After being a doom and gloomer during Y2K, I'm reluctant to totally give in to my natural pessimism. There is hope even if we can't make all the connections right now. Our information isn't 100% perfect.

I'm happy,because I'm confident companies like LS9 will keep peak oil at bay. Fossil fuel was a neccessary evil. And,it'll be obsolete in 20 years.

Quite a nice video, well worth watching, and quite true.

Most people weren't depressed during the depression. And in the movie "Mad Max", didn't the evil leather-clad biker weirdos seem to have more "joie de vivre" than those they were attacking? Once peak oil frees us from the tyranny of choice and all we have to choose is who gets to be morlock and who eloi, maybe we'll find that we're just as happy. It may be a shorter life, but more vivid.

It'd be far better if humans took a real look at the biological basis of happiness in time to ameliorate the Dieoff. But since that doesn't seem to be happening, at least we know in advance that the cannibal hordes will be more-or-less psychologically healthy and will probably smile a lot.

I'm a very pessimistic person, and therefore very happy. Things almost always turn out better than I expected. The few times when I got blinded on the downside, I simply deepened my pessimism and happy days were here again. Now I've incorporated getting blinded on the downside into my pessimism, a necessity in these times, and I should be immune to total collapse, nuclear war, martial law, etc. Well, any two maybe. Three would require another adjustment.

great pg
I've enjoyed over the years watching science catch up to ancient human wisdom. meditate, learn to shut off your brain, it's a great tool but should only be used when it's needed

That was powerful, thank you for posting it.

From the examples in his video, it appears those people are in denial. I sincerely doubt I would be just as happy 1 year later if I won $300 million vs. being a paraplegic. You can bed a lot more women being a multi-millionaire than a paraplegic. There are opportunities I missed out on in life and I sure as hell don't think I'm better for it. Synthesizing happiness sounds a lot like "just settling" instead of being ambitious and going for your goals of acquiring more - power, wealth, assets, women.

I was raised to never settle. Never be satisfied when you can achieve more and acquire more. Great businessmen of our times such as Bill Gates had the desire to acquire the largest share of the PC marketplace and conquer his opponents. The American dream is built upon the idea that everyone has the opportunity to acquire as much as he can in order to separate the winners from the losers. Our most popular sport - football - is all about being the biggest, baddest, meanest S.O.B. who can destroy everyone else.

With that in mind and coming full circle back to the Status and Curiosity article, those who are not ambitious enough to take/acquire resources (oil) will move down in their standard of living. Their voluntary (or involuntary) reduction of consumption of resources will only make it easier for those of us whose goals are to acquire said resources. Expand this idea of the national level and you can see that the nations who will come out ahead post PO will be those who will, by any means necessary, acquire & secure resources. That can only lead to one thing - war. It's all about survival.

I like most ideas in this--like synthesized happiness. However some of the logic is screwy. If paraplegics are just as happy as lottery winners it just tells me that people who buy lottery tickets lack the wits to control their lives--even with all the resources of the grand prize. Reading Kunstler made me disdain people with the Jiminy Kricket syndrome who believe all is fixable by wishing on a star. Isn't buying a lottery ticket (chance of win as likely as getting stuck by lightning 5 times) just as stupid? But also these gamblers want to get something for nothing. Striving for something and getting it = satisfaction and hence happiness.

Cheap oil was like a lottery ticket win. The world took all that wealth, used it to overpopulate the planet, build depressing suburbs in the US, fought some terrible wars, and pollute the planet. When you think about it, we could have limited births and built a peaceful paradise in nature--oh well, we blew it. We are just like those idiotic lottery winners lacking wits to wisely steer our lives. Wealth from cheap oil did not make people happier than people who lived in any other age probably.

The problem with this analysis is that it leaves out the large component of our sense of happiness that comes from our perception of other people's opinions of our status and value.

In a way comparing a paraplegic (who would get a lot of care and support in day to day life, but who has below normal status) and an instant millionaire (who gets lots of superficial envy, but probably has to question the admiration and apparent love of others) is too inconsistent. Arent there broader comparisons of happiness and GDP that show above aroun $5000-10, 000 dollars a year per person happiness perception doesnt really change any more? I know after being a starving student for so long I found myself less happy earning much more than that.

This kind of synthetic happiness seems more akin to the kind of stuff used by ruling elites to quell the disatisfaction of the desperately poor. On your knees and think about the wonderful afterlife. Or be good for your next incarnation. Or go the buddhist slant and convince people that their suffering isn't important anyway- perhaps you should try wanting even less?

In the end it seems to be saying that the trick to happiness *and* success is to have the wisdom to invest your limited energy in things you can change, whilst learning to accept the things you cannot.

Nassim Taleb's book The Black Swan talks about how a continual stream of small positive events provides a greater level of happiness than a single large positive event. This seems a similar idea that I strongly agree with.

Also see...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-purchase_rationalization

Small positive events randomly interspersed with big negative events seem to create a fulfilling life.

Madison Avenue has taken the manufacture of unhappiness to a high art form.

The BBC Video linked on the other thread explaining the Bernays role in propaganda and advertising explains this very well.

Even in communist or traditional societies comparisons are made between people and happiness judged based on the difference in status/possesions.

As some have stated, genetics/temperament have the most to do with level of happiness generally maintained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Temperaments

The four temperaments are basis for psychology/astrology, etc. People are like they are from birth according to this. Character is just disciplining oneself to make the most of this given temperament. It has been found in surveys that older people are mch more satified/happy than younger people as they have discovered what it is that makes them personally happy. They have learned to adjust the choices available in the external world to their particular temparament. The machine(human) has become self consciously aware of its relation to the exteranl world and adjusted accordingly. The young person accept its parents choices and then perhaps that of friends until it rejects all these concepts and thinks for itself due to long and hard experience and disappointments. We all know what trouble it is finding a fitting career choice for a young person as everyone has different talents. Not everyone can be a salesman or a computer programmer or a graphic artist for example.

Similarly the video here seems to address a more general concept as did Nate, specific short/medium term happiness based on stimuli/response in terms of brain/chemical reactions for any human.

This sort of stuff is very statistical and general. Madison Avenue marketing types have discovered target markets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terms_for_market_segments

For example if we belong to a certain subgroup then we try to characterize that group and what characteristics people have, why they were attracted to such a belief system or lifestyle. The recent article on Doomers by Kathy McMahon is a case in point:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45752

Initially a small group is made up of people with a particular temperament(superjocks in sport, hard core survivalists as doomers, born salesmen as politcians) but as the group becomes larger almost anyone can find a niche. It becomes a generalized culture where all temperaments and subtemperaments(mixed temperaments) occur and not just those whose temperament allowed the culture to come into being in the first place. For example in large enough art school, accountant firm or sports team almost any temperament could occur. This is actually necessary for the culture to survive long term in balance with nature(outside world).

All the humours have to occur(air, fire, water, earth, etc.) to find a balance in a larger group or mistakes will be made leading to a collapse of the culture with regards to the existing larger environment(survivalist get in shoot out with FBI, etc., sales types arrested on fraud, artists die of poverty).

The De Tocqueville quote implies an adventurous, risk taking culture in USA and a docile, settled nature of people generally in "old Europe".

From birth on I would think that all temperaments occur in equal measure regardless of geography(disregarding racial stereotypes), just as female and male births occur in almost equal proportions. The external stimuli in Europe or Asia however acculturates people to less space, less risktaking, more settled and routine lifestyles.

This is of course everywhere in constant flux depending on economics, technology, resource shortages or surpluses, population pressures and acculturation of immigrant populations to the pre-existing norms of culture.

So happiness individually is a matter of individual temperament adjusting to available culture, whereas the culture is a moving target, following the generational flux:

http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/068811...

Right now we are going down into a crisis era and the general culture is starting to come on board/realize what some hard core among us with pre-existing doomer (melancholic+choleric?) temperaments have long since realized due to our heavy concentration on facts regardless of social pressures.

So PO survivalism is set to become the general culture as only with all temperament types can a subculture become in balance with nature. How can a subculture broaden its appeal to the general populace with only depressives(doomers) and madmen (survivalists) at the helm? A phlegmatic poitician and sanguine comic would be needed to keep all in good spirts and working together. Too many fiery or depressed types would kill one another or themselves.

So the general culture sees overarching reality and adopts the survivalist culture. Happiness is then what each base temperament finds in this new culture. The politician says we must pull together to survive, the comic jokes about mega-death not occurring before he catches his favourite TV show, etc.

I wonder how 'happy' this guy's going to be when world war three begins and upwards of 2 billion people have their lives cut short.
Do you think there just might be a book out there that explains how to cope with the reality of imminent death?
I doubt his psychology text books cover that topic.

Man.....the mental gyrations we come up with to escape the real world.

Anyway, since this is a 'Peak Oil' site, here is a very imperative piece of information to think happy thoughts about -

Iranian Oil Bourse Opening by Steve Austin - 2008/02/06

The Iranian Oil Bourse establishing Euro-based pricing of oil is set to open on February 17th 2008 and could have devastating effects on the US dollar.

Currently all three major oil markets (WTI, NYMEX, IPE) trade barrels of oil in US dollars. Consequently any country buying oil needs dollars to pay for it. This enables the US Federal Reserve to issue huge volumes of dollars to meet increasing demand for oil. In return oil producing nations invest dollar proceeds in US treasury bills, allowing for the current US budget deficit.

But this balance may become unsettled after a fourth major oil market opens this month, trading in Euros: the Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB).

Unlike other bourses, the IOB relies on a peer-to-peer trading model, using the Internet. IOB has been in the works for several years and encountered many hurdles on the way, the last of which are severed underwater internet cables creating an Internet outage throughout the Middle East days before the IOB's opening and prompting conspiracy theories. In recent years the US has outfitted some of its submarines with the capability to splice optical fiber underwater so these theories may not be far-fetched.

Having the world's second largest oil reserves of 136 gigabarrels, Iran will likely extend its influence on financial markets when the IOB opens. Although under-reported by the media, this historical shift and its consequences should be watched closely.

Great post! Though I found it a bit ironic that it is brought to us courtesy of BMW. I guess they haven't quite thought through the implications of this research.

Then again what could you expect from a company that thinks showing a man fantasizing about a car while having sex with a woman is the road to true happiness. Gives a whole new meaning to the "Ultimate Driving Machine".

There's a reason some of us have chosen to exit the rat race some time ago. This also speaks to the reason those posters about the men with the biggest carbon footprint being more succesful in attracting mates are ultimately wrong. Fortunately for me some women prefer to be happy.

Ride a Bike or Take a Hike!

Our present view on what makes ppl happy is very common-sensical: love, in its widest sense, not necessarily romantic/sexual (though that helps!), work, which we usually feel is best if ‘meaningful’, but again, factory workers are happy, what is needed is activity seen as worthwhile in the community. Last, it is better to live in a group or society that is civic minded, friendly, with the possibility of smooth, harmonious social contact, and overriding goals, etc. Repeatedly, it has been shown that status, power, riches, excessive consumption, do not promote happiness.

Natch, views of Man (and what’s good for him) have changed over time; and the views influence our self-judgment, the judgment of others, etc.

Imho present pop and official psychology greatly overestimates unhappiness caused by loss (money, spouse, etc.), decay (illness), violence and abuse. There is a reason for that: firstly, unhappiness attribution of this kind masks other causes, while focussing on causes that are random (eg. accident, crime) or individual (spouse runs off) and leaves cultural, societal, and general political-economic considerations in the shade. We refuse to look at the bigger picture.

Second, it provides an excuse for sadism - the poor losers are victims who deserve pity or scorn, which may be tempered or hidden, following blame attribution. In both cases they are victims, if only of Fate, and thus lowered on the social scale, and can be abused again. A victim is the last thing anyone wants to be.

Naked, unbridled competition - as opposed to that, for ex. on the sports field - makes people miserable. Humans do not like to see others suffer, they do not like to ‘take advantage’ too much (all lab social psych research shows this), they are altruistic, they are capable of great self-sacrifice. We are group animals and survive because of the group.

So there is a lot of space for extremely positive change.

I sincerely doubt I would be just as happy 1 year later if I won $300 million vs. being a paraplegic. “Homes for old ppl. are a misery” - Happiness research is full of glitches, some of it is pure junk. Happiness is not a mental state or emotion that researchers in the emotion field can or do identify, as an ‘intrinsic’ emotion, as opposed to eg. fear, surprise, disgust. ‘Synthesizing’ and emotion like happiness is a metaphor, or a catchy expression, it doesn’t mean much - nothing at all brain-wise. One might as well say “one is grateful for small mercies” or “people make the best of it,” “some always see the bottle as half full”, etc.

There are two kinds of happiness – temporary and enduring. The inexorable pursuit of the first has produced the overconsumption and misery we see around us. It is the kind that is never satisfied for long because it is based on fantasy and stimulation – things that fade as soon as they are experienced.

Enduring happiness is based on a sense of purpose, meaning and direction in life. When I truly became aware of the impact Peak Oil (and climate change, pollution, economic collapse, etc. etc.) would have in our lives and in our world, and when I thought about our children and grandchildren, I got deeply depressed. Sort of a dark night of the soul experience. I have gradually climbed out of the depression by realizing I have work to do. Now, when I read the articles, hear the news and start getting that panicked feeling, I tell myself:

This is the world I’ve come to serve.

For those interested in the psychology of affective responses to choice situations, I further recommend The Paradox of choice : Why Less is more by Barry Schwarz. The IT conversations interview alone (53 minutes) is quite informative.

Dan Gilbert failed to tell us anything about how this "happiness" he speaks about is defined and measured. Rating one's satisfaction with, say, a painting is only one possible way to gauge happiness in respect to that particular item at the particular moment at which the question is posed.

Another proposed way to rate overall happiness is by asking people at random times how they are feeling.

A third possible way to do the rating is to ask people flat-out how happy they are with their lives, either since birth or right at this exact moment. People in a concentration camp would probably never report that they are happy at that particular moment, but they might rate their whole lives as happy, possibly by trying to exclude their current pain and sorrow from their overall rating.

I think one could cook up a large number of rating systems, and probably find that the answers they provide are varied and sometimes contradictory.

But surely that isn't really the point of Dan Gilbert's presentation. Rather, isn't he, like other inspirational speakers, suggesting that we will feel better if we adjust our point of view, if we value ourselves, act courageously and sometimes take chances?

Not a very original message, but I'm happy anyway, I mean, who cares: I will have forgotten this whole silly exercise by tomorrow.

I have Amish neighbors. There are very hard working people who live on the edge of poverty. Most of them appear to be quite happy. Unlike most Americans they have a strong sense of belonging to a genuine community. The worst thing that could happen to an Amish person is to be shunned. Being shunned is worse than having to drive a hay wagon in a bitter cold wind or walking behind a team of horses on a hot humid day out in the fields. Being shunned is worse than walking several miles to school in blowing snow. Being shunned is worse than having a very limited choice in what clothes to wear. Being part of a strong community is more rewarding than accumulating riches. This is the happiness we all ought to pursue.
The lack of belonging, which Maslow rated as the need just above our biological needs, is behind the epidemic of emotional illness we in America are suffering. The demise of organized labor means we no longer have a secure place in our working lives and no power over how our working lives are led. With TV commercials dominating our political process instead of neighborhood meetings we no longer feel we have a say in how governments are run. Instead we have the best government Wall St money can buy. Churches have become big businesses obsessed with budgets more than with our spiritual needs. The only measure of success is financial since there is no community based relationships to ground a sense of happiness in. Just look at how many posts on the Drum are about financial survival with any regard for what happens to the guy next door. If he loses his job or pension or savings due to the shenanigans of the rich he is derided as a parasite who doesn't deserve to live. Their is a good reason why the socialist Danes consider themselves happier more than the capitalist Americans do in spite of the tax structures. In America there is no belief that the coming burdens that peak oil will impose on us will be shared equitably. It will just one more opprotunity for the rich to get richer as more and more people fall out of the middle class.
We don't need to consume more and more to be happy. We need to relearn the benefits of community which the Amish enjoy.

What is happiness? Food For Thought...

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. - George Sand

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory. - Albert Schweitzer

Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient - Aristotle

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others. - Buddha

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family. - Thomas Jefferson

http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/International_Forecaster_Weekl...

"The Disease Caused By Oil"

What about when some people
felt happy by gaining power?

What about one's enjoyment
by making others miserable?

Human beings can build a model
of their world, wherein they
can go through a tunnel to
an infinite of modelling
the modeller modelling.

We ARE our Environment,
in infinite vortex loops ...

We are presuming our environment.

We are dreaming, inspired by data.

Our ability to model our world &
ourselves in our world model, is
connected to a structure of the
feelings associated with that.

Obviously, it is hyper-complicated.

We barely know how our bodies work.

We even less know how our minds do.

There are a lot of tricks and
various surprises to discover.

Happiness is only correlated
with our survival, since it only
has mental mechanisms which
are approximations for our use.

Within this context we return
to a central issue of social
survival and happiness in
a real context of power.

The world is controlled by
lies and coercions serving
organized fraud & robbery.

The people who have been
best at working hard at
being dishonest, and
backing that up with
violence, have been
able to build our
civilization ...

They have a definite interest
in keeping everyone else as
ignorant and afraid as it
is possible to do ...

People are born ignorant and crying.

It is relatively easy to keep them
being ignorant and afraid, while
developing more knowledge and
courages is hard to develop.

I think all happiness is synthesized.

We are fundamentally dreaming in ways
that presume our environment, and in
ways that are partially inspired by
what data is provided to a dream.

Desire creates our "universe."

We build our mental model of the world,
with ourselves as aspects of the model,
which is still inside of the modelling.

We do not and can not Know anything,
including ourselves, except as that
dream of relative illusions & lies
to ourselves about everything ...

More data might help us dream better.

But, we are fundamentally dreaming ...

Culture is sharing our dreams.

Crucial to a real culture is that
civilization is organized robbery.

There are some people who benefit
from knowing things others do not.

They want to keep things that way.

Their happiness is connected to
the misery of other people, and
they work hard to achieve their
goals, which must necessarily
mean others people's goals
are not achieved as much.

Thus, a quote in the video above
from Adam Smith, about what is
something so evil that those
who do it, will regret that,
is hard to reconcile with a
reality that people who do
get away the biggest crimes
are thereby enabled to do
it again even more so ...

Overall, this appears to be leading
us towards failure from our success.

People were brainwashed to believe
in a bullies' bullshit world view,
because that benefited bullies.

All bullies were happy to get away
with bigger and bigger defrauding.

Triumphs by the bullies requires
that the others are yet ignorant.

And so, our education systems and
mass media are not attempting to
enlighten the people, but rather to
keep them in the dark, dreaming
nightmares, that help bullies.

I think it is quite illustrative of
the contemporary world picture
to compare the graphing of
wealth distribution to a
oil well gusher gushing.

Neolithic civilization
is a social pyramid, &
it sucks up the wealth
& pumps it to the top.

The real graph of wealth distribution
looks like something that only should
be in a cartoon, because the reality
of the social pyramid has become so
steep, and there is a kind of tower,
with a gusher of extreme wealth ...
spouting out the top of the pyramid,
through the pyramidion people there,

which is metaphorically spouting like

newly struck oil well gusher/geyser!!!

It is appropriate that Peak Oil has
created a social wealth distribution
that looks a lot like a gushing well.

Our social system does what it was
really designed to do excellently ...

Our social system makes
rich people richer, and
it does so to an extent
that is astronomically
proportioned, compared
to the older kinds of
squat pyramid shape.

The flip side of extreme wealth
is extreme poverty, & happiness
can be felt by some people when
they are making others miserable.

Our brains and bodies are utterly
awesome in their complexities, and
we barely understand how they work.

We mostly ignore elementary philosophy.

We mostly take for granted
our "reality" without the
thought it is created by
our dreaming with data.

The dominant social stories
do everything they could do
to try to suppress others.

Indeed, a most human thing
is that we tell ourselves, and
others, stories, and we are
able to correlate how we
feel with those stories.

Peak oil is metaphorically
a peak wealth imbalance.

Some synthesize happiness that way.