Is it good to be happy? In different cultures, consider differently

On our planet there are two cultures, in many respects polar opposites. It is believed that the people of the West consider happiness to be the main goal of life, and in the East in this aspiration they see a manifestation of a rather questionable morality. However, in reality, everything is not so simple.

Is it possible to avoid happiness?

If you ask anyone who happened to meet on the street passerby, what he dreams about, then the answer is very likely: "I just want to be happy." By this, most mean the opportunity to be more happy and less likely to be sad. After a more detailed study of the issue and the expansion of representativeness, however, it turns out that such an approach is more likely for adherents of Western culture.

At first glance it seems very strange and unusual that someone can avoid happiness. We all know that it does not happen much, and the more it is, the better. If a person looks happy and behaves accordingly, it shows that his life was a success. But if someone belongs to the community of chronic losers, then he does something wrong, and he should change his views, and maybe even convictions, and adopt new methods of achieving success. But it's all in Europe and America.

Among the earthlings there are people and whole countries with completely different ideas about values. They believe that if a person is happy, then most likely he concentrated his efforts on his own well-being, and everyone knows how often personal and public interests contradict each other. Residents of East Asia find violent manifestations of joy extremely inappropriate. In Japan, for example, being happy at all is not so important. There are much more serious criteria for assessing the success of life.

Scientific approach

At the University of Wellington (Australia, Victoria), an interesting study was conducted to judge how different people tend to understand happiness and to what extent it is important to them. The results were surprisingly contradictory. They shook the established idea that happiness is the ultimate goal for most people.

Scientists proceeded from the definition of happiness as satisfaction, caused by a good state of affairs and the absence of negative emotions. At the same time, researchers were interested not only in how happy the personalities they observed, but also in their attitude towards other successful people.

They found that there are different types of happiness. For example, the emotions experienced by an employee who has learned about his promotion, have a completely different nature than the pleasure of the owner, who is happily greeted by the long-awaited faithful dog. And while both are perfectly happy.

Why happiness is sometimes not fun

People sometimes experience some embarrassment for their rare luck. They often think that happiness is a manifestation of selfishness and individualism, which is a serious problem for the carriers of some national cultures.

Such an atypical attitude to their own personal well-being affects some Americans (which is very strange) and most of the people who inhabit the East. They perceive happiness as a fateful portent of fate. If someone is having too much fun, then he will certainly be filled with tears, - this is how people, who have experienced the habit of destiny, counterbalanced the joy with sorrows, reason this way.

In its majority, the West, alien to mysticism and massively oriented to material values, does not share such fears, but sociological studies have shown that this theory is known to Europeans, moreover, many of them believe in it. Own personal happiness can cause anxiety to those who feel the insecurity of their situation in everyday life. In addition, the mood for trouble is often the same and brings it closer. At us this phenomenon define a word "naklikali".

Religious and ethnographic foundations

The theory of rejection of happiness is based on the Taoist rule, which states that everything in the world is in a permanent oscillation between opposites, the good is balanced by the bad, and the universe is a clearly balanced system.

Koreans say that happiness comes with a warning that a person will be as dejected in the future, as joyously now.

Iranian proverb says: "Sadness wakes up, loudly laughing."

Christianity teaches that happiness is good, if it is from the grace of God. Otherwise it is from the evil one.