Do we need a reason to be happy?

Eh, just wanting to be happy seems like a good enough reason. But really, if you look at the many health benefits of being happy, that seems to provide ample reason to be happy. If the reason to be happy is larger than the all the reasons to be miserable, then the reason for happiness is greater than the reasons for being sad. It's all in one's perspective. A very pessimistic person such as myself just simply refuses to see the reasons for being happy and chooses to be miserable.

Do we need a reason to feel the opposite, more of a depressive mood? No, that comes without a reason, it seems. Maybe that's the natural condition for us human beings. We need a reason to think, or feel, outside our gloomy box. In other words, to be happy.

Quoting TheMadFool

The ultimate goal of all humans is to be happy

You did not get this from the internet did you?

Quoting TheMadFool

2. There are more reasons to be sad than happy

Maybe you have not found what makes you happy yet. But I think that there are probably an equal amount of reasons to he unhappy as there are to be happy.

Having kids for some people is happiness, for others it is a burden.
Having no kids for some people is happiness, for others it is a sad incompleteness.

So no, we don't have to have a reason to be happy, we can just accept things as they are and smile about it.

But we do need reasons to be unhappy.

Happiness just happens. It is a guide in life.

Reply to TheMadFool I agree with Rich, above, "Happiness just happens". A lot of things in life just happen. We don't plan them, desire them as either the ultimate goal or the greatest tragedy, or do anything to achieve them. People wake up in the morning feeling everything from positive to negative, with many stops in-between. People discover they have fatal cancer. People slip on ice and shatter bones. People even slip on ice and die. People meet others on a street corner and they fall in love. The pick up a book in the library and it turns out to be the best story, or the greatest bore, of their lives. Life doesn't operate according to a plan. You may have a plan, but life may do nothing to help you fulfill it.

You are, just guessing, happy some of the time. Sometimes you are unhappy. Hey, you crazy fool, that's life.

2. There are more reasons to be sad than happy

I don't know whether there are more reasons to be sad, or happy, and you don't either. I wouldn't trust you to count the reasons, because you probably would overlook reasons to be happy and double count some reasons to be miserable.

Quoting Lone Wolf

Eh, just wanting to be happy seems like a good enough reason. But really, if you look at the many health benefits of being happy, that seems to provide ample reason to be happy.

That's something I overlooked. Happiness has many physical benefits, probably hormonally induced. That gives a very good reason to be happy for its own sake. Thanks.

However, I don't know how others feel, I seem to look for mental reasons to be happy. When I understand something in philosophy or a math problem I feel happy and I'm in the habit of looking for such situations. Am I alone in this? I don't think so. The whole enterprise of knowledge, philosophy to science, seems to be motivated by a desire for happiness. Put otherwise people do x because x gives them happiness.

So, although you're right it doesn't completely explain the state of affairs.

Quoting Nessuno

Do we need a reason to feel the opposite, more of a depressive mood?

I think emotion, barring PMS and insanity, needs reasons. Nobody simply laughs or cries without reason. Reasons are required to elicit emotion, at least for me.

If this is true for everybody then the whole situation is odd. The world isn't obliged to make us happy. In fact the world is a dangerous place...to put life in the right perspective all we have to imagine is the vast emptiness of space filled with lethal radiation. So, to seek for reasons to be happy is a futile enterprise. Like astronauts we're forced to take with us a bubble of happiness wherever we go. Why not just be happy, without reason, and discard this heavy space-suit of happiness and enjoy life? As it is life is meaningless.

Reply to Rich Have a read below.

Reply to Bitter Crank You're right. Happiness just happens but we still need a reason to be happy/sad. Try laughing/crying without reason. You can't.

Reply to TheMadFool
Happy could just as well be complacent. Essentially everything from life itself, to aspects of the economic system ensure that you are locked into something you cannot escape. Laughing in the face of this is a coping mechanism for the masses. It is post-modern advice given to those in hopes you do not investigate too much into the existential problems of life, and the intra-worldly affairs of being a part of a larger economic system.

Quoting TheMadFool

However, I don't know how others feel, I seem to look for mental reasons to be happy.

Yes, I understand your point very well. That is why, I think, that I've let myself into a depression. Finding the negatives can be easier than the positives when you've allowed it to go on for a long time. It becomes normal to feel miserable, and it is comfortable to stay that way. I think the way to find happiness must be to find contentment mentally, and to be satisfied rather than always looking for perfection. At least, that is what I have come up with, but it is much easier said than done.

If you could remove trauma and dysfunctional thinking, I think the normal state of mind would be contentment, assuming that all of your basic needs are being satisfied. Look at a cat - if it is fed, watered, and sheltered, it is usually content to just sit around and take in the surroundings.

The trouble is that trauma and dysfunctional thinking can wreak havoc with the proper functioning of the human brain, and can have effects that significantly outlive the related events. I've experienced extreme depression during periods when everything was going well in my life; and propped up with medication, CBT, and rTMS, I've been able to weather storms that would have crushed me earlier in life.

I think people could be generally content their entire lives, if they were taught to think properly about themselves and life from an early age, and were able to avoid any sort of extreme emotional trauma.

Quoting schopenhauer1

Laughing in the face of this is a coping mechanism for the masses. It is post-modern advice given to those in hopes you do not investigate too much into the existential problems of life

If I'm correct you don't have too high an opinion of life. If I am then you'll agree that life doesn't have the required amount of happy moments to make it worthwhile. Yet, even the most saddest person is searching for happiness, right? Even a suicidal person is looking for relief (read happiness) from his suffering. So, if we want something so badly and the world isn't being helpful why not simply be happy? Is it impossible?

Reply to Lone Wolf

In the shadow
Want the rainbow
Isn't the shade dead
All the reason needed
To step into the light?
No better reason right?

Quoting CasKev

I think people could be generally content their entire lives, if they were taught to think properly about themselves and life from an early age, and were able to avoid any sort of extreme emotional trauma.

I don't know. Trauma seems to have its benefits if you allow time and space for it to show. I think it rewires the neurons and your psychology - something like slapping someone into his senses. I don't recommend it though. It's painful.

Quoting TheMadFool

Even a suicidal person is looking for relief (read happiness) from his suffering. So, if we want something so badly and the world isn't being helpful why not simply be happy? Is it impossible?

Well, what I was trying to say is that it is no good being ignorantly happy to the detriment of not understanding something that is happening to you negatively. For example, if you lived in slavery, or were wrongly imprisoned, or lived under a maniacal dictator, or simply worked under an abusive personality-type (think Trump or someone of his ilk). These are all instances where perhaps just "being happy" would be the wrong approach. Sometimes, you must see what is really going on, how you are being manipulated or abused. This can work on a practical level (i.e. not having someone put you in this condition). But it also works in an existential level. Is the premise of life itself abusive? Was it good to be born? Is it good to make other people born? Does the whole economic structure put us in an inescapable situation in our relations to ourselves, others, and the world? So ignorant happiness may not be so good for the long-haul of investigating the human condition itself or the intra-worldly affairs that we must face within the daily grind of life.

I think it would be better to ask if we need a reason to be unhappy. Aristotle's Challenge on Anger taught us what would be a great discipline to follow when he says: to become angry is easy- but to be angry at the right person, at the right time, to the right degree for the right reason, that is not so easy.

So do you have a reason to be unhappy? And if you do have a reason, ask yourself what Aristotle asked and if you can say yes to all the aspects he suggests satisfying, in order to justly claim to be unhappy, then all the more power to you. But to be unhappy without reason is unfair to yourself so be satisfied and take happy wherever you can find it. (Y)

Quoting schopenhauer1

So ignorant happiness may not be so good for the long-haul of investigating the human condition itself or the intra-worldly affairs that we must face within the daily grind of life.

I understand you but if I've been observant wisdom relates better with gloom, like the donkey in the book 1984. I mean the wise tend to be unhappy, to say nothing of the fact that we still don't know what wisdom means.

So, the logical conclusion is that ignorant happiness is the only option. The donkey knows that if it's not the lion then it'll be the tiger that'll eat him - there's no escape from the law of the jungle.

Reply to ArguingWAristotleTiff (Y)

This is a very odd question. Happiness is a state of being, a feeling. Feelings do not stem from reason. The question does not make any sense whatever.
There are things which engender the feeling of happiness, but you do not use that as a reason to be happy. Happiness is the a non rational inherent reaction to such things.
For example. Eating Lemon Meringue Pie can make you happy. But you do not eat the pie then use that as a reason to be happy and then decide that is your best response.

I don't think that we need a reason to be happy.

In practical terms, I think it is possible to promote , contrive even, a sense of happiness or contentment, without any strong reasons, but a raft of "weak" ones are needed. For example, "it's Tuesday morning and I have the whole day to do as I please. I'm feeling well and there's plenty of things I could do..."

It's hard not to be happy when you've got a full bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon sitting in front of you.

That aside, I think the only pre-requisites for happiness are the absence of other people in your surroundings and the absence of expectations ... of any kind.