Sorry, I've been out of it.
Here's a debate about this on another board, just to give you some of my thoughts on the matter before I get back to this:
http://forum.avantlabs.com/?act=ST&f=6&t=7720&
If you want to actually get down to what happiness is. It's nothing more than chemicals bubbleing in the brain. It's funny to think of it that way.
It is ludicrous---not funny---to look at it that way. Reread my article, and look through the debate on the thread I linked to. Either you are or are not a conscious, rational creature---at least by nature, in terms of what our nature as human beings is.
Unless you wish to argue as if you're just a thoughtless animal who isn't in control of your state of awareness and reasoning, in which case you're just an animated piece of flesh dangling from the strings of genetic and environmental control. In that case, I may take you seriously----in terms of who you are, by choice, not who we are, as humans, by nature, by potential.
And what makes you "happy," doesn't necessarily work well toward your relatively long-term well-being. A paradox? Hardly.
Speaking along the lines of self-valuation, dig a little deeper. I covered this in my article, as well as in the other thread/debate---and, I shall expand.
Question? Are you asking me personally or do I answer my oppion on the whole sceem of thing?
Both.