What is happiness? This question has been discussed by learned philosophers as well as laymen for ages without reaching a consensus. Can it be true that a handful of common sense is better than a bushel of profound knowledge? Now, let us see the following:
Definition of Happiness
Everybody knows that a baby feel happy when sucking at breast; a child eating; an adult falling in love; parents waiting the birth of their baby... one feels better; a millionaire picking up a small money. From this common sense, we can easily come to the conclusion that HAPPINESS must be the momentarily feeling of things being A STEP BETTER for keeping our DNA alive. Otherwise, human can not survive.
Could this definition be universally right? I do not know, but I have not found any exception yet. Anybody's definition of happiness may be different from all others in the world because of the extraordinary high accuracy and resolution of human being. However, his or her definition will be essentially covered by this one.
Valid Happiness
As happiness is one of our instincts or our ancestors successful experiences saved on DNA (Reference 1), it applies to all things of human life in 10,000 years ago as well as today's things which come up to the 10,000-years-ago norm, including:
- Eat living-cell foods,
- Sleep all night long in the dark,
- Do things like gather-hunter does,
- Have other kinds of happiness which existed 10,000 years ago.
Invalid Happiness
In today's highly civilized society, we have many kinds of happiness that are invalid or not up to the 10,000-years-ago norm. Therefore, what we feel happy may not mean that the things are going a step better for keeping our DNA alive. Such as:
- Eating junk food,
- Smoking and drug addiction,
- Traveling for pleasure,
- Having other kinds of happiness which did not existed 10,000 years ago.
All these things mentioned above have gone far beyond their optimal points for keeping our DNA alive. They actually do us less and less good with the increasing of distance from their optimal points. At the same time, they waste the resources of our only globe, destroy the uniquely delicate environment on the planet, and make a great deal of unnecessary carbon-emission to warm our weather. As a matter of fact, invalid happiness not only does us no good to keeping DNA alive, but also hurts it seriously.
Therefore, we have to wisely remove the invalid happiness as much as possible.
Optimal Point
It is also a common sense that everything has its optimal point. For anything of human life, it is obviously the point which exactly comes up to the 10,000-years-ago norm (Reference1). This is because our instincts are essentially the same as our ancestors' in 10,000 years ago.
Conclusion
Valid happiness does us good; invalid one hurts us.
References:1. W. Ying, 2009,articlesbase.com, "Happy Life, Instinct, Wisdom, and Human Computer System." (Submitted Dec, 20, 2009)
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