What is Happiness?

 I had a very interesting and to me a very profound insight yesterday.  

Happiness is the perceived reinforcing rate-of-change of the quantity of something that value has been attached to.

What this means is that happiness is the first derivative on the quantity of something else. Happiness requires that something else, that medium, to exist.  Happiness does not stand alone.  Yes, it can be recursively applied.  The rate-of-change of happiness can itself produce happiness, but the original happiness is generated by a change in something else.  We may come back to this later.  For now let's tease this definition apart.

Most, perhaps all things in life are quantifiable in some sense though precision and accuracy may vary.  If all you can say is that there is more of something or less of something or even that something does or doesn't exist then it's quantifiable.  

We attach value to many things in life; health, wealth, relationships, etc.  Attaching value doesn't necessarily mean that we want the quantity to increase.  It just means that it's relevant to us in some way.  We also attach value to disease, poverty, and conflict.  You can qualify this by saying that for some things we attach a positive value, we want the quantity of it to increase, and for other things we attach a negative value, we want the quantity of it to decrease.  This is why "reinforcing" is included in the definition.  The change reinforces the positiveness or negativeness of the thing we attach value to.

Rates-of-change have signs.  If happiness reinforces something we attach value to then the sign of the rate-of-change is positive.  If the rate-of-change does not reinforce the quantity of the thing we attach value to then it's either zero or negative.  A zero rate-of-change is ambivalence.  A negative rate of change is unhappiness.

Rates-of-change also have magnitudes.  This is an indication of how quickly the change is occurring.  This magnitude is a measure of how intense your happiness or unhappiness is.  Slow changes may produce comfort or its complement, anxiety. Fast changes may produce ecstasy or its complement, misery.

Rates-of-change have durations.  Signs and magnitudes, at least in the happiness case, are constantly fluctuating.  This enables views of the short term and long haul.  Is your relationship with a particular person making you happy right now?  It may be.  Has your relationship with that person made you happy over the long haul?  It's probably had its ups and downs.

Rates-of-change are subject to balancing forces primarily due to the rates-of-change on several fronts.  I may experience a great deal of happiness by increasing the amount of time I've spend with someone, but this happiness may wear thin due to the pressures of wanting to spend my time in other ways.  This may explain "new relationship energy".  It may also involve whether or not there's a "zero sum game" in the mix. 

Finally, the word perceived is included in the definition because it's our perceptions that impact our happiness rather than fact.  It's pretty evident that perceptions may be informed by fact but perceptions are certainly not dependent on fact.

What are the implications of this?  First that happiness, or unhappiness as the case may be, do not occur without change.  It's this motion that makes life interesting and meaningful.  This is why we pursue "experiences".  An experience is a perceived change in something we attach value to.

Second, it highlights why it's important to understand the things that we attach value to and the things that others we interact with attach value to and why.  A value system is this collection of things we attach value to and the positiveness or negativeness of that attached value.  A shared value system is the collection of things that a community of people attach value to in a common way.  This is the basis for organizations, cultures, families, etc.

This also reveals that we attach relative value to different things.  Some things are more important to us, some are less.  Simultaneous changes on multiple fronts are the norm.  Net happiness is the result of many interactions in a complex system.  We can easily be happy and unhappy at the same time depending on which part of our value system we're paying attention to.  This complexity is fodder for a great deal of further thought.

Finally, at least for now, we can influence our happiness and the happiness of others.  Most directly by enabling changes in the quantities of something that value is attached to.  Less directly, and much more difficult, by changing if and how we value certain things; by changing our value systems. When we're young our value systems are very much in flux.  As we age and become "set in our ways" these additions and changes become much more difficult.  This "aging process" is also worth further consideration.

Practically, for me looking at life through the lens of this definition gives me much more insight into why I do the things that I do and why others do the things that they do.  No intentional change occurs without awareness and this gives me better insight into where intentional changes can and ought to be made.