h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

must they not?
Lord_Preston OMFC

I'd say that's pretty obvious. The opposite doesn't always hold true: lots of people find life worth living (evident in that they haven't killed themselves), but would not describe themselves as 'happy'.

Actually, I don't know of very many people who would call themselves 'happy'. Anyone who wants something that they don't or can't have (whether it be an end to world hunger, a better relationship with their kids, a million dollars, or a doughnut) could be happier than they are if they got that thing. We can asymptotically approach happy, but we can never get there.

Of course, if your definition of happy isn't that strict and clinical, then happiness is an attainable goal. If at any given moment, you don't have any problems weighing heavily on your heart (such as a quarrel with a family member, a religious doubt, financial worries, career dissatisfaction, &c.), then you could be said at that moment to be happy. Even if you do have some of those problems, but at that moment you are able to put them aside and not worry about them, you could briefly be happy. By this definition, happiness is not something to actively strive for, something that will make your whole existence perfect when reached, but rather something that comes and goes on its own. Happiness and unhappiness are not permanent states. Interestingly enough, feeling sorry for yourself and thinking "I'll never be happy" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as you worry about never attaining happiness, youu won't be able to reach it because you'll always have that worry.

on a brief read of your argument makes me feel that maybe life isn't worth living if you are happy because you don't have a goal to strive for. is that it?
Lord Preston OMFC

Well, I suppose you could put it that way... although those would be two contradictory definitions of happiness. On the one hand, you could say that you can't be happy if you don't have everything you want, and on the other you could say that you can't be happy if you're bored. If you try to incorporate both of those definitions into one Grand Unified Theory of Happiness (which is not unreasonable, seeing as most people would not be happy either with a very difficult life or with a life of complete luxury), you have a paradox. Having everything you want would leave you with no goals, so you'd get bored (read: not completely happy) and you'd want to leave some of the luxury and find a challenge, in which case you wouldn't have everything you wanted (or not completely happy), so you'd achieve all your goals and once again have everything you wanted but you'd get bored...

By this theory, there really is no such thing as happiness. If you spend your entire life searching for happiness, you'll get to the end and think you never found it, while you would have been a whole lot happier if you'd stopped looking for it and paid attention to the good parts of the life you had. (That's my sugar quotient for the month, folks...)

Perhaps this would be more appropriate in the Miscellaneous Chat forum at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/MiscChat

Probably.

Oopsie... sorry. <SMILEY TYPE="blush"/>

u might well say that it would make everyone happier if it was in the other forum. but, as was just proved, there is no such thing as happiness and so therefore "does it matter? even if it does matter does it matter that it matters?" if you are not going to be happy either way why should we listen, oh i remember coz u'll kick us out if we don't, just gonna shut up now, *runs away incredibly fast screaming "it wasn't me, he wrote it, i'm inocent"*
Lord Preston OMFC