Happiness: Making It

I've downloaded a video on Daniel Gilbert from the TED Podcast, but you guys can watch it on youtube if you want.

The part that stimulates me the most is this notion of synthesized happiness, not simply on the nature of synthetic happiness, its incompatibility with choice.

We have a remarkable capacity to cope, something I always felt Seneca underestimated. We have an evolutionary need to aim high, to set goals we cannot reach so that we can at least go somewhere when we work towards them.

Whether we reach goals or not, it's nice to have them. Going forward is better than sitting around smoking a joint (though you can be happy that way too).

People ask how I motivate myself to do things, mostly when atheism comes up, and I tell them it's not because I want to make myself happy. Not that I don't like being happy, but because I already am happy and, as Gilbert points out, I could be just as happy not working as I am working.

I do it because I want to push myself and the world around me. There is something to be said for pushing the limits of human thought, and though I am not delusional enough to believe I'm at the forefront of that, joining in and doing what I can is important.

Dan Dennett talks about his soundbite for finding significance and purpose in life: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

So find purpose. Happiness, synthetic or otherwise (I'm not a huge fan of the differentiation), will show up on its own time.