The Real Meaning of Happiness
During the aftermath of the 2015 Terror Attacks in Paris, there have been several TV programs presenting panels of experts, including psychologists, attempting to explain the reasons why young men from Europe or America join ISIS or Taliban terrorist groups. The obvious reason for most of the media is that they are psychopathic killers with a lust for power and mayhem. That is true for fanatic leaders and many of their immediate followers, but the surprising explanation is that the general recruits join in pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. Yes, you heard me right, happiness.
To understand how this works, we have to examine the definition of happiness and determine what happiness really is.
The meaning of words has changed over the centuries, but modern words are changing faster than we, as a society, can keep up. I look at the words we use every day and realize that, in some cases, we are using words incorrectly. Happiness and Teaching are two of these misunderstood words. Technically, the dictionary meaning still applies, but the context in which the words are presently being used confuses the meaning or intent of the meaning. I am using these two words as examples because, in any definition of each of these words, they must be explained together in their context. Only together can you understand why many young men throw their lives away for all the wrong reasons.
We are all familiar with the United States Declaration of Independence, which includes the phrases “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The phrase gives three examples of the “unalienable rights” which the Declaration says has been given to all human beings by their Creator, and for which governments are created to protect.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To a select few of the philosophers of Thomas Jefferson’s day, these three things went together, although happiness was sometimes implied by making the third tenet the Protection of Property. The implication is that if you had property (wealth and/or estate), you could live comfortably and be happy. Jefferson realized that this tenet (argued by John Locke) excluded most of the American citizens of the time. All men could not be considered equal if only those who owned property could realize happiness. What Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin both understood, moreover, was that owning property (wealth and/or estate) did not make someone happy. So what makes us happy?
The Instinct to Point
Studies in sociology prove that human toddlers (ages 1-4) instinctively try to teach others and that they experience joy in doing so. Although animals and humans both learn by association and observation, only humans instinctively teach. Kittens can mimic their mothers to learn how to climb trees. Mother Bears can force their cubs to climb a tree or show them how to climb it, but they don’t teach them. Kittens and cubs climb instinctively.
Humans do not have the instinctive ability to climb trees, but they do have the instinctive desire and ability to teach. We can be taught to climb a tree. I know because I taught my preschool-age sister to climb a tree. I enjoyed the experience of teaching my little sister something new, although I didn’t enjoy the earful I got because I didn’t know to teach her how to get down again. Bear cubs don’t need to be taught how to climb down a tree, but humans do. I believe she was up there for a while.
How do you know when a toddler is trying to teach you something? They point. Humans are the only animals that point with the aim of teaching. Not to be confused with pointing for the purpose of showing someone that you desire something. Chimpanzees and Bongos can learn to point – usually to sources of food. However, toddlers use declarative pointing to show you something either new or different, like a new puppy in the room.
Having you discover the object of their attention (not the object of their desire) brings toddlers joy. Not because they got something for themselves but because they discovered something for you. They pointed to teach you something. They will lose interest, however, if you don’t react with a declarative statement. They expect a response. They expect you to say, “Well, look at that. It’s a puppy!” Declarative pointing is a form of human communication, and toddlers expect you to interact with them in both learning and teaching.
The Joy of Teaching
In addition to developing speech and language, teaching was essential in human evolution because of the amount of information a human requires to survive. The ability to communicate together with the joy of teaching and learning enabled humans to happily pass on information on how to control crops such as wheat, squash, potatoes, rice, barley and corn and domesticate animals such as dogs, cattle, sheep, chickens, horses, pigs, goats and eventually rats. (Cats were never genuinely domesticated; alternatively, they learned to live among domesticated humans, but I won’t get into that.) Without any of the above (except for cats), we would not have civilization.
Our evolutionary ability to teach created the tipping point in our growing society – from extended families to towns, cities, city-states and now nations – that enabled humans to populate and exploit almost the entire surface of the world.
My point (excuse the pun) about the word “teach ” is that we can only really use it when it applies to human endeavours and implies an instinctual desire for humans to bring joy to someone else. Teaching is a win-win scenario where the teacher experiences altruistic joy from teaching and the student experiences joy from learning.
In my tree-climbing sister experience, both my mother and my sister remember it as positive. It was a joy to be celebrated, and therein lies the path to happiness: teaching and learning.
The Pursuit of Pleasure
In pursuing happiness, people often misinterpret the meaning of In the Pursuit of Pleasure. Happiness is not synonymous with pleasure. Pleasure is what you get from experiencing something sensual. Happiness is what you get from experiencing something cognitive or what most people associate with the term spiritual. (Spiritual is another misunderstood word and, in this context, is not associated with religious spirituality but a cognitive realization.) Remember, happiness comes from learning something new and from teaching someone something new.
You can experience pleasure from the rush of chocolate’s love drug (phenylethylamine), from the first alcoholic blush of crisp cool Sauvignon Blanc, or the climax of making love to your best friend’s wife, but those things will not necessarily make you happy. Why?
Because all three of these events are self-indulgent acts of sensual pleasure and may have negative consequences depending on circumstances: going into diabetic shock, suffering an acute hangover or anguishing the shame and guilt of cheating on your best friend (or all three in sequence) will definitely not make you happy even after the sensual pleasure each brought about. Chocolate, wine and lovemaking can make you happy, but it depends on the circumstances and not specifically on the associated pleasure drug.
Happiness experienced from sensual experiences is about giving pleasure rather than getting it. That is different from happiness experienced from teaching, which is about sharing life’s spiritual experiences. Spiritual happiness happens in the mind and is not necessarily connected with physical experiences. It can only be felt on an intellectual or cognitive level.
The Strange Truth About Happiness
The strange truth about Happiness is that it can appear in the most bizarre and inexplicable circumstances. You cannot pursue happiness. The Declaration of Independence is still correct in that it would be wrong to say Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Pleasure. But the context is wrong. If you think you can pursue happiness by eating a carton of chocolate ice cream or drinking a bottle of wine, for example, and it hasn’t happened because you gained weight or said something you regret after you got drunk, then you may think that you are a failure.
On the contrary, you may have lost 30 lbs and enjoyed a small scoop of chocolate ice cream or a glass of white wine on your birthday and felt happy because you realized that you no longer have the urge to eat an entire carton of ice cream or finish the whole bottle of wine. You are satisfied with who you have become through learning to eat or drink in moderation. That end result can make you happy. Happiness isn’t something you can plan, it just happens.
Happiness, moreover, is not necessarily associated with something good. You can experience extreme pain and then experience happiness when the pain has ceased. A case in point is the ISIS recruits. Eliminate the psychopaths (preferably with smart bombs) who join ISIS to inflict pain and suffering, and you still have thousands of unexplained (non-psychotic) recruits. Average kids become brutes and savages. Doesn’t this ring a bell? Strike a note? This is classic Lord of the Flies.
Lord of the Flies – Author William Golding’s adventurous tale about a group of boys marooned on an island is more than an action story. It is a commentary on the darkness that exists in all mankind. The evil in every soul that seeps through when humans are unsupervised, uncivilized and driven to madness.
Lord of the Flies Summary at WikiSummaries, free book summaries
I don’t believe, however, that we are inherently evil. If that were true, democracies would not exist, and autocracies would be the rule of the day. The second tenet of the Declaration of Independence is liberty. I guess that is a circular argument where you have to have liberty to have independence, but the point is that freedom is one of our natural and inalienable rights. You cannot be happy without being genuinely free. But freedom from what? Freedom from laws and legislation and big government? No, because (and this is spelled out in the Canadian Parliamentary system as peace, order and good government) good governance is essential to human freedoms, not contradictory to it. Again, that is where many conspiracy theorists get it wrong.
Without the rule of law and protection provided by good government in the form of a fair judiciary and unbiased police and military, freedom cannot exist. That is why power vacuums, such as those created in Libya and Syria by the Arab Spring, lead to Lord of the Flies scenarios. Without strong governments, the psychopaths can rise to the top through recruiting and brainwashing, cult fashion, the vulnerable, marginalized and disenfranchised youth of their immediate culture and those of transplanted cultures, the immigrants who recently moved to Europe and America to get away from terror and despair but never really fit into the new cultures.
False Happiness
What does ISIS offer to its new recruits that Europe and America do not? The joy of belonging, the joy of learning, the joy of being worthy of the teacher, and the joy of employment. As in any cult, these recruits are told that they will be part of the bigger extended family and belong to a worthy cause.
Much like the classic Nigerian 419 money scams where you are promised millions as long as you follow along with these easy steps, the ISIS recruiters, through emails and chats, promise possible recruits a happier, more fulfilling life. To the naive recruits, they send videos and pictures showing a “perfect” society where men, women and children are happy. ISIS’s media division fabricates videos shot in colourful playgrounds alive with sunshine, music, giggling and laughter and showing elderly grandfather figures in full beards, dressed in fatigues and carrying AK47s, gently pushing happy children back and forth on the swings. Any psychologist can tell you that these images are used universally to evoke memories or longing for happiness.
ISIS also promises to teach the recruits the “true” interpretation of the Koran (as Anderson Cooper calls it, “Koran for Dummies”), how to fire a weapon, and how to make a bomb. The recruits will experience the thrill of gaining wisdom or learning a skill, especially if it was forbidden in their previous society. They explain how, using these skills, the recruits can contribute to building a nation-state. Equally crucial to fulfilling happiness, the ISIS recruiter promises them a job. No advance payment, no tuition, no student loans. The training is free. The end result of joining ISIS is gainful employment for life.
What they find when they show up for work, however, is a different story. Classic bait and switch. During and after the training, the leaders will push the recruits to the breaking point physically and mentally, with the intent of brutalizing them into subjugation and humility until they are no longer civilized. They not only teach them to fight and kill, like most soldiers, but they also teach them to murder. The end result is, again, like any cult, full loyalty to the leaders regardless of how ruthless or inhumane. The disciples are now just robots, devoid of sympathy or empathy, in the war against Western civilization’s pursuit of pleasure. The brutal subjugation process extinguishes all except for the one spark that keeps them lit. Happiness.
The bait-and-switch tactics switched the happiness of childhood memories of children laughing with the happiness experienced from eagerly carrying out commands from their superiors. Misplaced and inappropriate as it sounds, these ISIS recruits are motivated by the false happiness they now experience from carrying out what they were taught. Murder and rape is what they are expected to do. It’s not a sensual pleasure but a result of what they were taught. That is why the killers in Paris appeared so disassociated from their victims, the result of humanity being beaten out of them during the cult-like indoctrination and brutal training. This is no different than any Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler-style cult.
Several years ago, I read a book by a young African boy who was abducted by the local army to become a child soldier. At the time, he felt no empathy for the victims he killed. But after he was rescued and rehabilitated by UNICEF, he finally understood what he had been part of. I believe for some (not for those who have already committed heinous crimes against society) of the ISIS recruits, it would be the same. They must be freed, rehabilitated and taught how to be valuable members of society. Being taught and being part of something is the operative terms for rehabilitation. To do this, however, we have to completely eradicate ISIS’s leadership to the very core and bring the survivors to justice just like we did to end the reign of Nazism during WW ll.
Most importantly, before rehabilitation (and before the complete annihilation of ISIS), we have to have prevention. In other words, we can only prevent young men from signing up if they can fight false happiness with true happiness. If these young men were not marginalized in the first place, then they would not be vulnerable to psychotic recruiters. They need to have skills and gainful employment to feel included in our society. If you strip away the religious labelling, then all of us, whether we call ourselves Muslim, Buddhist, Catholic, Christian, Jewish or Atheist, are just people. We all need to understand that we have the right to pursue happiness and that happiness is best spread and experienced through teaching, learning and being enabled to contribute to our society.
True Happiness
To finish on a happy note, I will say two positive things.
Happiness is unlimited, and the more we spread the joy of teaching, the more we spread the joy of learning. Happiness is the end game of our lives; the best part is that it is best enjoyed with others. Happiness alleviates depression, and nothing brings happiness quicker than achieving something new and challenging. Learning under supervision encourages us to focus on and live in the present. We become mindful of our actions and concentrate our thoughts in order to achieve the teacher’s and our objectives. The more complex the challenge, the more joy we feel when we achieve these objectives. Whether the goal is to build a web page or a house or learn to fly a plane, the result is personal satisfaction.
If you want to test this theory, go out and get your pilot license; if you have a pilot license, get your float plane endorsement, learn to scuba-dive or para-glide or take a yoga class. See if you don’t feel better about yourself. If you are looking for a job, learn to weld, fix cars or drive transport trucks. Learn to code HTML, PHP and ASP. Learn to cook vegan meals or make microbrewery beer. Eager teachers and instructors are waiting to help. It might not come easy. You may have to endure sweat and tears, doubt and uncertainty, or even pain, but in the end, when you succeed, you will experience joy and happiness.
More importantly, go out and teach even if you have never taught. Give your time to help the vulnerable, marginalized youth of your community. Help the less fortunate and disenfranchised feel included. Replace the false happiness of terror with the fulfilling happiness of getting a proper education, learning a trade and being employed. You will be all the happier for it.
Secondly, my sister did make it back down the tree and is living a long and happy life.
My happy little sister Sandy after coming down from the tree.