Translator: Maria Pericleous Reviewer: Chryssa Rapessi
My name is Constantina Theofanopoulou and I am a Post-Doctoral researcher
at the University of Rockefeller in New York.
I specialise in Neuroscience and Genetics,
but today I will not talk about this research.
I will talk about something that we all think about daily,
the pursuit of eudaemonia.
The idea of eudaemonia is inextricably linked
with Aristotelian philosophy,
where it represents a “perfect” state.
“Perfect” with the ancient Greek meaning,
which is end result, ultimate purpose.
The purpose which is almost elusive for us,
and which logically, according to Aristotle,
we will never be in a position to reach.
We will never manage to achieve ultimate eudaemonia
according to Aristotle.
However, what I would like to suggest today
is that there are some ways to come closer
to this eudaemonia, as each of us defines it.
A eudaimonia I call interdisciplinary,
because it draws from different sources, not just from my own experiences,
but also from different reading and studies
on philosophy and neuroscience.
What I want to mention at the outset,
is that the definition of eudaemonia
relies on different components and different factors,
and if we don’t understand them
we may never pursue eudaemonia
in a way that will benefit us.
The first component is time.
According to Aristotle,
if eudaemonia is something elusive and inaccessible,
we should be trying to achieve it throughout our lifetime.
And perhaps at some point, in our 50s, 60s or 70s,
following incessant effort on our part, and gained wisdom,
we would get to a point where we could experience some eudaemonia.
This definition of eudaemonia doesn’t work for me.
It doesn’t work because, first of all, it assumes
that we will live past a certain age.
It also assumes that, upon reaching that age,
we will still be lucid,
and will have enough energy to enjoy this eudaemonia,
which is something we should not take for granted.
This definition of eudaemonia reminds me
of the stories told by one of my neighbours,
who emigrated to New York many years ago,
and he said: “What I want to do
is to work non-stop, throughout my life,
so that when I get to the age of 60 I can return to Greece,
move to a small island and fish every day
and there, believe me my girl, I will be truly happy,
I will be relaxed, I will have found the meaning of life.”
And although I certainly respect this dream regarding eudaemonia
it’s a romantic view, but it wouldn’t work for me,
because it takes for granted
firstly that we will live past the age of 60,
and secondly that we will be well enough to enjoy this eudaemonia.
What I would like to propose is that we could set
some small windows, some small time frames,
within which we could look for eudaemonia
throughout our lifetime.
Some could reset the eudaemonia cycle each year,
others each month, or each day.
The important thing is that, if we aspire to this goal,
this purpose, throughout our lives,
we have to know that it’s very likely that we will never reach this goal.
The second component that I would like to mention
are our expectations.
The end goal, eudaemonia, combined with our expectations of it.
We develop various expectations
from the moment of our birth, through our family,
through our social circle and through the mass media.
We see a happy family
and imagine that, logically, our own family,
if we reach the goal we set for eudaemonia
will also look somewhat similar.
With our our friends, when we are all together and happy,
we will look like this.
We have expectations
which, as neuroscience has shown,
our brains take very seriously.
If we have an expectation regarding something,
which ends up not being fulfilled, we will feel vary bad.
Indeed, we may feel very bad
if we do something that, on its own,
could have brought us eudaemonia.
In the long term, our whole lives, we may not understand this fully
but it may be easier to understand
in the short term, a holiday experience,
which I believe many of you may have had, I know I have.
I had formed the expectation that I would be visiting a lake,
on which I would be alone, a solitary experience,
with no other people
where I would enjoy my swim alone,
then I would enjoy the view alone
and I would have the most relaxing two weeks of my life.
What I wasn’t expecting was, firstly,
the very long delay to my flight, the breakage of my suitcase,
and upon arrival at the lake, a crowd of people
who wanted to share those moments with me.
My brain reacted to this with anger.
A lot of anger and unhappiness.
However, if I hadn’t had the expectation
of what my holiday should have been like,
if I had been more free, to see the funny side
of the flight delay,
if I had been able to see differently
the sharing of my experience with so many people,
I could have managed to enjoy that holiday.
It could have been an eudaemonia-filled holiday.
The third component I want to refer to, is duration,
indeed, duration does, in a certain way, combine the previous two components,
that of time and that of expectation.
If I asked someone,
“Fine, you can reach the point of feeling eudaemonia.
Roughly how long
would you expect this to last?”
And I am sure that my neighbour would reply,
“I expect that once I reach the Greek island at 60,
until the end of my life,
let’s say at 90, I will be eudaemon.
30 years of eudaemonia, not much to ask.”
Or myself, on that holiday, expecting at least two weeks of eudaemonia.
I didn’t ask for much.
And yet I did ask for a lot.
I asked for too much, in view of what our brain can tolerate.
As we know from neuroscientific studies,
our brain cannot tolerate being for too long
in a state of ecstatic eudaemonia, with no distractions.
We know this from studying various hormones,
which, with specific settings, can give us this pleasant feeling,
we could refer to it as eudaemonia, in certain moments.
One of these hormones is, for example, oxytocin,
on which I based my doctoral thesis,
dopamine and serotonin.
What I would like to stress is that our brain can be
in this state of eudaemonia for a few minutes or hours.
Not for many days or months or years.
How can we tell?
We can tell through our efforts
to test the limits of our brain.
How can we test the limits of our brain?
By artificially inducing eudaemonia,
artificially inducing “the end-result”.
We see many young people, but not just young people, saying,
“Why does my brain make me capable to be happy,
to enjoy myself with my friends for a mere four or five hours,
then I get tired and want to go home?
I want to enjoy myself for 15 hours.
There are drugs that can enable my brain
to enjoy itself for longer.
So I will take some of these drugs.”
OK.
Your brain, however, will show you
that, in fact, it can’t survive for long in this state.
Your brain will try to regain its balance
by giving you not 15 hours, but a few days’ worth of side-effects,
dizziness, very unpleasant mood,
and other known side-effects.
Therefore, even when we try to induce these feelings artificially,
we see that our brain reacts,
our brain wants to regain its balance at all costs.
We may be able to force it, by using some substances,
but ultimately we will not get the desired results.
I will add a sidenote here, because the use of drugs is a sensitive issue.
Some of these substances, in specific doses,
and monitored by researchers or doctors,
can have just the positive results.
But their use has to be very controlled,
I could describe it as almost scientific.
End of sidenote.
How can we naturally induce
these pleasant feelings of eudaemonia?
What comes to mind immediately is the feeling we get
when we are with our friends, when we are in a sociable situation,
like I was, two years ago, on my birthday.
Obviously, I invited my friends
to celebrate my birthday with me.
And it makes sense, because human beings
for thousands of years
have been demonstrating their social nature.
Humans, compared to others in the animal kingdom,
are indeed over-social animals.
We live in densely populated cities
and their development is based
on our cooperation, communication and interaction.
I believe that this social reward system
is overrated and is deemed more important than the rest,
that all methods of reward, if they are not social ones,
although they are alternatives, are much less desirable.
I don’t agree.
Because, for example, there are ways
of personal, rather than social stimulation,
personal stimulation of this reward
which, according to neuroscientific research, is equally powerful,
to social rewards.
For example, let’s talk about the reward,
as I call it here, of the correct note.
When someone is playing the piano, and hits one correct note after another,
their dopamine, their oxytocin, their serotonin and othr hormones
are regulated in such a way, that they become capable
to have eudaemonic feelings
similar to the ones we have when we are out with our friends.
So why don’t we try to promote these ways of personal reward?
Indeed, we saw them come to the fore recently, during the pandemic,
and during the lockdowns,
when we missed our social rewards,
and felt that any other rewards we tried to obtain,
like by means of activities
such as playing the piano,
dancing, settling down with a book,
did not seem capable, or powerful enough.
However, what our brain is trying to say
is that if we really study,
if we practise these other ways to obtain rewards,
they will prove to be just as powerful.
My source reward is not the piano, it’s dancing the flamenco,
and you can’t begin to imagine how up in the clouds it makes me feel
each time my shoes tap to the right rhythm.
The only disadvantage to my own hobby
is that my neighbours must love me a great deal.
Thank you very much.