Is It Wrong To Believe In Happiness?

If the Dalai Lama says that the meaning of life is to seek joy, can we “prove” that? What exactly would the proof BE? I know that I used to be surprised that otherwise intelligent people didn’t seem to grasp this. What I DID notice is that they tended to be depressive, angry, and disappointed that their efforts didn’t bring them lasting pleasure.

But what is much, much worse than people who had not considered it are people who have…but deny it. Have reasons, philosophies, and perspectives that seem almost OPPOSED to the notion. And too often, their lives are catastrophic.

Now…neither of these things “proves” that the meaning of life is to seek joy. But the lack of that belief, let alone its opposite, is observable generally in people who express pain, depression, and anger as a dominant pattern

So…while we cannot “prove” such an existential position, neither can they. We are both proceeding on faith. But if I cannot establish a causality, it is certainly tempting to hypothesize one. Could we perform an experiment to test that hypothesis? Sure. You could take a group of people, divide them, and have half act “as if” joy was their intention. Let the other half act “as if” pain is just peachy. See what happened.

If you have a more sophisticated experiment, you could actually shift their beliefs using various therapeutic, hypnotic, NLP or other approaches. See what happens then.