21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S
16. Celebrate Life
‘The universe, it could be said, exists to celebrate itself and revel in its own beauty.’
Gary Kowalski
Pleasure, happiness and joy are words that are often used interchangeably. To start us off, I just want to draw out some of the ways I’m using the terms in this chapter.
Pleasure is the most generic of our terms. It can be used to describe the full range of good experiences. It tends though to be about something good happening in the moment rather than extended over time.
Happiness has a more time-based element to it and also it often includes some kind of meaning to our activities and not just any kind of good thing. Someone has described happiness as ‘pleasure and purpose extended over time’.
Joy is used in two contrasting ways. Firstly, it is the emotion behind our good experiences — out of pleasure happiness and joy, only joy is (officially) used to describe the underlying emotion. Secondly, joy is often used to describe
139