There's More to Life Than Being Happy (2013)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
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...
Though I can understand your point of view, I'm not a parent myself, but when I read that bit, I immediately had to think "whether this is actually true or not, most parents are probably going to disagree vehemently".
But on the whole, IMO it's a rather minor point. I'm not sure if it's true either (but if it was I can easily imagine most parents to have a bias that still makes them disagree), and because of that it distracts.
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?
1) Be good at what you do.
2) Keep your expenses well below your means.
With these two things, there are many ways to arrange your life to have enough time to pursue your passions. You can freelance or contract 20-30 hours a week, or work for a year or two in a regular job and then quit and take months off, or you can take Mr Money Mustache's approach and bust your ass to save up enough to retire within 10 years.
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.
Why don't you consider this as work?
* 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.
I've always found it strange we all "go to work" to earn money, then trade that money for the things we actually need like food and shelter - and sometimes some wants like entertainment.
The problem with using money as a middle-man is that it's very inefficent, because everyone along the line takes some. i.e. taxes, inflation, greed of your boss/company, the bank, etc. etc.
I aim to simply cut out the middle man and directly get what I want, which turns out to be way more efficient, i.e. takes way less time, which means I will have way more time to do whatever I want.
I live in Canada / Australia so it's no issue.
If you live in a country that doesn't have health care for all, you need to move.
Take note that I moved from Australia to Canada 9 years ago. It's a long process. It's a lot of paperwork. It's worth it if you get healthcare, no doubt about it.
> And how do you plan for times when you're more likely of not being able to do physical work anymore (in your 70 or 80s)?
Government pensions in both Canada and Australia are actually more than I usually live on, so I'll be fine if that's all I have, but I'm also putting money into retirement savings accounts that will supplement that (which also means I pay extremely little income tax when I am working).
I also won't be surprised if I wind up doing "reverse retirement" as my brother calls it - live life now while my body allows it, then work more when my body is giving up and I'm not so excited to be outside hiking/biking/snowboaring.
How much do you pay into those if you're not earning anything?
Do you still get health benefits when unemployed?
Afaik (and I really don't know for sure, because luckily I had never the misfortune to need it) it is paid by the welfare system. However, there are many rules and obligations to be edible and honestly, I wouldn't want to have to deal with the bureaucracy. There are several steps towards this. First, after becoming unemployed, you'll receive unemployment support, but only if you've worked before! They also demand that you use your own savings and securities to support yourself. After that runs out, you'll receive the bare minimum monthly allowance, which is around 300 to 400 Euros per month. You don't get that easily. As long as there are relatives, the state is very likely to get the money from them first. You'll also get free housing, but that's also far from what one desires (bad neighborhood, very small, etc.).
> Do you still get health benefits when unemployed?
Very likely, because health insurance is mandatory for everyone. So the system is built upon the idea that those who are able to pay also support those who are unable. However, it is very frowned upon to "abuse" this system and rest in the social hammock (that's a very literal translation, sorry). That's because the whole social system is regarded as a safety net, but not for individuals who don't want or can't contribute.
Right now there are tons of people driving and riding around there - it's perfectly do-able.
After having 4 way bypass surgery at 48 years old I knew my life needed to change. I worked for a bank and worked 60+ hrs a week. In fact many weeks were near 80 hours. Providing credit cards to the poor was not what I considered a meaningful job. But I was unhappy as well. It still took me 4+ years to figure out what I wanted to do. It was a complex road and it took a lot of visualization of my ultimate satisfaction (note not happiness) before I was able to leave this very well paying role.
I now lead a small web development team at a university. I scrum coach a broader high performing team, get to write some code (which I love even when I pound my head on the wall trying to figure out that defect) and interact with people that love what they do.
Even though I had not been much of a church goer, when I was on the table ahead of my bypass surgery and waiting to be knocked out I said a prayer to God asking if I was going to be alright. I got a very strong answer that was "You will be fine. It is not about you but the kids." Well I thought, at the time, that was about my kids but I later learned it was about other kids.
So I came to be at a university. But the drive to help kids also has me mentoring FIRST robots teams, mentoring FIRST robotics coaches, being one of the organizers of a annual maker event (RVA MakerFest). Speaking to high school students about a variety of topics, mentoring high school students and more.
I could probably be happier having a less complex life. Many days start early working on the volunteer work and end after doing the same in the evening.
Getting to this place required an exercise in visualizing my demise. I was asked by someone to write down my obituary and what others would say. I was not able to come up with much that was positive. So I choose to find meaning helping K12 students and College Students. My own kids now tell me how I was a grump before and now they love doing things with me (most of the time when not parenting).
As I now start to approach retirement (2 years) I will volunteer more not less.
For your pleasure you may find this helpful. I did. http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psy...
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.
You can't really control how you feel about your children once they are born.
It's not like you are making a deliberate, conscious decision to value their life over your own. That decision has already been made for you by your biology.
I know parents that think of parenting as jail for 18 years. I think of it as a gift to me to help shape their lives.
I believe I have free will at least in the sense that I can choose whether to follow my instincts or fight them. Remember, we have many instincts other than caring for our children, and a bunch of those aren't really meaningful in today's society anymore, and a few of those actually need to be fought, and the majority of well-adapted people succeed at that just fine, because they choose to. There are other instincts we do not fight, because they align nicely with our sense of what is "good" and what is "right" (which I believe is not based on instinct), and in cases like raising children they even aid us and strengthen our resolve. Sounds like a win to me.
(not a parent, btw).
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.
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.
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.