Happiness is a trivial concept. More, it’s the most sought after state of wellbeing in humans. Therefore, happiness is «the most wanted useless feeling in humans»; and because the latter ambivalent reality is so hard to realize, we founded entire religions, heavens, wars, sciences –even lives– in order to digest it. Ironically, we are all experiencing «happiness» since the dawn of « pleasure » in living beings, except occasionally for some. Ultimately ironic, if it wasn’t in each and everyone of us since birth, we would’ve roughly resembled a dead wilted plant.

When you eat sweet stuff, you feel delighted. When you drink water after enduring thirst, you feel extremely good. When you sit after hours of strenuous work, you get high on comfort. When you scratch your itchy back, you feel paralyzed by relaxation. When you reach orgasm after a sweaty intercourse, you feel a cocaine-like pleasure. And when you consensually kiss your crush, you tread the heavens. All of these positive hedonic moments you experience, and more, agree on three evolutionary principles: 

Firstly, they only appear when you accomplish something enhancing your survival. Eating and drinking, for instance, procure the organism with nutrients and fluids crucial for functioning; this is especially true for sweets and breads because they procure the ‘God fuel’ of cells, glucose.

Secondly, because your existence is at stake, it’s also rewarding if you repeat, and know how to repeat, those activities. For that, building motivation towards the act is noticed after its achievement, guiding the organism towards what’s best for it. Sex indirectly enhances survival considering it’s part of the aura of reproduction, which is considered the ‘gold standard’ mechanism of survival (cf. my last publication). As an example, a man achieving his life’s first ecstatic orgasm with his new partner will be accompanied soon after by a rosy tendency to engage in another. Indeed, the man should also mind how he will be attaining his second orgasm, because betraying or creepily insisting on remaking love might lose him his partner, which might be very unpleasant. 

Thirdly, it’s also of value to heighten other vital functions after you’ve deliberately extended your lifetime. In this way, the body motivates you to «move forward» to continue existing, because you’ve just «done what you’re supposed to do», i.e keep yourself alive.

Neurochemically, these last two responses take place beneath the brain’s outer gray layer, most importantly in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc): Dopamine is first released, kickstarting opioid and GABA signaling pathways to produce the «wanting» motivation towards the survival enhancing act; further boosting of opioid and related neurobiological hedonic mechanisms causes «liking» the act. The combination of both in an outstandingly functionally interconnected web, i.e human brain, gives an additional virtual sensation: pleasure. 

Pleasure therefore comes as a consequence, because it won’t arise unless you do yourself some good. Therefore, knowing that happiness is conventionally a «state of long-lasting pleasure», calling it a «hoax» is hereafter understandable. Being less vituperative, we’ll try redefining happiness as an «endless burst of pleasurable episodes». But isn’t that what life is? Grossly, yes. The only difference seen in happiness is pro-survival achievements being as intense as orgasms. In Nature’s eyes, the latter is unachievable because it’s meaningless... But humans found a way to hijack this law when they discovered drugs. Nature, wise enough, kept adamant about the «uselessness of happiness», letting us struggle with Addiction...