Wednesday 29 March 2000

Pic of the day:
If you could see it now, it's in your hand...
- only love can reach the shore for evermore
- where peaceful waters flow
Chris de Burgh, Where peaceful waters flow.

When I buy my Sims some practical new sim furniture, they will often walk up to it and show their happiness by clapping their hands. And they are certainly not the only ones who react this way. I know people say that material possessions do not bring true happiness. And this they continue to say, even though I'm sure you all have experienced the opposite.

Do you remembered how you felt when you got your first car? It was probably used; in fact, it was probably worn, and perhaps slightly rusty in the less important places. But it was a car, and it was yours, all yours! Do you remember the pride, the feeling of accomplishment, of being a real grown-up? You may not have clapped your hands, but you probably drove it around to all of your friends, even those who had much finer cars themselves. You probably thought about it in bed at night and woke up still thinking about it the first morning. And perhaps a morning or two after that, too.

I bought my first car when I was in my twenties. I sold my last car a couple years later.

I remember buying one of my first computers. How I repeatedly visited the computer shop days beforehand, how I read and re-read the brochures. I guess it is not all that different from falling in love, now that you mention it. And of course there was a feeling of joy and pleasure when I actually had it. Contrast this with the cynical irony after I bought my new stereo on February 3.

Even if earthly goods did not make us happy, lack of them can make us unhappy. Well, most of us at least. Most obviously, there is the discomfort of hunger, of cold or heat, of needless work. Buying the appropriate goods can alleviate this quickly. From there on, there are gradually more subtle needs to be satisfied: Boredom, need for social acceptance, the sense of beauty. And almost at every corner, there is some handy thing you can buy that will help meet those needs. The consumer society is not the favorite lifestyle of the world by accident. When stone-age tribes meet the global culture, it usually doesn't take long before they embrace it.

But there are limits to growth, and there are limits to happiness. When the basic needs are met, or a little bit later, one comes up against a new and different limit: The brain itself. It would seem that the human brain has a limit to enjoyment; and this is no big surprise. The pleasure center of the brain is a small but handy thing that is employed to various degrees by various instinct in order to reward behavior that is good for our bodies and our genes. Food when we are hungry, water when we are thirsty, company when we are lonely and sex when we are grown-up: All of them carry a reward that is immediate and universal.

But the brain cannot maintain a "high" at all times. The very chemistry of the brain ensures this. As drug addicts can testify, the brain adjusts. Soon it will start to feel normal when it should feel good, and feel bad when it should feel normal.

Perhaps it is no surprise then, that people now are not happier than they were a generation ago, even though they earn much more and have much more. However, people in rich countries still report more happiness than people in dirt poor countries. This indicates that basic needs must first be met before we reach our "destined" level of happiness. Intriguingly, the global interviews showed that people in long-standing democracies were the happiest, while differences in income between developed countries had no effect.

As for myself, I think I have pretty much reached my natural level of happiness. And I already have a wide selection of joy toys. Hey, don't overextend your fantasy, I'm talking about stuff like computer games, CD player, and even an electric organ. (The music instrument, that is. I told you not to imagine things.)

And also years of meditation and introspection has taught me that sometimes you can find happiness just by opening yourself to it. To me this is a religious thing, in so far as I consider this ambient joy to be a radiance of the Light, or God's glory in christian terms. We are always in the presence of God, unless otherwise noted. It is the loss of this presence that would really destroy me, and any person who has come to rely on it. As the Jewish poet-king David is quoted in one of his psalms: "Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me". Certainly if we cannot open our hearts to embrace joy, then no amount of toys will help.

But my meeting with various people has shown me that most of them don't try to tinker with internal religious values, and that might be the safest for them. Whether they believe in a personal God or not, the ambient level of joy is there anyway. (I'd be happy to discuss the theme of a personal God somewhere else, but really not right now.) Many people find this happiness in nature, looking at the daybreak over a mountain ridge or in the light filtering down in a forest glade. Suddenly seeing the beauty of everything around us, feeling the kinship with all life, and a peace that seeps into the very bones. This kind of happiness does not rely on modern toys, but is common on all continents across all ages, a free gift to any human that is there to accept it.

Here is my conclusion, then: Only one of the hands clapping comes from the outside, where the various goods and people and even religious images reside. The other hand that must reach out to meet it comes from inside. We may attribute our happiness to the things around us, but in truth it was inside us, waiting to be set free.