If happiness can be found in the illusions created by the experience machine, can happiness also be based on ignorance? Some suppose not, but we disagree. Consider the following case based on actual events.
Eve is an assistant professor at Euclid University. She is happy, enjoying the campus setting, amiable colleagues, and motivated students. She is especially pleased with the head of her department, a renowned scholar who is highly complimentary about her. The head asks her to serve on important committees, represent the department in college-wide activities, and lead in planning the department’s curriculum. She is delighted to participate in these undertakings, while she continues to relish her teaching and develop her research.
In her sixth year at Euclid, Eve is considered for tenure. She assumes all will go smoothly, especially because she has such strong support from the departmental head. She recognizes, though, that her scholarship presents a problem. She has spent so much time undertaking departmental responsibilities that she has published only a couple of articles. Yet she is confident of a positive outcome because her efforts have greatly benefitted the department and the university.
But matters go awry. In view of her thin publication record, the department recommends against her receiving tenure. The head does not support her, writing that although her service has been useful, she has not demonstrated strong potential as a scholar. When Eve is rejected for tenure and thwarted in her repeated attempts to obtain another faculty position, she is forced to leave academic life. She is furious at the departmental head, disappointed with her colleagues, and extraordinarily unhappy.
Such a chain of events is not unusual. While this tale offers lessons about academic ethics (which we shall here omit),
1 it also has implications for understanding happiness.
First, for years Eve was happy at Euclid. She did not realize that the departmental head’s praise was insincere, so she enjoyed their interaction. Had she known how the head actually judged her, she would have been unhappy. She didn’t know, though, and thus was happy.
Richard Kraut disagrees with this description of such a case. He argues that whether a person is living happily depends on whether that individual is “attaining the important things he values, or if he comes reasonably close to this high standard.”
2 Because Eve was deceived, believing she was making progress toward attaining tenure when she wasn’t, Kraut would claim she was not happy.
This way of understanding the situation, however, is unpersuasive. Eve went to school each day pleased with the ambience, the faculty, the students, and the work. Hence she was happy. Granted, her outlook eventually changed, and her happiness disappeared, but her later unhappiness doesn’t change her earlier happiness. Future events cannot alter past ones.
Admittedly, her past happiness was based on misreading the situation, for she didn’t understand the trouble she faced. Had she realized, she wouldn’t have been happy and might have sought to leave Euclid. But she didn’t want to leave. Why not? Because she was happy.
So much for the claim that happiness depends on knowing the truth. Yet Eve’s story also clarifies another aspect of happiness. Note that Eve’s reports of her initial happiness and later unhappiness were uncontestable. If during Eve’s earlier years at Euclid someone had told her that she wasn’t happy, perhaps because Euclid’s faculty wasn’t as friendly as she supposed, or other schools had better students than Euclid, or a different career path was preferable to that of a professor, none of these claims, even if true, would have proven that Eve wasn’t happy. Perhaps other people wouldn’t have been happy in her situation, but their preferences were irrelevant to her outlook. If she asserted sincerely that she was happy, then she was.
On the other hand, when she realized the treachery of the head and became indignant, no one could disprove that she was unhappy. Imagine Eve’s going to the dean’s office to complain about the tenure decision and express her unhappiness. Suppose the dean had replied, “You’re wrong. You’re not unhappy. You’re just confused. You think you’re unhappy, but you’re not.” Deans have said foolish things, but this reply would top them all. If Eve asserted she was unhappy, then she was.
Perhaps this point was never made more forcefully than in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poignant poem “Richard Cory”:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him.
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
3Whether Richard Cory was unhappy was up to him, not anyone else. Similarly, our reports of our own happiness or unhappiness are definitive. Of course, over time they may change. At first Eve was happy at Euclid, but when she left she was miserable. Suppose, however, she refused to give up her ambition for a successful career and decided to enter law school. Three years later she graduated with honors, then became an associate in a large law firm, eventually earning more than Euclid’s president. Along the way, she realized that she preferred interacting with corporate clients rather than late adolescents. Now she is happy again.
Such changes are unsurprising, because as events occur, our outlook may alter. Happiness may turn to unhappiness, or vice versa.
One final point. Eve’s happiness does not depend on whether college teaching or legal work is more meaningful. Recall Susan Wolf’s doubts about the significance of a life single-mindedly given to corporate law. Eve has no such doubts, although she may question the significance of a life single-mindedly given to academic affairs. Whether an enterprise makes you happy, however, depends on you, not on what most people believe or what a philosopher theorizes. The decision is personal.
