Untitled episode

the more voluntary unhappiness and pain you embrace the less the involuntary stuff hurts [Music] it's our focus on happiness making us unhappy Aaron would you start us off hmm yeah my worry with this panel is we might agree on too much so maybe I'll try and create some desensis for me the issue isn't that we are pursuing happiness but rather that we constantly seek to evade

unhappiness I think there is basically a sort of pyramid upon which you would want to build happiness contentment the first is meeting one's personal needs shelter food um Access to Health Care on top of that you would want to see some projects in your life being fulfilled self-actualization and whatnot and furthermore on top of that you'd want a sense of obligation and service to other people

now I think unhappiness comes in when any of those three things are missing so this idea and it could be quite a reactionary one I think of well we just need a little bit more pain and misery in life and actually that will do us all the world of good I think that's mistaken whereas my mother's generation used to say as I was growing up in

the 1990s what we need is a good War uh very reactionary sort of thatcherite statement you'd hear a lot then less so now thankfully I don't think that would make anybody more happy where I do think we're failing though as I said as at the beginning is that we have a society now which constantly seeks to evade unhappiness there's a wonderful stoical aphorism which essentially states

that the more voluntary unhappiness and pain you embrace the less the involuntary stuff hurts so the next time you have to get up at 5am in the morning to take your kids to foot or you have to do something at work which you really don't want to just remember it's probably in the long term going to make you happy finally that's true as long as you

want to do it that's the key thing uh finally I would say we have a a pandemic an epidemic in this in this country in our societies of loneliness and Solitude and for me what is the opposite of of happiness and I think that's a good way of understanding what real happiness is I'd say two words boredom and being alone and when I say boredom people

say oh god look sometimes boredom is good it's you don't have to be on your phone and distracts all the time I don't mean that I mean being bored in one's life I think is deeply detrimental to happiness and I think that sense of not really having social obligations and being in touch with others again is a real real problem and sadly we have a society

which is built precisely on these two things um liberal capitalism does lots of good things it helps us meet some of those essential needs we haven't never had such extraordinary social abundance but at the same time we're missing out on some of the sort of connective social tissue that actually has been the Mainstay of our civilization our societies not just for us twelve thousand years of

Agriculture for the last two hundred thousand years since the birth of our species and it's only really in the last sort of 50 to 100 years those are beginning to erode and so that sense that actually we're more and more unhappy uh I don't think is inaccurate but I don't think the problem is the pursuit of happiness I think it's the constant evasion of unhappiness sometimes

if you choose to be unhappy even briefly it can be good for you so there is a bold statement choose unhappiness at least in some circumstances thank you Aaron for that starting point Paul could I Turn to You for Your three-minute pitch yeah most of what he just said most of what he just said not all of what he said so um I distinguish between being

alone and feeling lonely um I think that's important we've had an epidemic of loneliness not necessarily being alone right and we we see loneliness rates um reported loneliness rates highest much younger people often people think about loneliness as being older because they are alone actually young people connected on social media often feel lonely so completely agree uh that it's a fundamental determinant of people's happiness um

people make all sorts of mistakes about what's going to make them feel good keeps me a job really um sort of mocking people for their stupidity um but none of us really unless we're masochistic well let's leave that category to one side or actively sort out things that we know for sure would make us feel worse as I say we make all sorts of mistakes we

get it wrong all over time and the reason I say that is because I have a very inclusive definition of Happiness a lot obviously will turn on what we mean by happiness and it was set up at the beginning as almost like a choice between happiness and purpose the subtitle of my book which you thankfully read out is finding pleasure and purpose in everyday life happiness

for me includes the you dymonic as well as the headonic it is a sense of feeling like what you do has a point is Meaningful isn't boring I think that's absolutely right boredom boredom is awful and without the risk of boring you by talking for too much longer of course the fundamental part of the human condition is survival but it ain't survival just to any end

we're motivated to survive we have incentives to survive if we're motivated to feel good in doing so and as I say leaving masochism to one side um then we are a species that has sought to with all sorts of mistakes and all sorts of Errors maximize happiness in one form or another thanks very much indeed Paul succinctly put and giving us plenty to think about and

that term purpose is something we'll come back to later in the discussion but not immediately because I want to make sure that we have this uh first take in terms of what we're actually talking about Joanna cavena is going to lead us on on that thank you Rana um so I agree yeah dangerously quite a lot with both of my fellow this is making me very

unhappy or disagree yeah sorry but I mean I it's such an interesting word happiness because we all kind of agree that it's a good thing well apart from Aaron's arguing that it may not be in some settings and if I wish you all a happy weekend that's meant to be a sort of nice thing but as Paul was saying there's always different meanings of course in

intrinsics that are you a hedonist or a euda monist or and if I mean it's nice the idea that you combine them because I always think otherwise you know if you said a happy weekend and then you put them to the two groups together you know the euda monitor will want to be sort of virtuous and the Headless wants to go and get smashed and actually

they're both having a really difficult time at that point so it's good to find a way I think to combine and I was thinking about this in terms of uh uh there's a good title to a no uh collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace which is a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again and I quite like that idea how many supposedly fun things

have we done and maybe in a sense as we gain knowledge in life part of that is gaining a sense of what these supposedly fun things are for each one of us and kind of knocking them off the list and and learning the things that we actually enjoy and the other thing is as Aaron was saying I mean this quote you mentioned Rana about Alexander Pope

on oh happiness our beings end and aim that's that's a kind of piece of sort of optimism Philosophy from the 18th century and Pope says don't worry everyone be happy because God has got this and whatever is is right and just kind of chill and even within the 18th century in a very religious time there's a huge amount of Kickback to that I mean Voltaire says

what on Earth are you talking about you know there's just been a terrible earthquake in Lisbon you know nearly 50 000 people have died and you're talking about General happiness and he says you're making kind of General happiness you know this sort of ultimate goal of all this dire unhappiness I mean how dare you so there's a kind of debate there about how can how can

Alexander Pope be so relaxed in the face of a sort of General suffering as well so I think I'm going to agree really that that reality is very complex our lives are very mysterious and I think single definition terms may not Define them entirely and the philosopher William James talks about this he actually says if you try to measure the disc the kind of amazing continuity

of experience with a single discontinuous word then it's a bit like if you try to fish up water with a net you're going to kind of lose all the interests and everything that's good about life so I guess William James would say happiness is a net and our lives are water and so this kind of sort of single idea will never fully Encompass them thank you

Joe and I love that line that happiness is a net and if there's anyone called Annette here in the audience please do uh put your hand forward and we'll find out whether that really is true or not to continue watching this video click the link in the top left or in the description below or visit iai.tv for more debates and talks from the world's leading thinkers

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