Summary

Happiness is so hard to grasp and hold for a very good reason. Happiness is one of the levers that natural selection uses to get us to behave in a way that benefits our genes. Wanting to be happy makes us do things that help our genes. Being happy does not. Natural selection has programmed us to seek happiness, but not to achieve it.  If we do ever achieve it, we do so only fleetingly, but, despite this, we will predict and even remember being thoroughly and enduringly happy.  To a large extent, happiness is an illusion.

Process

Underlying axioms and provisional beliefs:

• Evolutionary Psychology
  • Evolutionary psychology underpins the concept of primal beliefs