Is our happiness quota set at birth, like some thermostat.
Studies done have shown that in time, post the initial euphoria, lottery winners are no more happy than their scrimping fellows.
The rich are not particularly more happy than the poor (I know that will raise the hackles of the permanently outraged).
So is our happiness level at a set point, is it inborn; seated somehow in our brain circuitry. And is it possible to change it? Will there be in the future psychopharmacological drugs that will adjust our happiness set point as easily as we adjust a thermostat? So that
we will live in a state of hedonic bliss. (Think of Heaven as permanent bliss, and how that is lacking in imagination. This conception of the ultimate happiness may has sat well on a goat herder in a a parched desert 2000 years ago but hardly bears scrutiny in our neuroscientific modern day. Think of it, it would be like going 'shopping' permanently in Oxford Street, only interrupted by the odd Cruise or a fortnight in Magaluf. Worst of all there would be no problems, problem solving is the very lifeblood of human beings.)
Answers people give about their own happiness level tend to match assessments from their families and friends. Identical twins, too, whether raised together or apart, generally report the same degree of well being. Although there is no universal happiness set point, the average seems to fall slightly above the midpoint between euphoria and despair—a finding that makes good evolutionary sense.
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