A Human Strategy #543 The Analog of Happiness



543
The needle on any analog which could measure happiness would have to approach its zenith only when serving some other end.  If the pursuit of our own good fortunes consistently fails our aim on happiness, why would we not at least look at the consistency of the failure?  What if everything were inverted?  What if a large part of our suffering were the result of casting a poor valuation on suffering itself?   

It is in pain that one looks for alternatives, and if this switching has the better record for discovery, then it is pain that is the ally of the intellect and comfort, in resisting alternatives, that is the obstacle to one’s own education.  If, instead of pursuing a sensation of happiness that one would not admire in a fortunate pig, one sought out precisely the standard of setting oneself apart from pigs, then one would have at least the small requirement of adding a modicum of intelligence to the equation.  The sensation, as such, would not be less physiological than that of the pig’s; it is just that the needle to our analog would no longer point to mere sensation, but to something that looks down on such, translating itself by the comparison into the highest of sensations. 

Every superlative depends upon the human dominance mechanism.  He projects as valuable in the world that which redounds back as a perception of his own higher rank.  He thus confers upon himself his value, and he does this best when making distinctions between higher intelligence and animal sensation.  He can only experience the sensation by increasing a particular type of knowledge, looking down on the mechanical aspect of himself so that another aspect, self-awareness, might emerge.  It is a how a demigod at the crux of making its first distinction between its two natures finds a higher sensation in letting them slip into rank.   

He has taken the penultimate step, after which he takes the ultimate.  As we said, the needle on any analog which could measure happiness would have to approach its zenith only when serving some other end: no sensation that “believes in possession” can coincide with the awareness of its own external causes.  The distance disappears, by fulfilling its function.  The awareness of his own causality then extends beyond his own skin, even beyond his personality and rank, and into a fuller participation with eternity.

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