fable wrote:Not only in modern Western society. This need for euphoria, as you call it, has its roots in the European Renaissance. Consider Hobbes:
Interesting. Do you think the concept of "instant gratification" was enhanced during the Renaissance, or do you think it is part of human nature? Personally, I certainly think the need for short-term pleasure and the lack of ability to gain equal pleasure from long term goals is typical human nature, but I do think cultural circumstances can enhance or repress those needs (as any innate needs). If the Renaissance was a period where the need for euphoria was emphasised, perhaps became more accepted or more common, how and why do you think that happened?
As humans, we move through a spectrum of emotional reactions even within a given day, of various stages of contentment and euphoria; but we could make some broad assumptions about their interaction. I offer them for possible discussion, or just a nod:
1) The more a person seeks actively for euphoria, the less likely they are to feel satisfaction/contentment. A very content person is not likely to run regularly on the hamster wheel of euphoria.
2) Content people still have goals whose achievement yield transient states of euphoria. Very goal-oriented people will still experience moments of calmness and contentment.
The obvious example of situation 1 would be addicts. Not only drug addicts, but people who are destructivly addicted to shopping, food, sex or what have you. The stimulus you are addicted to, provide you with something extraordinary, something you cannot get elsewhere in your life. Soon, you become physically and psychologically dependent of this stimulus, and you start feeling cravings and withdrawal symptoms when you don't have access to it. After a while it is often the freedom from unpleasant craving and withdrawal symptoms are what drives the addiction, rather than the search for a kick. At this point, the addict will become prone to increase the intake of the stimulus, add another stimuli or add another stimuli. The vicious circle of craving-relief-craving relief makes the person feel bad constantly when the wished stimulus is not available. Thus, contentment is low in between the brief rushes, and life is so dominated by searching relief rom craving so there is no time or energy left over for pursuing other goals.
However, although all sorts of addictions are extremly common, not everybody is an addict or satisfye their need for happiness mainly by addiction. In many people, I am convinced there is no contradiction between pursuing euphoria and pursuing contentment.
I would actually think contentment and euphoria are interacting at a correlational level rather than contradictory - I think you more often see high contentment and high euphoria in the same invididual, and low contentment and low euphoria in the same individual.
That said, to what extent do you think that the individual needs in Maslow's Hierarchy (physiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization) provide euphoria, or contentment? Or are we looking here, do you think, at subjectively derived evaluations that could change depending upon circumstances and individuals?
First, let me just point out that Maslow's Hierarchy model has one fundamental flaw: later research has found out it should not be a hierarchy, but rather different groups. That said, I think the cathegories he identified are excellent as a model to describe the major areas of human life.
Related to euphoria and contentment, I would say that all of the areas can provide both. Being physically healthy is something most healthy people take for granted, and thus it does not elicit euphoria in us every moment, but it should be part of our contentment. However, the moment we see a severly handicapped person in a wheelchair on the other side of the street, we may become intensely aware of our ability to move freely, and this can trigger a sudden sense of euphoria. Also, satisfaction of physiological needs such as sex or food often elicit euphoria in people who are
deprived, ie in a state of need, whereas the mere physical sensation of a full stomach hardly triggers euphoria in us who eat 5 times a day.
I think novelty versus habituation is one of the keys to explaining why people experience eurphoria versus contentment, another I think is the relationship between perceived effort and perceived gain. A third key is the state of addiction in the terms I described it above.
Habituation transform many euphoria-eliciting phenomena into contentment. Habituation is simply the psychological and medical for getting used to something over time so that the response becomes weaker. This can be at cellular level or at an emotional level - if you let a person sit in a room reading, and then suddenly play a loud tone, the startle reflex will trigger, you can measure an electrochemical response from single cells and the person can describe they felt a special sensation. If you repeat this 5 times, already the 2nd time the response will be much smaller at all three levels (reflex, cellular response, persons' emotional experience). If you do it 20 times, there will hardly be a reaction at all anymore. This is learning.
So the large ability humans have to learn, also means we have a large ability to habituate. Euphoria is associated with surprise, feeling of something extraordinary, with high intensity and excitement. Thus, habitution to a stimuli will result our response changing from euphoria to contentment, or perhaps nothing depending on our ability to appreciate what is already there.
A common human pattern is that if people work hard for something and then reach a goal they really appreciate, we often feel both contentment and euphoria. High perceived effort and high perceived gain. However, even more common is that people feel euphoria when they have
gained something without effort. Getting something for free, buying something extremely cheap, winning - all these are situations that many people believe would make them happy, and most are actually correct. Some also get an additional euphoria by the feeling that they have "fooled the system" etc, if they managed to get something for free that normally is associated with a cost.
So in summary, I basically think that the relationship between euphoria and contentment will be dependent on where on the scales
novelty-habituation,
addiction and
cost-benefit a certain event will be for a certain individual. How much contradictiont there will be, will be dependent both on the addiction factor, and individual factors such as personality traits (for instance persistence, sensation-seeking) and cognitive traits such as abstraction level in thinking, ability to imagine the future, conseptualisation of time, etc.
Then you have these special states that popular psychology call "peak experiences" and states of "flow". "Peak experiences" are extraordinary intense positive experiences that may be euphoric, but they can also be experiences of harmony, perfection or tranquility. It's the intensity rather than the quality that is specific. "Flow" is a popular nonsense concept that nonetheless describe a phenomenon - an emotional style that results in high degree of contentment and high frequencey of "peak experiences" and euphoria - that is well known in psychology but there is not one catchy media-friendly term to it because it is a multifaceted phenomena. When I was at uni, my fellow psychologist students used to use me as the represenation of a typicall "flow" person, because I am chronically hyperthymic (chronically elevated level of mood) and very high frequency of euphoria (not surprising since I also have hypomanic episodes 1-2 times a year).
