Marta Leszczyska

Group 2A1
Word Count: 1242
You may ask scientists what is happiness or if it is definable. They would say it is
something reachable, but not easy to get. Dalai Lama would say that happiness is not
something ready-made and it comes from your own actions. You may also ask So how could
I become a happy person? In my essay I will analyse possible theories whose authors claim
that due to applying those theories people will become happy and I will weigh up both
advantages and disadvantages of them, presenting scientists points of view and at the end I
will present a golden mean for young people who have not decided yet for a particular path of
happiness for their future lives. The first section of my essay focuses on the down-to-earth
way to become happy, next section is devoted to a philosophy of Buddhas life, the third
paragraph concerns the theory of motivation which may result in achievement of happiness
and at the end I will present an old philosophical solution for happiness.
Hedonism is one of traditional theories of happiness according to which a happy life
maximizes feeling of pleasure and minimizes pain (Seligman 1). In his book Authentic
Happiness, Seligman who is a psychologist regards hedonism as a sum of pleasures, but he
indicates that there is a problem of ambiguity, namely let us imagine a following thing: Two
lives that contain the same exact amount of momentary pleasantness, but one life tells a story
of gradual decline (ecstatic childhood, light-hearted youth, dysphonic adulthood, miserable
old age) while another is a tale of gradual improvement (the above pattern in reverse)
(Seligman 1). Hedonism claims that the only possible way to achieve happiness is to revel in
ephemeral pleasures. People have to focus on things that are here and now. Michael Busch in
his book titled Adam Smith and Consumerisms Role in Happiness: Modern Society Re-

examined said that consumerism is directly associated with hedonism and has become the
pursuit of happiness recently. Nowadays, people tend to look for happiness in a bigger income
and in improvement of their living standards. They seem to have forgotten basic virtues.
Modern consumerism focuses primarily on encouraging consumption as both the persons
main purpose and as the route to happiness (Busch 65). Buying new goods make peoples
desires satisfied. Such an ephemeral satisfaction gives consumers sense of self-realisation and
finally it leads straightforward to happiness. Michael Busch indicates that consumerism
constitute an inseparable element of the pursuit of happiness by writing that: While each
individual good provides momentary satisfaction, the goal of consumerism is to keep the
consumer wanting to purchase more goods . . . (Busch 69). It shows that people seeking for
happiness are prone to buy more in order to achieve their life goal and that is why they have
to put a lot of effort to enhance their living standards. But eventually those people are happy.
In his book Consumption and Well-Being in the Material World Joseph Chancellor who is a
psychologist presents different point of view about consumerism and its contribution to
happiness. He said that well-off people have better life in general, because they can benefit
from the fact that they go to the best universities, they can afford to buy an expensive car, they
live longer due to their private health care system. However the biggest surprise is that these
advantages do not always translate to greater happiness. Although income does correlate with
happiness the magnitude of the relationship is relatively weak (Chancellor 14).
Now I want to present a negation of hedonism, namely Buddhism. This philosophy
claims that people are unable to be happy when they are focused on acquiring material goods.
Happiness occurs provided people have positive mental attitudes, work to develop their minds
and are willing to support others around them. According to Buddhism material things are
impermanent and people will not find lasting happiness as long as they revel in buying new
goods. Charles K. Fink (a professor of philosophy at Miami Dade College) comment on

acquiring material goods as follows: Because all things are impermanent, we cannot achieve
lasting happiness by acquiring the things we desire. These things eventually fade away,
And with it our happiness (129). He also said about Buddhism that happiness . . . is a state
of fulfillment or desirelessness, a state completely free from dissatisfaction or want (Fink
128). But this state is not so easy to achieve, because no sooner is one desire fulfilled than
another one occurs. Buddhism undermines peoples traditional concept of happiness, because
it claims that such a perception of happiness is an elusive one. Happiness is the natural
expression of understanding, really understanding, that all things are impermanent (Fink
131). How to become happy then? Buddhism offers two paths to follow, one of them is to
fulfil all of desires that people have or to get rid of them. Fink compares a desire to an
addiction: Smoking a cigarette alleviates the craving for a cigarette, but it does not enhance
the quality
Of a smokers life. Ignoring the health risks of a tobacco habit, smokers are not better off than
non-smokers because they satisfy more cravings. They would be better off without these
cravings . . . (132). It implies that fulfilling desires contribute nothing to pursuit of
happiness. It is good to fulfil a desire, but it is even better not to have any of them.
Next theory concerns self-actualisation of people as a main goal of happiness. It is
Maslows theory that deals with such a matter. He created a hierarchy of basic needs that
people must achieve during their journey to self-actualization. His basic needs are:
physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and one growth need, namely self-actualization.
People achieve happiness when they reach the peak of this hierarchy self-actualisation. They
have to fulfill all of their basic needs in order to achieve happiness. Maslows assumption was
that some needs are stronger than the others, e.g. the fact that you do not have any friends
becomes irrelevant once you cannot breathe. Maslow stated that people are motivated to
achieve certain needs. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one (which

is higher in a hierarchy), and so on. Once basic needs have been fulfilled, one may be able to
reach the peak and achieve happiness. However, according to Maslow, only a few people are
able to go through all the way to the top of the hierarchy of needs.
What is a golden mean for happiness then? Does it even exist? People put a lot of
effort in order to gain it, but a lot of them do not believe in it. Who are happier? Those who
search for it and do not find it or those who accept that such a thing does not exist? Aristotle
came up with a solution for happiness a golden mean, which is something between two
extremities. People have to balance their lives without reaching any extremities. He claimed
that happiness is a central goal of human life and the only possible way to gain such a thing is
through actions of a soul and a life in consonance with a virtue. What is even more important,
he claims that happiness depends on ourselves. One has to struggle all the time to achieve
happiness. It is reachable, but requires a lot of effort that has to be put into the process of
becoming happy.

Works Cited
Busch, Michael. Adam Smith and Consumerisms Role in Happiness: Modern Society Reexamined. Major Themes in Economics (2008): 65-76. Business.uni.edu. Web. 23
May 2015
Chancellor, Joseph. Money for Happiness: The Hedonic Benefits of Thrift. Consumption
and Well-being in the Material World. Ed. Miriam Tatzel. Dodrecht: Springer, 2014.
13-22. Print.
Fink, Charles. Better to Be a Redunciant. Buddhism, Happiness and the Good Life. Journal
of Philosophy of Life 3.2 (2013): 127-44. Web. 23 May 2015
Seligman, Martin. Happiness: The Three Traditional Theories.
www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania, July 2013. Web
25 May 2015.