It's not about Happiness - It's about Meaning
Forget Happiness -What humans really care about is 'beating other people.
Consider this article: . .. .
"Sometimes people just care about winning -- no matter the cost.
Consider bridge players who play for hours without smiling, not making money or making friends. “They wanted to win for its own sake, even if it brought no positive emotion,” Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times.
“They were like hedge fund managers who just want to accumulate money and toys for their own sake. Watching them play, seeing them cheat, it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself.”
So it's a myth that achieving happiness is our highest priority. "If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago," Seligman says. "We want meaning in life. We want relationships.” Achieving "well-being" is a dynamic process that involves pursuing things like winning for their own sake, even if it doesn't bring us joy."
This is a lot coming from Seligman, who led the "positive psychology" movement with his 2002 bestseller, Authentic Happiness. He now says the book was off-target. He reconstructs what it means to live the good life in, Flourish: "well-being" is the combination of positive emotion, engagement in daily life, having real relationships, meaning in life, and a sense of accomplishment.
The key is figuring out what's most important to us, and then focusing on that. And usually, happiness comes as a result: it's called delayed gratification. "
Read more: Aimee Groth | May 17, 2011, 6:41 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-seligman-happiness-2011-5#ixzz1MqyojGDW
I think the article is spot on. I especially admire Seligman for having the honesty and the guts to come out and say this, after he wrote an entire book saying something different. I know he has a new book coming out, but I still think it would be really hard to publish a book and then admit you were wrong, or short sighted, or you messed up. I have to admire that. I hope you do also.
His "we want meaning in life" observation is one I also have observed and share. It is easy to observe people making relative value judgments based on their limited scope of humanity. For example - people will tend to look around them and decide that maybe they are the most spiritual person they know. So, they 'win.' and therefore they feel meaningful. They exhibit confidence in their judgment, and maybe they kick back and relax, why? - because they value the relative examples available to them; which are the comparative lives of the other people that they know, and so they find 'meaning in life.'
If I'm the brightest, the smartest, the strongest, or the most spiritual person - well then, I've got it made. I am meaningful. I must be doing okay. I got nothing to worry about really - because we all naturally set our bars only as high as the next best human person. When most people seek "meaning," they rely on their own relative valuations. 'Winning' is an obvious marker and a data point for any relative valuation.
I was listening to the radio the other day, and the lady DJ was talking about some woman's funeral. At the end, she added her personal opinion, and said something like this: "The only thing I want them to say about me when I am gone, is that I was very stylish." You see, to her, that means "winning." Style is the standard for her life, and she wants people to remember that she measured well on that scale. That's ALL she cared about! Style above truth. Style above kindness. Style above love, etc. . .
What's your standard?
(C) RLMcCormick
