杨柳
杨柳

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Loss of Self in Pursuit of Happiness

However, we gradually lost our selves through striving for happiness, a genetically and socially moulded and constructed term.

It is said that happiness is anything other than things make one unhappy. Sometimes people feel the spontaneous urge to fulfil each single task en route towards happiness; other times they are propelled so. And the matter concerned on the table simply is the ongoing question ---- what is happiness? No matter how many smart heads have rendered in their particular theoretical way the explanation of happiness, it seems what we chase after out of question fall into a certain universalised, worldly or popularly accepted meaning of happiness. But do humans utterly in their innermost selves find that it truly is what they want? or have they never during their pensive moods realised it was, at least in some part, the expectations others cast upon themselves and in no more than seconds they internalised such concepts. They believed they know well about happiness, and people could lecture about it or catechise others about it if they are allowed under any circumstances. However, we gradually lost our selves through striving for happiness, a genetically and socially moulded and constructed term.

Happiness is firstly determined by human genes, and in pursuit of happiness humans’ selves are never at their free will. If the air tepid or cool? If the bed is cosy or comfortable? If the stomach is satisfied well? If we are inflicted by illness? and so on. We are innately programmed. A lot of things we do not need to make a decision for there already is a pre-coded biological configuration in each of us, and that configured, us, are changing continuously in conjunction with the external environment along with the course of time. We used to be so there, so proficient in hunting and farming, and we are now required to make a set of laborious efforts to just get the hang of the primordial skills. But we are advanced indeed, and are non-stop adjusting to the substantial outward world of experience. In ancient times, humans found a well-supplied living with no war was desirable. Nowadays, humans’ needs are augmented. They crave for an even more happy living with accomplishments in align with the industrialisation, mechanisation, informatisation and so on. Therefore, in terms of self, a rather philosophic question, it seems no small a surprise to find our selves are no longer what we presumptuously think, and it is so much a matter of philosophy that one could presumably at last has the idea ---- the “self” is never at our free will, at least biologically. Because of genes the self has long been lost in human endeavour to happiness. And it is equally distressing to know so it is socially.

Society has rendered us another hallucination we seem to possess our very selves whilst aspiring for happiness, to the contrary, happiness is of community expectation and it is never what we ourselves believed to be. Humans get fond of socialising with each other, however, once the gathering of groups of people made its emergence, it gives rise to the formation of community, which is bound to set up rules for its members to abide by otherwise they soon enough will find themselves unwelcome, or as they are so-called “deviant”. Then it probably is of no surprise to realise the happiness, so well worshipped, is merely one form of community discourse. It is dictated by the community, the majority’s will. Consequently, in trying to find the socially-constructed happiness how can we say we have our own selves? To make matter worse, the fact is that we have lost the “self” thingy downright after our birth, or before? How so? Our sex, if we do have such a thing, is prenatally decided. Perhaps it will be the same case if sex is not “sex”, a name, but something else. What we want as we are pursuing happiness? They could be simple as well as be sophisticated. But whatever it could be, happiness is a social coincidence.

The problem of inquiring such a question lies in the subversive resistance against the established regularities. And it makes little difference after all. Anyway the happiness is questioned, and the conclusion is assumed that the cost of happiness is the loss of self by means of human genes and the society.

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