Be Good. Be Orange.

Being Happy
Nathan Morales

Happiness can be described in many different ways. It could be the feeling of elation, or a warm glow from an event in one’s life. The majority of people want to be happy and chase it all of their life. What if there was a way to create your own happiness? To be able to have the ability to manufacture your own happiness without having to chase it your whole life. According to Dan Gilbert, “happiness can be synthesized”(Gilbert).

What is happiness? Happiness is split into two different types, according to Gilbert. There is natural happiness which is obtaining things that we want. Then there is synthetic happiness, which is accepting what we have and reaching a sense of elation due to that acceptance. Both are necessary in today’s world. Without natural happiness economics would fail. The reason that economics will fail, is that people would not have the same ambition or drive to obtain goods since they would be happy with what they have. Though without synthetic happiness, suicide rates would go up when people loose their jobs, or do not get what they want, since they cannot accept what has happened to them.

What does synthesized mean? In Dan Gilbert’s ted talk The Surprising Science of Happiness you can create your own happiness or have synthesized happiness.. The way you can do this is by looking at the bright side of every single event that happens to you. For example, if a writer were to be in a car accident, and broke their writing hand they could react to the situation in different ways. They could be furious about the situation and blame someone or a higher being. The other option is that the person could be happy that they have a break from career, or understand that they can focus on other things. Dan Gilbert would advise the second option. because which is synthesized happiness, allows you to manufacture your own happiness, and take the best out of the worst situation.

Lastly natural happiness requires ethics. The reason it does, is that without ethics many goals would be unjust and create unhappiness amongst people. For example, if I really want a jacket, and I steal it from a store without getting caught I hurt the person who is selling the jacket. They will then be unable to reach their goal of making a certain amount of money, making them less happy. With ethics I would be able to have the moral imagination to discern whether or not I should steal the jacket. I could then understand it would be morally unethical to do so since stealing is wrong according to my moral code. I then can accept that if I want the jacket I can raise money to get it or synthesize happiness and understand that my jacket will suffice.

Happiness can be synthesized. To a certain point I  understand this. One specific piece of  evidence that Gilbert used was “A year after losing the use of their legs, and a year after winning the lottery, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives”. (Guilbert)  I cannot agree with this since there are different levels of happiness and not all people can be “equally happy”. Even though I do not agree with this evidence, and still skeptical of the true worth of synthesized happiness, I do not have enough experience or wisdom to truly be able to go farther with this topic and I know there is a certain limit to explaining this and or disproving it. For all I know happiness is achievable with a flip of a switch. To be able to recognize that anything that happens can be turned into a positive.