About time we got into some concrete conclusions regarding happiness. Based on the principles Quanology lays forth, let’s have a look at what makes you and me happy . Some will contend that happiness is different for everyone. While it’s true that everyone has their own things that they like to do, the points listed in this article apply to everyone, and they contribute to overall long-term happiness. Here they are…

 …But first the all-important definition paragraph. What is the nature of happiness? Happiness, in the quanological context is simply: following the laws of nature. Do what Mother Nature wants you to do, and you will be happy. She may be a bitch at times, but she is no dummy. She knows she has to reward the beings and physical bits which do her bidding. Problem is, we all have different ideas about what she wants for us. As we know (or at least, assume here), Nature wants us to dissipate energy. This wish has translated into Evolution for living creatures and Evolution has in turn given humans a varied set of Genetic Proliferation Strategies which we execute to allow evolution to be carried out. Now, some Genetic Proliferation Strategies are more mainstream than others, ie, they are more effective in general. Mass murderer is also a GPS, but it is not nearly as successful as loyal husband and father. Thankfully, Nature rewards the fathers more with happiness than the mass murderers (they are a depressing bunch). So, what makes the average person happy? Can happiness be quantified? Scientists say “yes”. Scientifically, on an individual level - not a societal level, cognitive psychologists will quantify happiness as the amount of positive emotions one feels during the course of an average day. Doesn’t matter what you experience or what you do, only what you feel about what you experience and what you do. Participation in the points below will simply help you to experience positive emotions long-term through the sub-conscious reward-system which nature has built inside you. Without further ado…

1. Physical fun - You are an animal - flesh and blood, a physical being. Attending to this physical being is an obvious way to be happy. My dog is happy rolling in the mud - something dogs do - and you will be happy doing what humans do. When you work out and exert your physical body to a level above ordinary use, you are telling yourself “I am useful, I am doing productive things”. And Nature says “that’s a good boy” and rewards you for it. Your body wants you to use what you have been given to an extraordinary level, simply because that level means you are dissipating energy at an extraordinary level - Nature’s fundamental desire for us. Anything that Nature wants you to do, it rewards you for.  Happiness through physical exertion is low-hanging fruit. Running a human body through a rigorous work-out is like taking out a kid for an ice-cream. I’m not saying that working out all day will lead to a happy, fulfilled life, but what it does do is gear up the rest of your person for a high-scale mission in search of a happy fulfilled life. With blood circulation increased and confidence increased, your brain tends to think more from a positive viewpoint. In case you were working-out in a group atmosphere, you will also be strengthening the social bonds that are so important to human happiness (transition to next point…).

2. A social life - Tigers are solitary animals but lions live in groups. A lone tiger is a happy tiger but a lion living alone is incomplete. Ditto for humans. Talking to people and sharing with people is part of our nature and nature will reward you for partaking in this behavior. It is no coincidence that all these social networking sites are doing so well. Positive psychology experts are concluding how important a good social life is to happiness. And looking at our evolutionary background, it makes good sense that strengthening the unity of a group entity feels good. What did Nature give us to keep us alive? She made us smart and she made us social. The rest is not all that exceptional.

3. Education - Just as our bodies like to be put through the ringer, so does our brain. Cognitive stimulation is fun, and you know it. Not all of us like school but all of us like learning. Find a subject you’re interested in and take it on a weekend getaway for two. Nature correlates the act of building cognitive resources with success in genetic proliferation. Can’t read? You are doomed to a joyless existence (how would you know since you can’t read this). But don’t confuse reading the newspaper with learning. I’m talking non-fiction books, magazines and journals. Good long-term feelings will soon follow.

4. Mindfulness - Consciousness is relatively new to life on earth. Until people came around, the entire universe had been running on unconsciousness. And, when you’re living in another moment thinking about all the crap you have to do today or all the crap you did yesterday, you’re actually not conscious of the current moment. Consciousness is a blessed, super important adaptation and using it feels good. We were made to consider “other options” and were rewarded when we found them. But you can lose the goal-oriented drive for now and stop to think about your feelings at the moment, take a look around at your surroundings, feel the air going into your lungs and your feet on the ground, and the infinite number of molecules dancing around you interacting with one another on and on into eternity… It can be very subtle or it can be the most euphoric feeling in the world. Either way, it’s happiness and it’s right there whenever you want it…

5. Achievement - Doing good things feels good. Even hanging up the curtains my wife had been hounding me about feels good. Not during, but afterwards. Euphoria after the accomplishment of a hefty task (trust me, drilling in the ceiling was a hefty task) feels innately good. It’s hard-wired. Theoretically all individual accomplishments should be linked to the individual, and your self-worth and credibility goes up with every hole you drill for the common good. Nature wants you to achieve and test the bounds of your ability in hopes that it will lend to the proliferation of your genes. So it made accomplishment feel good. And accomplishment does not come without having a feeling of control over your self and your environment.

6. Thinking happy thoughts. As we discussed in the Evolution of Morality, good and bad are human constructs. Do yourself a favor and try to see the positive side of everything around you. This is actually the whole topic of conversation round Cognitive Psychology. Everything, yes everything, has a potentially good and bad side to it. So, try to focus on the good. Is this naive? Is it brainwashing? Maybe, but who cares? Why would you not? In the name of reality? No such thing. Reality is what you make of it. Two people in 2 exact same situations can have 2 totally different experiences. You can choose to have the good one…  If you consistently choose the bad one, rest assured this is just a self-defense mechanism you have built up over the years to protect yourself from loss. You can learn to live without it, and you’ll be very happy you did.

7. Good genes. Alas we are all bound by the ship in which we sail and some of us have some pretty happy vessels and some of us don’t. Psychologists have indeed found evidence of genetic predisposition to happiness, or rather a “happiness range” in which an individual operates. If all your family members are grumpy, good chance a shiny disposition will be illusive for you, even if you’re pretty consistent with the aforementioned points.  

So this stuff is pretty obvious, sure, but good to clarify and focus on them. And then comes the big question, “why don’t most people do these?” They seem attainable enough. That’s another article all together.
But let’s take a quick look at some of the things which are not on the list. In doing so, please note that the 7 keys above have been chosen as such in part because they are independent of competence. By that, I mean that there is no real bad way to do them. You cannot achieve poorly, you can not be social poorly, or exercise poorly (aside from over-exertion…). Ti’s not the case with some of the points below. Let’s take a look.

What’s not on the list (and why the hell not):
Kids - Kids actually do feel good in the long term, and obviously making them feels good now. But they are not the key to happiness. The joys of parenthood can be short-lived as your children soon attempt to pass on their genes at the expense of yours. Parenting is indeed hard work. I’m not saying that parenting can’t be tremendously rewarding, I’m just saying that nature has no problem using you to her own needs, making you horny, getting you hooked on the idea of having kids, and then leaving you to clean up the mess once junior crosses the line between cute and needy. Once again, this is by no means the only perspective on parenting, and as with many things, if you do it right, it can be very rewarding, but do it wrong and it can be a disaster for everyone involved.

Marriage - Again, it depends on how you do it. A good marriage can add nicely to a happy life, as married people tend to be generally happier than the singles. But of course, they can also take the form  of War of the Rosesstyle fiascoes where lives get ruined and kids get really cynical.

Riches - Different from “money” in which we could just mean “having enough to tend to your immediate needs”. Riches means lots of cash. It is natural to want to accumulate resources, and having something, be it knowledge, high self-esteem, a strong body, or a big sack of money, feels inherently good. Unfortunately when that something is something that others want from you, can take from you, and can be lost, then a sense of worry and fear may not be far behind. Paradoxically, it takes power to get and keep money - and that can be a burden. It feels nice when no one wants anything from you. If you’re rich, you’ll never know… It’s not called the root of all evil for nothing (I think that’s bullshit too). Riches are an integral part of a full-life but it alone will not make you happy, just as gasoline alone will not make you go.

Religion - Now, let’s trim the definitions of religion down for a second and just call it: worshiping a higher being and following a set of documented beliefs in a group setting. This doesfeel good, and I would argue that people who have found religion tend to be happier on the whole than those who haven’t. And it is in our nature to join together under a common set of beliefs, and thusly nature has ensured that it feels good. But there are many miserable religious people. Unfortunately most of them don’t even know they are miserable. Following a group means not always following yourself. That feels horrible all the time. Let us not confuse religion with #4 above. You can have that connection to a higher force without religion.

Love- Love does feel pretty good. At least that true selfless love where you don’t really want anything from the object of affection, just that they be. Problem is, it’s not something we can just go after. It either happens or it doesn’t - that is, since it involves something external, ie something to love, you are not in control of it. It’s not something to build your life on, it’s potentially fleeting and susceptible to the fickle nature of the mind. Maybe you can love a person like you would a piece of art and simply muse upon it from a distance and enjoy its quality. Fine…

Sex - Anyone who has been overcome with guilt minutes after copulation should be able to see why sex did not make the list. Sex is a young prospect with lots of talent who is just too erratic to consistently contribute to Team Happy. It’s just so wired into our subconscious that we sometimes can’t understand on a conscious level why we go to so much trouble to get it. Remember when you first found out what sex actually was? Didn’t you think “that’s ridiculous”? And here you are, so many years later unable to keep your eyes on the car in front of you when a short skirt struts it on the side walk. Nature does want you to have sex and scientists say that it adds years to your life. (I guess nature thinks “he’s still throwing strikes, no need to pull him off the mound yet). Good, proper sex can result in some of the best moments of your life, but ”bad” sex can result in some of the worst moments of your life.

Health - Shocking, I know. But Positive Psychology researchers have shown that your health does not have drastic effects on our level of happiness. You can be just as happy as the next guy, smoking and coughing all day long. Overweight? You might cringe slightly when looking in the mirror, but overall, you’ll still be able to smile just like your thin counterparts.

Good weather - Just wanted to clarify that sunshine does not correlate with happiness. Complain as you will about the dreary weather, but moving to a beach resort will not change your levels of happiness. There are miserable people in San Diego.

Attractiveness - This is just one of the reasons Extreme Makeover shows are silly. Being suddenly attractive simply does not contribute to the long-term happiness of individuals. They may feel overjoyed at all the sudden attention they are getting for their comely appearance, but eventually the negative feelings which they most probably had inside start to work their way back into the daily routine, and they start to feel like shit again. Only this time, they can’t say to themselves “if only I were beautiful”.

That’s it for now. One of these days we’ll explore the difference between the people who actively and consistently partake in these 7 keys and the people you do not. As an end-note, I’d like to add that everyone wants to be happy, but unhappiness is part of the game too. No need to deny its existence in your life or try to stomp it out completely. Discontent is the seed of improvement. While some define pure happiness as the lack of desire, we know that Nature wants you to desire. Lack of desire means lack of movement. It is only when you desire something, like happiness, that you will do something, like the points mentioned above. Just as the universe is always slightly out of balance, you - even on your best day - will always be slightly left of pure joy. That is life, and it’s OK.

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The Psychology of Geopolitics

For those of you who don’t know what geopolitics is, it’s the complex web of relations, agendas, strategies, and the eventual execution of these strategies that ALL countries are involved in in order to maintain and expand their piece of the earth. Some countries have small or insignificant pieces and some have large and significant pieces. Which ever one your country has, you can bet it’s working hard to maintain it’s current level and possibly expand it to the next level.

Geo-politics and their nation-states are simply macro versions of any other system. All systems are composed of players, and the players have to earn their place in the system. Don’t want to be in the system? No problem, you may leave. And your role will be promptly recast to someone who does. There’s a little bathtub book I read to my children about a pond and the various animals who live there. You’ve got the minnows, the salamander, the frog, the beaver, the heron, etc. Every one of these animals must work and develop to stay alive (I don’t mention that part to my kids). If they don’t, natural selection will see to it that they are replaced by animals who do. “If you don’t want to play, get off the field.” This is so fundamental to nature, and of course to human nature, that I don’t know if we will ever reach some zen-like state where we have transcended this biological drive. And so it plays out in geo-politics.

Why do people want to rule the world? I don’t know that people do, but there is a drive to expand on what you have - to get more. It is a subconscious drive - ie. we can’t easily control it. We can tell ourselves we are giving 10 billion dollars to African nations to help fight AIDS, but maybe there’s a part of us that knows “now they owe us one”. Or that we are invading Iraq to “liberate the Iraqis”, not to gain significant influence in a strategically vital and relatively accessible part of the world. I honestly believe that George Bush believes he was doing something positive for the Iraqis. That’s how strong your subconscious mind is. And we can all draw our own conclusions as to what Bush’s subconscious mind wanted. And then, of course, there are blatant admissions of these aspriations - ex. “I’m gonna invade Poland”.

Now, I live in Holland - where America is often criticized for it’s foreign policy. The perspective that I often see missing from these criticisms is the geo-political side of the things. Everything America does is to maintain and expand it’s current status. And every country does this. Holland doesn’t make too many world headlines with it’s foreign policy simply because it’s level is not sufficient enough to have much effect on the rest of the world.

If we were all tennis players, you could say that we were all out to develop our game - but only a few are out to win the tournaments. And the ones who are, will train differently and more intensely, and fight harder in matches than the rest of us who are just playing on a more recreational level. And, rest assured, we all want to win tournaments, it’s just that some people have the talent, the motivation, the confidence, and the rich parents to pay for tennis lesson, and other people do not. So for some people, the effort involved in training has a better chance of paying off than for others. And that’s a big part of natural selection: good risk management.

In short, Holland, and other mid-range countries are not employing the harsh tactics of American foreign policy, ie don’t make moves to strategically take over the world, simply because they are not in a position to do so. From their current state, such efforts would most probably fail. This is why lions don’t attack elephants - the risks outweigh the rewards. Were Holland a global super power, they would be acting much like the American government. (Doesn’t mean what America is doing is right and beneficial to the world, it just means that these motivations are a natural part of the human experience. Thankfully, so is disgust and opposition to such an imbalance of power and its irresponsible use. )

So the subconscious mind wants to help you and your country grow. If you’ve woken up one day and you’re the biggest fish in the pond, it wants to keep things that way too. And it’s a good thing - if approached with benevolence and competence. What if we were all like Ghana? There must be an innate drive to develop or else life stagnates. Geopolitics means each country is playing a little game of chess with the rest of the countries - trying to position itself to maximize its potential and allthewhile maintaining popular support for its actions. These drives go way back to when your ancestors were single-celled and swimming in a pool of goop. We cannot fight these drives but can only hope to grow more conscious of them, in the process analyzing which drives are furthering the human condition and which ones are holding us back. This “enlightenment” will provide the base for humanity’s most enduring struggle - against human nature.

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