I was thinking the other day about people’s motives for doing what they do. After much consideration, I have found a single motivator which seems to explain every human behavior I can think of; namely, people want to be happy. Doubtlessly this is not a new observation in the sense that no one’s observed if before, but I find it rather interesting.
For some behaviors , it’s quite obvious. Eating ice cream, relaxing, going for a walk in the park, etc; these behaviors are all performed with the end goal of being happy. Sometimes, the motive is buried, but it seems to me that it all eventually boils down to happiness. Take going to the gym. Most people I know don’t particularily enjoy the drudgery of lifting weights or the endless toil of cardio workouts. Some gym-goers say they go because they want to be fit and healthy; others, because they want to be stronger; still others because they want to look good. But always, because they think being healthy or strong or good-looking will make them happy. If they thought being healthy, strong or good-looking would make them unhappy, you can bet that they wouldn’t go to the gym.
Of course, the definition of “happy” can vary considerably. A better definition might be more like “a positive state.” Meditation and dirt-bike racing may both bring happiness, but of a radically different sort.
Sometimes, it’s even harder to extract happiness as a motive. Consider anorexics, or suicide bombers, or workaholics. They do what they do (starve themselves, kill themselves and work themselves to exhaustion, respectively) with the understanding that it will eventually bring the happiness (in these cases, weighing next to nothing, eternal bliss, and more money). However, the end goal always seems to be happiness.
I see addictions as the one exception. Many smokers/alcoholics/drug addicts say they want to quit, so apparently they must see being free from their drug of choice as a happier state than the state of addiction. However, few of them actually stop. Obviously, this is the fault of their biological wiring. It’s so hard to quit for the precise reason that the aforementioned substances act directly on the brain, making quitting next to impossible. It’s kind of like a reflex. In this case, happiness can’t really come into play as a valid motive – biology takes over.
And that is all I have to say about that. Thoughts?
