We've Turned Everything Into a Tool for Happiness

One image captures the heart of Julian Baggini's longform meditation in the Guardian about human behavior and happiness. He recalls reading a book in which the author writes about hugging her husband for exactly six seconds after a spat, knowing that was the time necessary to get the right chemicals flowing to promote bonding and reduce stress. She didn't hug her husband for the sake of hugging him. She hugged him for the oxytocin. Now extend that principle elsewhere. Baggini argues we've quietly started treating almost everything we cherish—art, sex, friendship, religion, volunteering, walks in the woods, you name it—as tools for getting something else: better health metrics, boosted happiness scores, stronger resumes. He calls it "the instrumentalization of everything."

He points to ads that push museum visits because they might lengthen your life, churches praised for lowering depression, and science stories that frame orgasms as cancer prevention. He summons Aristotle's observation that some things are a means to an end (with mere extrinsic value), and others are the ends themselves (with intrinsic value). Too many people confuse the two, he writes. He quotes another philosopher, David Hume, to amplify the point: "I feel a pleasure in doing good to my friend, because I love him; but do not love him for the sake of that pleasure." Baggini says the problem isn't that our activities sometimes deliver health or wealth benefits, but that we mistake those "welcome side-effects" as the entire point. His proposed reset: Recover the idea of doing things, and loving people, for their own sake. Read the full piece.