What Level of Happiness Are We Seeking?

Details: 10 December 2010

A key component to transforming a culture of death into a culture of life and love is having an accurate understanding of the values and beliefs that drive our culture. An invaluable resource for understanding what drives our culture is Fr. Robert J. Spitzer’s book, Healing the Culture: A Commonsense Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom, and the Life Issues. I read and wrote about this book some time ago but revisited it recently and was amazed and inspired again by its insights.

The core of what Fr. Spitzer calls "The Life Principles" is Aristotle’s four levels of happiness. Fr. Spitzer points out that "Aristotle taught that happiness is the one thing we seek for its own sake. Everything else we want for the sake of happiness. In other words, happiness is the ultimate end of the human person (our ultimate goal), and all our desires are shaped by what we think happiness is.

"Unfortunately," Father continues, "our culture defines happiness in very narrow and tangible ways, causing young people especially to seek fulfillment in material/ego gratification, autonomy, and control. These substitutes for true happiness ultimately lead to emptiness, frustration, and despair."

Aristotle’s four levels of happiness are 1. physical pleasure and possession; 2. ego-gratification; 3. commitment and contribution; and 4. giving our lives over to unconditional, infinite, perfect, and unrestricted Love, Truth, Justice, Peace, and Unity. These levels are hierarchical in the sense that a person can be willing to sacrifice a lower level of happiness for a higher one.

In their article summarizing Fr. Spitzer’s book, Marie Harkins and Camille Pauley explain that level one happiness "is the most basic level of happiness, and comes from physically stimulating the five senses in a positive way. It is experienced as ‘feeling good’ or ‘having things.’"

Although level one happiness is good and necessary, "there is a serious problem if human beings begin to seek physical pleasure and possessions as if they were the only, or the most important good." "If we live only for this type of happiness", the writers point out, "we will find ourselves constantly driven to hoard material goods and to indulge in physical pleasures, and we will be exceedingly unhappy in the long run."

If we are driven by materialism it can lead us to view the needs of others as a burden or obstacle to our pursuit of "things" instead of as an opportunity to demonstrate love.

Level two happiness is characterized by "the desire for being better than others, being successful, or being admired, popular, powerful, or in control." Harkins and Pauley point out that, as with level one, these desires are not bad, per se. "But problems arise again when we seek Level 2 as our ‘end’ [or] most important thing in life."

"If a person’s whole view of happiness comes from gaining a comparative advantage, the result is not happiness, but suspicion of others, fear of losing, resentment toward those who are better, contempt for those who do not achieve as much…[and] an exhausting drive to achieve more and to look better at the expense of personal relationships and growth…"

Level three happiness "is the kind of happiness that comes from trying to make the world a better place, or to make a positive difference in the world through self-sacrifice…But, as good as level three is" if we expect "that our final happiness will come from our own contributions in the world…this will inevitably lead to disappointment, crushed ideals, dashed expectations, and maybe even despair."

This is because "we simply can’t find ultimate fulfillment in other human beings… Nor can we give ultimate fulfillment to others." "We can prevent our Level 3 desires from descending into an ‘I have to save the world all by myself’ mentality," Harkins and Pauley write, "by allowing our Level 4 desire to direct Level 3."

For people of faith, the writers continue, level four happiness is "the happiness that comes from letting go and letting God direct our desires toward eternal happiness." It is "surrender to the unconditional love of God" and the belief that "God always wants what is best for us…"

The point here is not to abandon the lower levels of happiness in favor of the higher ones, the writers stress. "Instead, the point is to identify how we can frequently frustrate our own pursuit of happiness by…pursuing the lower levels without allowing them to be guided by the higher ones."