Happiness and pleasure

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These two concepts are often confused. On a daily basis, we get various messages that are contradictory, and that are used in ways that are not distinct.

And interestingly, the differences between the two concepts, or terms, are actually quite significant. There are even two biochemical brain matrices that are antagonists.

Pleasure is always short-lived, whereas happiness is long-lived.

Advertising companies are well aware of this, which is why they always “fight” to make the purchase of a good or service feel not just like a pleasure but more like a contribution to happiness.

Pleasure is also something that is visceral, corporeal, whereas happiness has more philosophical definitions, and a more ethereal or even spiritual nature. Pleasure is also associated more with taking something away, having something for ourselves, whereas happiness is more focused on giving.

One of the tools that helps us to be happier is precisely this mechanism. How many of us are not happier when we offer a gift to someone else, and perhaps when we receive a gift, we don't feel this happiness so much, but more pleasure in the anticipation of opening the gift?

Biochemically, pleasure can be achieved with exogenous substances. Some of them are considered narcotics, and they're not even allowed to be consumed. In happiness, there are no drugs or molecules that can be administered so that we can achieve it pharmacologically.

Pleasure is something that is often felt alone, even if in order to achieve it we are next to or very close to another person. In order to feel pleasure, the other person doesn't have to feel it too, and if they do, it's their pleasure, not ours. Happiness is felt in a group. To be truly happy, there has to be a moment of sharing in a group, a sense of belonging and a real social experience.

Pleasure taken to its extreme can lead to physical or emotional dependence, as very often happens with chemical substances (painkillers, etc.) or even behaviors (jumping off a cliff, extreme sports, etc.). Happiness, on the other hand, is not proven or demonstrated to be addictive.

Neurons communicate with each other through the release of various neurotransmitters. Their electrical activity is conducted from one end of the cell, the cell body, through the axon, which can be several meters long, to the pre-synaptic region, which releases a chemical messenger that will be picked up by the next neuron in the post-synaptic region, and then transformed into an electrical impulse.

In the case of pleasure, there is a neural mechanism that performs a negative regulation, or negative feedback, when a neuron is stimulated by a large amount of the neurotransmitter responsible for its activation, as happens when dopamine is released into the neural plate, a second release of dopamine will not have the same effect on that same neuron, and this is due to the fact that the receptors for this neurotransmitter are not available in the same proportion, and because there is a lower expression of receptors in the neural plate than previously existed. This mechanism aims to protect neural structures, because we know that continuous and prolonged excitation of a neural cell leads to its death or degeneration...

In the case of happiness, the molecule that is most correlated with this mental state is serotonin, which in itself is an inhibitory molecule, which will promote not an excitation of the next neuron, but an inhibition of its electrical activity, which leads to neuroprotection. It is therefore a state that promotes protection and relaxation.

In a world where we are playthings in the hands of social media algorithms, marketing companies, or even other people, we should try harder to establish lasting relationships, and not just an immediate response, which is becoming weaker and weaker because there is a physical requirement to have an ever stronger stimulus in order to feel the same experience.

An example of this is when we try a psychotropic drug for the first time. The feeling we got the first time will only be achieved again if we reduce the regulation mechanisms, i.e. we have to take larger and larger doses, and the response will never be as strong as it was the first time.

I hope you enjoyed my reflection for today. Thank you for staying!

Bem Hajam🍀

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