#028 Should we seek pleasure or flourishing?
Eudaimonia – the essence of modern wellbeing
Since diving into the world of wellbeing and what it means for me, for you, and for our communities I have become fascinated with the idea of eudaimonia and flourishing. Never heard of eudaimonia? It was a new term for me also!
What about hedonism? You might have read about people in the tabloids with a ‘hedonistic’ lifestyle? Or heard about the hedonic treadmill?
Hedonism is defined as “the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life”. In other words it’s our pursuit of pleasure that should guide our choices. Sounds pretty good, right?!
Well, yes and no.
When our sole aim in life is to pursue pleasure, we tend to get fixated on the extrinsic (or things outside of us), like a new handbag or pair of shoes, a new car or a promotion at work.
We have all been there – stuck on the ‘hedonic’ or pleasure treadmill of always wanting more. And more. And more.
You buy a great new jacket on the weekend – but still covet your friend’s new jacket because he got it on sale. So you go out and buy another one.
Or something twinges inside of you when a colleague gets a promotion, even though you were promoted two years ago (and didn’t even apply for this opportunity!). More, more, more.
In essence, we get something today, but we are still dissatisfied tomorrow (or even hours later) because there is always more that we could have – but don’t have (right now). It is not just a phenomenon in humans – monkeys are on the hedonic treadmill and suffer from comparison-itis too (as demonstrated in this fun study and video!)
And it is the promise of future pleasure that keeps us on the treadmill. Chasing a better paying job so that we can live in a bigger house or a better neighbourhood. Or working overtime so we can afford the latest gadget. Our sense of self is tied to this never ending pursuit of pleasure.
Capitalist culture has us wired with the desire to keep up with the Jones’s.
Our hedonic impulses twinge every time we look at social media:
Why aren’t I on holiday in Greece!
Ooh, I would really love skin like hers, maybe if I just buy this serum…
I know I just bought a new pair of shoes, but that pair looks so great on him…
And on and on it goes.
Tech and access to social media makes it worse. The hedonic treadmill doesn’t just affect adults, but increasingly teens and tweens have hopped aboard as their smart phones tell them what they should like and dislike and aspire to. American teens spend about five hours a day just on social-media platforms (including watching videos on TikTok and YouTube). Add in all the other phone- and screen-based activities, and the number rises to somewhere between seven and nine hours a day, on average.
Phone usage for adults is similarly high – the global average is 3 hours and 49 minutes a day. Ghana tops the list with adults averaging 5 hours and 36 minutes. Japan has the lowest usage rates with 2 hours daily. For office workers staring at a screen all day, we end up spending most of our waking hours online.
Swiping left on my phone, I see my daily average last week was 2 hours a day. Not bad, but I can still think of better things to do with my time than being on my phone. (Sidebar - if you scroll down on your screentime app, you can see how many notifications you get a day. I have turned off all email notifications, but I still receive, on average, 100 notifications a day, mostly from texting-based apps! Which is a post for another day, but I don’t know of many people who pick up to respond to a text and then don’t scroll on to do something else…)
That is a lot of time to while away every day in the pursuit of short-term pleasure hits.
What is a more sustainable way to look at pleasure?
Eudaimonia!
Image credit: Anna-Louise Ewen
Said you-day-mon-eee-a (my phonetic translation – not an official one!), philosopher Professor Angie Hobbs describes eudaimonia:
“In ancient Greek, it literally means ‘looked after by a beneficent guardian spirit’. It is a more objective concept than happiness, or pleasure. It’s much more to do with the fulfilment of your faculties, the actualisation of your potential, living a rich and fully human life. And it’s something you can hang on to even in circumstances where feeling happy just isn’t possible, let along feeling pleasure.”
You don’t need to take a deep dive into philosophy to appreciate that the idea of eudaimonia or human flourishing sounds like a pretty great personal and societal objective. We don’t constantly need to chase more, asking ourselves ‘what do I want right now?’ - but instead we ask ourselves questions like ‘how should I live?’ and ‘what sort of person should I be?’.
There isn’t a correct answer to either of these questions. And maybe the answers change over time as you transition through different stages of life. But when you do ponder these questions, perhaps the answer doesn’t have anything to do with the pursuit of pleasure in the hedonic sense. If you think back to what made you feel great 5 years ago, chances are it wasn’t buying an expensive handbag, it was probably an experience with loved ones.
Over the last few years, I have spent a lot of time living a more ‘examined’ life, that is, trying to live life more intentionally. I have delved into many ‘self-development’ books, studied philosophy and used my meditation practice to bring greater awareness to how I exist in the world.
One thing I have learned is that the path to flourishing is by necessity a very individual journey. But what is common is that it can be tricky, brain-bending, uncomfortable and joyous.
Eudaimonia will be a bit of a theme for future Well, Well. posts over the coming months. What might a eudaimonic journey look like? How might it feel to go on a quest to find your unique self? How do you sit with the discomfort of not knowing (or not being told)?
Nietzsche, a philosopher, said:
“At bottom every man knows that he is a unique being, the like of which can appear only once on this earth. By no extraordinary chance will such a marvellous piece of diversity in unity, as he is, ever be put together a second time. He knows this, but hides it like a guilty secret. Why?...The man who does not want to remain in the general mass, has only to stop taking things easily.”
To flourish, Nietzsche suggests that we need to unspool ourselves from the opinion of others and the fear of standing out. We need to stop taking things easily.
What an adventure!
What does the thought of living an examined life feel like when you sit with it?
Terrifying? Uncomfortable? Exciting? Promising?
Let me know in the comments below :-)
Be well,
Alicia