The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

by Emily Esfahani Smith

If we report that happiness is our main value in life, as a majority of us do, then wouldn’t life in the tank satisfy all of our desires? It should.32 Yet most people would say no to a life of feeling good in the tank. The question is, why? The reason we recoil from the idea of life in the tank, according to Nozick, is that the happiness we find there is empty and unearned.33 You may feel happy in the tank, but you have no real reason to be happy. You may feel good, but your life isn’t actually good. A person “floating in the tank,” as Nozick puts it, is “an indeterminate blob.” He has no identity, no projects and goals to give his life value. “We care about more than just how things feel to us from the inside,” Nozick concludes. “There is more to life than feeling happy.”