Happiness
If someone is asked what they want out of life, more than once the answer will be happiness. This concept of being happy and enjoying life is the obvious answer to the question, but what if this ultimate life prize that everyone is chasing is something we can synthesize ourself. I recently watched a ted talk about this type of "fake" happiness and it made me think....a lot. I had pondered this idea before: that we can make ourselves happy despite what is going on around/in our lives, but I had never thought of it in the way this lecture presented it. I posted the lecture above but it is a little lengthy (also if you don't feel like being shouted/yelled at by the presenter...) so in short, the man giving the talking, Dan Gilbert, explains that synthetic happiness (happiness that we make ourselves feel) is just as pure and good as natural happiness (happiness from gaining something or someone you want). He says we have a psychological immune system that works to make ourselves happy no matter what situation presents itself. This made a lot of sense to me and linked back to my days of high school psych. In psych we learned that our body has levels that have to be met and these levels include happiness and sadness. We cannot be in either one of those extremes for too long (extremely happy or extremely sad) or else we will not be able to function. This is why it makes sense that this internal psychological immune system tries to help us adapt and be happy with what we have.
The entire concept of happiness is so odd to me. The divide between science and mystic is very unclear and I can't seem to figure it out. I can't help but wonder if happiness is just chemicals, or if there is more to it.
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