Quote:
Originally Posted by Jel
send a bunch of chocolates/cakes to the local old peoples home once a week/month, 100% anonymously
buy an old lady a dishwasher
send tickets to a show/pantomime/concert/sports game to a children's home
+1000 things like this. Obviously it gives different people varying degrees of enjoyment, just throwing it into the mix in case it gives you any ideas  |
In psychology, there is a well studied and well proven link between volunteerism/helping others and ones improved personal sense of well being and contentment, reduction of stress etc. Also, "things" can't make a person happy as people seem to think. That's not how it works at all as in this context, "happiness" would be an improved and sustained mental state vs a temporarily improved mental state. That is confusing the function of the brains rewards system and temporary dopamine releases (i.e. jerking off or eating cake or whatever) with a more or less permanent or at least a longer lasting mental state. Though happiness doesn't completely come from within (volunteering/helping others as an example), it certainly doesn't come from "things".
You can also see the confusion... between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is not "happiness" in the context of emotional health. Pleasure is merely a short term high. A blowjob is nice, but a blowjob that lasts months would be a nightmare.
The truly sad thing is that your suggestion would do far more to make any person here more happy than anything else and its super easy to do.
Interestingly, twin studies have proven that happiness is more or less a fixed trait. People are born with a certain amount of activity in the brains pre-frontal cortex - it varies from person to person. In identical twins however, this level of activity too, is identical. In twins who are separated at birth, you can see 40 years later that they share the exact same personality traits - including a strikingly similar degree of "happiness" in addition to sharing most other personality traits. People generally will only feel a set degree of happiness and no matter what happens in the short term (i.e. winning the lottery), they will quickly return to that set point -
hedonic adaptation. Changing that, actually requires a lot of work. It can't be done by buying a Ferrari or dating a model, as you will still return to that same set point, no matter how good you feel in the short term.
I would also think that one should be concerned to realize that he or she believes an inanimate object makes them "happy" and looks to inanimate objects for "happiness". Thats no more logical than exclaiming that an inanimate object makes he or she upset (i.e. This car is pissing me off) - that's a lot of power to give to something which is neither aware of itself or others.