Happiness And Pleasure: How Are They Linked?

There are as many definitions of happiness as there are people. It is as if each of us has a very specific profile. In which there is room for a very varied set of elements. Shaping precisely this particular conjugation. It is in this universe that the heart of pleasure beats.

We could understand pleasure as that sensation – therefore, a subjective element – associated with the positive, with euphoria and which, in many cases, arises from the satisfaction of a need or a desire. That is to say that pleasure would be closely linked to relief but also to ambition.

In addition, pleasure has another peculiarity: some define it as the absence of pain. And yet, there are many people who also seem to find pleasure in pain : it is sadomasochism.

An association much more present than you might think. For example, it is not uncommon to see pain drawn on the face of many athletes. And yet it’s a feeling they appreciate. We could therefore specify a little more and say that the opposite of pleasure would be pain. But the pain uncontrolled. The one that the person cannot regulate / stop.

Something similar happens with fear. Many people are able to take advantage of this emotion when they know in advance that what will happen will not have consequences in real life.  As can happen in a book or a movie. Pleasure thus arises from the “deception” of the brain.

Happiness

A song by Van Gogh’s La Oreja group tells us that happiness is a good make-up of a smile. This reflects the fact that in our society, to a large extent, happiness may have become one more object of consumption. It seems to have a pretty high price tag. To achieve it, we would have to become people that we are not really.

It would therefore be a question of being part of a movement that perhaps adapts us to society. But that also distorts us a little. Thus, we feel more and more unhappiness while working longer hours. And by accepting bad working conditions, in order to pay for the activities that we used to do for free before. Or for which the community was helping us. We are talking here, for example, of cooking. To carry out work in the house. Or to take care of the youngest or the oldest.

Studies tell us that this state that could be described as happiness is achieved through balance, good management of desires, good organization of the pyramid of needs and significant social contact. This social contact also seems to follow a rule: the less expensive it is, the less it seems to make sense to us.

Don’t worry, we’ll translate. A social contact that requires a low investment of resources would, for example, be a telephone conversation on the couch. A social contact that requires a considerable investment would be one in which we have to move and for which we are going to isolate ourselves in a way.

In addition, a true state of happiness changes our outlook on the world. This forces us to ask ourselves a dilemma: “ What can we give? ”To“ What can others give us? “. This situation leaves behind our dimension of being in need to become beings who can help meet needs.

Pleasure

What can perhaps help us more easily define the difference between happiness and pleasure is that the latter has a much simpler, if not primitive, neural circuitry. This promotes, among other consequences, that pleasure can be very destructive. We are talking here, for example, of dependencies. We have to think about the fact that, in a certain way, pleasure keeps reinforcing a way of meeting a need. Whatever that need. This is particularly the case of a person who needs to smoke when they feel that their anxiety is increasing.

On the other hand, happiness seems to be the horizon which responds to this agitation of the human being which goes beyond its own adaptation to the environment. It also has a lot to do with its own adaptation / acceptance of its characteristics.

It’s not so much about living longer or achieving greater success than others. No. It is also about focusing our attention on our way of living or reproducing ourselves. To talk about this reflection, we usually include the prefix “meta”. For example, thinking about how we think (assessing the quality of our thinking) shapes our meta-thinking.

Now that we are largely aware of the danger of pleasure, it is easier to understand that happiness rests to a large extent on our management of that pleasure – biologically, one might say, of release and recovery. associated neurotransmitters. So, for example, the best way to satisfy a need is not always the most comfortable, the fastest and the most economical.

Understanding this paradox and applying it in our daily life is all the more difficult because, in the natural state, when we were in our most primitive form, we hardly needed to impose limits on ourselves. This requires personal development, which allows us to adapt to changes in our own society. With the advent of supermarkets and mass consumption, we can now consume large quantities of products that we could not afford even decades ago.

Thus, happiness has shifted from an intimate encounter with pleasure to the inclusion of a third element. A self-control that prevents us from ending up prisoners of a pleasure obtained in a certain way. As we bury our own eudemonism.

Our thoughts

What we call “happiness” does not refer to a state of constant euphoria, but to a harmonious attitude to reality, which …