistic and pseudoscientific dopamine theory" is.

Happiness, by the way, is the experts call either a "mood" of "feeling." Philosophers have moods, but that is the entire extent of their knowledge of them. It is psychologists who study moods.

Happiness is the thing you aren't experiencing right at the moment you see your beloved dog get run over by a truck. The English cannot experience this because they have "lorries" and cat lovers cannot experience it because they don't have the capability of experiencing "qualia."

Do you think it's possible for someone to be always happy? Or somewhere between mildly contented and elated always? Maybe very infrequently unhappy? The notion of polarity has taught/confused us that we need great sadness to appreciate great happiness, but is this so?

That is a difficult one. Can someone who wallows in poverty for well over a decade of undergraduate + graduate school + post-doctorate fellowship and then gets to wallow in poverty for an undeterminable amount of time as an associate professor* experience even a moment** of happiness?

*"Can't we make Professor Smith a Professor Emeritus yet? We'd have a spot for one of the now middle-aged young upstart associate professors for a Tenured Faculty Member position. Smith hasn't done anything but drool on himself for the last 23 years."

**Even during the throws of an orgasm? True fact: the semen of associate professors is 92% tears.

Periphrasing isn't a word. Did you intend to type "peristalsis" or "perineum"?

I would love to hear where you heard this "intellectual dogma that 'most are usually happy."

It is empirical. People tend to spend more time doing the happy-happy thing than the sad-sack thing. As far as I am concerned, it definitely cannot be dogma*, as there are loads of intellectuals who bang on about how much life sucks.

Most people don't have one mood 100% of the time. Equally as interesting, no one thinks about chicken sandwiches 100% of the time.

*I checked the dictionary definition of "dogma" and it doesn't include anything about "something BtM2 said on the 2+2 forums."

The bolded makes no sense. If I'm not experiencing misery then I must be happy? If dog hit by truck then not happy. Therefore if dog not hit by truck then not (not) happy. Denying the antecedent. You're not describing what happiness is, you're just describing a moment of unhappiness.

Possible for someone to be always happy? No. This is like asking if it's possible for the good to exist without the bad. No and no.

More importantly, I'm not saying no here on the trivial basis of practicality. Rather, on the basis of the metaphysical principle of polarity, as you deduced perhaps. Applied to happiness - happiness and sadness is the same thing, not separate from each other, but merely different. Differentiation but not separation. The more of one you have, the more intensely the other you'll experience. Someone with a very unfortunate life knows happiness more intensely than your average Joe blow. The seeming paradox is resolved when you accept that there is merely differentiation, not separation. Happiness-sadness: one concept, not two.

I'm sure you've read the innumerable happiness studies BTM. Don't make me fetch them. They mainly agree with your perspective - that happiness is a kind of comfort, just barely above the line of depression or suicidal tendencies. "Spend more time doing the happy-happy thing". Are you trolling? Do you know how few people spend their working day (most of their week) this way? If by happy, you mean 'comfortable', only then, and barely even, does this comment make any sense.

???

With moods, there is direction and intensity. Demanding that one specify happiness as only counting if it involves high intensity (jumping for joy) is silly.

[QUOTE=yukoncpa;51830775]The bolded makes no sense.[/b]

It makes perfect sense. You'd definitely not be happy if you just saw your dog get run over.

No. Of course not. I didn't say anything like that at all.

Do you object in principle to a concept of happiness that is broadly achievable by people as they actually are?

Each of us has an inner "sense of well being" which is not often realized save when an insult occurs.

We may feel well when a cardiac arrhythmia strikes and disrupts this "inner felling of well being". Likewise a joyful event can change the nature of our "feeling within"

Happiness, which I relate to joy isn't normally the steady state of affairs of the experiential human. I say "normally" for there are some who present with an inner joy throughout life but I suspect its a variation of the sense of "well being".

Contrary wise, a depressed state disrupts this inner "well being" and can become long lasting, calling for remedy.

More to the point, the answer to the "happiness researcher ' should be "when?". The intellect is only marginally involved with this "well being" and perhaps can make a judgment as to the human state of being, when asked, but this is about "feelings" which are not brain bound.

"Feeling bad" is not the same as "thinking clearly" though there is spme element of thought in feeling and feeling in thoughts.

What basis do you have for suggesting this? Someone with a very unfortunate life might go on experiencing misery in perpetuity. Maybe they'll have brief periods of contentment or elation even, but there's nothing to suggest this is proportional to their amount of unhappiness.

I don't think you're suggesting happiness/sadness is a perfect equilibrium - because then depression wouldn't exist. Are you suggesting one's ability to experience the greatest joy must be a function of them having experienced equally extreme difficulty? Still doesn't quite seem logical to me.

How is it silly? What you're referring to is comfort/content-ness. Happiness cannot be an ongoing feeling; not even in a hypothetical world.
No I don't object to that. It often is achieved by people as they are, when fully immersed in the present moment listening to their favourite music or cracking jokes with their friends, absent of any sense of self-conciousness about how silly they may look enjoying their music or what a fool they're making of themselves by wearing underwear on their head as they prance around joking with their friends. Yet, these moments of happiness would not be as so, if it weren't for the busy work-week that preceded them, or the extended moments of neutrality or unhappiness that came before.
Yes that's what I'm saying.

If it seems paradoxical or "illogical" you have not yet viewed happiness-sadness as one concept. Rather, you're separating them. As one concept, an effect on one side of the polarity automatically induces an effect on the other as well.

I laughed because it's true. I'd also add workaholism and bitter egotistical games somewhere in there.

Just yesterday I overheard a conversation between two senior lecturers aspiring for an associate professor position. Apparently they believed that they'll take less s.h.i.t from incompetent women in the faculty under their new positions. This conversation embodies the essence of the academic life.

Jealousy ITT. Being an academic is the best job in the world.

Except that it's not a job. A life-consuming ego game.

You seen some of the heffa's with tenure around campus?
Not even the time to exercise or look after the one thing that contributes most to quality of life.

What isn't?

Sure, and everywhere else. Academia magnifies it, I agree, although that's probably the case in other professions too.

Admittedly very little.

Nonetheless, this can be anything done primarily for its enjoyment, including but not exclusive to social work/volunteering, making music, dancing, writing poetry or philosophical fiction, making art, tackling complex mathematical problems, nature photography, making pornography and so on.

These things don't necessarily lend themselves to hyper-competition or institutionalised workaholism, although they can if you prefer stroking the ego.

I think you're wrong about about academics being especially workaholic. About every job I can think of is tougher than being an academic.

Refer to previous heffa comment.

They're not stupid (comparatively). They know that health is important. They lack the time.