BEATE CERTE OMNES VIVERE VOLUMUS

P. H. Shingu Graduate School of Energy Science Kyoto University, Yoshida Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606, Japan

"Suddenly realize!"

Abstract

"We all want to live happily." This famous expression by Cicero so plainly describes the aim of the Development Engineering. Then, naturally, comes the question, "what is happiness?". This paper first reviews various old and new writings about happiness. Happiness is then classified into four stages. The first is the attainment of simple pleasures. Second is the continuation of that pleasure to the time of one's death or beyond. Third is the experience of hardship or sorrow for the sake of intensification of the feeling of happiness. The last stage is to find the real and supreme happiness in the hardship or sorrow itself without expectation of any compensation. These stages are similar to a four storied house. Without first floor, there can be no higher floors. The problem for the Development Engineering is to find the way how to satisfy the strong desire of people to live in the first floor without destroying the whole house and let people enjoy the real happiness in the higher floors. The physical cause of the danger, of the destruction of the house itself in the near future, exists in the exponential nature of the expansion of the economy inherent in the people's activities living in the first floor. Proposed is a principle of taxation, to moderate such expansion, introducing a time parameter of when to tax as much as necessary. This parameter, which is the ratio of the relaxation time of the sentiment of joy of attaining the pleasure of high profit and the time to tax, is called, in the field of rheology, the "Deborah number". This parameter is applicable to the timing of starting any renovation action to relax the human attachment to the old habits. The concluding remarks are that the history never repeats and the happiness does not lie in the satisfaction.