Common Sense is COLLECTIVE happiness. (The One: Example 1, Turks and Greek on Cyprus are member of the Cyprus family and want to be happy TOGETHER; Example 2: Red Indian Canadians / Aborigines want to mix with import-Canadians/import Australians on basis of EQUAL RESPECT.)
Common Sense is not about immaterial 'spirit' 'sin' and 'guilt', conflict supposing (dualistic) notions from animist Catholic ethics.
Alexander the Terrible annihilated the common sense Zoroastrianism in Persia. The Roman Senate took over the Empire of Alexander the 'Great' and its fascist ethics. This convenient belief in immaterial 'spirits' was definitely formalized in The Council of Chalcedon.
People in close to common sense Africa and Buddhist Asia don't make the weird split divine spirit and sinful body, and treat 'soul' as common sense intuition ('unity of body and emotion)'. Like in all NEARLY destroyed cultures: Zoroastrians, Red Indians, Aboriginals, Eskimos etc..
Have fun, and make others having fun in doing so. Humans live in extended families.
Happiness has no connection to the illusion 'mind', or to avoiding the rational IDEAS 'depression', 'neurosis', 'obsession', ...
(Your cellphone is complex in behavior and able to perform crazy things, very easy to use, but has no 'mind'. Cellphones must be 'chaotic').

Utalitarian philosophers make the distinction between intrinsically valuable and extrinsically valuable and between making desires useful (collective happiness) or desire satisfaction (individualistic hedonism).

I see it in essence similar but use common words. Collective Happiness in my view is a mix of moods in ones mind caused by joined experiences and individual fantasies. NOT the shallow feeling of relief when the shares that you own grow in money value (capitalism). NOT in feeling 'heavenly' when the individual profit of your factory attacks the sky (industrialism), but like in a longlasting love affair both enjoying RESPECT given by The Family. NOT being delirious because of being addicted to some god ( = orgasm of 'ego'), but the deep experience of luck when you think: " OUR life is good" (being Warm Flame in the Fire of Life)

Ages ago Jesus started to turn Palestine culture into a 'world' of happines. This cultural revolution later would have influenced Islam. Jesus was crucified as terrorist by the Romans and ignorant new Hebrew leaders with Hellenistic Greek training (the Pharisees). His followers fled to Turkey, Egypt and Persia. From the very start the Greek/Roman misconception of Zoroastrian Christianity used 'gunpowder diplomacy' to frighten the so called 'pagans'. Catholicism conquered Europe. Later in Western Europe the Catholic variant Protestantism became dominant. Protestantism was hated, and banned from Europe. But it strongly settled in The New World (The United States). After WWII the banned Protestantism via the Marshall program by the United States as Capitalism returned to Europe. And especially in England, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden became awfully strong. In the US Protestantism developed into fascism, Western Europe is following in full speed. Capitalist US and Capitalist Western Europe are main victims of The Recession. But also Communist Russia and Communist China.

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'Young' beings have to learn by trial and error how to become 'happy'. Intelligence is about experience, creativity is not born out of understanding. Because that would mean that general truth is limited. Only local truth exist (and then still personal), meaning that you grasp your personal version of the local paradigm of unlimited truth (a model like: dark sky predicts rain).
Intuition (ethics archived in our bodies) is a great help. But in case intuition is not yet built, then Philosophy should at least give hints about how to become 'happy'. The tool abstract thinking should return to being useful in social affairs by explaining the complexity of dayly life, that trait made philosophizing survive in evolution. If it's lost than also philosophy will never be more than the science of abstract models.
Our brain became brilliant in processing, 'emotions' or 'feelings' are much more than only side-products of logic as is the hidden explanation in rationalism. An action that produces a Good mood in one person, may cause Evil feelings in another. I'm not going to discus Good and Bad, but a philosophy that is only logic and neglects emotions is a useles tool.

That doesn't mean that philosophy has to become (short term) political. For this reason we've got sociology. But it does mean that philosophy should have use in everyday life. By philosophizing and debating about this daily life, to eventually come to a slight change of the basics. Sociology should only apply existing philosophy in short term politics. Long term politics should be steered by stable sound principles. To find out which ones the perfectly suited study is philosophy. Students who prefer both traits should combine the 2 studies.

For becoming happy in relative thinking there are no general rules. But it helps to realize what system of thought you are using (have been 'indoctrinated' with). In the 'First world' feeling 'happy' became more and more being wealthy and having a job. But if people in the Third World would use this definition, they would lead bitter lives. Luckily their definition of happiness is quite different, or in other words 'being wealthy' has a different meaning for them. This emotion for them is related to having friends, being respected and having fun.
Every thought-structure consist of rules and some kind of logic. Together such ethics will help you realizing happiness.

It is time for a new generation of thinkers, who'll return to the basic values that made using our brain (meta-sense) useful in the struggle of life. Accompanied by new leaders who restore authority out of respect. I.e. explaining everyday life to everybody, and lead the way. People like Socrates, Plato etc. where interesting, BECAUSE they used their authority to say a lot about daily life.
After several ages that resulted in a science as religion where quasi leading philosophers behaved like farisees without beards, or in Iran with beards. And on top of that the majority of the articles that they produce are only readable for insiders. Studying 'philosophy' became a purpose in itself (a religion), neglecting the goal of all human tools to serve mankind. And useless to say but anyway, mankind consists of MUCH more than only the 'mind'-priests 'philosophers'. 

Realizing happiness (or creativity, freedom, or unpredictibility) of the total environment is the driving force in evolution. For some that means sex, for others love, etc.
I saw in interesting episode of the science fiction series Babylon 5. In it there appeared a race that found happiness by being preys in a hunt of beings of another race. Their main feeling of happiness was acquired by dying with honor. They certainly were not as in Western Christianity afraid of death. Further this race showed many moral values that we know as humans.
The inherent message in this episode was: Every view might be stable in its own surroundings.

I repeat that this doesn't mean that philosophy has to become political. On the contrary, but it must not be afraid to address important problems of life. Finding short term solutions for these remains a political affair. In the 20th century Critical Theory showed the dangers of totalitarianism by just analyzing.

Many people in the First World are religious (a dominant part of them Christians). They don't realize it, but believing in a god is not different from believing in absolute truth. That's why they believe in exporting the basic values of this religion, because these are a part of such a truth. Strange enough in the past that often resulted in wars, while their religion claims to be peaceful. When you think of wars try to imagine people being inhumanly tortured, being burned or shot to death, all the time on the run, developing hatred. But than surely other religious long-term values must be served.

Around 1940 Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced relativity in logic in his Philosophical Investigations . His most famous proponent was Karl Popper. Wittgenstein had a relative view of knowledge and Popper an absolute. Popper believed that there were general unchanging laws of nature for every being.

Wittgenstein considered laws to be relative to the used system of thought (closed circle of knowledge, bubble of life). Those circles could partly overlap (like Olympic rings) or be completely apart. Later Thomas Kuhn around 1960 developed this idea into the concept of paradigm shifts. He supposed that to get from one circle of knowledge into another (not enclosed) one, you needed a kind of jump in thought.
That doesn't mean that Popper only had absolutist thoughts. But if you study his work closely you come to realize that his notion of truth is an absolute one. Just as Kuhn he was brilliant, only in essence he had a different view on truth (see Popper-Kuhn controversy). Not a wrong one, but one that according to Nietzsche is a dead end, and is essentially opposed to Wittgenstein's relative view on knowledge.

When humans invade space they'll meet intelligence not 'made on earth'. Their system of thought (ethics) might be essentially different. We might not even see them. To communicate we would need an interpretator. Someone who's circle of knowledge (partly) overlaps that of the unknown beings and also ours. 

The 'orientation' of 'happines' in space is random. Local evolution builds an 'orientation for happiness' in billions of years. Locally (on some planet) this orientation (worse-better) becomes semi-absolute, only in orientation NOT in size. When on earth thousands of generations 'parents' always start dancing when it rains, and stay silent at sunny times. THEN a fish-man might develop

Now back to the interpretation of happiness. This feeling completely depends on what is considered by 'happy' in your circle of thought (local ethics). In the rational logic moods are considered purely as expression of rational thought, and are living an ever more marginal life.
If you were educated religiously that might be keeping your god, the pope, or your pastor happy. If you are a dog that'll be keeping your boss happy. If you are like Jesus, than dying for others is all you need.

This way you can be filthy rich and happy, but also extremely poor and happy. Also you can be wealthy and unhappy, while your jobless neighbors are satisfied with their life. Relative thinking learns that every view on reality is a local system of thought and might locally be consistent. As such is has no use to connect religion and social help. Real social help obeys the local rules, and comes with locally working solutions. It stimulates local people in expressing their local intelligence in creativity and solve their own problems.

But in general you could say that keeping others happy is considered more and more not the image of happiness. This narrow minded egoism could be said to start mid 19th century. This was desperately fought by the famous thinker Friedrich Nietzsche who tried to scatter believe in gods and religions.

In wealthy capitalist countries happiness started to be personal. So you're only happy if you yourself feel happy. But be sure that happiness in many cultures used to be for a large part a group feeling.

In the 19^th century a famous philosopher connected genuine happiness with creativity. He was convinced that gods/dogma's prevented change. That philosopher was the controversial Friedrich Nietzsche. It certainly doesn't mean that he hated religion, but that he hated the implicit mind addiction (behaving like zombies: slavery of mind).

Don't take the word 'happiness' to strict. And possibly 'creativity' is a better word than happiness (than think of the feeling of content in an artist after finishing a work). Happiness means nothing more than feeling well as result of an action. Not the hedonistic feeling of wine lovers, but the deep experience of something being alright.

Group-happiness used to be much more important than it is became since Enlightenment in rationalism. Evolution doesn't care about local happiness. Stronger even evolution doesn't care about human happiness. In the eyes of evolution ants can be as important as a humans, it's in essence arrogant to presume different. Evolution aims at the improving general 'happiness', 'maximum freedom' etc. in the shape of ever more unpredictability of the totality. How this is achieved doesn't matter.

Evolution doesn't seek to avoid suffering. Any solution to finally reach growing unpredictability will do. It's a complete mistake to thinks that evolution aims for chaos. Unpredictability is realized by simplicity THROUGH growing complexity.
It also helps in this case to forget ideas about Good and Bad. These are only human-made concepts, often created by religion. That's why for a long time sharks were considered the image of being bad. That doesn't mean it's not a fine idea to get rid of pain, but evolution as a process totally ddoesn't about it as a main goal. But it's only a nice sub-goal.

Plants, bacteria and viruses are in many ways far more creative than humans (in many other ways humans appear superior). So if within the scheme here pictured by me you're looking for a goal, than go for maximum creativity of all beings (without bothering others). This can be translated in limitless goals.

Finally let's connect happiness with evolution. Evolution aiming for 'happiness' for all life equipped every shape of life with DNA (archive) and common sense (camera). DNA and common sense produce 'intuition'.
Tiny parts of 'intuition' might be 'helped' towards consistency by the logical tool 'understanding'. But using 'understanding' (science) as replacement of MUCH MUCH more subtile intuition is pitiful arrogance (and extremely dangerous).
Western World arrogance resulted in slavery, industrialism, capitalism, 2 world wars, poverty outside western world of 'understanding', fascism.

As finish another idea to think about. Happiness could very well be the same as being creative. It can't be a coincidence that creative persons often are happy with their life. Then the goal of evolution is realizing maximum creativity (or say freedom) for all living creatures.
Creativity is MUCH MUCH more than what in the Roman era was called 'scientia' (technology).
It is eye opening to review the history of Roman Christianity and the Mohammadan variant of Islam

War = Wasting Energy in Selfdesigned Conflict, agressive egoist/ individualist behavior that aims at destroying the happiness of others.
Realize that both 'capitalism' and 'communism' are products of Enlightenment rationalism. 'Rationalism' is the totally dominant dual world-view of the Western World, that suppressed common sense and PER DEFINITION sees conflict everywhere ('analysis' is cutting into the 'differentials' 'good' and 'bad', TRUE and FALSE, 0 AND 1, ....).
Evil, FALSE, 0,.., terrorism ('conflicts' inherent in 'rationalism') are finally fought with 'war on terrorism' and genocide.
In technology (at relatively high frequencies) calculus is a brilliant tool, but use of calculus in social life is a DISASTER.

Growth of happiness. Near to the sorrow of the world, and often upon its volcanic earth, man has laid out his little gardens of happiness; whether he approaches life as one who wants only knowledge from existence, or as one who yields and resigns himself, or as one who rejoices in a difficulty overcome - everywhere we will find some happiness sprouting up next to the trouble. The more volcanic the earth, the greater the happiness will be - but it would be ludicrous to say that this happiness justified suffering per se."
From Human, All too Human (1878) Friedrich Nietzsche (inspired by Zoroastrian view on life, as in ancient Parsi belief)

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Henk Tuten, March 2003, updated till present

Sound of Hope