Happiness as an Emergent Property
Try subtracting stuff from your daily life
Emergent properties are characteristics or behaviors of a system that arise from the interactions and relationships among its individual components but are not present in any single component alone.
These properties often result from the complexity and organization of the system as a whole, rather than being reducible to the properties of its individual parts.
(See the end of this article for examples of emergent properties from different fields.)
Happiness
Happiness is also an emergent property.
Many individual components need to be present for us to be happy. We need to be healthy, need to be loved, need to have money, need to lead a meaningful life etc. for happiness to emerge.
None of the components alone is enough for us to be happy. Having money, a job, a life partner, a brand-new car, or a healthy body alone is not enough. If it were, we would probably all be happy.
Subtractive Emergent Property
Emergent properties emerge not only when we keep ADDING new components to a system but also when we keep SUBTRACTING them.
The tranquility we suddenly feel when we clean the house and get rid of junk is one such example.
Focusing is a well-known technique to eliminate multiple goals in order to increase productivity. When we focus we subtract distractions, and success emerges as an emergent property in our lives.
To be happy, it’s usually a more reliable method to eliminate things from our lives instead of adding new components. When we clear the mental and material “garbage” happiness emerges on its own accord.
We cannot determine exactly when and where happiness will emerge but more often than not subtracting things lead to an emergent property that we commonly refer to as “relief,” “tranquility,” “joy,” “contentment,” or “happiness.”
Why do we feel better when we diet? Because subtracting food and body weight leads to the emergent property of “health.”
Why some of us get a divorce? Subtract and a new outlook on life emerges even though the divorce process is usually painful. It’s probably much harder a road to happiness when an already married person adds on a lover or a second and third spouse (where it’s legal).
The whole point of minimalism is to increase the chances of that happiness property to emerge by eliminating things.
Great spiritual traditions ALWAYS recommend less of this and less of that because by doing so we prepare the grounds for happiness to shine one fine morning.
I’m thinking these days to get rid of my second car and find a way to live with only one.
I’ve got a few hundred books that I don’t read anymore. They collect dust. I called a few libraries and thinktanks in Washington D.C. to see if they accept donations but they don’t seem to be interested in books about Turkish history and politics. So I’m stuck with them and I’m not happy about it.
Are there things in your life that when eliminated might create happiness as a byproduct, as an emergent property?
EXAMPLES OF EMERGENT PROPERTIES
1. Biology
Consciousness: Consciousness is an emergent property of the human brain's complex network of neurons and synaptic connections. While individual neurons do not possess consciousness, the collective activity and organization of neural circuits give rise to conscious experiences such as self-awareness and perception.
Ecosystem Stability: Ecosystems exhibit emergent properties such as stability and resilience, which result from the interactions among various species, environmental factors, and feedback loops. These emergent properties contribute to the ecosystem's ability to maintain balance and adapt to changes over time.
2. Physics
Phase Transitions: In thermodynamics, phase transitions such as the formation of a solid from a liquid or the emergence of magnetism in a material are examples of emergent properties. These transitions result from the collective behavior of a large number of particles, which exhibit new properties at the macroscopic scale that are not present at the microscopic level.
Superconductivity: Superconductivity, the phenomenon in which certain materials exhibit zero electrical resistance at low temperatures, is an emergent property that arises from the interactions between electrons in a material's lattice structure. Individual electrons do not exhibit superconducting behavior, but their collective behavior does.
3. Social Sciences
Culture: Culture is an emergent property of human societies, arising from the interactions and shared behaviors of individuals within a community. Cultural norms, values, and traditions emerge from the collective beliefs and practices of a society, shaping its identity and influencing social behavior.
Economic Systems: Economic systems, such as markets and financial networks, exhibit emergent properties such as price dynamics and market trends. These properties emerge from the interactions between buyers, sellers, and other market participants, rather than being determined by any single individual or factor.
4. Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence systems can exhibit emergent properties such as learning and adaptation, which arise from the interactions between algorithms, data, and feedback mechanisms. Through training and exposure to data, AI systems can develop new capabilities and behaviors that were not explicitly programmed.
Swarm Intelligence: Swarm intelligence algorithms, inspired by the collective behavior of social insects like ants and bees, exhibit emergent properties such as self-organization and robustness. Individual agents in a swarm interact with each other based on simple rules, leading to the emergence of complex behaviors at the group level.
In each of these examples, emergent properties illustrate how complex systems can exhibit behaviors and characteristics that cannot be fully understood by examining their individual components in isolation.
Instead, these properties emerge from the interactions and organization of the system as a whole, highlighting the importance of studying systems at multiple levels of analysis.
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