Happiness 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Happiness 2 - Essay Example Scitovosky said that life is essentially a struggle for economic status and as such it is the goal of any given person to claim a steady income for at least a perception of happiness. The terms means something unique to every individual, and despite this flexible existence we all believe our struggles through life are merely to seek out some kind of natural balance that results in being happy; the elements of this state of mind are so varied that there is no way to physically quantify the measurement yet people continue to ask themselves what would or would not make them happy. Material possessions, family life, social status and free time all rank highly among people who are either looking for or say that they are truly happy; how much does money really have to do with it? â€Å"Why is that despite having achieved previously undreamed miracles of progress we seem more helpless in facing life than our less than privileged ancestors? The answer seems clear: while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousand fold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content† (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992). Stace consents that this idea is rather elusive and even points out that other theologians categorise happiness as a purely negative experience in that it doesn’t seem to really exits; whereas physical realities can count as positive and basically influential on a person’s daily life, happiness is a vague and therefore inconceivable term (1937). Trolfand has tried to explain happiness as a certain biological quality of humans who find themselves experiencing an â€Å"inevitable consequence of congenital forces† (1928); it’s an unconventional take on what originally had more spiritual connotations however in the search to define the terms scientists have more to base their conclusions on that the rest of us. Instead of struggling to pin a true meaning to the word happiness,