Essay: Expressions of Happiness and Well Being on Social Media

‘The happiness of a lifetime’ or ‘A lifetime of happiness’?:
Expressions of Happiness and Well Being on Social Media through the lens of Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”
As any Facebook or Tumblr user can attest, people love to share their happiest moments with their friends. Weddings, graduations, exotic vacations, and other life-changing positive experiences attract many likes, not to mention the attention and envy of the readers. Happiness is appealing and is, overall, the main goal for the average person’s life. We all want to be happy. We also want to share our happiness with others and also influence them in a positive way.
Aristotle philosophizes that happiness is the ultimate telos for a person. Telos, translated from Greek, means “end.” People act in hopes of reaching an end that is beneficial to their lives. A person who trains for months for a marathon hopes to run in the competition. In this example, the telos, or goal, of the runner is to be ready to compete in the race. This end, however, is only the means for achieving a higher end. Why does he or she want to compete? To be successful and healthy. Why be successful and healthy? To be happy. The next logical question is: Why does one want to be happy? Aristotle would answer this question by saying that happiness is the highest good: the Supreme Good. He states, “everything that we choose we choose for the sake of something else — except happiness, which is an end” (Nicomachean
Ethics: X, 6). While this runner trained to achieve the good of health and success, his or her ultimate goal is happiness. The minor goals along the way were simply means to achieve the Supreme Good. Even though the pursuit of happiness is universal, the issue arises in considering what constitutes a happy life.
The happy moments that are shared on social media — the Instagram pictures, the Facebook status chantges, and the Twitter tweets — are not enough to comprise a happy life. These happy “moments” are, nevertheless, just “moments.” They are transient and infrequent. A question surfaces: Can a life full of happy moments, while the rest are average or otherwise unremarkable, constitute happy life? Aristotle, in his classic work Nicomachean Ethics, argues that a person’s life has to be analyzed as a whole in order for him or her to be considered happy. What is not clear is whether it is more rewarding to experience a few moments of highly intense joy scattered through one’s life or a lifetime of minor, not overly exciting pleasant emotions. It is also not clear to what extent sharing one’s happy experiences or one’s attempts to influence other people’s happiness can help one’s own happiness.
Aristotle muses on the story of Priam of Troy. Priam experienced a long period of happiness and prosperity but, in his old life, he ended up losing his kingdom, most of his family, and ultimately, he died in the hands of Achilles’ son Pyrrhus. Aristotle asked himself the question whether Priam was, in fact, happy.
“For there is required, as we said, not only complete virtue but also a complete life, since many changes occur in life, and all manner of chances, and the most prosperous may fall into great misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the
Trojan Cycle; and one who has experienced such chances and has ended wretchedly no one calls happy.”
Aristotle’s answer is, essentially, that one measures a person’s happiness over the period of his or her lifetime, not just based on a few individual moments of bliss. Happiness should be part of a person’s legacy after his or her death. This theory, however, emphasizes the need to distinguish which goods are actually desirable for a happy life.
In Book I, Chapter 5 of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle compares three kinds of lives to show which goals lead to happiness. The three lives are: a life of pleasure, a life of politics, and a life of contemplation. Before analyzing the three different types of lives, one must understand human nature. Humans may be ego-centric, but they still rely greatly on interpersonal relationships. To deny either the internal or external factors of a human’s life is to lead a life destined for unhappiness.
His critique of a life of pleasure is that it is not inherently human in the way it focuses solely on the person. While many people believe that pleasure leads to happiness, Aristotle expresses his dissent. He claims that “the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts.” If people live their lives solely based on impulse and immediate gratification, they will be passive slaves to the present, never able to take control of their happiness. Pleasure is fleeting and will be insubstantial when evaluating one’s life as a whole.
Furthermore, pleasure is a complex concept because a pleasurable activity does not necessarily benefits a person’s life. Food is a universal pleasure that is often even seen as a treat
or a delicacy. On average, food is a necessity for a healthy and happy life. However, when the pleasure of food gets out of hand, it exacerbates obesity and other health problems. In this case, the effect of pleasure is detrimental to one’s life. A similar example is related to hobbies. If people do not find pleasure in their jobs and cease doing their work duties to spend more time on their painting hobby, their career will suffer. In this case, pleasure is a momentary distraction from the burdensome needs in one’s life. Unfortunately, ignoring those necessary activities will lead to unhappiness. Pleasure cannot be the one’s ultimate telos because, when it becomes an obsession, it is dangerous to and distracts from a person’s well-being.
The final issue with a life of pleasure is that it ignores external factors of a person’s life. Aristotle rejects the idea that happiness exists to fulfill our need for pleasure. This would be a hedonistic view that, if true, would make humans “slavish.” When one focuses only on pleasure, he or she acts selfishly and does not have an external voice of reason. Aristotle also posits that anyone and anything can experience pleasure, even slaves and the hoi polloi. However, humans do not want to be slaves, so they would also logically not want to share this characteristic with slaves. This contributes to the person’s inability to improve his or her overall life, even though there are momentary pleasures.
Overall, a life of pleasure is inactive. When given a situation, we, as humans, are not just capable of simply fabricating pleasure. If this were the case, then we would not care so much about free will and our ability to make decisions. This pursuit of such free will that is lacking is exactly what leads to an active and happy life — one that is suitable for humans, not passive “beasts.” Aristotle shows his extreme protest of a life of pleasure by using the strong visual cue of “beasts.” The word is powerfully negative so that he can convince the reader to
abstain from such a detached and passionless life. Aristotle proves that a happy life demands productivity and activity, not self-centered passiveness.
While a life of pleasure is disparaged for its propensity to ignore external factors, a life of politics is presented as a minimal improvement. A life of politics solves the passivity of the former by relying on honors and virtue. Political life gives a purpose to a person’s actions beyond how it affects him or her internally. To be considered honorable, one relies on an external person or group to see this quality. Nevertheless, it is in this positive aspect of political life where the negative lies. The political life focuses too much on the external and not enough on the internal. The precise balance between internal and external, that is critical for human happiness, is lost.
A life of politics ignores internal aspects because virtue relies very little on whether a person is actually virtuous and more on whether the person is seen as virtuous. Honor is easily manipulated because it is based on someone else’s perception of you. Aristotle summarizes the root of this issue by describing this type of life as “superficial.” People can give to charity in a public fashion for the sole reason of appearing kind, whereas, in private, they refuse to help the homeless person on their street. This refusal shows that people living a political life can easily manipulate their private selfishness into public virtue. The manipulation is not only external. People often pursue honor as a way to convince themselves that they are good. Once this seemingly charitable person receives an award for his or her benefaction, the motivation to be giving goes away. It is easy to see that such people are not actually living a good life, let alone a happy one.
Honor and virtue are also deceptive because they are vague concepts. Given the situation where two people live the exact same lives, one can be considered virtuous while the other is not. It is this randomness that makes a political life an inaccurate gauge of happiness. Goodness has to rely on the actions of the person in question. For example, a person who sleeps for her entire life can be considered virtuous. She never acted not virtuously but she also did not actively do anything necessarily virtuous. Furthermore, if she sleeps her whole life, she will objectively not have a happy life.
The last objection to a life of politics is that honor usually assumes the overcoming of adversity. Take the situation of a local hero or even a hero from mythology such as Hercules. Although Hercules was happy and honored when he defeated the hydra, he still had the stress and worry of dealing with the hydra. People in such a situation barely know what actually happened during the fight, yet the emphasis is placed on the public’s perception. However, when it was just Hercules during the fight, he was certainly not reeling with joy.
Overall, the political life is impaired by how it relies on social judgement and ignores the true nature of a person. In short, it is “superficial.” There is no balance or even a relationship between external perception and internal reliability. Without the internal and external factors depending on each other, the path to happiness is incomplete and true happiness cannot be reached.
The answer to the issues with these two types of lives lies in the life of contemplation. Aristotle’s argument originates his argument with his statement that humans qualify themselves from simple animals because of our ability to exercise “rational thought.” While animals live the
simple life of pleasure, humans are able to ground their need for pleasure in the outside world. While a grazing animal is able to be happy by being passive, humans needs to satisfy their need for rationality. The cross between happiness and rationality lies in contemplation. Contemplation relies on deep reflection, which can only be executed with understanding for oneself and how the outside world interacts with oneself. Returning to the example of people with food addiction, rational thoughts means that they value the objective health opinion of the outside world. This rationality would cause people to seek help in order to remain healthy and attain happiness. “Happiness extends, then, just so far as contemplation does, and those to whom contemplation more fully belongs are more truly happy” (Nicomachean Ethics: X, 8). While a life of pleasure would make people happy in the moments of eating the food, their lives as a whole would not qualify as happy. However, if they were able to constantly think rationally and better themselves based on the ability on the outsiders’ opinion, they can easily combat their future health misfortunes. Pleasurable activities are no longer seen as possible “ends,” instead, they are minuscule parts of a life otherwise full of contemplation. Ultimately, a life of contemplation combines the internal and external wants and needs of a person. The individual is no longer blinded by the ego-centric, momentary happiness, rather he or she can act upon personal faults from an external and, therefore, rational perspective.
After establishing that a happy life depends on private and public factors of contemplation, Aristotle also asks the question whether happiness is relative. To a sick person, happiness equates with health, whereas a poor person may expect that money will bring him or her happiness. In other words, what constitutes happiness is in the eyes of the beholder. It is not surprising that the words for “happiness” in different languages have different etymologies. In
French, “heureux” comes from the Latin “augurium” (or “augury” in English). The German word for “happiness” is “Glück” which is a cognate of the English word for “luck.” Other European languages similarly equate happiness with luck. In Russian, “счастье” comes from the Proto-Slavic word for “sharing something good.” Even in the time of Aristotle, the word for “happiness”, “εὐδαιµονία (eudaimonia),” could be interpreted also as overall success, welfare, or “human flourishing”, and etymologically, it really means “good spirit.” One must understand the specific precision of language in order to fully absorb Aristotle’s true interpretation of happiness and the means of achieving it. Imagine the confusion of a translator who has to express the concept of “happiness” in these different languages.
In the twenty-first century, for the first time, it is possible, thanks to social media, to understand empirically and quantify what happiness and well-being mean for billions of people who share their life experiences on line. A number of studies have looked at the different types of happiness (as well as sadness) expressed on social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
From a psychological point of view, one possible definition of happiness is “satisfaction with one’s life” (cf. Haybron, 2003). He particularly emphasizes that “life satisfaction” is a longitudinal concept that covers an extended period of time. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy distinguishes between two senses of the word: “A state of mind” and “A life that goes well for the person leading it”. All of these definitions relate to the way in which people express their life experiences on social media.
Let’s consider how people nowadays are most likely to share their happiness or lack thereof on social media. Almost by definition, what is shared online are instantaneous moments of happiness, and not expressions of a lifetime. Some common examples address the ephemeral nature of such moments, e.g., “I’m scared to be happy because I know it won’t last” posted on Tumblr.
A recent article on the expression of the pursuit of happiness on Twitter by Yang and Srinivasan (Yang and Srinivasan, 2016) investigates the level of satisfaction with life by the users of Twitter over a recent two-year period. The authors analyze more than 3 Billion tweets and classify them based on the type of user: satisfied or dissatisfied with their life (S class and D class, respectively). They cite a study by Lee et al (2013), in the appropriately named Journal of Happiness Studies, in which happiness is equated with subjective well-being (SWB) and is measured as a combination of three components: 1) the presence of positive emotions, 2) the absence of negative emotions, and 3) life satisfaction.
The first point that Aristotle makes is that a happy life can only be determined after death — when the whole life can be considered, not just the happy moments. The examples that Yang and Srinivasan mention refer both to instantaneous judgments of happiness and also to life satisfaction: “‘I enjoyed my lunch’ and ‘I hate this boring movie’ reflect positive and negative affect respectively while ‘I’ve achieved all I wish for in life’ is about life satisfaction.” (Yang and Srinivasan, 2016). In their study, they identify some interesting trends such as the fact that users who express dissatisfaction (“D class”) with their life tend to use more verbs in the present tense, more personal pronouns, especially first person singular structures. On the other hand, users who express satisfaction with their life (“S class”) tend to use fewer adverbs in their posts.
As one could expect, words related to death (e.g., “bury”, “coffin”, “kill”) are statistically more likely to appear in the postings by D class users. Conversely, words related to religion (e.g., “altar”, “church”) appear more frequently in posts by S class users. It is interesting to notice that words in a third category, money, such as “cash”, appear a lot more frequently in posts by S class users. Apparently, money does make at least some people happy, in contrast to Aristotle’s observation that “[t]he life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.” His belief that “eudaimonia” is valuable in isolation is correct and supported by this research. On the other hand, some of the components of happiness such as “wealth” matter only in relation to other things in life.
Facebook publishes a Global Happiness Index, described in (Cohen 2013). The Global Happiness Index can look at the aggregate posts of Facebook users and, using techniques from computational linguistics based on the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) database (Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010), discover that the happiest day of the week is Friday, which is 9.7% happier than the worst day, Monday.
The studies by the University of Iowa and Facebook also confirm the assertion by Diener and Tay (2015) that most people around the world are actually happy. Using the SWB (Subjective Well Being) index, Diener and Tay further hypothesize that humans are actually predisposed to (mild) happiness. Diener also claims that happy people have a number of good outcomes in a number of areas such as stronger immune systems, longer life, higher creativity, higher altruism and tendency to help others, higher levels of success in life, better marriages, better social relationships, better self-respect, and better abilities to cope with difficult situations.
Happiness is valuable not only for one’s mind, but it extends to each aspect of one’s life. Whether one’s happiness can help their own mental to physical health or it is helpful to the people with whom they interact, happiness is powerful.
As one can see by the positive examples mentioned above, happiness exists in many different forms. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle fails to explain the specifics of a life of contemplation. He mentions how not to live, but does not advise what actions one can actually take to promote their personal joy. J. L. Mackie maintains in his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong:
“As guidance about what is the good life, what precisely one ought to do, or even by what standard one should try to decide what one ought to do, this is too circular to be very helpful. And though Aristotle’s account is filled out with detailed descriptions of many of the virtues, moral as well as intellectual, the air of indeterminacy persists. We learn the names of the pairs of contrary vices that contrast with each of the virtues, but very little about where or how to draw the dividing lines, where or how to fix the mean. As Sidgwick says, he ‘only indicates the whereabouts of virtue.’” (p. 186)
The issue arises that Aristotle is vague in his advice. He argues that a life of contemplation is one that is worthy of the Gods (Nicomachean Ethics: X, 8). But, if anything, this grand claim only ostracizes the average person. He is so vehemently against the lives of pleasure and politics that he does not see that it is human nature to fail. His main praise for a life
of contemplation shows that he believes that happiness can only be achieved when humans reach the level of Gods.
The constant personal battle to reach God status can actually be more harmful to one’s overall happiness than it is beneficial. The line lies where a life of contemplation becomes an obsession. When a person only sits and contemplates about life, no new experiences are gained. Aristotle’s main issue with a life of pleasure is echoed in this criticism of a life of contemplation: Inactivity. While he has proved that contemplation is a big part of happiness, when it is taken too far, it becomes too internal. In a similar argument, when the external factors of honor and virtue that are involved in a life of politics are ignored, an individual loses his or her sense of rational thought. This isolation means that the individual will actually not be able to accurately assess and reflect on their actions. If people follow a life of contemplation to an extreme, they risk a biased view of their actions (lack of external honor) as well as never having motivation to take action at all (lack of internal pleasure). It is incorrect to deny human nature and limit people to the life of contemplation.
Mackie shares this concern that a life of contemplation is too limited and not easily accessible. He says, “We learn the names of the pairs of contrary vices that contrast with each of the virtues, but very little about where or how to draw the dividing lines, where or how to fix the mean” (p. 186). The solution is to combine the three lives. To take the internal focus of a pleasurable life and the external focus of a political life and combine it with the wisdom of a life of contemplation solves the problem at hand. The small pleasures in life, such as those that are presented on social media, serve as daily motivation to continue to live well.
Participation in such exchange of happiness with others even shows how to be happy. Combined with constant contemplation about these pleasures means that an individual can become an expert in how to maximize small happy moments. Next, the reliability of a political life serves as a certain cause for action. When only focusing on contemplation, action is forgotten. However, if a political life emphasizes inner and outer goodness, private and public goodness, then the balance between the two is restored. One can see how contemplation can actually show a person how to truly be good. One can use the guide of honor and virtue to self- reflect and emulate those characteristics instead of hiding behind them.
One virtue related to happiness is trying to influence others about their political involvement. Social media make it possible to study the levels of political engagement of people. According to a study by the Pew Research Center (Rainie et al. 2012), “39% of all American adults […] have done at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media”. Furthermore, “31% of social media users have used the tools to encourage other people to take action on a political or social issue that is important to them”. Other studies have shown a positive relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life. One cannot but wonder whether there is a connection between the ability to influence other people’s political engagement and the perception of happiness. Vincenzo Berghella (2014) makes the point that taking control over different aspects of one’s life leads to a higher perceptions of happiness. Being able to participate widely in activities that shape other people’s daily lives doubtlessly raises one person’s perception of control, and hence of happiness. One possible drawback of this ability to influence other people on social media is the possibility of falling into the trap of hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation, a term coined by Brickman and Campbell
(1971), refers to people’s tendency to return to a previous level of happiness and well-being after a temporary positive or negative experience. It is possible that the additional pleasure and happiness obtained from being able to share one’s happiness on social media and to influence other people will wear off over time. Then it could cease to have its positive effect on people. In such a case, one would expect the overall levels of collective subjective well-being to drop in the future. However, even if this does happen, people will still be able to pursue a lifetime of happiness by engaging in new forms of communication and sharing.
In the end, the question is: is it ‘The happiness of a lifetime’ or ‘A lifetime of happiness’?
References
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Berghella, Vincenzo. Happiness: the scientific path to achieving well-being. 2014. ISBN 9780578136264.
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Brickman, Philip and D. Campbell (1971). Hedonic relativism and planning the good society. in M. H. Apley, ed., Adaptation Level Theory: A Symposium, New York: Academic Press, 1971, pp 287–302
Cohen, Noam. Is It a Day to Be Happy? Check the Index. http://www.nytimes.com/ 2009/10/12/technology/internet/12link.html, visited on May 13, 2016
Diener, E., & Tay, L. (2015). Subjective well-being and human welfare around the world as reflected in the Gallup World Poll. International Journal of Psychology.
Diener, Ed. Subjective Well Being Frequently Asked Questions. http:// internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/faq.html , visited on May 13, 2016.
Haybron, Daniel. Happiness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press 2013. Mackie, J.L. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (N.Y.: Penguin, 1977), p. 186.
Lee, Yi-Chen, Yi-Cheng Lin, Chin-Lan Huang, and Barbara L Fredrickson. The construct and measurement of peace of mind. Journal of Happiness Studies, 14(2):571–590, 2013. doi: 10.1007/s10902-012-9343-5.
Rainie, Lee, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady, and Sidney Verba. Social Media and Political Engagement. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Political- Engagement.aspx , 2012.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/, visited May 13, 2016.
Tausczik, Y.R., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29, 24-54.
Yang, Chao and Padmini Srinivasan Life Satisfaction and the Pursuit of Happiness on Twitter. 2016. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0150881. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150881