What is happiness?
The reason we ask ‘what is happiness?’ is that most of what we call happiness is actually just the feeling adults get when we find relief from the pain and stress of living under the duress of the human condition. That condition can be described as human’s capacity for ‘good and evil’—we know that the ideals are to be cooperative and selfless, yet we humans are capable of incredible aggression and selfishness, and being unable to explain that dilemma has left the human race with a deep, subconscious sense of insecurity and even guilt.
It’s understandable then that when we achieve moments of relief from the human condition, we associate that relief with happiness. When we buy some new clothes, or have a drink of beer at the pub, or our football team wins a game, or we eat a meal at an expensive restaurant, we have just for that moment been able to distract ourselves from this subconscious insecurity we carry with us all the time; alternatively we have found a way to effectively refute this sense of guilt by saying, ‘I am good because I won that race’, or ‘I am good, because I am the prettiest girl in the room’, or ‘I am good because I just made a lot of money’, but however we do it, what we are really doing is finding some temporary relief from the human condition. Because they are just superficial strategies, they leave our deeper unhappiness, and its cause, unaddressed. But again, in the absence of the real explanation of our species’ underlying insecurity, we humans have had no option but to do these things.
So the real question we needed to answer in order to remove this underlying insecurity and resulting need for distraction and relief, is not ‘what is happiness?’ but WHY are we humans angry and selfish, and not selfless and loving? Most wonderfully, biology is now able to provide the full explanation of our angry and selfish behaviour. This comprehensive explanation of the human condition is available in this Introductory Video Series and Part 3 of Freedom: Expanded Book 1, by Jeremy Griffith.
With the explanation of the human condition now available, we are able to see that we are suffering from an upset state, characterised by angry, alienated and egocentric behaviour that is the result of a two million year old, unavoidable clash between our gene-based instincts and our emerging nerve-based consciousness.
Thankfully, our upset can now subside because we have the real defence for our behaviour, which means that real, genuine happiness is at last possible.
We will be able to replace the superficial versions of happiness we have had to live off with our natural happiness - the happiness of being able to love other people and, importantly, the dark side of ourselves, completely secure in the knowledge of our own fundamental goodness.
As Professor Harry Prosen, a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association has said about this immensely exciting, all-relieving breakthrough in biology ‘I have no doubt this biological explanation of Jeremy Griffith’s of the human condition is the holy grail of insight we have sought for the psychological rehabilitation of the human race.’
