There's a reason why Kahneman famously gave up[1] on happiness research, because of our muddled thinking about it.
Instead, he argues (which I fully agree with) that we should focus on reducing misery. As a society it is far more difficult to agree on "maximizing well-being", but "minimizing suffering" is an objective we can all agree on as a measure of policy.
And he says, setting "reduction of misery" as an objective for policy would result in very different activities.
That’s interesting, Schopenhauer (and, to my knowledge, the Vedantic tradition) define suffering to be the positive aspect (not as in good, but as in known or evident) and what we experience as happiness to be a negation of that.
I’d be interested on exploring this further, is it an active avenue of research?
For current work, Paul Bloom comes to mind: "The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering ..." Probably there are others too.
From about 50 years ago, I'd also highly recommend "Toward a Psychology of Being" by Abraham Maslow. What a writer!
That said, ideas about "graceful suffering" go back to the Greek and Roman Stoics from more 2000 years ago. Read some Seneca and Epictetus, I'd say. FWIW, I've written a detailed list of high-quality English translations here[1].
I think the reference might be that some versions of suffering focused ethics entails positions like antinatalism in the short term, and the extinction of suffering capable life as a great good in the long term.
considering the great amount of miserable, unworthy lives (factory farmed animals, heavily abused and tortured humans, etc) that exist and will likely exist even in some amount in even the "utopian" far future, it's reasonable for someone who doesn't think this all this can be counterweighed by any amount of pleasurable lives to consider permanent extinction as good.
and of course in the short term, suffering focused ethics may entail antinatalism as your children can't suffer, be abused, abuse animals, eat factory farmed meat if you just don't have children.
Nice, but a lot of words. Happiness is how you choose to relate - that is, happily. It takes practice and exercise, and then over time, it's who you are. If it sounds simplistic, think of it like body building, where instead of lifting weights, you choose to relate happily, It's within the reach of every conscious being with choice.
That said, choosing happiness is obviously often difficult, and also easier if you have someone you can ask for help, either a person, or a deity, a buddha, or maybe just a dog. If you are a committed atheist, you can always say, please dog, help me choose happiness. I can pretty much guarantee they will give you the only answer you need. Woof.
Even as atheist one can converse with fictive entities. I would even go as far as telling that in any society that have any form of administration, one will have to deal with fictive entities.
Back on the focus to happiness, I just finished to read ACT Made Simple: An Easy-To-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy[1]. I recommend it to anyone who thinks there is too much hindrances between them and happiness, or any life-according-to-own-values aim. What I especially appreciated in the book:
- humor is often used at right level
- it doesn’t sell itself as a stack of miracle turn-key solutions that works 100% of time
- the work itself doesn’t simply expose practical skills and techniques, it is a living example of applying them
Happiness is a marketing term. It isn’t a real thing, it’s an aspirational state which we are told we can attain through a lifetime of hard work, through buying things, through reading this book, with this one simple trick, click to read more.
As long as you seek happiness, you will never, ever find contentment, as you will forever be chasing the tail of a dragon.
For me, I just one day gave up on the idea that I could ever be happy. I had a long, dark teatime of the soul, but came out of it absolutely content with my lot. Completely changed my life and how I live, and while I wouldn’t say I live in some kind of state of exuberant ecstasy day to day, I am content, and am no longer burdened by the quest for a reified concept.
You can apply marketing methodologies on basically anything and "flood market with it" to the point where it is depleted of any positive impact it might have when used properly.
If you look at people who are flagged as "happiest man in the world", people like Matthieu Ricard[1], you will be very far from the image of someone that reached "some kind of state of exuberant ecstasy day to day".
Make do with as little as you can in every aspect of life without torturing yourself. IMO this also counts for creative ambitions: there are writers who propose to postpone writing for as long as you can.
Healthy long-term relationships, on the other side, seem to require a fair amount of luck, though.
I agree, but I think you need hope in order to be happy. I.e. happiness is the combination of high hopes and low expectations.
Without high hopes you could just be anticipating things to get worse which tends to lead to anxiety and just a general glum outlook on life. Hoping things will be better tomorrow, but expecting things to get worse is a subtle but important mindset shift.
Not my experience at all. It leads to joy and happiness when things go better than I expected. Also, I never stop working on improving things. There is always a chance that things are actually better than I expect.
Haha, I was only aware of the basic idea. I had no idea there's so much work coming up with more optimal algorithms, but I guess it makes sense considering.
It would be amusing if the extra details didn't break down the analogy....
There's a point past which it falls apart. I can just lower my expectations to the point that I don't expect my basic human such as food etc. to be met and be happy? Really?
The only way I have seen where this actually succeeds involves believing there is something better than this existence, available on the other side through the deprivation. And at that point, arguably, there is not a lowered expectation, but rather a new, heightened one.
How do you define happiness in the first place? Is it a bliss, joy, pleasure, an ecstatic state of mind, the satisfaction of one's desires, or the absence of them? All of the above? Perhaps none of them?
Personally, I define happiness as being content with where you are right now - you wouldn't want to be in any other place, in any other time, in any other state of mind. You're happy here, right now. You have your inner peace.
I was listening to a podcast some time ago, and one quote struck a chord with me: “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want”.
> “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want”
Poetic, yes, but doesn't agree with my experience. Anticipation brings excitement and a certain taste of happiness. I would say my 'happiness level' rises closer I am to the goal, and drops fairly quickly after obtaining the goal. If I wanted to maximize someone's happiness over time, I'd try to keep them in state where they are almost achieving their set goals for as long as possible.
> Anticipation brings excitement and a certain taste of happiness.
It does bring excitement and joy, but this feeling is rather - you constantly have to chase it.
> If I wanted to maximize someone's happiness over time, I'd try to keep them in state where they are almost achieving their set goals for as long as possible.
There's a risk of burning out, so I'd be careful with that.
I seem to find happiness when I'm not concerned with finding it, and just fully involved in the situation/moment.
Perhaps this is because I don't really pay attention to my happiness level when I'm actually happy, and so can "enjoy" the moment by being fully present.
Yet, I feel my happiness isn't tied to how good or bad the particular situation I find myself in is (as I can't really control that), but more about how I deal with it.
It's almost as if my happiness is tied to my ability to step up to the plate and meet any situation head on.
Happiness is a "skill", not simply a "decision". A skill has to be learnt from the very basics, practiced day to day, and ultimately perfected to the point where the behaviour becomes second nature. Playing the mind skillfully is perhaps as difficult as playing multiple musical instruments simultaneously :) Which also means we all have large room for training and improvement throughout our lives.
... studies show people expect their break-ups to be longer and more painful than they are, in part because we forget that our psychological immune system will kick in and we’ll decide we never liked the person anyway.
I must be missing this "psychological immune system," as breakups of what (to me) were deeply committed relationships have been the most painful, longest-lasting things I've ever experienced.
Yep. It's more likely that [certain] studies show [a proportion of] people expect their break-ups to be longer and more painful than they actually are.
I would have liked to see links to those studies in the article to evaluate them. I was unexpectedly broken up with once (after committing for around 'just' a couple months), and it hurt for far longer and was more painful than I thought it might be. Things were mostly better after 4 months, and rarely thought of after around 8 months.
Nice article, highly agree with it! :) i’ve spent the last few years building an app fir your first point: “write down three things you’re grateful for every day” https://mindhappy.page.link/app
Its really amazing to see entries from years ago and you can effectively learn what you like from doing this consistently
A superficial feedback based on your play-store presence:
Your app icon is aesthetically unappealing. The yellows, reds and greens are too saturated and clash with each other and with blue background. I wouldn't want to keep seeing that icon on my phone app list.
The app itself also has questionable design choices. The light blue background is too saturated and not good for text readability. I understand the brown background is not part of the app, but it still leaves bad impression in the screenshots. Maybe a color selection tool like huemint.com could be used for more pleasant and usable experience.
Text entry box would benefit from more padding.
There is a screenshot ("73 entries") showing two days with no notes in them, with huge and meaningless cards; that seemed strange and unrepresentative.
The app description doesn't make it clear which features require subscription.
I hope this feedback helps. Didn't intend to be insulting in any way.
Actually the regions have comparable life satisfaction, but people say California because they think of the weather and fail to take account of other things, such as the fact that California is full of tedious hippies.
Hahaha. He just slipped that one in there :p;) xx ;p x
I realized this a bit too late, but hopefully it helps someone - Try to optimize matching what you want to do with what you think is the right thing to do in as many situations as possible.
Do you want a happy life, or a worthwhile life? I think they're probably correlated, but I don't think you can guarantee one without risking the other. In that light, optimizing for happiness seems like the wrong move.
Long-term happiness could mean deferring gratification. Caveat emptor: trying to then execute long term plans to achieve that deferred gratification but which go awry in the intervening time can start to turn a gambit into pure misery. From personal experience, I'd suggest building redundancy in the form of things like savings and relationships, before letting an inclination for ambition risk leading you to build long and brittle pipelines which fall apart as soon as unexpected hardship strikes.
It's a cliche, but a lot of the unstated reasons we were happy at one time were there all along, until they start to slip away (social connections, health, etc.)--usually without realizing the extent this has happened until years later. As a rule of thumb, I'd suggest that the most important thing to nurture over the years are your friendships and social connections (even if that means just a chat message every few days to a close friend from college who moved to another city), which are probably your best shot at adapting your new life situation to feel more at home with happier moments in the past, but which also look forward to the future (after all, friendships are more than just shared memories--they're comprised of living, breathing people, and as such can lead to new experiences and connections that lead to even better things than just holding onto what once was).
Finally, if you really think about it, maybe the easiest way to be happy is really the satisfaction you get knowing you've brought genuine happiness to someone else. :-)
The wrong move for people who want a worthwhile life, maybe. I’m not convinced that I, and perhaps a significant fraction of humanity, would choose a worthwhile life if we could only pick one to optimize for.
People can define what is worthwhile to them, such as helping others at their own expense. Perhaps one could argue that is what makes them "happy" and thus achieve "happiness" even though they might be suffering.
> you could be joyful but think your life is worthless
I find this hard to believe. At a certain point I think a lack of meaning in your life is going to make you day-to-day unhappy, whatever you’re spending those days doing.
>> you could be joyful but think your life is worthless
> I find this hard to believe.
Albert Camus developed the philosophy of Absurdism around a very similar idea. A gross oversimplification is that in the grand scheme of things, logically and objectively our lives have no meaning, but our brains are wired to need meaning. The solution is to create that meaning for ourselves even while acknowledging that meaning is a delusion.
I think there is some truth to this. Many of my colleagues who come from well-off families seem to struggle with finding meaning in their life, and I suspect it might be because work quite literally doesn't have a purpose for them - they could quit working today and not have to worry for many years, possibly forever.
To me, I work so I can earn money and provide for my family, which I don't take for granted. That alone makes any work-related annoyance not such a big deal.
Of course I also like getting intrinsic pleasure from work, social relationships, rewarding hobbies, etc., but I find meaning in life prior any of those, which is a good defense mechanism for when one or more of those things aren't going so well.
>The solution is to create that meaning for ourselves even while acknowledging that meaning is a delusion.
Well, that also can be presented as "freedom of purpose". If you associate freedom to some positive and desirable situation, then you should welcome with gratitude that universe doesn’t come with any pre-established meaning for your life.
You still have to deal with the fact that you can’t write on the book of universe as easily as you can fantasize any made up story, and that you are not alone with accreditations to write with some level of freedom.
I think a better argument is that there is no objectivity to begin with. It's all subjective. If you believe life is meaningless, it is. If you believe there's meaning, there is.
> If you believe life is meaningless, it is. If you believe there's meaning, there is.
If you believe that there's meaning, and struggle to achieve said meaning, but ultimately failing, or ultimately proven that the struggle was ineffective at achieving said meaning, you will turn bitter and end up unhappy.
If you believe life is meaningless, you will observe that your internal model is correct, and thus be vindicated, if not cynical towards everything.
> you will observe that your internal model is correct
What I was saying is that there is nothing extrinsic to compare an internal model to, so you should know that any meaning created is your own. Creating meaning that requires you achieve something and possibly fail seems unnecessary.
I view willful ignorance as a method of resisting potential pain - and resisting anything usually introduces its own pain at some level. I find that being aware of, and accepting of pain works well for me, although I'm not always good at it.
Alternatively, what’s wrong with just accepting that there is no meaning to our existence..? Why not laugh at the absurdity of it all instead? Don’t worry about this or that, just be…
Why should the meaning of life we choose for ourselves be a delusion?
I get the point that this meaning is arbitrary (in the sense that it has no ground since the world is absurd).
But as long as this meaning works for you, who cares if others find it meaningless?
Loneliness may be an issue though, but this is where the internet, among other ways, makes a difference. You can look for like-minded people or
publish your work, your project, your ideas to attract people interested.
Some just can't stand a meaning world, but many as I consider this lack of meaning as a requirement for our freedom.
I'm an atheist ; the absurdity of the world appeared to me at an early age - as an experience than my body can feel, an emotion, that only my mind made a rationale of.
However, raised in an open-minded but deeply Catholic family, the Bible points that very clearly. God is said to have given humans the freedom to choose to follow the path of Jesus. Or not.
Faith implies doubt, by definition. Having faith is not to be absolutely sure of the existence of God. Faith is hope despite the doubt, and God asks of the believers their fortitude in their faith into Him.
The "ultra" believers, those who have no doubt, are not "in the faith". They are usually fanatics, those kinds of people who think they are always right and want others to be like them.
It's like courage: being courageous means going over our fears. If you have no fear to handle in doing something, then your courage is not tested.
If you have no doubt whatsoever in the meaning of life, you are either a fanatic (whatever you do, some are moneymaking fanatic, fame-fanatic, power-fanatic or racist misogynist incels, hate also provides meaning, onviously) or someone who avoid at all cost to face the absurdity of the world.
For example, I have close friends who are always super busy. If they have half an hour of free time, they feel bad: they feel an emptiness that they can't bare.
The world is absurd? Great, we are totally free to give ourselves the meaning we want to our life! Isn't that amazing?
Find your crowd! They are people out there sharing your meaning of life. Create a community of intention, so that you live in the world you want.
"Become who you are".
I'm not saying it's easy, and not everybody is in capacity to be free. But most educated people are, if they want to. But acting freely requires courage, much more than succeeding in the career and the way of life the society wants you to.
That meaning of life that works for you doesn't have to be "for life". One path may prove less meaningful that expected. Loving to dev on projects you want to work on is meaningful to many. Having a well-paid job as a developer can be utterly meaningless: hence the so many side-projects to retrieve a bit of spontaneous enthusiasm whike coding.
Sometimes, what has been meaningful for years is not anymore. Many men live that during their 40s, the so-called " mid-life crisis". Or you are done, that meaning doesn't work anymore. So what? Is it lost? No! As long as you had meaningful years, that's a huge win. Just time to move on and explore another part of yourself or becoming someone else.
I'm both a joyful person, and perhaps the futility of the entire Universe is what makes me so joyful in laughing at the meaningless of it all, while also appreciating the connections, insights and flames that are ultimately worthless.
> I find this hard to believe.
I would suggest you give Emil Cioran [0] some time. It sounds like the kind of person that you find hard to believe exists, so might provide some context.
Instead, he argues (which I fully agree with) that we should focus on reducing misery. As a society it is far more difficult to agree on "maximizing well-being", but "minimizing suffering" is an objective we can all agree on as a measure of policy.
And he says, setting "reduction of misery" as an objective for policy would result in very different activities.
[1] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-why-no...