
There's More to Life Than Being Happy (2013) - kareemm
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/?single_page=true
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mordrax
> Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and
> requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low
> happiness among parents, including the ones in this study.

I have to either strongly disagree with the outcome of this research or
disagree with the definition of happiness used here. If you were to ask
parents (myself included), if having children makes you happier in life, I
think you would get a resounding yes it does! Having kids is stressful at
times, and you can be constantly tired and stretched to your limits but the
heights of joy one experiences as a parent has no bounds. I'd hate to think
that the majority of parents think of child rearing as some sort of meaningful
suffering...

~~~
kedean
I have no children, but those studies always seem to focus on parents who are,
at that moment, raising small children. They are asked at the most stressful
point in the process if they are happy, of course they'll say no. These
studies need to amortize happiness levels over a number of points in the
childs life: birth, a few intervals likke 2/5/10/15, and once the child has
moved on and left their house.

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rifung
I'm curious to know how others deal with meaning in the context of their jobs.

I certainly live for things outside of work, but at the same time work is a
necessity to survive. How do you balance how much time you devote to work when
your source of meaning is unrelated?

~~~
grecy
> _work is a necessity to survive_

While your statement might be true very broadly, you don't need to work
anywhere near as much as you think you do to survive.

I worked 9-5 for 18 months and saved enough money in that time to then spend 2
years driving Alaska-Argentina. [1]

I've just been working 9-5 for 4 years and have now quit and have saved enough
money to spend two years driving around Africa [2], then hpefully 2 years from
Europe->SE Asia.

If I only wanted to earn enough money to "survive" (i.e. food and shelter) I
bet I only need to work 2 months a year. Less when I throw in hunting, doing
my own maintenance and growing my own vegetables.

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-
adventure](http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure)

[2] [http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-
africa](http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-africa)

~~~
koonsolo
> Less when I throw in hunting, doing my own maintenance and growing my own
> vegetables.

Why don't you consider this as work?

~~~
jrk_
I can't answer the question for OP, but for me it would be

* Pursuing my own goals

* Working directly on something which benefits me

* A lot less boring than sitting in the office all day

* Not sitting in an office at all

* Nature

* Real satisfaction from accomplishment

* Don't have to when I don't want, i.e. I have to deal with the consequences (e.g. no food) but nobody can make me responsible for this and fire me

* No commute through crowded cities

* No recycled, AC'd air

* Did I mention not sitting in an office?

I think I have to stop now or I get even more depressed than I already am.

~~~
adrusi
I think what the parent meant to say was "why don't you consider doing that as
your main source of income?"

~~~
jrk_
I think because this would be only about being self-sustained, without
generating additional income. And there lie the downsides: No early
retirement, no health care, no social insurance..

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Aqueous
sounds a lot like we sour on the "pure" happiness of merely providing for our
own selfish needs, then have children, a deliberate hardship, to satisfy our
"un-selfish" need for meaning. this is pointed out by the article's scientific
sourcing. but - devil's advocate here - isn't having children also
fundamentally selfish? (says person in a quite possibly crowded room of
parents)

~~~
rifung
I think having children may be fundamentally selfish, but not raising
children.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'll add to this that raising children can be selfish as well if you overdo it
and apply "Hollywood morality" in your life - i.e. "they hurt my child, so
I'll hurt hundreds or even thousands of people to get my revenge on the one
who did it to my child, and it's OK and I am a good person".

That is, doing things for your own benefit at the expense of everyone else
around is selfish, but I believe so is doing things _for your loved ones_ at
the expense of the society at large. Call it recursive selfishness, or sth.

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tim333
>by ... "giving" rather than "taking" \-- we are not only expressing our
fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to
the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.

Yeah but you can do both. And pursue happiness for others which often as a
side effect makes you happier in yourself.

The article mentions Frankel and the holocaust. If Hitler had had a philosophy
of making people happy rather than "German expansionism, belief in the
superiority of an 'Aryan race' and an extreme form of German nationalism", as
Wikipedia puts it, things could have been more chilled. You can overdo the
deep philosophy and end up avenging some historical slight or slaughtering
unbelievers when just being nice would work fine.

Disclosure - member of Action for Happiness which promotes that sort of stuff.

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gglitch
This seems like an unsophisticated view of what 'happiness' is. In my view,
you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with
happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for
no other reason. Viewed from within that frame, it seems like the response to
this essay would be, if not to be more happy, why pursue a life with great
purpose and meaning?

Edit--it feels more pompous not to cite my sources than to do so, so I'm
getting this mainly from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and equating
"happiness," with what he calls "eudaimonea," which is not to be falsely
equated with a simple good feeling.

~~~
tripzilch
> In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything
> you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build
> and maintain for no other reason.

What you seem to be describing is a concept called "value" in the philosophy
of ethics. "Happiness" is a pretty universal value. But it's not the only one,
"Freedom" for instance. There's some hypothetical thought experiment that
illustrates this, about people being offered to get hooked up to a VR eternal-
happy-machine simulator, it's a bit more nuanced than that, you should
probably look it up if you want to know :-)

Anyway, it seems to me that the article is arguing that "Caring for/Giving to
others" is somewhat of a neglected, "forgotten" value.

But then, I happen to agree with most of what it says.

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mark_l_watson
A great story. Made me think of the story in the movie 'Woman in Gold'
(recommended).

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ssaddi
very nice article. The book, Man's Search for Meaning, was listed as one of
the 10 most influential books in US

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bcook
Contentedness might be a more logical goal. Be emotionally open to either
happiness or sadness by default.

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ZoeZoeBee
Moral of the Story don't be a Jerk, find your special purpose

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223).
This is not a dupe, because that was well over a year ago.

