The
happiness syndrome
Adapted from my book: ‘How to make and fake Happiness’. Happiness* is the word (or name) English
speakers use to describe one of two biological whole system’s self-regulatory
Guide & Control signals (the other being unhappiness). The syndrome of Happiness, as signal or
symptom, emerges as increased (i.e. heightened) activity (i.e.
arousal) in a particular group of bodily responses, primarily in the solar
plexus area, and of BIO-NAV (i.e. mental) applications,
themselves emergent. The
happiness syndrome as self-application happens if and when an energy surge,
triggered by a survival capacity increase resulting from problem solving (and
any problem solved will result in happiness), is diffracted within a
bio-system to activate a particular ensemble of that system’s
sub-applications. Such sub-application activation generates increased whole
(or overall) arousal experienced as pleasant. The happiness
signal app (alternately registered as symptoms cluster, hence as syndrome)
emerges as: 1.
Increased activity of particular peripheral
nerve ends (beginning in the solar plexus) that generate the sensation of
pleasure. 2.
Increased breathing rate. 3.
Deepening of breathing. 4.
Expansion of the chest. 5.
Increased exhalation often combined with
verbal output. 6.
Increased muscle tone (i.e. sense of
lightness). 7.
Increased energy displacement (i.e. as sense
of speed or brightness or lightness). 8.
Increased sense of cohesion. 9.
Increased heart rate. 10.
Increased blood pressure. 11.
Increased temperature. 12.
Increased bodily movement. 13.
Increased speed in BIO-NAV operations. 14.
Increased readiness and urge to interact. 15.
Tensing of a particular group of facial muscles (i.e. smiling) to show
teeth. 16.
Increase in the capacity and range of sensory perception. Bodily arousal changes not
sensed (hence not conscious) are increases or changes to external chemical
outputs, to changes in particular apps on both sides of the brain and to the neural
and chemical transmitters that trigger and modulate, hence support the bodily
apps whose combined whole output happens as the experience of the feeling
called happiness. Basically the happiness feeling signals an increase (to
wit, a ‘high’) in predation (i.e. fight and attack, rather than fight and
flee) capacity. * The word (actually a metaphor) ‘happiness’ (Note: a word is an arbitrary soundbite and not
actually the experience it is intended to describe, in much the same way as
the map is not the territory) is derived from the medieval English
word hap, meaning luck
or chance (as in the words perhaps, hapless and happen). In
short, in former times a happy person was deemed to be a lucky one, an
unlucky one hapless. The basic idea that happiness happens (sic) as the
effect of luck was pinched from the ancient Greeks who believed that
happiness meant: possession or inspiration by a ‘good demon’ (for instance,
Lady Luck; or the Goddess Fortuna), to wit, eudaemonia.
Consequently, to seek happiness (meaning, to make one’s luck, as in the
American Constitution) has always been deemed morally acceptable (i.e.
virtuous), in contrast to seeking pleasure which, for political reasons, has
always been deemed immoral, indeed a vice. Happiness as courtship display |