Are Our Values Impacting Our Life Happiness?
Question: What are Junk Values?
Junk Values are those external drivers that we hold so dearly but aren’t worthy of being valued at all. They are desires that aren’t deeply connected to anything we find important internally.
As Explained by Johann Hari, “I kept getting signals that the way to be happy is simple. Buy stuff. Show it off. Display your status. Acquire things”.
This is the problem in today’s world.
“Junk Values that were once a meaningful source of intrinsic happiness are now being replaced by more superficial means of enjoyment”.
What are intrinsic & extrinsic motivations and how do they affect our happiness?
Intrinsic motivation is a term used to describe the incentive we feel to complete a task simply because we find it interesting or enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation is what we feel when we complete a task for some external reward. In short, intrinsic motivation allows us to perform at our very best. Why do we do the things we do? What drives our behavior? Psychologists have proposed different ways of thinking about motivation, including looking at whether motivation arises from outside (extrinsic) or inside (intrinsic) an individual. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, and extrinsic motivation comes from without.
Sometimes you’re better off doing things for enjoyment, but in other cases, you might need a little extra outside motivation. However, it pays to be careful since excessive external rewards can sometimes dampen intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation is when we are motivated to perform a behavior or engage in an activity because we want to earn a reward or avoid punishment. You will engage in behavior not because you enjoy it or because you find it satisfying, but because you expect to get something in return or avoid something unpleasant.
Extrinsic Motivation:
– Participating in a sport to win awards
– Cleaning your room to avoid being reprimanded by your parents
– Competing in a contest to win a scholarship
– Studying because you want to get a good grade
Intrinsic Motivation:
– Participating in a sport because you find the activity enjoyable
– Cleaning your room because you like tidying up
– Solving a word puzzle because you find the challenge fun and exciting
– Studying a subject you find fascinating.
Now imagine that you sing not because you like to do it, but because you work at a bar you hate and it is your job to sing to entertain the patrons. Perhaps your parents envisioned you becoming a singer and have forced you all your life to sing and take lessons because it is their idea of how you should live your life. Maybe there is a woman you want to impress and the reason you sing is more about impressing her than the actual joy of singing. Regardless, all of these are examples of extrinsic motivation. You are singing not because there is some natural joy to be found within yourself in this activity, but because there is something you want to gain down the line whether it be money, parental acceptance, or a woman’s attention. You are not however singing because that is what you actually enjoy to do, but rather the motivation derives from an externalization of expectation.
Now, it is important to understand we are a mixture of both. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation mutually come together all the time to form our reasoning behind any pursuit we choose. Yet what makes Professor Kasser’s research so interesting is the outcomes of both of these different types of motivation. Extrinsic motivation, that is the motivation that comes from gaining something down the line, seems to be related to dissatisfaction as well as depression. The more we are driven by these sort of external factors the less happy we generally are. On the contrary, research shows that the more our decisions are motivated by intrinsic motivation, the sort of motivation to do something simply because it makes us happy, the happier we generally seem to be.
Personal Experiences of me The Universe
While this may seem trivial, it bears noting just how increasingly difficult it has become to not only have those intrinsic motivations but to not have extrinsic motivations overrun them.
According to The World Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest country on Earth. Finland is followed by other European and Nordic countries such as Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway respectively. The Sustainable Governance Indicators Organization ranks Finland very near the top as far as social safety nets are concerned. People are entitled to four weeks paid vacation, and childcare is free to families with children who are 7 years old or younger.
The United States, which ranked outside the top 10 in The World Happiness Report’s findings, has no set rule for paid vacation. Childcare is often very expensive and a burden, especially with the stagnation of wages over the years. In many instances in these other countries, there is less pressure economically to provide these things which would also include things such as education or healthcare.
The idea of work isn’t seen so much as a necessary evil to survival but rather an intrinsic good feeling of contributing to the betterment of society.
Personal Experiences of Me The Universe
Take social media as an example of this sort of pursuit of happiness through extrinsic means. Instagram and Snapchat are perhaps the best examples of this idea of extrinsic motivations causing unhappiness. Probably the best explanation would be the people who excessively Snapchat entire concerts. There are hundreds if not thousands of better quality videos that capture the moment much clearer than your shitty phone quality and angle. So then why do we so often do things like this? It can’t be because of some intrinsic motivation, I don’t know of anyone who genuinely feels joy by just recording things on their phone. They aren’t even watching the performer with their eyes but rather through the lenses of their camera. They aren’t experiencing the moment at all. In fact, often times once we post some compilation of concert videos to social media we never watch them again. In my view posting things like that on social media isn’t motivated by intrinsic values, but extrinsic values that according to studies lead to less happiness. We don’t post because it makes us feel good, we do it to gain some sort of envy. It seems that we no longer do things that make us have a good time, but do them because it shows other people that we are having a good time. This sort of prioritization of extrinsic over intrinsic seems to be at the heart of our unhappiness.
This fetish for envy isn’t just personally destructive but obviously has a profound affect on others. Not only are you not living in the moment, experiencing the experience, but you essentially are perpetuating envy, you create an environment where you go: “Hey look at my life it’s amazing! What are you doing with yours?” Not only does this give a false image of yourself, since science is showing that things like this don’t lead to actual happiness, but you add to a culture that prioritizes the envy of an experience rather than the intrinsic joy felt while experiencing that particular experience.
It doesn’t only have to be about social media, materialist ideas that are driven by our radical consumer culture deliver these seemingly unhappy results as well. Think of materialistic things we fetishize in our society. We look at clothing, shoes, jewelry, etc. often to bring us joy. Yet when we purchase these things outside of a necessity state of mind we do so with this extrinsic motivational factor. We buy these excessively expensive things not because they intrinsically bring us joy the way someone may find singing or drawing to bring them joy, but because there is this external factors at play, such as our continuous obsession with the envy of others. In other words, our happiness isn’t being derived by any internal or intrinsic ideals, it is being driven and therefore dependent on, the acceptance and envy of others.