Overview of My Articles on Happiness

One of the main topics of my articles is the term called "Happiness". It has been one of my pioneer obsessions during my 'contemplative' times. 'Contemplative times' refer to the solitary walks that I take during which I tend to think and analyze things that are either bothering me or have excited me somehow. It's a great way to soothe my mind and come to peace with things that are at odds with my conventional mindset and somehow upset me.

Happiness on its own is an entity that I focused on somewhere in 2015ish. However, I was from childhood, a particularly inquisitive, spiritual, and imaginative person. Couple such a personality with an introverted and 'nerdy' nature, you get a soul who oftentimes gets agitated somewhat quickly. To counter such bouts, I developed a way to get at peace with myself, which involved arguing with myself as the Devil's advocate, examining every angle and thinking out every aspect of that topic/problem. And to me, if a problem has a solution, a rational explanation (despite my now possessing that solution), it ceases to bother me. I don't fret that i don't have something, I fret when I find out that something is either impossible to achieve or the solution is not known to me. 

Regarding Happiness, my articles are neither psychology nor philosophy nor tips/tricks but an independent, rational thought. They are mostly focused on discussing how to increase, intensify, and improve the longevity of it. The following are some the topics that will be written in detail, later on:-

• Kinds of Human Needs

  • Advanced Human Needs

  • Materialistic Human Needs

  • Group Human Needs

• School and College Life, Ideal Childhood

  • Child vs Adult Happiness

  • ​Early Maturity and Long Term Happiness​

  • Ideal Neighborhood Composition for an Ideal Childhood

  • List of Tasks for an Ideal Childhood

• Freedom versus Discipline, The Golden Mean

  • Technology's impact on Happiness​

• Sadness Quota

• Types of Happiness, Cerebral vs Physical

• Virtual Reality, Snapshot of Experience, Others Perspectives

• Imagination, Hype, and Anticipation

  • Nostalgia, its power, and shortcomings​

  • Mental Fantasy World, Potential of

• Theory on the origins of Happiness

• Intensification/Prolongment of Happiness

  • ​Physical Limitations​​

  • Eventual Scope

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1. Kinds of Human Needs.

We all know of the human needs to eat, sleep, breathe, drink, and take shelter. These are sometimes known as basic human needs. However, for a human to be truly happy, there is a set of advanced human needs that need to be satisfied as well. 

I have tried to classify human needs into three parts, which consist of basic needs, advanced needs, and indulgence. Indulgence isn't really needed for sustenance or contentment, but rather for extreme pleasures or escaping from agony. 

Now these needs are not written in stone, nor is their solution fixed for all human beings, but for the vast majority, these needs will suffice. Knowing them and preparing your life accordingly helps in maintaining a constant level of happiness, (contentment). 

Initially, only the needs will be discussed and slowly, the discussion will pan out the tasks which we can do to achieve those needs.

The flowcharts below will classify the needs neatly: -

 

 

 

 

 

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We will focus mostly on Advanced Human Needs here because Indulgence isn't really required for being happy, rather its more of a luxury that few can afford. Let's tackle the broad human needs categories one by one.

1. Physical Needs refer to the needs relating to our bodies. These are mostly biological and not ceberal or emotional. Exertion components of the needs refer to doing some physical tasks and then getting tired. It includes running, jogging as well as weight lifting, rock climbing, or even manual labor. Anything which gets our muscles and heart pumping. The easiest way to satisfy this need for sedentary workers is to play casual sports with friends or joining a sports club. Occasional hiking contributes as well but needs more effort and costs more. Sexual Needs are self-explanatory. The urge to relieve yourself or in other words, foreplay and orgasm followed by relaxing hormones, consists of one cycle. You don't necessarily need a partner for reliving yourself (imagination can often be enough) but multiple partners often increase the intensity of satisfaction of this need.  

2. Social Needs refer to the pertaining to needs involving other human beings. As is wisely said that Man is a Social Animal and often forsakes luxury and opulence to get the company of his fellow-men/women. Interaction is the day to day conversations with other people, preferably people who aren't close to you. This gives a sense of asserting your presence in the outside world, rather than just staying stuck to the insides of the house. Colleagues, vendors, and customers are the best possible use cases for interaction.

Companionship can refer to either your same-sex friends or spouses. Or it can even refer to your travel buddies, colleagues, etc who give company to you, during your routine life. Companions are needed to provide a stable person with whom you can share and discuss the majority routine things of life.

Celebration refers to both a) sharing your achievements within a community and b) enjoying a major festival or notable event with other people. Celebrations are important because they give us the incentive to go on and without which, hard work and industriousness seem to be wasteful. 

Caring is the nurturing and maternal aspect we acquire while overseeing the need management of children, pets, and the elderly. While this need is heavily dependent on your empathy quotient, most folks do possess in a considerable degree, especially when it comes to their own children. However, infertile or sexually unconventional orientation possessors can also enjoy this by volunteering at hospitals or vet clinics.

Romantic need is the combination of attracting, getting attracted to, wondering about, a person (usually of the opposite sex but not necessarily) by having dopamine and other hormones released organically. This is often called "love" but instead of being a long-lasting feeling, love is more often than not, a temporary feeling that attains its peak in the late teens to early twenties. By no means necessary, its very addicting and enjoyable, especially in a diverse and open society like we have in democracies worldwide.

3. Curiosity Satisfaction is also a very human trait. We are not robots or enlightened masters. We are simply mortals who often look in awe of scientists and sages. A shooting star, noise in the dark, light at the edge of the forest, a strange mechanism operating machine, a different country's culture or even a magician's sleight of hand give us a strange pleasure in the task of "discovery". People often love thriller movies because the entire purpose of the protagonist in such movies is the explanation of the unexplained.

The Easiest way of satiating curiosity is through Books/Multimedia which gives a platform for going too far off places by being in one place. Portability is another fun aspect of this way because we can carry our tools easily to wherever we want to. Reading a good book/watching a nonfiction documentary is a good example of satiating curiosity. 

Travel to a new place once in a while is another dimension to "explore". Reading or watching only gets you so far. However, experiencing the noise, smell, and soul of a place can only happen through physically going there. Thus, people want to travel so often, even though they choose the same places many times, its mostly because they don't want to risk everything all at once in a completely new place. Comfort and inertia makes people choose new places less often than their actual needs would dictate.

Spiritual Answers are required by the majority of folks at one or the other point in life. They are the incentive of why religions take root in human societies in the first place. A Religious gathering, a priestly figure or a spiritual temperament, and freedom to debate with yourself are some ways in which these questions can be answered. 

4. Constructive needs refer to the production of something unique/new/useful with effort and are basically for others and not us. It is broadly divided into two parts, one part referring to the contribution to the economy/society, the routine job that we all do for money while the other is the hobby, which we do for producing something that is unique and may hopefully catapult us to boundless fame. Creative Pursuit helps in satisfying our inherent need for creativity and fame while the contribution part helps keep us on our feet and fills our pocket with money. 

5. Consumptive needs are the "filler" and "enjoyment inducing" tasks that keep us going from one constructive task to another, and provides us with lone enjoyment time. The definition refers to the act that we are consuming someone else's construction. Mindless Consumption refers to television, First Person Shooter games, action/comedy movies where you aren't required to take your brain from an inertial relaxed state to an active, alert, or thinking mode. Mindful Consumption refers to the tasks which require some thinking to actually be enjoyed and give food for thought without burdening your mind with more stress. A Key difference between mindful consumption and the constructive task is the magnitude of concentration required as well as the responsibility that is absent in mindful consumption. 

6. Safety Net needs are somewhat invisible needs that we have to feel more "protected" and "secure". Without these, anxiety and stress slowly creep in otherwise seemingly stable and happy lives. There are two major types of Safety Nets, that of the family/friends, and the other is of the routine.

Family gives you moral and financial support for most of your life and is the backbone people rely on. Extended family gives a fair amount of socializing as well. Friends, are very similar to the family but have more mental support than a monetary one. Sharing problems and secrets is done with friends while enjoyment of festivals and events is done majorly with family. (exceptions excepted)

Routine is the set of activities that we do frequently without thinking anew every time we do them. Some characteristics of a good routine are that it reduces stress, improves efficiency, and is sufficiently diverse enough to remove boredom. A stable life and good social bonding are requirements for a good routine to form. Backpacking, traveling like a nomad are good for a while but need to be sacrificed after a while to enjoy a good routine.

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A fairly good balance is needed amongst all these tasks to remain at the peak of human happiness for most folks. Note that, the magnitude of time spent in each task can vary widely but, having all of these needs under control is most important for a balanced life. And a happy life means a productive life, which implies that happiness, contentment, productivity, and peace are all interrelated. 

Exceptions do arise amongst us humans who go in extreme directions of human behavior. In statistical terms, we can term those "exceptions" as people who fall beyond 3 standard deviations of normal distribution. Of course, those folks don't need to satisfy ALL the needs however, such folks are rare. For those folks, there is a special category of needs labeled as "Indulgences". Indulgences don't need to be restricted to the exceptions but exceptions are more commonly found there (despite having some advanced needs as well). For the vast majority, Indulgences are either fanciful fantasies or abhorrent. However, for this article, we'll restrict our discussion to Advanced Needs.

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After we grow up, we get bored quickly and can't seem to enjoy infinitely. One major reason is an imbalance between the time spent between Consrutctive and Consumptive tasks. There is no "Golden Mean" ratio that I have, but certainly, balancing constructive and consumptive definitely relaxes you and makes you feel better. In other words, you don't feel useless or bored. 

Tasks are what we do to satisfy our needs, depending on what type they are.