In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, shows why, for most of us, the pursuit of happiness is all too often a wild goose chase. Stumbling on Happiness is an engaging book, on a topic that is surely of interest to most, if not all, mankind. For, as the founding fathers of the United States recognized long ago, much of what we do is driven by our pursuit of happiness.
In less able hands, a book on even such an interesting subject could have gotten bogged down in psychological jargon; however, fortunately for us, Daniel Gilbert, a Professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of this book, avoids the temptation to pontificate. Instead, he adopts an easy and witty style, to produce a book that keeps the reader engrossed from beginning to end.
According to the author, the characteristic that differentiates human beings from all other animals is their ability to imagine the future. This is the defining feature of humanity. And this ability to imagine the future is intimately connected to our happiness, or the lack thereof.
Before discussing happiness, we must first know what we mean when we use the word. According to professor Gilbert, the word can indicate at least three things: emotional happiness, moral happiness or judgmental happiness. Of the three, emotional happiness is the most basic, and also the hardest to describe. It refers to the feeling, or subjective state, of happiness. |
