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Permalink Reply by Arcus on September 6, 2012 at 2:30pm

I doubt there is a magic formula that makes everybody "truly happy". The items you described are signals/proxies of achievement - the need for which we all obviously posses - and will certainly make some people very happy, specifically those which value such things. On the flip side, having no power, status, or wealth tend to make most of us unhappy. It is not necessarily thus that if that which makes us unhappy is added we become happy, or vice versa that if something which makes us happy is removed we become unhappy. In motivational theory a very intuitive model which explains this is the Hertzberg two-factor model, in logic it is related to the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

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Permalink Reply by Sagacious Hawk on September 6, 2012 at 2:52pm

I couldn't tell you. I haven't accumulated much in either of those three things.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Reardon on September 6, 2012 at 3:19pm

I don't know, give me a few hundred million dollars, and make me king an I'll let you know.

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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on September 16, 2012 at 7:10am

Thanks for your replies.  Of course, this question isn't closed, but maybe we've moved on a little. 

It's true that we need a certain amount of power, status and wealth, biologically. 

However, first and foremost, those qualities have to come from within.  Perhaps that is one necessary requirement for true happiness.  If we don't feel them within us, then we can never get enough from external sources to fulfil our needs for them. 

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Permalink Reply by Yahweh on October 27, 2012 at 9:41am

take out wealth in any equation and no matter what you'll be sad/depressed although you can't be happy with wealth alone, it needs to combine it with something else.

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