A friend posted the screenshot below on his WhatsApp status today and I immediately remembered a quote by Titus Lucretius Carus about the negative nature of happiness;
It is a joy to stand at the sea, when it is lashed by stormy winds,
To stand at the shore and to see the skipper in distress,
Not that we like to see another person in pain,
But because it pleases us to know that we are free of this evil.
It is not that we enjoy someone else’s misfortune, but that their misfortune acts as a reminder of how fortunate we are, and enables us to feel pleased about it.
According to Schopenhauer a German philosopher (and the god of analogies), happiness is no more than the absence of pain and suffering. Suffering in this case can be likened to a desire, pain or boredom. For example, imagine the satisfaction of buying your first car. What makes us happy here is not the positive state of being a car-owner, but the negative state of relief from the worries that come with not owning your own car and having to resort to public transportation.
Happiness is an emotion entirely based on the cessation of previous suffering. In order to be happy, we must aim to eliminate suffering (read pain, desire or boredom) from our lives, and in order to feel happy, we must take the time to reflect on their absence.
Happiness never really occurs on its own. It only occurs when there is the absence of something or one of the following is overcome; desire, pain, suffering and boredom. It also disappears together with the need that preceded it. which we can see in the way that the importance of prior achievements soon fade into the background.
So, back to the screenshot, It is clear that humans are not necessarily happy about the misfortune of others, they are just pleased about the “absence” of this misfortune in their own lives. Thanking God because you can see does not mean you are happy about the blind man’s misfortune. You are only happy about the “absence’ of that misfortune in your own life.
Happiness is essentially the absence of suffering.
