I really believe this type of thinking and the philosophies spawned by it are harmful. It's easy to find flaws even with premise #1, that "suffering is bad".
We choose to suffer for things we deem worth suffering for even if they don't bring us "joy". In an extreme example of this, we might even choose to jump in front of a car if it means saving a child.
I think a lot of things in this philosophical vein are a symptom of disconnection from society. I truly believe that if you are socially enmeshed with others around you and deeply care about their well being (friends, family, maybe even a partner and/or pets and/or children), or have other things in the world that you deeply care about, (e.g. nature, art, etc.), it would seem odd to try and deduce life from first principles, since these "worldly attachments" are an immediate and obvious source of meaning, value, and direction.
Regarding section 3 - what even is "true happiness", anyway? I'd say (without evidence) that among those who are financially secure, the happiest people are probably those who are content and don't spend all their time wondering about how happy they are; the more you think about this topic the more you'll focus how you can be happier and just end up dissatisfied as a result. A mindset of optimizing for happiness will accidentally make you unhappy.
With all that said, I do like the author's section about trying to align yourself with reality as much as possible.
> I'd say (without evidence) that among those who are financially secure, the happiest people are probably those who are content and don't spend all their time wondering about how happy they are; the more you think about this topic the more you'll focus how you can be happier and just end up dissatisfied as a result. A mindset of optimizing for happiness will accidentally make you unhappy.
Fantastic point.
How do you escape the trap? How do you make yourself happier without worrying about happiness?
It seems like a meditation discipline could be helpful for addressing this. How else would you tackle it?
> How do you escape the trap? How do you make yourself happier without worrying about happiness?
I think part of the answer is in the quotation you quote: "the happiest people are probably those who are content and don't spend all their time wondering about how happy they are.".
My experience agrees with that! For instance, less than 30 minutes ago I went take my kid to the kindergarten and on my way back saw an house for sale, and my automatic response was something like "why do others have money and I can't get a higher paying job". Fortunately, I was paying attention to my thoughts, caught that one on time, and reminded myself that I do already own a house, it's almost payed, and I do have a good (enough) life.
> It seems like a meditation discipline could be helpful for addressing this. How else would you tackle it?
What I try to do is to catch those kind of thoughts before they make serious damage, and realistically remind myself of the path that I chose and what I have now as consequence.
I wouldn't say that I can do it successfully every time, as I've been lately fighting these exact thoughts that I should earn more money (because of small kid, family, inflation, etc.), and I enter a spiral of reading HN for posts about people switching from academia to industry (my current dilema), and lose sleep, and get tired. But after some time (used to be months, now weeks), I try to calm down, realize that yes I'm bored but I do have enough free time, earn above average (for the country, not for the industry), and an interesting opportunity may appear eventually.
So, I'm not a perfect example of success, but I do try my best to remind myself to be content with what I have achieved so far. It's a balance, and it's hard to strike. And being content (some of the times) doesn't mean that I've reached "nirvana".
Don't know if what I wrote makes sense (still tired), but hope it helps.. :/
How exactly do you aim for contentedness? What series of steps would you recommend? Is it like being "cool", where you have to find it without seeking it?
By setting the bar lower, honestly. A walk in nature isn't very likely to make you happy, but it is quite likely to make you content. Happy is the top of the scale. Content is "good enough".
I have a slight tendency towards gloominess and light depression and for me the most powerful tool has been to change how I answer "how are you doing", both when other people ask and when I ask myself. Instead of trying to figure out if I'm happy, I just look if anything bad has happened yet. Usually the answer is no, so I can answer "doing good so far" pretty much always. Doing this has improved my mood incredibly. That's the same sort of happy-vs-content thing I'm talking about.
It's like going to sleep. If you try to will yourself to sleep it will invariably fail. Instead you have to make the conditions right and sleep will mostly happen by itself. Similarly you shouldn't try to be happy. You should try to not be unhappy -- by removing things that make you unhappy, or by learning to live with them without it affecting your mood too much -- and the rest will follow.
I wouldn't say I'm an expert in this area, but I have made some large strides over the past few years. It's definitely something I had to "seek out", for reasons I'll explain here. I used to obsess all the time over how I compare relative to others, and was generally walking around feeling terrible with constant reminders everywhere of how I compare to others, now I only have these thoughts occasionally and when it does happen, I can dismiss the thought relatively quickly. This was only possible through a couple years of intentional effort to unlearn comparison-related thought patterns.
In practice, I'd say the feeling of "contentedness" is less of a feeling of "coolness" or "relaxation", and more like a very "normal" feeling (like how you already feel 90% of the day) where your head is either kind of empty or running full of random things. It's mostly about the absence of negative spirals of thinking.
As far as the changes I made, the specific steps I took were along a framework of addressing habits. I think that fleeting thoughts of comparing to others are kind of like an addictive habit like smoking. First a thought like "others are doing better / are happier than me / I should be doing xyz to be happier" comes, either for no reason or from some environmental trigger, and then you dwell on the thought which is what causes the unhappiness.
One possible step is removing triggers - I think these triggers tend to be social, so if you're surrounded by people who constantly brag or make verbal comparisons to others, spend less time with them if you're able to, and spend more time with others that you enjoy the company of. Also, as bad as it sounds, it's also useful to spend less time around friends who are unhappy / have bad mental health and spend more time around happy people (or pets), I think mindsets of optimism and contentedness can rub off when they're "normal" (i.e., if everyone around you thinks in that way).
In my case, I started spending a lot less time with a particular depressed friend (it felt like a shitty move at the time, but after improving my situation I was able to come back and spend time with them again in a more resilient mindset where their thought patterns don't rub off on me), talking way less with my parents who were comparing me to others a lot (ditto about feeling like a shitty move at the time but being able to come back), began having way less depressing / "deep" / "philosophical" conversations with friends, and spent more time with friends and acquaintances (+ my cat) who seem social and who don't talk about themselves/others too much.
Along this vein, my litmus test for whether I consider a friendship to be positive for me was, "if this person ends up more successful than me, would I be happy or jealous?". If I'd feel happy, then it's because I deeply care about them, the same way I would be happy and excited if my sister or parents struck it rich. If I feel even slightly jealous, then it's because I don't genuinely care about them in the same way, instead I'm using them as an index for how successful I want to be, and any friendship resulting from that will be full of social comparisons and won't be enjoyable for me. Also, cutting social media feeds (but still staying on messaging apps like Messenger, Instagram DM, WhatsApp, etc.) was also a really good move, basically it eliminated the downside of social comparison while keeping the upside of social connection.
The second step is removing "dwelling" on these fleeting thoughts like "am I happy?" "are others happier?" etc. A band-aid solution is to dismiss such thoughts when you recognize them by acknowledging that your circumstances are pretty good and that it's a bit vain to obsess over your personal happiness levels when things are already pretty decent. I used the statement "stop being so vain" to dismiss these thoughts for a while which seemed to work pretty well. Eventually I didn't have to use this bandaid because I just unlearned the habit of dwelling.
With that said, this is just my approach and what worked for me, everyone has different circumstances etc., but I'm sure some of it could translate to others' circumstances. Hope this helps!
We choose to suffer for things we deem worth suffering for even if they don't bring us "joy". In an extreme example of this, we might even choose to jump in front of a car if it means saving a child.
I think a lot of things in this philosophical vein are a symptom of disconnection from society. I truly believe that if you are socially enmeshed with others around you and deeply care about their well being (friends, family, maybe even a partner and/or pets and/or children), or have other things in the world that you deeply care about, (e.g. nature, art, etc.), it would seem odd to try and deduce life from first principles, since these "worldly attachments" are an immediate and obvious source of meaning, value, and direction.
Regarding section 3 - what even is "true happiness", anyway? I'd say (without evidence) that among those who are financially secure, the happiest people are probably those who are content and don't spend all their time wondering about how happy they are; the more you think about this topic the more you'll focus how you can be happier and just end up dissatisfied as a result. A mindset of optimizing for happiness will accidentally make you unhappy.
With all that said, I do like the author's section about trying to align yourself with reality as much as possible.