The Theory of Transfer of Happiness?
Ok, let's talk about something, still not-making-so-much-sense today. As the title suggests, does happiness transfer from one another through an event? Originally, I want to call "law of conservation of happiness" so it sounds cool, like Energy; but considering the difficulty on quantifying "happiness", and "law" means there need to be sufficient proof, unlike "theory" which could be a hypothesis, we'll stick to the "theory of transfer of happiness". Ok. Let's look into it.
What happens if someone falls down in the middle of the road? Adult reaction would be rush to help the guy out of the road quickly, not only to not block the road, but to prevent potential accidents. Children, however, would prefer to laugh at the man whom falls on his feet. It's generally the case for children when they play and someone fall down or getting injured during the play, the rest would laugh at him/her before they try to help her. Laughing first, helping second. Generally, it triggers that seeing someone in pain makes us happy, as it contradicts the boringness of plain background, something striking in the events, aside from enjoyment of a certain activities. It's just like in adulthood, when a long-time friend come and visit you. Surprise, if you like the person, you'd feel amazed. A stone drop in a pool of puddle. With this, we can see that, while that one person injured is in sadness, his original happiness had transferred to other people in the surrounding area. Though, because it's not "conserved", there are more people being happy than more people being sad. If the video is uploaded to news or YouTube (and similar video-sharing platforms), more people got happy watching your agony! That's how happiness had transferred. Transfer of happiness from one to the many.
Let's look at another example: winning a competition, or winning a lottery. Basically, "winning" in general. Things that you can win generally are not "everyone had their fair share, everyone perhaps are equally happy (ignoring the greedy ones and the difficult-to-satisfy ones, and...)", you get what I mean. Something balanced for equity, though certainly couldn't satisfy everyone the same as the majority (because greediness, etc are always at work in certain individuals that demands more than the surrounding gets), aims for everyone getting equal of the share, at least. Competitions, however, is a transfer of happiness from the majority of participants to those whom get price, most probably top 3 or top 10, or even just top 1. It's more like an aggregation of happiness to the pyramid's top, without an equal distribution (1st place certainly feels more happy than 2nd place, and 2nd place isn't guarantee to be happy and might punch 1st place in the face for not getting 1st, due to envy). Generally, the majority whom got nothing but put in cash (for the lottery) to buy a number are at a loss, while the top are at a gain. Transfer of happiness from the many to the one. (or the few).
What if the competition is a group competition. Example, football games, or other games that requires teaming? While some international/national sports on TV probably have their team players learning how to behave even if they lose, with mindset that they could always win back the next time, it's not always the case if you'd look into something more private, like school casual plays during physical education sessions. The thing is, not everyone likes playing football (or other ball, we'll just stay with football as the example here, but you could generalize to other games like basketball, badminton, etc), and not everyone is equally strong. When you're on the losing team, you're more likely to blame the goal keeper for not catching the ball, perhaps even voicing it out or shouting it out to the goalkeeper, when the other team score one goal. The other team won't stop the calling out however, as it's "none of their business". We're just playing ball, and we win, that's it! And generally, when a game ends, even internationally, the losing team would feel sluggish, including their supporting audiences, while the winning team would be roaring (from the players and the audiences). Perhaps no one lose control, but we can see that it transfer happiness from the losing team (and audiences) to the winning team (and its supporters). Transfer of happiness from the many to the many.
Of course, the last is transfer of happiness from one to one, which still we would use competition as the case, but consider you're playing a game of two, 1V1 than many V many.
Generally, what we learn two things is: If you're going to play games that aren't "all that wins", you'd consider trying to win alternatively (this time you win, next time I win, then we swap again) rather than one keeps winning consecutively. On one hand, if one keeps losing, he/she might not want to play with you again, at least in that game. On the more serious note, it could damage your relationship with the guy/gal because winning/losing is so important to him/her that it could put your relationship at stake, especially if you consider how difficult it's to make friends in adulthood (for the majority) and losing (non-toxic) friend(s) for a stupid game is, unacceptable. It's better to choose or design games that does not favor winning/losing, but synergy.
Second, and also the conclusion of this topic, we see that happiness aren't lost in the way they are. They're just being transferred from one to another. And perhaps you might ask: what if the person in hurt isn't known by other people? So no one to laugh at? And those who knows him are the only ones to worry about the person? Generally, you'd see that happiness isn't conserved; but if you consider it conserved, who knows if "one to many", the "many" might have your happiness? And generally, it's a hypothesis, that means it doesn't always true that happiness transfer is real. After all, one mentioned it's "not making so much sense" at the beginning of this article. :D
And another case being a widespread of sadness, especially when between a group of greedy people. For example, we have seen from novels etc where several countries just found a "new land" and they group together to attack it, however, with everyone being greedy on their part, they do not agree on their distribution of the land after it's being successfully conquered. Everyone ends up unhappy. So that's like a mass spreading of sadness, like diseases!
Be sure to Like and Subscribe!
