What is the relationship between happiness and pleasure?There are so many definitions of happiness that it is impossible to list them, it is as if each of us has a very specific profile in which there is a set of multicolored elements, forming a particular structure. In this universe, pleasure remains.
Can we understand pleasure as a feeling? Or subjective element?Associated with the positive, the euphoria that often arises from the satisfaction of a need or desire, that is, pleasure would be closely linked to relief, but also to ambition.
- In addition.
- In pleasure we find another peculiarity: some define it as absence of pain.
- However.
- Many people seem to think otherwise: we are talking about sadomasochism.
This association is much more real than we think, for example, it is not uncommon to see the pain expressed in the face of many athletes, and yet it is a feeling that they appreciate, so we could talk about it with a little more precision. and to say that the opposite of pleasure would be pain, but uncontrolled pain, that the person cannot stop or regulate.
Something very similar happens with fear, many people can take advantage of this emotion when they know in advance that what will happen will have no effect on real life, as can be the case of a book or a movie, pleasure was born, so from?Cheating on the brain.
A Van Gogh Ear song says that happiness is a beautiful smile makeup, which is reflected in the fact that in our society happiness may have become a more consumer object, an object that has acquired value and requires being what we are not really.
This happens in a cycle that perhaps adapts us to society, but it also distorts us a little.
So, we have drawbacks when working longer hours and accepting poor working conditions to pay for activities we did before and where the community has helped. We talk about making food, cleaning the house or taking care of the kids.
In this sense, some studies say that this state that can be called happiness is achieved through balance, good handling of desires, good organization of the needs pyramid and meaningful social contact, however, this personal contact seems to follow a standard: the less laborious, it is more likely to be significant.
That is, a social contact that requires a small investment in resources would be, for example, a telephone conversation lying on the couch, a social contact that requires considerable investment would be the one in which we must move and to which, in a certain way, we will isolate ourselves.
In addition, a true state of happiness changes our world view. This puts us in a position to ask ourselves the following question: “What can we give?”Instead of what can they offer us? This leaves behind the dimension of being people in need and transforms us into people who can help meet needs.
Perhaps one of the differences that best limits the space between happiness and pleasure is that the latter has a much simpler (primitive) neural circuit, which provides, among other consequences, that pleasure can be very destructive.
We are talking, for example, about substance abuse. Let’s think that, in a way, pleasure reinforces a way to meet a need, for example smoking when someone feels that anxiety is on the rise.
On the other hand, happiness seems to be the horizon that responds to the anguish of the human being that goes beyond adaptation to the environment, this also has a lot to do with adapting / accepting its traits.
It is not about living longer or achieving better reproductive success, it is also about paying attention to how we live or how we reproduce, to talk about it we usually add the prefix goal, for example, reflecting on our way of thinking (in assessing the quality of our thinking), we form our meta-thought.
That is why, to a large extent, knowing the danger of pleasure, happiness is largely maintained in the management we make of this pleasure, biologically, can be said, the release and reabsorption of the associated neurotransmitters.
So, for example, the best way to meet a need is not always the most comfortable, the fastest and the most economical.
Making this change is complicated because in the primitive world there was almost no need to impose limits.
This requires a personal evolution, as they have evolved in our society, for example, supermarkets and shops that offer varied products at prices that allow us to consume large quantities.
Thus, happiness began to have an intimate encounter with pleasure, when it understood a third element, a self-control that prevents us from getting caught up in a pleasure obtained in a certain way, burying our own eudaimonia.