How to Find Happiness
Happiness is not pleasure, joy, love, or the absence of suffering. Happiness is not an emotion, but a state of being.
Should we be happy?
Happiness has a bad press, particularly among intellectuals.
Most religions tell us that we shouldn’t look for happiness in our current life. There is too much suffering in this world; what we should do is to live a righteous life and wait for a reward of incommensurable happiness after we die. Even Buddhism is based on the idea that life is full of suffering, that can only be remedied by achieving Nirvana. This would involve a lot of toil and meditation, and probably will only come after several reincarnations.
Philosophies are not better. The ancient Stoics and Epicureans taught that looking for happiness is futile. The most we could hope for is to avoid suffering by reaching a state of equanimity called ataraxia. Other ancient philosophers, like Aristotle and Plato, emphasized cultivating Virtue. More modern philosophers focused on duty or social order, when they were not utterly pessimistic.
There is a reason for that. In the ancient world of limited resources and constant warfare, you had to keep the populace in a state of resignation. If people thought too much about…
