Could happiness exist without suffering? — MonfortS26

Yes.

Happiness can be derivative from identifying that suffering has diminished or disappeared, for instance. But it is not necessary to suffer in order to be happy. Nor is a lack of suffering sufficient for being happy.

But would the concept of happiness exist without the concept of suffering/sadness? Would happiness have any value to us as humans if we had never experienced suffering?

The concept 'happiness' does not arise from there being another concept, 'suffering'. Happiness is an experience, recall, a biological phenomenon. That's what the concept refers to.

The value of happiness arises from the effects of being happy, e.g. its benefits on your health, fitness, and ability to interact socially. Neither the presence nor the absence of suffering is necessary for the value of happiness.

Yes, Happiness is a biological phenomenon, and yes the concept is referring to that phenomenon. You could say the same about suffering though. Is there any scientific evidence to suggest that the two aren't related to each other? Is there any reason to believe that they don't exist on opposite ends of a spectrum? Does happiness really benefit your health, or is it your health that contributes to your happiness? Same for fitness. Same with your social skills. Couldn't it go the other way as well? Wouldn't suffering do the opposite to all of those things? It makes sense to me that happiness is the evolved chemical reward for doing things beneficial to survival and suffering is the punishment. If we as a society were to get rid of EVERY cause of suffering, that reward would no longer be a reward. If everyone were 'happy' all of the time, would they really be happy? Would we still have use for that concept? Or would everything just be completely neutral?

When you try to measure the immeasurable, or compare the incomparable, confusion results. When one gets old, things stop working properly, and start hurting more or less all the time. Such suffering does not preclude happiness, and great happiness does not preclude unhappiness at the same time. How can one be happy at the state of the world? Yet how can one be unhappy at the sight of the cherry blossom? One can be carefree, yet careful and caring, all at once; they go together, or else things fall apart, and one ends up with the misery of indifference.

Can a world exist where everyone is happy?

No, but I think Utopias are goals worth striving towards. I'm not sure if happiness and suffering necessarily imply each other as light/dark or raw/cooked. Suffering has a biologic component that can be independent of our conscious control, happiness seems to be somewhat more amenable to our control, but it too has its biologic component.

When you try to measure the immeasurable, or compare the incomparable, confusion results.

A problem for utilitarianism.

A problem for utilitarianism. — Cavacava

I'm more than happy to make problems for it. X-)

Utilitarianism maximization of pleasure or do not harm, as ethic views seem to hold more weight in the public sphere, where benefits that affect the whole of society are important. It seems to me as though collective agreement is easier to discuss using Utilitarian principles. Perhaps the collective aspect helps offset confusion about what is best? Rule based and emotive ethicals systems, I think offer better individual guidance.

Nah. Rules are what the collective does, and then the first rule should be that the rules apply to everyone equally. Justice as the foundation of society. Counting happinesses is a nonsense from start to finish. As if five glasses of wine are necessarily better than three. One each is good, wouldn't you say? Then if there's any left, we might offer a top up.

Not sure. Modern political theory places national self interest (national happiness) above the moral intent which rules suggest. Public self interest has more of a pragmatic basis (this is good for us because it will enable so & so...) it is easier for politicians to explain and make such actions palatable for their constituency. What is in the National interest seems to be determined more by the anticipated consequences that an action will have on the majority of its citizens.

Ideally, I think you are right (de jure), but I don't see its force in action (de facto).

Modern political theory places national self interest (national happiness) above the moral intent which rules suggest — Cavacava

Well not entirely. Even Trump sometimes blinks at the gassing of foreigners; though as a theory it stinks. But if things were as they ought to be, the world would be a very different place.

Happiness is a process of evolution. Millionaires kill themselves or waste away thier fortunes. Drug addicts are some of the seemingly happiest people but using dangerous chemicals to be "happy" will eventually leave one bankrupt of mindful capabilities. You have the inbetween conforming like good soldiers to the flame.

This world will push anything that can create wealth or manipulation or both.

Is happiness a combination of being content, simple, ignorant or a genius?

We assume happiness is even more then a word. Happiness could be many words according to the dictionary.

I'm under the humble opinion that happiness is just an idea formulated my insecure people? Perhaps I've never been happy but I know the true zeal I had for life as a child was no fluke but that means happiness is innocence and only achieved in as a child. I see pure happiness in mentally retarded people my Aunt for instance is beautiful, healthy, quick witted and mostly happy and 61 years old but mentally retarded.

Happiness is a choice or an illusion or a slow process brought on by evolution in a seriously fucked up world.

You want "more" "better" or I guess different happiness? Then freeze your body for a million years and hope for the best when woken.

Just my ideas....as simple as they may be.

When I fast for a day or two, and then get to a table with plenty of food and finally allow myself to eat, the first dish tastes as absolut bliss. The second is good too. The third is pushing the limit and doesn't taste so good anymore. The forth is a sacrifice, and so on.

If I keep on doing that I will eventually get sick and vomit. Even with the first dish my body needs to clean itself. That is why I go to the bathroom to sh*t and p*ss. That is an ugly and sad circunstance that I don't like to share with others. What I do like to share with others is a good dinner or lunch time between friends.

Describing what happiness is, in my point of view, is like this physiological phenomenon. When we gladly eat after an extreme situation, it tastes the best. The body necessarily has to clean itself, purify itself, to make space, so that I can eat again. When I go to the bathroom it symbolizes the saddnes that can invade us even if we're doing the thing we used to love most. That certain activity might have just deteriorated because our psych must go to the "bathroom", it itself goes to a phase of suffering. But that is OK, because it will make space for more little happy moments down the road. Realizing this is Happiness (hence the capital H). Expecting saddness to come when one is happy, and expecting happiness to come when one is sad, is wise.

As a footnote, why does suffering exist? To prevent that worst things happen, just like if I don't sh*t, I get very sick.

Is happiness a zero-sum game? No.
Is Happiness a zero-sum game? Yes.

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Can a world exist where everyone is happy? — MonfortS26

Yes, it's certainly possible. Happiness is just a (set of dynamic) mental state(s), which is just a (set of dynamic) brain state(s). Theoretically, we could put everyone in the relevant brain states.

Could happiness exist without suffering?

It depends on just how broadly we're defining "suffering." I'm not a fan of that word in philosophical discussions, because it seems horribly ambiguous to me. If one is defining "suffering" really broadly, as some people seem to do, then perhaps happiness requires that one at least believe that some suffering has been alleved.

If we're instead defining suffering far more narrowly, so that we're only talking about people being in significant pain, discomfort, etc., then I'd say that happiness can definitely exist without suffering.

Would a life without either be worth living?

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine what would make me feel that life is not worth living.

How do you learn anything without making mistakes - without suffering the consequences of your actions? It seems to me that to be eternally happy means that every wish comes true, and that you never make mistakes to suffer from. It seems to me that happiness is derived from true knowledge which means we know everything and there is nothing else to learn, or make mistakes. Asking if there could ever be happiness without suffering is asking if we could ever know everything.

Don't forget about boredom.
It is not only about the intelect (true knowledge) but also about novelity and emotions.
Why is novelity important? Because change is the eternal self-reflection.

Good point. Maybe knowledge isn't all it's cracked up to be then. Perhaps it is the process of acquiring knowledge, not the knowledge itself, that provides happiness - which means that suffering is required for happiness to exist and vice versa - another dualistic false dichotomy. It's all process.

Can a world exist where everyone is happy? — MonfortS26

Happiness is an emotion (an instance of a person's core affect continuum); a subjective condition which doesn't persist over time. As such, it is an unattainable intersubjective (social) goal.

By definition, happiness varies across individuals and cultures. For example:
1) What makes a psychopath happy is probably not the same thing that makes a neural typical person happy.
2) What produces happiness in one culture (e.g., head hunters) may not produce happiness in other cultures.

However, if happiness is a positive attitude toward (or evaluation of) one's life with reference to eudaimonia (i.e., human flourishing, or well-being), it is a practical (and arguably necessary) social goal which entails the satisfaction of fundamental human needs (Max-Neef, et al.) through the implementation of public policy based on a political commitment to social equality.

Interestingly, the OECD combines both the evaluation of, and affective reaction to, life experiences in its definition of subjective well-being.
Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2017). World Happiness Report 2017, New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/HR17.pdf

There's surely no one answer to a question like this. If there were, it would mean there were no such thing as perception. Perception varies by individual knowledge and expectations, selective mechanisms (of attention), and so on. In other words, when two different people observe the same object, they observe it with discrete perceptions and aren't actually observing the same object at all. In the same way perceptions differ per person, so would happiness. Some people likely can stay happy for extensive periods of time. Others happiness is aperiodic and has more a life of its own. I do often wonder if people like my grandma can maintain happiness due to their rather obdurate and inflexible schemas and mental structures (schedules), which is pendant to a sort of restlessness of needing to know what will happen next. Others can cultivate happiness in a more genuine and eudaimonic way: whatever happens, whether desirable or not, is accepted and embraced as part of a greater order that is always, to some extent, outside of control. Most of us fluctuate, and if that means a zero sums game, then, yes, it would be. The Tao is always in a state of returning. Perhaps changing moods are actually associated with the pendulum-like equilibrium of a healthy entelechy. And each of us have our own self organized teleological cartography to life.

Rigid expectations are never conducive to happiness. When lives are so micromanaged by telecom and clocks (that is, technology over the domain of life and relations; complete information of the universe reduced to a set time on a mechanical device: mechanicalized time), it blocks genuinely free human relationships: used to be before telephones, the only way someone could talk with you was by stopping by your residence, of course unannounced. And it's likely whatever activity you were engaged in was put aside to visit with your kith. Now when someone stops by unannounced and you're busy, they're being rude to incommode you. These contexts alter happiness because, though I'm not as sociocentric as most I know, human relations are central to happiness, and in our era, more agency has been given to machines than to human relationships (a pity).

To answer the questions: No, we couldn't exist in a world where everyone were happy. This type of sameness would be bad whatever happened to be: if everyone were happy, it wouldn't be called happiness anymore. So, would we want to all be happy if we could? Would that then be happiness? No. Happiness arises in contexts that aren't happiness even if it is a kind of neutral feeling of metaphysical pathos.

Suffering can be routinized and handed over to mechanicalized "life"; eliminating all other order in one's life including the Bacchic celestial order (freedom) can be accomplished by the convenience of supplication before machine (but machine order is not elimination of suffering at all since it makes people more and more effete and lame, servants to itself; prone to more suffering actually, more chances for uncontrolled and unexpected outcomes). Some people seem to try to transform suffering into living an over organized, overstructured life. But they usually harbor inner tension and are ready to lash out and lambaste every chance they get. Again, if someone harbors anger or everything they do is derived from psychoneurotic repressions, there is hidden suffering despite what they say or claim to believe about themselves and their lifestyle.

If a life without either happiness or suffering would be worth living makes me think on other states of consciousness I've experienced, which would act as coordinates other than up and down moods. Transpersonal experiences and peak experiences are indeed rather "other" comparatively. So I'd say, yes, life would be worth living in some other state if even that wouldn't be desirable. Going beyond comforts and discomforts, happiness and suffering, is possible and maybe even parallel to liberation (lasting joy). When there is a trauma which involves a whole community, everyone forgets their differences. Why were they living in such a partially conscious way that they should feel their whole life prior to the trauma was only routine and not worth living to the peak? What role does trauma play in the transmodulation of their psychal components? Why do people feel every day of their life is a rehearsal for the future in complete disrespect of cosmic order and immanent death or trauma? If they didn't feel a false comfort in this way, maybe they'd understand life isn't so much about happiness and suffering, but intrinsic value of life day by day.

It makes sense to me that happiness is the evolved chemical reward for doing things beneficial to survival and suffering is the punishment. — MonfortS26

Maybe I am misconstruing those words, but they seem to be saying that a sufferer's suffering is due to his/her own failure.

Therefore, a rape victim's suffering is due to his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; a hospitalized victim of a crash caused by another driver who was DUI is his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; the suffering of a disenfranchised African-American in the Jim Crow South was his/her own failure to do "things beneficial to survival"; etc.

I suppose if everybody thought that happiness was a purely interior state that could exist without respect to material factors, then everybody could be happy.

However, most people (I am guessing -- no evidence, sorry) connect happiness to both material and purely interior states. That's a problem, because unless everybody is satisfied with respect to their material wants and needs, some people will be unhappy.

Worse, there can't be very much change in peoples' material wants and needs because there is only so much material to go around, and if one group develops greater wants and needs and can not meet them, they will be unhappy. If they take material away from somebody else, that group will be unhappy.

Universal happiness requires that the world be a rather static place, and that just seems extraordinarily unlikely.

I suppose if everybody thought that happiness was a purely interior state that could exist without respect to material factors, then everybody could be happy.

However, most people (I am guessing -- no evidence, sorry) connect happiness to both material and purely interior states. That's a problem, because unless everybody is satisfied with respect to their material wants and needs, some people will be unhappy.

Worse, there can't be very much change in peoples' material wants and needs because there is only so much material to go around, and if one group develops greater wants and needs and can not meet them, they will be unhappy. If they take material away from somebody else, that group will be unhappy.

Universal happiness requires that the world be a rather static place, and that just seems extraordinarily unlikely. — Bitter Crank

I have never heard anything from the humanities or social sciences about cultures other than modern, Enlightenment-inspired cultures highly valuing happiness and making it a top priority.

Maybe it is not coincidence, therefore, that modern, Enlightenment-inspired, happiness-worshiping cultures are the ones consuming, polluting, altering and destroying the Earth in a short timespan to a degree that it and the life it supports may never recover from.

Locke's phrase was "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property". If my memory serves me (it probably doesn't) it was Franklin who suggested that "happiness" should replace "property".

It probably wouldn't have made all that much difference because for many happiness means the successful pursuit of property. Rather ghastly.

Certainly some people, due their own lost-soul needs, want or need to make happiness into a zero-sum game. Some people's happiness depends on harming others. There's no reason to believe that that won't always be so, due to our aggressive-monkey heritage.

Accept it as fact, but that doesn't mean we have to be proud of it.

Michael Ossipoff

Happiness and sadness are two ends of the same stick like night and day, black and white. One has no value without contrast to the other. If sadness didn't exist, there would be nothing to compare happiness to and therefore it wouldn't exist. If you look at the ying and the yang, you can't see the white dot without the black background and vice versa.

If it were possible to be happy 100% of the time, there would be no reason to live because everything would make you happy and there would be no reason to improve anything. You could be swimming through a sewer and still be happy. Sadness and negative emotions can be beneficial and outline to us what is and isn't fulfilling to us.

In my opinion, fulfillment is the goal and it is wise to acknowledge that there will be ups and downs as you acclimatise to each level of success and sometimes you will take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Even if you become a billionaire, you will acclimitise to that level and if you start to lose money, you may become depressed. I know of at least one billionaire that killed himself because of this phenomena.

Can a world exist where everyone is happy? Could happiness exist without suffering? — MonfortS26

I think so.

Would a life without either be worth living? — MonfortS26

It's a tricky question, because I think happiness is a natural bi-product of worth. If a person believes life is worth living, then that worth will result in happiness.