Why Are We Happy

Why are we happy, Dan Gilbert

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong. He argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. The premise of his current research is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. 
In the TED Talk  “The surprising science of happiness,” comes up with some interesting ideas that base their accuracy on well researched and tested methods.

Who do you think is happier between a lottery winner and a paraplegic, one year after winning vs. losing? The answer seems really simple. But if you think about it, so does life! Researchers have proven that both categories are equally satisfied with their lives. The reason why everyone tends to overestimate the impact or duration of future events is due to “impact bias”. Believing that you will be devastated after breaking up with your wife is reported to the current relationship, but one year after, feelings and circumstances will have changed.

Synthetic happiness: Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted. In our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. this happens because of the contemporary economic situation which teaches us that winning is the most important thing, while losing can only deliver us a humble second place. Synthetic happiness is real and comes when acknowledging that what you have is better than what you lost.

ORIGIN OF PLEASURE

This is the talk of Paul Bloom:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393340007/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=integraloptio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0393340007

You laid out this wonderful case that humans are fundamentally essentialists. Do you have a sense of why? Why is the origin of things so deeply important to us?
  In Paul Bloom's TED Talk, The Origins of Pleasure, Bloom delved into the question of why pleasure and pain are what they are. He began with discussing a painting that was forged and sold to Herman Göring, Hitler's second in command. When Göring found that his most prized painting was forged, his biographer said, "He looked for as if for the first time he had discovered there was evil in the world."
  Why, Bloom asked, do origins matter? Because we're focused on status? Bloom argues that it's because we're natural born essentialists -we believe that certain things are certain ways without fault. For example, studies show that wine in that is said to be expensive, no matter how cheap it may really be, is almost always experienced with more pleasure. Sex is affected by this also. Our ideas of how sexually attractive a person may be will change depending on their gender, relationship to us, etc.
  Motives are also important, in both the fields of pleasure and pain. A three-year-old girl's artwork was being sold for thousands of dollars until people found out that her father was coaching her. The art didn't change, simply the way it was made changed. In a study about pain, students who didn't know that the person causing the pain knew he was causing pain experienced less pain than students who knew that the perpetrator knew what the consequences of his actions were.
  Bloom ended his talk with a John Milton quote that I think summed up his video perfectly. "The mind itself is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

MATRIX

Matrix use a version of the brain in a tray. In this movie, the human being  are aisled in urns. An informatic programme called Matrix is able to conect every brains and recreate a world with relationships between them. The computers that control the planet, need to keep the humans alive because they`re their energy source and with the program Matrix they entretain them.
There's a group of people who escaped the trays and they disconnected themselves from Matrix. They try to defeat the machines, but they aren't able until they find Neo, the one. He, after defeating the computers, makes an error in the system and he takes over the control and the humans are in charge again.
This movie has a relation with the Cavern Mith, due to the fact that they have the same meaning and the components are very similar, for example: the slaves of the cavern would be the humans inside the trays, and the cavern would be Matrix. The fire that is in the cavern could be compared with the agents, and the chains with the weapons. Finally there is also a relation between the exterior world and Zion (from Matrix). The last similar thing would be the freeing of one of the men in of the cavern that came back to rescue the others and the success of Neo in liberating everyone from the machines.