Sunday, August 7, 2011

How morality creates happiness

I tend to refer to morality a lot in my posts and in my discussions in life. To me, it is very important. And so I felt that it would be necessary for me to explain what I mean by the word "morality".

Many traditions and religions have their own set of moral rules. It seems the intention of most of these are to ensure social harmony by having everyone follow the same rules.

My idea of morality is different to this.

In a long overdue post on economics, I should talk about consumption vs investment. I'll mention it briefly here. Imagine for example, we are in a community that can only spend its money on pizzas or pizza ovens. The basic idea is if we spend most of our money on pizzas, we can enjoy the benefits now; If we invest most of our money on pizza ovens, we don't get to enjoy it now, but we get the benefits later (namely, being able to make more pizzas).

Morality is about long term happiness. Its short term equivalent is hedonism.

Hedonism is the near instant gratification of our senses. I don't consider hedonism an "evil", but I believe many religions have long warned against hedonism because of it's long term limitations.

From the economics viewpoint, we can have pleasure now, or invest our energy into something pleasurable later. So we have hedonism vs morality. The problem with a hedonistic attitude to life is that while it may be fun now, we adapt to it quickly, and it consumes all our resources. A hedonistic person may enjoy life until their 40s or maybe even their 50s if they are lucky. But the quicker we are gratified by something, the quicker we adapt. Eventually it becomes too hard to find pleasure this way.

It's like reaching the top of a hill. One day we will reach it, and then we can only go downhill. It can also backfire when all the time, money and energy we have put into our life no longer satisfy, and we have spent no time building anything long term. All we can do is look back at the top of the hill and remember how far we have fallen.

Another negative effect of hedonism is that we often see others as a barrier to getting what we want, or the source of what we want, and we seek to take it from them. A whole life of hedonism creates the perception that life is about how much you can take, and that other people are your competition. Life becomes a game you play to win.

On the other hand, investing in morality is like building a staircase. It is slower than running up Hedonism Hill, and in the short run it may seem that you're behind. But there's no upper limit to the staircase. You can just keep adding steps. So when a hedonist has hit their peak, you are still quietly working away on your happiness.

In this way, living a moral life is like investing in your happiness. Moral rules can sound constricting and boring, but they are time tested rules for your long term happiness. Most moral rules are based around the ethic of reciprocity aka the Golden Rule which says to treat others like you want to be treated.

When you want to build long term happiness, you can't create enemies. You need to find a way that is sustainable. And the only way to do that is to find ways to make both yourself and other people happier.

This is different to gratifying what your senses demand in the moment. It is about finding your set of unique skills and talents and how they can be applied to make the world a slightly better place.

In other words, to building happiness long term, you need to seek a life of purpose. When living a moral life, you don't play to win, but you play the game to discover the reason you are playing.

This takes time. I've been spending almost 10 years looking for my purpose. But I'm getting there, and I've learned a lot along the way. As I slowly narrow down and refine my understanding of my place, I've become happier and more content. And each year presents an opportunity to discover something new and try something different. Each year I get to add a new step to my staircase of happiness.

And I'm still looking towards the sky.