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.