Happiness is a sense of being in harmony with our world. We have what we need, there are no threats looming, we have achieved our basic goals, and the body rewards us with a sense of contentment.

Happiness exists by having some basic requirements fulfilled, and a notion that the situation as it is is good.

Our societies aren’t particularly happy. The reason why is what we desire.

In my profession, marketing, we try to persuade the world that it wants our products, and the message is blasted over TV, Radio and all other media, trying to create a desire, whether the recipient of the message can afford our products or not.

It is not an attitude confined to marketing. Teenagers peer pressure each other to get certain labels, magazines and toys. Students are pressured for great grades, even in studies that will only lead to a job for 10% of them. We motivate our employees to compete for a promotion, we also know that only 1/100 will get one. Patients are told they want new tests by doctors who want to avoid being sued by lawyers who want the work.

Desire is created – often by others, for their own gain.

And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Studies show that some of the happiest societies are the simplest ones. Perhaps the price of happiness is a lack of innovation. Perhaps being happy and fulfilled doesn’t push us to exceed the needs our current environment puts upon us. But with a world that eventually will run out of some of its resources, it is good to start working beyond the current demands of our environment, to feel the urge, to want to work harder.

But there is no need to get depressed either.

In the end, it always comes down to us: be aware of the desires within you created by others, and be the captain of your own heart. Don’t drink the kool-aid of others and always take the long view…

Further reading: You are what you choose

You are what you choose

In “You Are What You Choose”, Hamilton and de Marchi discuss the six core traits that shape our decisions.

The six TRAITS attributes are:

1. Time:  Do you have a shorter term view or a longer-term view of life? Scoring high on the “Time” trait means that you forgo short-term gain for long-term value.
2. Risk:  A lower score on the risk attribute means that you are more risk averse, while a higher score means that you can tolerate more risk.
3. Altruism:  To what degree are your decisions driven by your focus on the welfare of others? A low score means that you may simply have a lack of action or low interest in charitable activities and a high score means that you are “other centered.”
4. Information:  If you are an information junkie, then you probably score high on this trait.  A lower score means that you do not seek out as much information to drive your decision-making.
5. MeToo:  A high score on this attribute puts you in a sort of “status-seeker” category. Think in terms of “keeping up with the Joneses.” A low score means that you are more individualistic about your choices and not so influenced by what others are doing or not doing.
6. Stickiness:  This attribute measures what role loyalty plays in how you decide. A high score in this area points to being loyal to a brand or value while a low score means that you can switch easily to an alternative. Think about being in a restaurant and having the waitress as “Is Pepsi OK?” If you score high on Stickiness and love Coke, you might answer “NO! Get me a Coke!”

To us of course, it seems as if poetry and maths are entirely different disciplines, especially because one resonates on an emotional, archetypal level (a shared human basis that aliens would simply not have) and the other relies on more abstract conventions (some of them still archetypal, but far less so).

Daniel Tammet

Enter Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant, who can make what to us appear to be insanely complicated calculations. To us, this appears an expression of genius.

But in his book Embracing the Wide Sky, Tammet prefers to argue that the way we see intelligence and our ideas of how the mind develops puts genius on a pedestal it doesn’t entirely deserve. Tammet explains that the differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated; his astonishing capacities in memory, math and language are neither due to a cerebral supercomputer nor any genetic quirk, but are rather the results of a highly rich and complex associative form of thinking and imagination. Autistic thought, he argues, is an extreme variation of a kind that we all do, from daydreaming to the use of puns and metaphors.

Especially insightful is how Tammet explains that he sees numbers as ‘objects’. He describes how the number 33 and 101 both have a lumpiness to them, a texture that clearly explains their relationship to him. As a result, what to us are very difficult computations become easier to him, because his mind simply has developed a higher level of associative connections that make otherwise abstract numbers easier to recognize, more intuitive and more ‘intimate’.

“Embracing the Wide Sky” combines meticulous scientific research with Tammet’s detailed descriptions of how his mind works to demonstrate the immense potential within us all. He explains how our natural intuitions can help us to learn a foreign language, why his memories are like symphonies, and what numbers and giraffes have in common. We recognize giraffes because we remember their yellow tones, their blacks spots, their long necks. We remember parts of it and how they fit together to give us the unique idea of a giraffe. Tammet argues he simply does the same with numbers.

In learning how to memorize long and difficult passages, we are often given the advice to try and create associations in our mind to facilitate the process. Tammet takes the view that all intelligence is largely based on such a system. Sure IQ plays a part in all of this, but its role is exaggerated, and by embracing the power of association, visualization and connecting the abstract to our natural intuition, perhaps we could develop our ability to learn in previously unexpected ways.

Daniel Tammet on a BBC documentary: