Desire Satisfaction

I took a Moral Psychology class last year. Some of the stuff was pretty interesting, but I spent a lot of time in class playing spider solitaire.

Often times in that class, a philosopher would work off the assumption that happiness is fulfilling your desires. That seems to make sense on some level... why'd we want something that would make us unhappy? We want to be happy, so naturally if that's our goal, we'd desire the things that make us happy - so, happiness will be the fulfillment of our desires.

Does this work? Nope, for two reasons. First of all, we don't know what will make us happy. For example, many people think that the achievement of some goal will bring satisfaction to their lives. If only I could be #1 on the team, if only I can get into a good college, if only I can get a good job, etc... then I'd be happy. But so often achievement is only a ticket into a new arena of competition. I got what I wanted, but the trophy turns out to be empty and I'm not satisfied.

Second, our desires get messed up, like the drug addict who knows that they'd be better off quitting, but just keeps wanting more. An example from my own life: I used to play a lot of video games and watch anime, and I'd always say ahh, okay just one more game, one more episode. And after fulfilling my desires, I wouldn't be happy. That happened on Monday, I wasted a lot of time playing a game called Bloon Tower Defense 3. Not happy afterwards. I told my roommate to punch me if he caught me wasting my life like that again.

Anyway, all this to make the point, happiness is not desire satisfaction. Happiness is not getting what you want (though, it'd be good if the two overlap). So what is happiness? More on this later.