
‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special over Being Happy - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/why-success-wont-make-you-happy/614731/
======
adamhowell
Reminds me of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which I think about
often:

[https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-
nearly-8...](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-
nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-
happy-life/)

“[F]ollowed 724 men since they were teenagers in 1938. (Approximately 60 men,
now in their 90s, are still left.) The group consisted of men from various
economic and social backgrounds, from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods to
Harvard undergrads. (President John F. Kennedy was even part of the original
group.) Over the years, the researchers have collected all kinds of health
information, and every two years they ask members questions about their lives
and their mental and emotional wellness. They even interview family members.”

“Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy
throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from
life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better
predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That
finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-
city participants.”

“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it
wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going
to grow old,” said Waldinger in a popular TED Talk. “It was how satisfied they
were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their
relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”

~~~
throw48e7
> Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy
> throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from
> life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline

I call bs, selection bias. If something bad happens, the "close relationship"
ends faster than you can say "divorce".

If you manage to maintain close relationship way into retirement, yiu are very
lucky. Of course you will be in great shape.

~~~
jasonv
I'm not so sure.. I'm an introvert and a loner, so I often feel a bias against
these kind of assertions. I want to be able to continue being a loner, feel
good about it, exhibit resilience and self-reliance in a way that leaves me
satisfied with my days, and invested in my intentions.

I don't have a lot of friends, but I have a few. I'm divorced, but I have a
great kid and am still actively intertwined, familial-y speaking, with my ex-.

I wouldn't be able to say how all this affects my EOL quality and vitality,
but I'm almost 50 and I don't feel diminished or negatively impacted by my
life decisions or lifestyle yet.

I'm not "lonely" but I work to make sure I'm "alone" a good amount. I feel the
urge to get social about once every 3 months and I can usually make it happen.
I have a few places in the world where I travel, have friends, and can be
super-social for a few weeks at a time.

If not determined by a lower bound, I wonder if they meant it qualitatively as
we all quantitatively.

~~~
TimesOldRoman
You sound like you have enough close relationships to sustain you.

~~~
throw48e7
I dont want to speak for OP, but I am at similar situation. I maintain close
relationship with family to help people, not to "recharge".

Close relationship are energy suckers. For relaxation there are casual friends
and flinks. But I would not call that close relationships.

------
silveroriole
I think this is why lots of people are unhappy nowadays. Think about life in a
small community. It’s easy to be the guy who is special because he’s the best
at baking, or juggling, or playing an instrument, or telling stories. Whatever
it is. Wanting to be especially good at something and recognised for it seems
like a pretty basic human need to me. How is anyone going to feel special now
when everyone’s seen a hundred YouTube videos of people doing your special
thing infinitely better than you ever will? No wonder people get addicted to
‘fake specialness’ at work. Relationships can also make people feel special.
But the nagging feeling that you’re not REALLY special may remain...

~~~
realtalk_sp
It's almost like the problem is wanting to be special? Stoicism and tangential
philosophies are more critically important than ever, in my opinion. I've also
found a great deal of benefit from not participating in social media.

EDIT: There's a related and quite important concept in the contemporary well-
being discourse often referred to as 'the dispassionate pursuit of passion [or
success]'. I think many of the people who show up on HN would benefit from
understanding it. Choosing to not desire being special _is not_ the same thing
as being inert. There is a balancing point. Here's a resource (albeit maybe a
bit too self-helpy) that talks about this:
[https://www.happinessacademy.eu/blog-en/the-6th-happiness-
si...](https://www.happinessacademy.eu/blog-en/the-6th-happiness-sin-
passionate-indifferent-pursuit-of-passion-the-6th-habit-of-the-highly-happy-
dispassionate-pursuit-of-passion-the-6th-happiness-exercise-3-good-things-
with-a-twist).

~~~
silveroriole
I don’t really subscribe to stoicism (and a lot, but not all, of mindfulness
and CBT) for precisely this reason: it seems to me to be telling people that
it doesn’t matter if their needs aren’t being met, the real problem is that
they have any needs. If it helps you personally, that’s great! But to me
stoicism texts often feel like they’re written by some dismissive parent, the
kind who would just tell you “only the boring get bored” instead of playing
with you when you were a kid :)

~~~
lxdesk
To me stoicism is helpful in the sense of the advice one gets in jujitsu: If
taking one grip on something isn't getting you the leverage you want, don't
grip it harder, let go and take a different grip.

Stoicism can't help if you're just getting traumatized, but a lot of "I feel
awful about the world generally" sentiment boils down to having a tense grip
on one's worldview, a rigid set of norms leading to the judgment that it is
all wrong and terrible and thus to a kind of flagellatory self-harm. Nature as
a whole, on the other hand, is indifferent - the "is" instead of the "ought".
We learn many oughts when we're young, but they all deserve examination.

~~~
nefitty
This is one of the best comments I’ve ever read on HN.

------
ericmcer
It is always a bit paradoxical to discuss articles like this over a message
board where we compete for votes and the top comment haha.

I often think that happiness is a shallow goal, and you leave a lot on the
table if you are unwilling to suffer. Success and achievements are answers to
that old question 'why?', they justify our existence.

Contrary to that, to paraphrase Gene Wolfe from Book of the Long Sun: " _When
something is good it needs no justification._ "

another relevant quote (just because!) from East of Eden:

" _On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and
on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I 'm glad I
chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the
other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's
suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch._"

~~~
arctangent
> where we compete for votes and the top comment haha

I don't think this is the reason most people post here.

~~~
nefitty
There’s nothing like the rush of getting a post to the front page, even if it
is vacuous compared to more difficult accomplishments.

------
hinkley
In so many aspects of life, I see people chasing after an analog for the thing
that they actually want, either because they become confused along the way, or
could never decide/admit/discover what it is they really wanted.

If I'm famous people will love or accept me (if you're famous, you will never
again know for sure who really loves or accepts you). If I have money I will
finally feel safe. If I am the most intimidating person in the room, I'll
never feel intimidated again, and nobody will ever know how helpless and small
that makes me feel. If I have tons of kids, someone will still remember me
fondly when I'm old.

These all end up fixing the wrong problem.

~~~
earthscienceman
This is the best comment in the thread. We often compensate in ways to patch
over the thing that is difficult or harming us. It's so much easier to just go
for gold than it is to criticize and deconstruct your own motivations.

------
AndrewKemendo
"banality of mere happiness"

That is exactly it.

Based on this article I would certainly be a member of the group called a
success addict. I can only speak for myself here but in my opinion "happiness"
is not only the wrong goal, it's an active distraction from determining and
pursing the right goal. I have MY version of what the right goal is, but have
no illusions on it's generality.

Therein the conflict lies: The average person in my estimation defaults to
"happiness" as the generalizable optimization vector.

To wit - the article demonstrates this with the language of addiction and a
reinforcement of the ONE TRUE GOAL: "relationships and love." Deviation from
happiness (epicurean or hedonistic) as the ultimate goal is exactly that -
deviant!

~~~
lionhearted
Well said.

------
jasode
The topic of spending "too much time at work" is something I think about a
lot. (Wrote 2 previous comments about this.[0])

In the 2nd thread, one reply ask, _" Have you tried finding fulfillment in
having a family?"_ \-- I didn't reply to that but I want to do so here.

It depends on the personality as a parent but it can be very dangerous to rely
on your family to be the _source_ of happiness and hoping that it overrides an
unsatisfactory job. I'm heavily influenced by growing up with my unhappy
mother because she had artistic ambitions that were disrupted by having
children (me). She had to work at a "boring" 9-to-5 job to put food on the
table and a roof over our heads. Because of her awful (but good paying) job,
all of our misbehavior and problems were magnified and she lost a lot of
patience with us. For our specific circumstances, we might have been all
better off if she (over)worked 60+ hours at something she liked (for possibly
even less pay) so we as children weren't such a glaring irritation to her.
Lots of frustrations with us with exasperations such as, _" Do you know how
hard I have to work to put food on the table?!"_

Based on that, I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to your future
spouse, and future children ... is to find work that's palatable. Don't bring
your misery home. Don't ask your family to be the _source_ of happiness.
That's too much pressure on them. Instead, see them as _enhancing_ your
existing happiness.

I'm not giving universal advice here. I'm emphasizing that you really need to
examine yourself and understand who you really are before thinking your family
and relationships will be your salvation. It wasn't for my mother and it's not
for me. Maybe we're psychologically defective. I don't know. For me, I already
tried the author's advice with a 40-hour job and "work/life balance". That
doesn't make me happy. What works _for me_ is to pursue an unbalanced life.

Yes, there's _" all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"_, and _" nobody
lies on their deathbed wishing they spent more time at the office"_, and _"
hustle porn"_, etc. I'm aware of all the derogatory memes that try to
invalidate how I feel but I can't help it.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426760)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23924830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23924830)

~~~
jimbokun
"Don't ask your family to be the _source_ of happiness."

I think investing in a family means seeing _their_ happiness and successes and
flourishing as one of the sources of your happiness.

And working a job to make money to give them an environment where they can
grow and thrive and flourish can be part of that happiness, even if the job
itself is kind of "meh".

(And if that's not something that motivates you, then, yeah, probably best not
to start a family.)

------
jameslk
Not everyone lives to seek happiness. There's no reason to view seeking
"success" or any other mode of living as illness just because it's not going
to achieve happiness.

I don't think most want to be simply happy anyway. A lot of people want to
have kids. Is this because they want to be happy? Is buying a house about
seeking happiness? Is the author writing this article to be happy? Is reading
Hacker News going to make you happy?

It's usually a mixture of motivations. There's far easier ways to be happy
than most choose, but happiness is not the only reason to live.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Yeah back in the day the pursuit of happiness used to be a vice, hedonism
almost. Now it's seen as the ultimate life purpose, wtf.

~~~
bladegash
Back in what day? Aristotle spent considerable time explaining how to achieve
eudaimonia. In more recent history, humanist psychologists (e.g., Maslow,
Rogers, etc.) have suggested people have an inbuilt tendency towards self
actualization (which is roughly equivalent to happiness). I’m sure there are
many more examples, but I find it unlikely that happiness has been seriously
considered as a vice.

~~~
n4r9
Pleasure (i.e. self-reported, short-term happiness) and
actualisation/flourishing seem to be very different things to me. Or at least
that's one of the lessons I learned from the novel Brave New World.

~~~
bladegash
I haven’t read the book you mentioned, but from my opinion derived after
studying Maslow and Rogers, is that actualization refers to the result of
factors leading to a fully functioning human, and by proxy, a happy/content/at
peace one.

If you ever get a chance, look into some of Maslow’s explanations on the
characteristics of an individual who has self-actualizated. There are other
interesting humanistic psychologists such as Dabrowski that are fascinating as
well.

~~~
n4r9
> happy/content/at peace

Is that the same as immediate pleasure though?

------
hn_throwaway_99
Curious if corona quarantines have changed folks' perspectives on this. I
consider myself pretty high on the "success addict spectrum", but after
sitting at home in my sweatpants (or underwear) for the past 4 months, I just
feel like some of those "success desires" have lost their luster.

So much of desiring success is really about desiring recognition from others,
and for some reason I just feel like I care less after being socially distant
for this long.

~~~
s0uthPaw88
I actually feel like covid lockdown has had the opposite effect on me. Many of
the things I enjoyed doing have been made impossible or much more difficult,
so it feels like all I am left with is striving for work accomplishments.

------
es7
Put another way: many people choose to pursue a meaningful life over a happy
life.

The English word "happy" covers a wide range of states and I'm not sure the
original article has even settled on one definition. They reference terms like
'life satisfaction', 'orginary delights', 'relationships and love', 'hedonic
treadmill', etc.

The article seems to be coming from a good place, but I think the deeper
message got lost in the noise: "Work for a sense of personal meaning, not
outward achievement" (paraphrased).

Happiness and success don't have to be mutually exclusive.

------
Natfan
Incredibly interesting article, I don't think it's just America that suffers
from "success culture", from Europe to Asia to Africa you can find swathes of
people who want to "be the best".

And it's worrying, because at some point you will do the best work you can.
You will hit that goal. If you don't have any other things you want to achieve
out of doing a good job at work, I could see it easy to fall down the slippery
slope of depression.

Thought provoking stuff!

------
d33lio
I seek success and money explicitly so I don't have to give two f*cks about
what people think about me. So I can do exactly what I want, specifically
things many other people can't do because they've encumbered themselves with
"meaningful" relationships and kids.

"Being special" is a bad take in my book. Everyone has a unique idea of what
success is. Success can skirt the lines of being widely known, rich or
surrounded by a family they built.

Just live your life, it's an optimization problem without any real end - so
get on with it and stop worrying you're going to make the "wrong" call.

~~~
juniper_strong
If you need success and money to not care what people think about you, well,
whatever works.

------
opportune
I think competitive personalities and globalization just don’t mix. When
humans lived in much smaller groups it was possible to carve out a niche if
you wanted to. Aside from the monarch you probably didn’t know of many other
people outside your community who were really good at X/Y/Z. Now there are 8b
of us and it’s not hard to find out how many of those people are really good
at something. Survival in wealthier countries is also so easy that all the
competition is really for prestige/glory/status (having a moderately bigger
house, nicer vacation, sending your kids to a better school) anyway.

The other thing is that our financial system is so well-defined it can gamify
“success” as just increasing a simple, well-understood metric: money

------
Wump
This reminds me of something Alex Honnold said in the fantastic documentary
Free Solo:

“She [his girlfriend] sees things in a different way. For Sanni, the point of
life is happiness. To be with people that make you feel fulfilled and have a
good time.

For me it’s all about performance. The thing is anybody can be happy and cozy.
Nothing good happens in the world by being happy and cozy. Nobody achieves
anything great because they’re happy and cozy.”

I found his perspective so fascinating and revealing about people who are
among the best in the world at something.

------
kgin
Addiction is a progressive narrowing of what brings you pleasure.

Addicts don’t choose their addiction over happiness, they lose the ability for
other things to bring them happiness through desensitization.

------
baxtr
_“There are only three requirements for success. First, decide exactly what it
is you want in life. Second, determine the price that you are going to have to
pay to get the things you want. And third, and this is most important, resolve
to pay that price. "_

H.L. HUNT

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Eloquent, intuitive, and wrong. You may still fail despite your best efforts.

Of course, 'success', however defined, is presumably different from happiness.

~~~
playpause
Why does “You may still fail despite your best efforts” mean the above quote
about success is wrong?

~~~
jimbokun
You can pay the price you calculated, and still not get what you want.

~~~
jmchuster
But maybe the real treasure was the friends you made along the way?

------
jackfrodo
There's a great parable relating to this: The Other Side of the Hedge[0] by E.
M. Forster. It's not too long, and I can confidently say it's worth your while
if this article struck a chord with you.

[0]
[http://www.101bananas.com/library2/otherside.html](http://www.101bananas.com/library2/otherside.html)

------
29athrowaway
Wallace Carothers, the DuPont chemist that created nylon and contributed to
the creation of neoprene, felt that he did not achieve much and committed
suicide.

To most people, those are outstanding life achievements.

~~~
booleandilemma
Damn. And I'm happy when I can get a few people to use my crappy software.

------
mrkn1
I agree that happiness on a diet of achievements sets you up for failure. I
also think that a lot of people know this intuitively but don't acknowledge it
consciously or to others.

However, the author should have elaborated on "meaningful relationships".
Dominant networking sites have imposed the unproved notion that "who you know"
is more important than "who you are" and "what you know". Constant social
comparisons encouraged by social media are also contributing to depression. As
the author of a University of Houston 2015 study [0] stated: "This research
and previous research indicates the act of socially comparing oneself to
others is related to long-term destructive emotions".

[0] - [https://uh.edu/news-
events/stories/2015/April/040415FaceookS...](https://uh.edu/news-
events/stories/2015/April/040415FaceookStudy)

~~~
jimbokun
I don't think any of the relationships you describe would qualify as
"meaningful".

~~~
mrkn1
That's my point.

------
kbouck
_No matter how good you are at something, there 's always a million people
better than you._

    
    
      -- Homer Simpson
    

_Gotcha: Can 't win. Don't try._

    
    
      -- Bart Simpson
    

[https://youtu.be/1YgGnfBNAqg](https://youtu.be/1YgGnfBNAqg)

~~~
hinkley
I recall once having a conversation with the gifted kids about how being in
the "99.5th percentile" meant that there were 8 million people in the world
smarter than you. That number is just bigger now, and ignores fields of
specialization entirely.

~~~
abc_lisper
If you are in the US, that 8 million number won’t mean much. You would be
surprised how fast the brain withers away without proper education

------
azinman2
This is such an American perspective. Happiness doesn't have to be your #1
goal, or even in your top 5-10. The article seems to undervalue the idea of
making a positive impact in the world or lasting change. It seems to conflate
achieving goals with the idea that you'll move the goal post, and that's
necessarily bad (e.g. the Sisyphean concept). Personally speaking, I much
rather have a long-term positive impact on humanity than to be happy but a
blip on history's radar. I should be so lucky. Many choose to value their own
family's success over their own, or their community. Others dedicate
themselves to noble causes with high potential fatality risk.

------
cbanek
> even though a good relationship is more satisfying than any job.

Um, citation needed. Also relevant, "Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will
never have to work a day in your life."

If you love your job, it can bring you happiness and success. Look at jobs
like being a doctor where you get to help people. Even though many doctors
have plenty of money to retire, they tend to keep working and helping people
because many times they just really enjoy it!

This also misses out on all the problems of a relationship, like stress,
cheating, money, fighting, etc. If relationships are so great, why do so many
marriages end in divorce? (isn't that like "quitting" your "job"?)

Maybe I'm just a success addict, but if it's something I care about, then I'm
going to go for it. And I try to keep what I measure to be how useful I am to
others, what I can bring to the table, rather than dollars or title.

Of course if you constantly strive for the things you don't really want, you
can stress yourself out trying, then stress yourself out failing, or stress
yourself out being there. But the same could be said of a relationship with
the wrong person. Coming from a broken home, I wish I could explain how easy
it is to see people in broken relationships that make them unhappy, but also
unable to get off the "relationship treadmill". Pick the right people and the
right things!

~~~
zwkrt
A few points:

\- rhetoric about loving your job tends to come from a very small minority of
people who do not have an absolutely mind-, body-, and soul-crushing job. Rich
people like to talk about working at Wendy’s as some sort of “introductory” or
“transitional” job, but this is not the case. And on top of the job itself
being awful, then you get to go home and worry about the fact that you don’t
have any money. There is something to be said for having a sense of Zen at
work, since that will make it less miserable, but the strange capitalist
utopia where everyone is whistling at work is probably a long way off.

\- “relationships” are more than just with your spouse. What about your
friends, roommates, relatives, children, neighbors, baristas, janitors, etc. I
don’t count coworkers because I believe that a work environment tends to
inculcate a sense of competition and scarcity among people which is the
opposite of what good relationships are made of. It is so important to have at
least a few people in your life that would be there for you even if you didn’t
have a fancy job or nice things, because one day you might not have those
things and then where will you be?

~~~
TimTheTinker
I’m not rich, but even I view a food service job at a fast food business
(besides owning the business) as transitional. In other words, I would have
_no_ intention to stay there longer than absolutely necessary. I would forego
many comforts to save what I need to make my move and get out.

There’s a saying that if you took away all of a rich person’s financial assets
(anything owned) they would be rich again within a few years. That may be a
bit of a stretch (it might take more like 10 or even 20 years), but the point
is, there is a required mindset that it takes to get out of poverty, and that
is a firm determination to not accept the status quo.

Don’t get me wrong: having that determination doesn’t guarantee anything
(plenty of people work hard and don’t break out of it after 20 years because
of hard luck or inescapable obligations), but those who do make it out always
have that mindset. And those who don’t have that mindset _never_ make it out,
even if they win the lottery.

------
erikerikson
Something I've really struggled with is when people who enjoy working more
than I (perhaps addictively, perhaps not) then exclude me and others from
participating. They've often earned the control but I've often produced higher
quality work and only prefer a different work life balance. However, unless
I'm willing to project onboard-ness with the culture and act accordingly, I'm
excluded from participating.

------
pyankoff
Richard Hamming disagrees:

"Is effort to be a great person worth it? ...those who did succeed said - Yes
it's better than wine women and song put together... Doing something really
first class and knowing you've done it is better than anything else they can
think of."

[https://youtu.be/a1zDuOPkMSw?t=2461](https://youtu.be/a1zDuOPkMSw?t=2461)

~~~
physicles
It's a roll of the dice though. Of those who attempt to do something first
class and pin their hopes on it, how many can succeed? You can at least say
that the Stoic path is a more reliable path to satisfaction.

------
Hokusai
"This might be hard to believe, but I'm just a regular Joe. I just want to be
happy. And happiness comes from the achievement of goals. It's just that when
you've made your first billion by the age of 19, it's hard to keep coming up
with new ones! But finally, I've got myself a new goal: WORLD DOMINATION!"
Darwin Mayflower in "Hudson Hawk"

~~~
QuesnayJr
I love every Mayflower scene in that movie, even when Minerva just sits on the
boardroom table singing "I've Got The Power".

------
CM30
Hmm, I guess I'd probably be in this situation. Always been far more
interested in becoming the best/world class at something, and very
uninterested in people or personal relationships.

However, I think the reasons for that are:

1\. I've always found it tricky to form real relationships or connect with
people in any emotional sense, so trying to become rich/famous/successful
feels like a more easily quantifiable, practical alternative.

2\. As an existentialist, I've always believed that people make their own
destiny, and that people can forge their own path to success. So I've always
chased success to prove that you don't have to be some gifted prodigy born
with the right genetics and upbringing to do great things or innovate in any
field.

And I guess the internet probably hasn't helped either. The news and social
media sites are full of outliers seemingly doing amazing things, so my
standards for everything have basically become 'has to match/beat the top X%
of people in this fied showcasing their work online'

------
frequentnapper
"The pursuit of achievement distracts from the deeply ordinary activities and
relationships that make life meaningful."

Obviously if they value achievement more, then that's what's more meaningful
to them. Not sure how anybody can define what's meaningful in general for
everybody. And meaning changes with time - what's meaningful today, may not be
tomorrow.

------
fulafel
Success as a synonym for making money always felt like a hijacking of the word
to me. Good life outcomes and slaving to get rich are different things. Being
intense about your own thing is yet a third idea, frequently associated with
sacrifice of financial security (eg pursuit of the arts or non moneyed
academia fields)

------
Kinrany
> Rather, it should be work that serves others and gives you a sense of
> personal meaning.

Way to finish the article with a tautology. "To find meaning, do something
meaningful." Sage advice.

Looks like I'm very bitter that the author suggests happiness as the
alternative. Brainwashing ourselves into permanent happiness is clearly not
something we'd want.

> As I once found myself confessing to a close friend, “I would prefer to be
> special than happy.” He asked why. “Anyone can do the things it takes to be
> happy—going on vacation with family, relaxing with friends … but not
> everyone can accomplish great things.” My friend scoffed at this...

I had a similar exchange with a friend. I wish the author said more.

------
Impossible
Tangentially related random connection. This quote

 _In the 1980s, the physician Robert Goldman famously found that more than
half of aspiring athletes would be willing to take a drug that would kill them
in five years in exchange for winning every competition they entered today_

Stood out to me as a possible source for inspiration of the Juicer class in
the Rifts RPG
([https://rifts.fandom.com/wiki/Juicer_](https://rifts.fandom.com/wiki/Juicer_))

~~~
stephen_cagle
Whoa, when I read the quoted sentence of yours I immediately had the same
though. Kind of eerie.

Man, RIFT was kind of weird with all their numbers, but it was cool in ideas.

------
supernova87a
Isn't the rise of the US based on breaking out of past stagnant structures,
and using creative destruction to change how the world works?

I don't know if the creativity and opportunities to grow, try new things, be
someone else would be the same if everyone were "just happy" ala Old Europe
(in Rumsfeld's words). You might not be very happy, if the environment were
everyone just being happy...

But I guess the article is suggesting that people readjust their definition of
what happy is.

------
ryanmarsh
Everyone has personal problems. I promise you it's much better to deal with
those problems while not having to worry about money or career.

------
data4lyfe
"In the 1980s, the physician Robert Goldman famously found that more than half
of aspiring athletes would be willing to take a drug that would kill them in
five years in exchange for winning every competition they entered today"

Seems very probable that when it comes down to it and they had the pill in
their hand, a lot would not go through with it once the reflection hits.

------
natchy
_" the notion that one's goal in life is to be happy, that your own happiness
is the goal. i just don't buy it._

 _... i mean, happiness is... (pause) ...I 've heard from several people an
now I wonder... (pause) ...is that what postwar democracy has amounted to?"_

\-- Hayao Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli) in "The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness"

------
aaron695
> Imagine reading a story titled “The Relentless Pursuit of Booze.”

It's called the Modern Drunkard Magazine

[https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Homage-to-boozers-
Bimont...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Homage-to-boozers-Bimonthly-
magazine-2707671.php)

------
DeonPenny
This is pretentious. Happiness has never been the purpose of life. Meaning is,
and if these people find meaning in their work the better for it.

Most of the people I find unhappy now a days are the one constantly running
after it. Never picking something that matters and may in a lot of cases make
them unhappy for a time.

------
centimeter
The Variability Hypothesis means that the evolutionarily optimal strategy for
males is to be very special (top few percent) within their competitor group.
Since competitor groups have grown a lot since the evolutionary environment,
it's not surprising to see this manifest in arguably pathological ways.

------
mjklin
The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life, or of the
work, / And if it take the second must refuse / A heavenly mansion, raging in
the dark. -W.B. Yeats, “The Choice”

------
FailMore
I have done this for a long time and am just waking up out of it. It is sad to
have spent so much time lost... (when I embarrassingly thought I was found).
Trying to find the right pathway for myself now.

------
2038AD
as Schopenhauer put it:

"Life itself is a sea full of reefs and maelstroms that a human being takes
the greatest care and caution to avoid; he uses all his efforts and ingenuity
to wend his way through, while knowing that even if he is successful, every
step brings him closer to the greatest, the total, the inescapable and
irreparable shipwreck, and in fact steers him right up to it, - to death: this
is the final goal of the miserable journey and worse for him that all the
reefs he managed to avoid."

------
chrisbennet
"Enough is an abundance to the wise." -Euripides

If you want to be happy, let go of your ego. Love or be kind to other people
without expectations of reciprocity - even the a*holes.

------
henning
See also:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U)

------
gentleman11
This is portrayed as being about social recognition. Is it? The facts talk
about deeply anti social behaviour. This is about chasing a flow state

------
sunstone
And other people make the conscious choice to be happy. More or less in the
epicurean style.

------
gnator
Should definitely read I don't want to talk about it by Terrance Real which
dives into this.

------
mysterEFrank
important read for the hacker news crowd

------
yelloweyes
It's not a choice. It's a disease. No one chooses to be miserable.

~~~
commandlinefan
Well, the article makes it look like striving for accomplishment necessarily
makes you miserable, and makes the comparison to alcoholism. If so, it's a
very deeply buried, unconscious misery: alcoholics wake up and go to sleep
feeling horrible and will tell you out loud that they're miserable whenever
they're sober and wish that they could stop feeling so awful. Pursuing
excellence doesn't (in and of itself) ravage your body or destroy your sleep.

I'm fascinated by computers, and I like to spend time learning more about
them. This doesn't make me miserable, it makes me happy (and, lucky for me, I
can turn this into money too). It _does_ make the people around me
uncomfortable: they figure that if they were reading a book about programming
computers, _they_ would be miserable, so they try to talk me out of
"punishing" myself.

