Question:
If everyone wants to be happy, then why does everybody acts and behaves so differently?
People are strange creatures. Somehow with the same genes and biology we can end up as heroes or villains, village idiots or Nobel prize winners, astronauts or burger flippers, and everything in between. From the same basic make up comes the clinically depressed and the class clown, saints and psychopaths. My hope is to help identify and reveal the dials that explain the variety within the human race. This kind of project as so many applications, but for various reasons I like to apply it to my personal passion, storytelling. No where is there a clearer window into the human psyche than through great stories!
We will be picking up from the two introductory articles accessible the home page. They explain the premise of my research which is that all of our actions can be explained based on our Pursuit of Happiness. Happiness as I use the term means: experiencing a solidly desirable mix of sensations. Said another way, we are happy when we what we are overall feeling good. It’s very general and we will start to nail down what we mean by that here.
Desirable Sensations
There is one word in this definition of happiness that I want to focus on, “desirable.” To desire means to want or to hope for. There are different ways to talk about desires. You could say that you desire something. When you just say that you desire something it would imply that you don’t have it, or at least that you don’t have enough of it. You could say that you desired something, that would imply that you wanted it in the past and now you either have it or you don’t want it any more. Neither of these captures the nature of happiness. I use desirable because desirable means that its something that you either you would want if you did have it or that even if you didn’t know you wanted it you would want it if you knew how good it was. Got that?
I like being pedantic, but I try to do it for a reason.
When we talk about happiness, we are talking about experiencing a set of sensations or feeling that you would want, whether you knew you wanted them or not. *deep breath* Sometimes we want things that once we experience them we realize that they are actually not desirable and other times we experience things we didn’t want, but once we experience them we realize we should have wanted them if we had known. *wheeze*
This highlights important aspects of how we should think about happiness as individuals, but it is especially handy in storytelling. Just because you get what you want, doesn’t mean that you will be happy with it. It also means that even if you don’t want something it doesn’t mean it won’t make you happy. That’s the premise of the story Green Eggs and Ham.
We are all trying to be happy, but what happiness looks like is different for everyone, but it’s not just random. Through my research I have come across a variety of ways we define happiness. If I am right with my assertion that everything we do is driven by the pursuit of happiness then understanding how we define happiness give us a universal way to talk about different people and why they act differently! This leads to the creation of more authentic, intentional, and interesting characters in stories. This paves the way for, somewhat paradoxically, both more consistent and more creative character dynamics. (You might also find it helpful to think about yourself and others.) In the rest of this article I will introduce you to these factors.
Your Desired Happiness
The factors that I introduce here are ones that will come up over and over again in the rest of theory. They are some of the primary forces that create the vision that the character will seek to accomplish. That is what it means to have a personal version of happiness. You can think of your desired happiness as the situation you believe will bring you the kind of happiness to hope to achieve.
You can have different versions of happiness for different situations. Your version of happiness at school will look very different from one you have for a when you are on a date.
Key aspects contributing to your version of happiness:
- Drives
- Values
- Knowledge and Beliefs
Drives
As part of human nature we have things that internally push or motivate us. These things are innate. We don’t choose them, we don’t have any direct control over them. These are things like hunger, curiosity, fear, belonging, etc. These things can be found in the Drivers column of the Orders of the Psyche graph.
While the existence of these drivers is essentially universal, how strongly each of these “calls to” the individuals differs from person to person and from time to time. These internal motivators can push the characters to do things, sometimes very hard and sometimes very subtly. Sometimes a drive is an itch that wants to be stretched, and other times drives become oppressive overpowering forces. Such is the case with the fight or flight reflex. When that drive sets in, it’s really difficult to reject.
Because of the power of our drives and the individual difference in them, different people naturally gravitate towards different things. We tend to gravitate towards things that satisfy our innate drives. This is one part of how we form our personal version of happiness. However, we might reject our innate drives, but that’s a rabbit hole for a different time.
Although our bodies and minds push us to act in certain ways, we are still able to shape our own lives. This largely revolves around making choices. We make choices all the time, but I don’t think we usually understand the choices we are making. This probably sounds like an absurd idea. How can you make a choice without knowing what choice you are making?
To explain what I mean I’ll once again point to my thesis, that everything we do is a reflection of our pursuit of happiness. So every choice we make, by this definition, is a choice about how to be happy. Values are a way to understand the choice that you are making.
Values
Happiness deals with our desired sensation. But what makes a sensations desirable? To find an answer beyond a blank eyed stare and accompanying, “because it is,” we will have to talk about the properties of sensations. You didn’t know that sensations had properties did you? I hope that you will find these enlightening because they are the result of much research. They are probably the most important and powerful ideas in my theory. They underpin my theory of personality and a discussion of morality and virtue. I have identified five of them.
Now that I hopefully have piqued your curiosity let’s discuss what they are. The five properties of sensations are:
- Time
- Positiveness
- Negativeness
- Risk
- Social Aspect
Woo, how anti-climatic! It is beyond the scope of this article to explore implications of these properties, so let’s focus on their use in the current discussion.
Everyone has their own version of happiness, an idea about what happiness looks like to them. These traits of sensations help us identify what that version could be. If we talk about the Time of the sensation, then we talk about when the person would want to enjoy their sensations. Do they want it soon or are they willing to wait for it? If we talk about Positiveness then we can explore questions of what types of positive sensations they want, and how much they want them. Negativeness is the opposite. How much negative sensations are they willing to put up with in their happy place? Risk? That is a question of how much uncertainty they are willing to endure while seeking and enjoying their happiness. Finally, the Social Aspect deals with how and how much the happiness of those around you influences your version of happiness.
Each of these plays a significant role in shaping our vision of happiness and in turn who we try to be. I look forward to exploring how these properties play into our nature and pursuit of happiness in future posts!
Knowledge and Beliefs
The major contributors to developing our version of happiness are our knowledge and beliefs. A version of happiness is a hope; it’s an idea. It is born out of ideas and imagination. Our knowledge and beliefs are the building blocks of these visions. If you want something, it’s because you believe that it will contribute to your happiness. You may believe that it will fulfill your drive. You may believe that you can get it in the time frame you prefer. Your knowledge about yourself, the world and others, play the key role in these evaluations.
The contribution of our beliefs to our version of happiness is fairly self explanatory so I will keep this section belief.
You’re welcome.
Conclusion
Everybody has some idea of what happiness looks like for them**.
**(caveat mumble mumble rabbit holes mumble mumble…)
As we understand our drives and values, and the world we live in, we can create a coherent picture of what we hope for in life. This hope will reflect the happiness that we want for ourselves.
This is the first tool for understanding human nature and the characters that we want to create with it. A person without a version of happiness will be lost and unmotivated.
As we continue of this journey of exploration, we will see how the Pursuit of Happiness is largely defined by what version of happiness we decide to pursue. You can hardly imagine just how large an impact this has on you as a person, on characters and how you relate to the characters in stories.
Thanks so much for joining me again.
If you are following the recommended reading path, then the next article you will read will be about the tools that a person has to actually go about pursuing happiness. After all, having a vision isn’t much good if you can’t do anything to pursue it.
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