Does happiness exist? Or is it just the absence of suffering

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Ben_Sinner

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I heard a view point that claims happiness doesn’t exist, so we shouldn’t seek after it. “Happiness” is just the absence of sufering according to this view

Here is an article that talks about this. Here are some of the things said.

raptitude.com/2010/07/good-news-happiness-doesnt-exist/

Happiness…occurs when something is removed, not when something is added. Happiness is an opposite, a negative mold — an imaginary abstraction created to define precisely what it is not

Happiness is too easily confused with gratification

This is how the human mind works now. It creates unhappiness to keep us moving, with no regard for our quality of life. You can scratch the itch your whole life and it won’t go away.

I love this. The production of chemicals like serotonin create the feeling of gratification for survival purposes. I feel like this is often confused with happiness.

Now I’m assuming we as Catholic/Christians believe in the opposite. We believe suffering is the absence of happiness. How can we as Catholic/Christians back up this claim?
 
“To suffer for God is the highest joy and delight, but not to be able to love Him enough is a great martyrdom.”
  • St. Crescentia
 
I read a book called “In Pursuit of Happiness”
by E. Perry Good, it is a textbook for one of
my courses in college. It says that happiness
can be achieved when you know what you want
and when you get what you need in this life.
Of course, this is not a Christian book, but
it has some good points, like we ALL want
Love, power, freedom and fun and when we
balance these, we can achieve happiness.
 
Does this mean the author of the article doesn’t think it’s possible to be unhappy and grateful at the same time?
 
Bradski said:
Whoever wrote that has a VERY depressing view of life.
Click to expand...
👍

Some people suffer for a greater cause than their own personal comfort. True happiness is found through Christian service of others. We are most happy when in loving relationship with others. And with God in the beatific vision.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
I heard a view point that claims happiness doesn’t exist, so we shouldn’t seek after it. “Happiness” is just the absence of sufering according to this view

Here is an article that talks about this. Here are some of the things said.

raptitude.com/2010/07/good-news-happiness-doesnt-exist/

Happiness…occurs when something is removed, not when something is added. Happiness is an opposite, a negative mold — an imaginary abstraction created to define precisely what it is not

Happiness is too easily confused with gratification

This is how the human mind works now. It creates unhappiness to keep us moving, with no regard for our quality of life. You can scratch the itch your whole life and it won’t go away.

I love this. The production of chemicals like serotonin create the feeling of gratification for survival purposes. I feel like this is often confused with happiness.

Now I’m assuming we as Catholic/Christians believe in the opposite. We believe suffering is the absence of happiness. How can we as Catholic/Christians back up this claim?
Click to expand...
The author is a BUDDHIST or at least using BUDDHIST arguments on this point. It amounts to despair in Christian terms.
 
There seem to be cases where those who might claim to be or who are viewed as successful at avoiding suffering - are many times very unhappy folks.

So I don’t think the math works.
 
I guess by ‘suffering’, it is really meant as “subtle uneasiness”, not so much full on physical/mental pain.

They say happiness is not a feeling, its just the absence of feeling unhappy. If you are happy, you don’t even realize it.

according to them…(people of the article)
 
By that definition then not even Jesus was happy because he suffered. Sometimes a greater good that can only come through suffering brings us a greater happiness than what we had before. Jesus suffered so that we can be united to God. Jesus’ goal in life was not to avoid suffering but to do the will of the Father. Doing God’s will is what made Jesus happy and seeing the fruits of his travails in us. There is a fruit of suffering that xan produce peace and joy.

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

(Romans 5:3-5)
 
Seems like whoever said this was basing it off of a classical notion of happiness, etc. where polar opposites are on a spectrum. It also sounds like you are operating on the same framework too in a way: that the presence of one is only possible with the absence of the other. This sort of thinking comes from classical aesthetics if I recall correctly. I would recommend reading Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, which is basically one of the most profound refutations of this framework of understanding. It might provide you an answer for how to confront this man’s thinking.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
I heard a view point that claims happiness doesn’t exist, so we shouldn’t seek after it. “Happiness” is just the absence of sufering according to this view

Here is an article that talks about this. Here are some of the things said.

raptitude.com/2010/07/good-news-happiness-doesnt-exist/

Happiness…occurs when something is removed, not when something is added. Happiness is an opposite, a negative mold — an imaginary abstraction created to define precisely what it is not

Happiness is too easily confused with gratification

This is how the human mind works now. It creates unhappiness to keep us moving, with no regard for our quality of life. You can scratch the itch your whole life and it won’t go away.

I love this. The production of chemicals like serotonin create the feeling of gratification for survival purposes. I feel like this is often confused with happiness.

Now I’m assuming we as Catholic/Christians believe in the opposite. We believe suffering is the absence of happiness. How can we as Catholic/Christians back up this claim?
Click to expand...
Happiness and suffering are different subsets of feelings, not true opposites. One can be suffering from great physical pain and yet be in great happiness such as seeing your child utter his first words, did well in some event and so on. One can suffer great hardship yet take pleasure in attempting to help the even less fortunate, those even more in pain. Forgiving your enemies could be another but rather tough act to emulate.
 
What about pleasure? Anyway, we have pleasure centers in the brain. For example, provide electrical stimulation to the pleasures of a rat’s brain every time it pushes a lever, and the rat will forgo eating and drinking, and eventually die from total exhaustion.

My point is that the pleasure centers of the brain is the real cause of happiness.
 
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