HAPPINESS = CONTROL: A BAD IDEA THAT WENT VIRAL

For the first time since the field of psychology formally became a science, which was only a century ago, serious scientific attention is finally being paid to Happiness.

Previously, the focus was on the causes of unhappiness, and with good reason. Mental disorders inflict enormous misery, and clinicians wanted to find some kind of cure to alleviate people's suffering. Psychiatrists and psychologists are still devoted to this aim, and they still have a way to go, but room has been made to ask two fundamental questions: What is happiness, and is it possible to find lasting happiness?

Philosophers and mystics have had their own answers to those questions for thousands of years, but the jury is still out, so far as a professional consensus is concerned. 

 

One view is that happiness is fairly random and incidental - it comes and goes, without anyone predicting when it will happen.

Another view is that happiness needs to be redefined so that people don't chase after a fantasy of constant sunshine and bliss. Our expectations should be refurbished, with the aim of a state of grateful sufficiency.

Then there are super-optimists who maintain that the highest level of happiness is possible, but it is attainable only by locating a higher reality and establishing yourself there.
Finally, there are those who see that Happiness, like the air we breathe, simply is as much of an ever-present constant as the air we breathe. Just as we can choose to  hold our breath, refuse air, and go red in the face, so we can refuse Happiness, and go red, blue, green or whatever colour we like, wherever we like, but the atmosphere of Happiness remains as a constant option.

Given these very mixed messages, the vast majority of people ignore psychological theory, using their time and energy to carve out a workable, everyday kind of cotton-woolly painlessness, while in the back of their minds they're on the lookout for catastrophes that may destroy their happiness altogether – like natural disasters, poverty, crime, and disease. One reason that the field of "positive psychology" came into being is that this seat-of-the-pants approach to happiness doesn't actually work very well, and it's declining as we speak. So, thankfully, is the mind-gymnastics of positive psyching.

This is where a very ancient and bad idea reveals its presence. It holds that Control gives you happiness, and the more instruments of control you can wield, the happier you will be. I think this one dates back to our earliest times when we dwelt in caves, and is mirrored in everyone's life from the moment when we first thought “I could die right here and now”, the first fearful feeling that came with it, and we started inventing strategies to make those thoughts and feelings go away.

In the case of our Neanderthal ancestors, they attributed things over which they had no control (eg. weather, seasons and availability of food) to deities, and devised strategies and appointed representatives from among them, to intercede with the gods for favourable treatment, and placate any annoyances that we may have unintentionally caused the presumed endowers of bounty. 

 

In our own case as babes, we developed strategies for pleasing, and avoiding causing displeasure, to those whom we saw as essential to our survival and well-being. The common element that interests me in both perspectives is that we come from a ground being of needing to be able to control our environment, and being powerless to have much influence in that regard. Manipulation and Control became the name of the game.

In a sense, political, economic, and medical sciences, religions, social systems and such run on the idea that Control in the guise of "caring" = Happiness, but I think there's a problem inherent in every system. Every system I have examined generates its own myths and culture, and is blind to its own defects if you believe in the system. 

 

But what if Control was never the name of the game. What if we were fundamentally wrong about that? What if there's actually no such thing as control, outside of a desperate belief in it.

The real problem that I have with "control buys happiness" is twofold. First, it has not turned out to be true beyond a very limited point. As a child, I had no power whatsoever, the innate games had no effect at all on my father. I couldn't wait to get out from under him in order to have some autonomy and call the shots. Unfortunately, such a restricted upbringing gave me no training whatever in how to do it, and for 3 decades I stumbled around in the dark, bumping into the furniture. Then, about the time I discovered how to exercise some influence, I discovered it was a blind alley anyway.

Look, having enough power, influence and money to make things happen produces more creature comforts than living with the stress of disenfranchisement, poverty, and want. No argument - BUT - beyond a fairly modest state of financial and social security, the power of control over people's lives brings more stress and unhappiness than it's worth. And there's a further sting in the tail: power over another person is not something you have by right. It is given to you by those who want to be told what to do. And anything given to you can be taken away again. You can never be sure of it. And how on earth can you possible respect and trust someone who needs to lean on you? By the same token, if you don't give someone power over you, they don't have it.

Of course there are rich people who seem exceedingly happy, and poor people who seem the same. Did you see Kevin McCloud's astounding TV documentary exploring the Mumbai slum of Darabi? What an object lesson in debunking pet academic theories of social engineering!! And it kind of proves my theory, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account or social standing, you shouldn't devote your life to the pursuit of wealth or power, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologises the wealthy and powerful as if they live in a paradise on earth.

The second reason that "control begets happiness" is such a bad idea is more subtle. Continually topping up your power base and calling the shots in your version of Tammany Hall prevents you from finding happiness another way. You're trapped in your own web.

I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness already exists, and our ability to dwell in it depends on our state of awareness. I'm finding that, to access higher states of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness. This puts do-gooders - control freaks with a halo - out of the running. Control corrodes the carer and rapes the cared-for. I'd go so far as to suggest that the absence of Control distinguishes Good Care from bad, phoney care. Bad care debilitates; good care empowers healthy self-reliance.

Those who pursue control over their environments and neighbours are not only chasing rainbows, but they are also actually still at the basic, densest level of Mere Survival, albeit a bit flashier and noisier. Controllers' egos have got them by the nose, and their ideas and concepts and beliefs about Happiness have to be proven right at all costs, again and again and again. A truly happy person doesn't worry about concepts and judgments of "right" or "wrong"; only what works. A happy person doesn't give a hoot about whether they're a millionaire or a pensioner. A truly contented person lives in “happy” as a full-time way of being. I learned this on the slopes of Mt.Etna in Sicily: a happy person watches the destructive lava flow across his land and sees a thriving vineyard and and olive grove a few years hence.

 

A similar view has been held for centuries by the world's wisdom traditions, and ironically, now seems a very good time to test it out. In the past, the average person was helpless in the face of natural disaster, poverty, plague and war. That's no longer true for millions of people who now have enough access to equilibrium in mind, body and spirit, a sense of authorship over their destiny, and opportunities to engage actively in social, political, spiritual and working life to be able to connect with happiness rather than simply try to avoid or anaesthetise pain.

It would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity by thoughtlessly adhering to bad ideas that don't serve you well. From the seed of this Control idea grow other bad ideas like “not being a member of a ruling elite means that you are an inferior person, a loser, or the idea that superiority and winning are everything”. Then there's the idea that you can use your money, power and position to buy so many glittery toys and distractions that these will constitute happiness, and so on. 

 

A truth I choose to explore, is that Happiness is an inner enterprise that is very different from the pursuit of power, influence, pleasure or the amassment of fortune. I'm also at a point where I suspect that the purpose of Life is for Happiness to get to know itself. No one should accept this as a given; it needs you to test it out personally. In the end, the message of the world's wisdom traditions is a call to find out the truth for yourself. It just helps to clear away the underbrush of untruths, and "control gets you power and happiness" is just that – a jungle of thistles and creepers that you won't be able to get out of.

Happiness is. Period. Whatever path you're on, happiness is closer to you than the end of your nose. But no-one's going to ram it down your throat. You do have to open your eyes and see it for your self.

[Happiness is the Road – Marillon – 9:58]