“Happiness is a signal”

 

A synopsis of my book: ‘How to make and fake happiness’

 

 

…. that tells me that I’ve come on, ….. as a come on to.”

 

 

Happiness is attractive, indeed sexy (i.e. inviting copulation, meaning contact). Happiness signals an increase in my relative survival capacity, actual (i.e. real) or virtual (i.e. faked, i.e. ‘as if’), and which I’ve done by increasing my actual or virtual survival assets.

The symptoms of happiness

 

In short, happiness signals that I’ve got there (i.e. where I needed or imagined I needed to be), that I’ve arrived and so completed a function and so on. Getting there is momentary, hence transitory. Likewise happiness. The happiness signal (symptom to some) indicates a momentary relative survival positive change (i.e. a win = become biologically ‘fitter’) without regard to the actual or virtual initial or end states of what has changed. In short, happiness signals that I’ve become an ‘alpha’ (hence biologically attractive) male or female, albeit in my world. Unhappiness signals the reverse.

The heretical view

 

Thus, ‘I’m happy when I get there* (or become) [for the 1st time, or get richer or thinner or better at darts or cooking] but not when I am [rich, i.e. stay the same].”

 

“Difference wins, sameness loses.”

 

*  Both get there and am (as in being there) happen as moments, consequently decay. Because they decay, get (there), in order to experience am, must be recreated. Such creation occurs via achievement of differential (momentary) contact and which alone provides a momentary upgrade which is signalled with momentary happiness.

 

Thus as Heraclitus (c. 500 BC) opined:

 

“You can’t step into the same river twice.”

 

Happiness as courtship display

 

The Biology of Happiness