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Are Happy People, Productive People? The poetry of Sufi Mystics is full of descriptions of drunken evenings and besotted lovers. Nary a soul has a care, for their lives are spent in vigorous pursuit of hedonistic bliss. Work and productivity does not enter the mind of the Sufi seeking the endless moment and the perfect lover. On the surface, this is how the poetry may be read. Yet beneath this language lies the truth of their history, that during one of the most prolific times for Sufi poetry and mysticism, they were viciously persecuted. Without this language of careless "happiness" to cover their deep beliefs, neither the Sufi mystic nor their words, would have survived. What then is happiness? What is this thing that can be used to distract people, motivate them and destroy them, as well? The meaning of this one word is the most contested in modernity. Yet possessing a personal definition of it is endlessly important to one's ability to live a fulfilled and productive life. Happiness, in modern western culture, is the ultimate goal and ideal. We are inundated with messages that demand that it is easy to achieve provided that we do a certain thing, consume a certain thing or think a certain way. If we are "unhappy", it is most likely caused by a deficit, either in our behavior or attitude, or in our capacity to have the things deemed necessary to achieving happiness. Herein lies the clue to 'happiness', it is one of those words in the English language that carries a host of meaning dependent not just on the context but on the individual to whom it is applied. Happiness can be an emotional state of joy or bliss. It may be expressed as deep and long-term contentment in one's life, inclusive of hardship and tragedy. Happiness may mean satisfaction. Whichever meaning you choose, the concept involves the sense of worth and value that one attaches to one's own life. To discuss happiness implies you have in mind a scale of comparison. The scale of comparison holds the elements of what is needed by a person to view their life as having value and worth. As we acquire the constant presence of these elements, our sense of value increases. People who feel that the lives they are living are of value are more likely to express their feelings in terms of happiness, no matter to what definition they subscribe. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is the most well known and clearly defined list of needs for a valued life. Beyond the base details of air, water, food and sex, Maslow allows for the extended realms of physiological needs, the needs for safety and security, the needs for love and belonging, the needs for esteem, and the need to actualize self. With all the needs met, it is supposed, one can be adjudged - happy. Productivity, which appears during the fulfillment of the need for self-esteem and actualization, precludes the state of happiness. Or does it? Productivity should not be confused with creativity. Creativity implies a longing for purpose and fulfillment. Productivity is taking what the process of creativity has discovered and realizing it. A person engaged in productivity, happy or not, is engaged in a process external to their sense of self. It may be an extension of an internal creativity, but production implies something that can be separate, that can stand alone from the self. For productivity to be inclusive of the process of happiness, the result, which is independent of the self, must still be identifiable as having been created by the self. It is not so much a matter of pride and acknowledgment, but an external recognition of what the individual has been responsible for producing. Unions, in industries based in mass production, work very hard to transfer that recognition of the individual into a sense of belonging in a skilled trade. White-collar industries spend millions of dollars creating instances of recognition for persons involved in an industry that produces a sea of paper and data with no individual name on it. Production, both quantity and quality, rise when the individual involved in the process feels valued for their contribution. No matter if almost any one could be trained to take over their part of the process, the culture of industrialization strives to replace the individual identity of achievement with individual identity with the group that has achieved. The culture of industry remains rooted in Maslow's need for belonging and self-esteem. For industry to be successful, the persons involved must remain in a cycle of constant affirmation of belonging and recognition from the group through their contribution to its production. It is important to realize that in modern Western culture, the culture of industry extends beyond the working hours into "private life" via the industry of consumerism. A person who is productive, whether according to a pristine interpretation of Maslow or according to the mutated forms of industrial society, has a greater capacity to experience "happiness". They have both an external and internal source for validation and knowledge of their contribution. A person who is not productive, who experiences none of these things, has a greatly diminished capacity for happiness as they are rooted in the lower realms of the needs. A person who is productive but neither values their production nor are they valued for it has the least capacity for happiness of all. The factory worker who feels no connection to the success and quality of the finished product, the minimum wage worker who is constantly told that they can be replaced at any moment - not only experience a lack of value but perhaps more devastating, spend their days feeling as if they are wasted or not worth anything at all. The sense of belonging and identification in the process of production is non-existent. They are frozen, mid-rung, on the ladder of needs. A happy person produces not only quantity and quality, but has a discernible capacity to make connections that may lead to invention. For the happy person, the production is a part of their life, to be examined and improved upon. The unhappy person bears their productivity like a burden, resentful of its demands. The unhappy person may invent, but it is not with a freewheeling kind of genius, but the inspired but limited invention of someone seeking to relieve drudgery. Productivity is conducive to happiness, but once happiness is experience (or achieved), is that person as productive as they were before they knew themselves to be happy? Happiness, in all its forms, changes the experience of life that a person has. It gives rise to a mild (for some) form of paranoia that at any moment, they will be made unhappy. For these, happiness becomes a trap and anything that they have associated with causing the happiness becomes something to be treated warily. They may, unconsciously, seek to maintain the status quo. Maintaining that has rarely proved beneficial to productivity. Others find happiness inspiring and seek to repeat and reinforce the experience and all that is associated with it to the point of maniacally repeating themselves and denying new experiences. The truly happy person, the one whose happiness stems from true fulfillment of their needs, discovers that the kind of production we tend to talk about in Western society, is not very important at all. The genius that is inspired as they rose to their state of happiness begins to become valued for its origination in the self. From the middle of the ladder, where the external sources of validation played such an important role, the person begins to find their internal and spiritual world, far more engaging and rewarding. The truly happy person is worried most about living their life to their fullest capacities, whether or not the industrial definition of production comes into play, does not bother them one whit. A happy person - is. A happy person has no need to produce to gain a sense of value and belonging. They do have a need to experience their life. Invention, true invention, is the province of the happy person for the application of the idea is not nearly as important as the idea itself. The thought they came up with is reason enough to follow it through, not its' potential to become something. The happy person lives to produce according to their purpose, not in service of a purpose outside of their self. Why should it? For there is an army of people trying to climb up the ladder of needs. It is the happy person's invention that will give them the first taste of value and belonging by participating in its' production. Happiness does not guarantee production. It may in fact, subvert the kind of production valued in an industrial society. However, the inventions discovered in happiness give to industrial society its ability to revive itself and continue. The un-happy person, the one who may only sense the possibility for happiness in their life, is the person on whom industrial society feeds for survival. The fate of the American culture rests upon the balance of recognizing that the achievement of happiness is a necessary step in the maturation of the person and the continued existence of society. The current sway to emphasize, mislead and entrap people within a cycle of non-fulfillment by always presenting them with a reason why they cannot truly be happy will only lead to a backlash. A backlash illustrated beautifully in the book "Atlas Shrugged" when the thinkers, the doers, the people who had achieved an internal happiness went "on strike" and refused to contribute to the culture of discontent in order to maintain the status quo. Politics and philosophy aside, that instance in the novel should serve as a dire warning to society about what may happen if we continue to deny people the right to be happy. There will always be those in the process of searching for happiness whose productivity will satisfy society's needs, but we need to learn to honor and respect the truly happy person who has come to value something outside of society for their contributions to society's growth. We must all be engaged in a process of growth and change or we risk coming to a complete halt. Once stopped there has not even been a rudimentary discussion of how we would start to live again. |
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