Hello everyone, how’s it going? My name is Luciano Sewaybricker, and this is the Underside of Happiness Podcast. This is a pilot episode to kick off a conversation about the topic of happiness. Important note: I’m not here to talk about one definitive happiness but about countless, diverse, and controversial ways of thinking about it.
You’ve probably figured out by now that this is another way of saying I won’t teach anyone how to be happy. In fact, I might be one of the worst people to do that.
Whenever I’m invited to interviews, they always ask me a question that terrifies me. The interviewer, smiling and full of hope, asks by the end of the interview: “So, Luciano, are you happy?” Depending on my mood, half the time, I say, “not sure.” The other half, I start with, “Well…” and proceed to waffle on. Either way, the answer is always disappointing, and I can see the person’s shoulders slump and their hopeful smile fade. Their expectations visibly drain away. Well, we’ve got a few episodes ahead, and you’ll be able to conclude whether you are happy. About me, you already know that I have no clue.
The goal of today’s episode, and this introduction, is to show that it’s hard, if not impossible, to talk about happiness in a simple way. Happiness is a messy field of debate. Some people say it exists; others say it doesn’t. Some claim it depends on gods or God, others that it depends on the people around you, or even that it only depends on you. Happiness might be more about pleasure, ethics, or friendship…. I could keep listing possibilities, but you get the point.
Happiness, then, is a topic far too complex and fascinating to fit into a manual or step-by-step guide. If you ever meet someone who claims they can help you be happier (even if they have a PhD in something or are the guru of a reality show winner), be skeptical.
Plato, the famous guy behind The Symposium, wrote that “Happiness is what guides the actions of everyone.” Later, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal added that not only does happiness guide everyone’s actions, but it also guides the actions of someone who decides to take their own life. You can see from these two statements that happiness is important, and there’s some consensus about that.
Broadly, happiness revolves around the idea of being central to people’s lives. But here’s another point Plato and Pascal would agree on: happiness is not easy to achieve. Plato claimed that only one person had ever indeed been happy, and it wasn’t him, his mother, or one of his lovers. For Plato, the only truly happy person was his teacher, Socrates.
Pascal, too, believed happiness was tough to attain. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have argued that the ultimate act, suicide, could be a way of seeking happiness. If happiness were easy, no one would need to go to such lengths to find it, right?
If you prefer a more modern thinker, Freud suggested we should give up on happiness since it’s impossible to achieve. Or consider the writers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers, who didn’t promise happiness but instead the pursuit of it. They didn’t guarantee it for anyone.
You might think, “But those guys are way too old, intellectual mummies. Today, we have science investigating happiness.” To you, dear listener, I say: hold your horses. Every scientific theory starts somewhere, often in the minds of those so-called mummies. For now, just be skeptical when you come across a 15-minute TED Talk titled “The Secrets of Happiness” or a book called The 7 Steps to Happiness or The Art of Happiness. The same skepticism applies to this podcast. While we have a unique and special connection being built here, this podcast will not hand you a recipe for happiness.
Let’s stop with the small talk and dive into the history of the word “happiness.” This history isn’t simple and comes in several versions. I’ll tell you the version I like, which begins in Ancient Greece. This isn’t the only way to tell this story, of course. It could very well be told through the perspectives of Arabic, Chinese, or Indigenous thought. But to show you just how messy happiness is, the Ancient Greek version is more than enough (plus, I wouldn’t really know how to tell the others).
Imagine Ancient Greece. Greek citizens didn’t have to work—they enslaved people and foreigners for that—and could dedicate themselves to what they valued most: contemplating the world. People gathered in public squares or schools, debating a wide range of topics. This practice gave rise to a new way of thinking about the world and humanity. They were starting to separate what they believed belonged to the gods from what belonged to humans—what was within our control. Put simply, they were moving away from the answer, “Because the gods want this way.”
Today, this separation seems obvious to us. We even have distinct terms for types of reflection, like religious versus philosophical. But back then, this kind of debate wasn’t obvious or easy. For starters, they had to discuss things that didn’t yet have clear words. Concepts like will, freedom, subjectivity, autonomy, and happiness had vague meanings by our standards. There were no dictionaries with clear definitions of how to use these words or what they meant.
It’s like trying to teach your grandparents to use a smartphone. You don’t even remember the last time you used a landline, and now you’re trying to get them to install WhatsApp. But they have no clue what WhatsApp is. So you say it’s an app… which doesn’t help much. You realize it’s a lost cause. The closest you get is when they say, “Oh, it’s like a fax machine?”
The Ancient Greeks were like a bunch of seniors trying to figure out WhatsApp. Except that instead of WhatsApp, they were debating happiness. What words do you use to explain what you mean to others? Today, it’s easier to look back at historical records and say it was essentially a debate about the best way to live. But at the time, these seniors, fumbling with their cell phones, came up with very different answers.
A quick side note here: I’m oversimplifying Greek philosophy by comparing it to seniors with smartphones, I`m being prejudiced against seniors. That’s obviously wrong on so many levels. And I know it. Which probably doesn’t help my case…
For example, three major Greek writers had rather different views on happiness. Hesiod wrote that living well depended directly on divine will. In other words, many things could be investigated philosophically, but not happiness. Happiness was for the gods to understand, and only they could make someone happy or not.
Euripides, the author of Medea, was even more drastic. For him, happiness was so inherently divine that only the gods could be happy. We, humans on Earth? Doomed.
Then there’s Sophocles, an essential figure for psychoanalysis and the author of Oedipus Rex. He shifted the conversation, suggesting that happiness could indeed be a human endeavor. Through wisdom, we could learn to navigate life better and achieve happiness. Ultimately, his proposal involved understanding how to please the gods and acting accordingly. This gave humans an active role in relation to the gods, which is much closer to how we think today.
But the problem isn’t just one of understanding, as in the case of Hesiod, Sophocles, and Euripides. There was also the issue of which words they would use to talk about all these things. That is, these guys didn’t exactly refer to an object using the same words. More often, they used the adjectives Olbios, Macarios, and Eudaimon. Over time, the first two ended up being more commonly used to describe someone blessed by the gods – considering gods as external entities to human beings who observe and might or might not grant something to a person. Meanwhile, Eudaimon, which literally means “Good Deamon,” came to mean something like an internal deity or an individual connection with the gods.
So, in the transition that ancient Greek philosophy underwent, the word Eudaimon better translated the spirit of the time and was gradually used more often to refer to this better way of living in Ancient Greece.
In the daily life of the Greeks, the adjective Eudaimon or the noun Eudaimonia prevailed, especially after the work of Aristotle. But it’s important to emphasize that, in no way, does this mean there was consensus about happiness. We’re talking about a period of about 300 years before a trend started to take shape.
But before we talk about a moment when these people no longer seemed like old folks trying to use a smartphone, let’s take a detour to tell the story of the debate between Solon and Croesus. This debate is recorded in one of the oldest history books, called Histories (quite an unexpected title), written by Herodotus.
Solon was a wise Greek wanderer who roamed, getting to know the world and spreading his wisdom. Wherever he went, he was venerated. Everyone wanted a piece of Solon’s brilliance. Our other character, Croesus, was the king of Lydia, a prosperous kingdom at the time, full of riches, victorious in battles, and ruler of vast lands.
One day, Croesus, sitting on his throne adorned with precious stones, received news that Solon, the wise man, was wandering through Lydia. Croesus, without hesitation, ordered his subjects to bring Solon to his presence, but not before giving him an introductory tour of Croesus’s fertile and lush lands. The tour took a few days – it was quite a lot of land. When Solon finally arrived at Croesus’s castle, they went for a walk. Croesus said something like, “Do you see everything the sun touches? It all belongs to me.” And then the magnanimous king started listing all he had conquered and owned, finishing the list with the fateful question: “So, Solon, is there anyone happier than me?”
At this point, the story shifts quickly from a Lion King vibe where Mufasa presents the savanna to Simba, to a tense atmosphere between Mufasa and Scar.
Solon replied, “Well, Croesus, actually, there is. In my travels, I met two brothers who went to war and died; I also met a family man who, after working and supporting his family, suddenly died in his sleep…” And Solon went on listing deceased people he considered happier than Croesus. Naturally, Croesus is enraged by this answer and starts a frenzy within the castle, trying to behead Solon, who escapes like Simba fleeing the hyenas. Ultimately, Solon got away and kept wandering for a while.
But I digress. It’s not about who survived that matters to us here. What’s important is what each one understood about happiness. While Croesus believed happiness was tied to possessions, wealth, and achievements that could be evaluated objectively in real time, Solon believed happiness was about living an ethically good life, free from misfortune, and could only be assessed at the end of life. After all, what if someone is struck by a disease and suffers terribly in the final years of their life? That’s why, for Solon, one couldn’t speak of someone’s happiness while they were alive.
Now, look at this bit of history we’ve covered in just a few minutes, and see how complicated the history of happiness has already become! And we haven’t even gotten into the details of what the great Greek philosophers proposed.
Returning to the question, “But what do science and Positive Psychology research, for instance, have to do with all this?” It’s related because the objects of investigation need to be defined before being studied in research using MRI scans, questionnaires, or whatever tools (it is called the construct or concept validity). After all, I need to know what I’m looking for. And research on happiness always refers in one way or another to Greek philosophers. And we’ve had a tiny sample here: ancient Greek thought on happiness was plural and diffuse. What might justify, for instance, assuming that one Greek philosopher told the truth about happiness and not another? How can I argue that happiness can be evaluated objectively and not only at the end of life?
We’ll revisit this discussion about the science of happiness quite a bit. For now, I hope today’s episode gets you out of autopilot when wishing someone “happy birthday,” or saying you’re happy. Also, I hope you start noticing how much happiness is talked about nowadays—in magazines, advertisements, and daily life.
To wrap up this episode, a beautiful quote from the Portuguese writer Valter Hugo Mãe in his book “The son of a thousand men.”
Quote.
“Happiness is being what you can be” (Ser o que se pode é a felicidade – Mãe, 2012, p.77)
End quote.
Chris Cornell sang an interesting complement to that, about what you can be:
“Be yourself is all that you can do….”
I hope you enjoyed today`s episode. See you next time.
The Underside of Happiness 