Hacker News Reader

Comment by joshmarlow | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago I read a claim that the word 'happy' is relatively young - ~500 years old - and that translations of others words into 'happy' are somewhat approximate.

My takeaway is that (presuming the argument is correct) that much of human striving is probably better described with specific words (as you suggested - joy, accomplishment, fulfillment, excitement, etc). For most of human history, most people probably didn't think "I want to be happy" but "I want to have a good partner", "I want a big family", "I want my crop to grow so I don't die."

I wonder how much unhappiness is caused by seeking a poorly-defined ideal of happiness.

The book was called "Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison".

View on HN

> My takeaway is that (presuming the argument is correct) that much of human striving is probably better described with specific words (as you suggested - joy, accomplishment, fulfillment, excitement, etc).

All those four words combined is something like the concept of eudaimonia that Aristotle describes in his Nicomachean Ethics:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flourishing

I've not read Aristotle directly but translating eudaimonia was an example in the book that I mentioned. The argument was that eudaimonia is often translated as happiness but that doesn't make sense in contexts where we talk about a soldier dying experiencing eudaimonia (suggesting a loose translation).

You don't think it possible for some one to die happy?

No. It's certainly not a goal. And even if it can somehow happen, soneone could be resigned or drugged, it's different from something like "happy to die".

This question itself seems to be a perfect example of the point that the word is worse than meaningless. Worse because people use it like it has a useful meaning.

One can die in a state that has a lot of the qualities or features that overlap with other states that people call happy, but that doesn't make them equal or equivalent.

What emotion must people be feeling when they die then?

> the word is worse than meaningless

It seems as though you are redefining it to be meaningless, then projecting that onto everyone else. Is it not curious to you that everyone else takes no issue with its usage?

What is your definition of happy?

Ambiguous, mutable, and context-sensitive.

Oh, absolutely. 99.999% of human history has been "just want to survive another year."

Russ Harris has a great book about this called The Happiness Trap [0], which is an introduction to ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

[0]: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76053/the-happiness...

Dunno. Traveling to less developed places parents still want the kids to be happy for a start. It's surprising in places without roads, internet, phones etc. how normal everything is.

It's normal for parents to want their kids to be happy… it's less normal for those kids to be "happy" all the time.

The word שמחה and conjugations appear in the Bible about 200 times, so we have a good idea of what it means in context. It means exactly what I perceive the noun Happiness and the adjective Happy to mean in English.

That's very interesting and is good evidence against the thesis - thanks for sharing!

Just because the word 'happy' is relatively young in the English/European language, a conclusion can not be made for the whole Humankind.

Very true - which is why this piece "that translations of others words into 'happy' are somewhat approximate." would be very interesting if accurate.

The German word for happy "glücklich" derives from the German word for luck "Glück". Could also be the other way round, idk.

Instead of saying "being lucky" we therefore say "having luck" instead. However, "glücklich" is commonly used in both contexts: "I bin glücklich" (I am happy) is very common as well as "Ein glücklicher Zufall" (A lucky coincidence). It's kind of implied by the language that a lucky coincidence makes you happy.

Makes sense to me that this might even be the origin of the term and the underlying emotion it described. Even hundreds of thousands years ago, people have been lucky from time to time which triggered an emotion: Happiness.

It makes a lot of sense that "happy" is opposite to "disappointed".

Thanks for the book recommendation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com