[Retra]

You're trivializing people's motivations. People don't do things simply because it makes them happy. They also do them because they feel compelled to, even if it would not make them happy. People are even sometimes forced to do things because they don't have any other option, or because they don't know of anything better to do. Reducing all of this to varying degrees of happiness is sloppy and usually inaccurate.

[white-flame]

Like I said, it gets tautological. What is the difference between a compulsion, a desire, and a want? All could be defined as "that which would make me happy". And as fully acknowledged in some of my descriptions above, it's not that one ends up better off, but that one appreciates something happening for its own sake. All of these seem to be equivalent. None of it is trivialization, it's simply a cloud of motivation in which there aren't easy-to-draw lines of distinction.