The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But, I think some of us aren’t necessarily in the hedonic treadmill game. Some of us keep working to gain more wealth not be of higher social status but because we fear being relegated back to poor-guy status.
Now, I often do want to be the non-rich guy again. I see many of my friends making 30k a year and enjoying life. And, I often take time off to hang with my old friends because it gets me out of my bubble and also because it’s more authentic to me. I get tired of wearing a mask.
But, I keep driving myself for wealth because I find it gives me security. As a poor kid, I can’t tell you how many times I was targeted by the power hierarchy. Being at the bottom of the social ladder hurts. You get abused and bullied. You have no voice or remedy when you (often) become the target of those with wealth. It hurts mentally, emotionally, financially, and - as the police are mostly paid to watch you - it can wind you in prison.
No, I can’t deal with that feeling. I want money because it gives me access and it keeps the creepers away.
As a short form :
"I'm not running to the top, I'm running away from the bottom."
Just yesterday I was talking to someone who's father contributed $10,000 to the reelection campaign for the local sheriff. I asked him why he did that and the response was so that the sheriff would feel obligated to the guy's father.
Privileged people don’t get how much of a trap the world is when you aren’t privileged.
There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.
The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.
Are we talking about feeling happiness twice as much as feeling sadness? 4x, 10x? Sadness can come from things outside our control.
I think a better goal is are you present? Are you listening to yourself and to what you really want for your life?
Everyone will want different things but making an emotion the goal is a fools errand.
If you took away my marriage and job, I would be markedly more unhappy. I imagine if I ever have a big wad of cash sitting around, I would be a bit less happy if that disappeared too (only because keeping it around certainly would only keep me at the status quo, if not make me more happy).
What's that they say about coming into a lot of money, that it just reveals who your true self is?
And yes, some people get into crappy marriages or crappy jobs where they just get knocked down 24/7. But I've observed that negative people easily self-prophesy into negative situations far more often than positive people.
edit: added points
Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot until I actually paid attention to some of his interviews and lectures, talks a lot about this. Happiness is a pretty crappy goal to have. It's a side effect of pursuing actual, worthwhile goals. People need to take some responsibility for their own state of mind and the things they are choosing to do that affect it.
Also, worthy goals often bring pain. They often require you to forego own hapiness for something you consider more valuable. They often leave you burnout, feeling empty, unsatisfied and tired maybe even ressentfull. In particular, caregiving work is often like that. Soldiers also follow goals worthy to them (whether you personally agree or not with this or that goal) and are not happier in the result - it is called sacrifice for a reason. Those two are just obvious examples, not the only ones.
In addition to all that, your own happy personally worthy goal often brings unhappiness to somebody else, often to familly. It is extremely unfair to then blame that person for his or her own unhappiness since that has a lot to do with mine (or yours) decisions.
It's a response. Internal responses, sure, but also - and more dramatically - to external ones.
> Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot
Trust your initial instincts ;)
It helps his cause that many criticisms of him are terrible and involve many fabrications.
This youtube channel contra points is a much better criticism then mine: https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas
Fobbing that off as "well he's just being mean to us nice people", when they went after his career and means of supporting his family (at the time), doesn't cut it.
The path to become happy isn't instant though, it's much more complex than flipping a light switch, it's definitely harder for some than others (and possibly even impossible for some sadly), but for sure, you need to decide to become happy if you ever want to be.
".... and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know."[https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...]
Teach yourself how to cook, get in shape, draw a picture, write a story, help someone less fortunate, teach someone something you know, learn how to juggle... In the end it doesn't really matter what it is but you will have that proud feeling and be happy in that moment. Rinse and repeat.
What I have found permanently effective is practicing gratefulness. Every day I make it a point to think of things that I am genuinely grateful to have, or to have experienced. This (for me), more than anything else, helps put my mind at ease, and allow me to enjoy the life that I have.
The issue is this is hard and takes a lot of dedicated work to do.
But does that really mean that being happy is not a choice?
A paraplegic is unable to choose to move their legs due to a medical condition - would they assert that 'moving your legs is not a choice'?
I'm far more apt to believe that people's lives are getting worse and that they're depressed as a result. People are lonelier than ever and society's problems are bigger and more abstract than ever.
We're no longer even cogs in a machine, we're atoms in a cog. Meaning in life has become extremely elusive.
The really insidious thing is that many of the big players and driving forces behind these trends saw it coming, knew that what they were building may have far-reaching negative consequences, and then chose to do it anyway for the sake of money. What a time to be alive, right?
Then there is the depression you get after a bad relationship, or as you said, an increasingly individualistic and adversarial consumer society that goers against our social instincts.
> “Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”
Some good articles on the political-economic phenomenon of depression, the response of mainstream treatment techniques and mental health in general:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...
This is why when people start on antidepressants it is a process of trying different ones until they find one that works.
> “The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”
Stability allowed me to have time for introspection.
Introspection allowed me to target issues in my life.
Fixing those issues is lowering my discomfort in life.
Money won't fix anything for you but it will provide you an environment where you can.
- I forgot who first said this.
The lows are very different when you have money and when you don't have money.
When you are struggling financially and a single event (e.g. car breaking down) can spiral into wrecking your entire life, you it's hard to "let go" of that.
When you are financially stable there are a lot of frustrations (e.g. work stress) you can learn to cope with, control, or let go of.
If the same thing happened today I could just shrug it off and carry on regardless.
I am not rich now but I have spare cash and this makes an immeasurable positive difference in ways one cannot conceive without the benefit of an alternative experience.
When I was unemployed for a while even the smallest problem was all-consuming because I had to worry about losing my last money and everything else.
* If you're broke and the car breaks down, it's both a car crisis and an extra financial crisis (need money to fix the car).
* If you have enough money saved and the car breaks down, it's merely a car crisis ... and, given that you're capable of fixing the car, it's less of a crisis, at that.
The whole dynamic changes.
For example, I live in Canada and unless you life in the capital of the province everything is really far away.
A lot of people live in cheap apartment blocks of rural areas and it can be a walk of pretty much an hour to get to the groceries store. There is public transit but it's usually every few hours instead of a constant traffic, so you have to plan your entire day around it.
I do agree with your main point that public transit should be one of the main investment of a country.
When I was a kid we had no access to a car, quality food or enough money for over the counter medication (acne, mild infections, etc.). Luckily we live in Canada where we can get prescribed medication for free, so none of us died of dangerous infections or anything like that.
We only managed to grow healthy and avoid criminality because our mother is a saint of a woman who sacrificed her adult life to give us a chance for something better.
I really doubt the lack of wealth gave us any comfort and that gaining wealth created any discomfort.
So that people can go to work out of personal choice and not out of desperation.
Or maybe I am the one misunderstanding, in which case - you can be sure I am a supporter of social safety net.
However as someone experienced not only with the excellent public healthcare system in the north of Europe or in Germany, but with the more average ones in the union as well, IMO you should look at Switzerland more than at the EU. You talk of the EU system as if it is awesome everywhere - it's not. Answer for yourself - are your local governments as efficient, robust and not corrupt as the German is?
Well said. This describes my experiences really well.
You can't take it with you, and you don't know how long you have to live. So there is no point in saving money for the sake of saving money. There are few religions that disagree, if you belong to such a religion I guess saving for the next life makes sense.
I think research has found that people really overestimate how much "meaningful" or "enjoyable" employment is worth to them. Last I read, it was worth about 20% of one's salary on average, at least when you survey people.
To me, this makes sense. We have a limited number of days on this earth. If we're going to trade some of them for other resources, it's easy to see that you should get the best value for that trade possible. Anything less is basically giving away parts of your life.
Now that doesn't mean you should take a job that is actively unpleasant or unethical (although it explains why people do). But, personally, I can picture being significantly more satisfied with the day to day of my job. My current workplace is pleasant but not necessarily highly stimulating. On the other hand, it is highly compensated with good hours. That's the most important to me.
Maybe there won't be an opportunity for regret, but it's certainly not definitive.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/keeper-loves-flame-regin...!
Edit. Thought I'd expand on that. I grew up poor. Had a kid at 15. I've had to ward off wild animals from eating my food. I've injured myself doing stupid stuff (some injuries that have not fully healed even years later and they limit me near daily), I've been fired, I've changed careers, I've gone into debt when I should not have, I've not tended some friendships I should and I've lost them, I've made bad purchases. I could cry a river. I don't. I always try to make the best decision given the information I have. This year, I made a financial choice that had I not, I could have put an additional year's salary into my bank account. No regrets. I've done the best I can. Sometimes it hurts. I learn from it, and continue living.
Everyone's trying their best with what they've got. Sometimes you don't have the energy, information, innate ability, etc to make the absolute best choice. Actually many times. So you make the choice that is best according to your current circumstances and abilities.
That's not to say people can't improve. When they do, they've upped their level of "best they can do".
When I remind myself of this, that people are doing the best they can at that moment, it helps me forgive myself and forgive others for disappointing me.
We spend a lot of our time trying to add pleasure to our lives to (temporarily) boost us above our baseline happiness level, when really we should be spending that time learning how to change the baseline level itself.
Isn't it odd that there are monks who live with nothing who are probably happier than any of us?
I can't even measure my own "happiness" most of the time, and it's a different part of my brain giving that report (usually full of crap and not realistic) from the part that actually experiences "happiness".
Catholics nuns and monks are supposed to live cloistered and contemplative life, a lot (sometimes completely) isolated inside a monastery. Per definition. Note that sisters and brothers are something a bit different, they work in outside world and make different vows. The formation takes years, but once it is over, they take solemn vows and that is supposed to be for life. That is what you promises. The solemn vows make you nun or monk and you are not supposed to change opinion after. Obviously it is possible to leave, it is not even legal to keep you by force. But if you do that after vows religious consequences do follow.
Whether road outside is easy or difficult for those still in formation depends on monastery in question while it being easier now. I read both types of accounts. But all in all, it is supposed to be hard and my understanding was that every nun and monk goes through hard times (that is partly why they really did not liked defections in past and punished them - defection makes it harder on others in formation).
How hard final rules are depend on monastery. But most strict one limit your ability to talk to up to two hours a day. It is called recreation - you however do work at that time that requires talking and silent work otherwise. Friendships are regulated, you are not supposed to have special relationship with someone else, all should be treated the same including emotionally. In another monastery I read about man did lonely work whole day not talking and had one hour a day where they walked with partner and walked - you was told who it will be and you switched so that they spent same amount of time with everybody.
The way monks and nuns talk, without emotions is also because regulations, rules and vow of obeisance make them so. Talking with anger is wrong for them, content is how you are supposed to look like.
The vow of silence (useless and idle words are forbidden) and obeisance are quite important when speaking of potential happiness, you are really not supposed to say no to superior even if superior changed and is someone different you may not personally fit. If you are unhappy after such change, tough luck. Note the impact of vow of silence on your ability to discuss and compare experiences with fellow monks.
Another interesting bit is that a lot of formation is literally about making you as obeisant as possible, assigning you tasks that are useless while you are supposed to gently smile, answer "yes brother" and fill the hole you just dug. That is expected, just like in army training they have as purpose to fill you into certain mold.
They've traded a life of materialism and conflict for self-reflection, asceticism and charity. They don't just hide away and do nothing but take care of themselves.
> Here is the issue, you have a responsibility to the rest of the human race, to become self contained and not give back
This is not a truism and is open to philisophical debate.
The hand-licking story that made the front page today illustrates this point perfectly. Approached rationally, the mom could not solve the problem, no amount of mental effort would yield a resolution or insight into the issue. When the mind expects an answer to a problem that it can't solve, it applies more and more 'force' until it breaks through. In this case, the force was destroying her family relationships. But this is what frustrated rationalism does. People don't or can't catch themselves before they create awful situations.
It is only when she applied an irrational approach to the problem, surrendering the need to control the situation, that she could finally understand what was going on.
I rail against excessive rationality on HN all the time, promoting a more cautious, traditional outlook on certain things like office politics. I expect coders to be exceptionally rational, I don't have any issue with it.
But Americans in general are succumbing to the trend of expecting to be able to answer every question they ever have in their lives and throwing away their emotional health on meaningless symbols and missing the true core nature of what it means to be happy and healthy and whole.
Perhaps the starkest example of this phenomenon is when atheists lament that there aren't any atheist churches. 50 years ago, if you were an atheist, you still went to church. They were still the pillars that communities revolved around, the very loom of the fabric of society.
Nowadays, we've thrown away every last bit of symbolism that brings people together and wonder why we're so lonely. If things aren't perfectly rational, people's minds rebel immediately and harshly, like it's my fault you don't understand a concept requiring depth of study to really grasp.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the mind will create a myth if it doesn't already believe in one. Money, job, marriage is the American Dream myth. It stems ultimately from positivism and expecting to be able to understand everything.
It doesn't have to be this way. You might not be able to fix everybody else but you can fix yourself.
> It is only when she applied an irrational approach to the problem, surrendering the need to control the situation, that she could finally understand what was going on.
I feel like you have a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of "irrational" that you're applying here.
What I took from the hand-licking story was that her initial attempt to brute-force the issue without understanding it was irrational, i.e. "not logical or reasonable", and that approach failed. Then, quite reasonably and rationally, she backed off and established trust with her child, found out the underlying cause of the issue, and provided a solution that resolved the underlying issue.
If you see your child doing something anti-social, then it's logical to try to correct it because if you don't, it will cause problems for them down the road. In fact, it would have been irrational to not do anything about it.
It was only when the logical brain got overridden by maternal instinct that she could choose an approach that led eventually to a resolution.
The logical brain demands control over the situation. If she could have surrendered control earlier, perhaps even in the first few times she witnessed it, then she could have taken a less-combative approach.
There was nothing incorrect or irrational about the actions the mother initially took. Her approach was reasonable given the limited information available to her. A slightly more rational approach would perhaps have placed greater emphasis on the value of empathy and her relationship with her child, which was being undermined by some of the measures she took, and given correspondingly less weight to the social pressure she was feeling from others—but in the end she made the rational decision in line with her own principles and priorities and stopped trying to force the issue. Later, when her son was both able and willing to discuss the matter, she was able to analyse the root cause and suggest several rational alternative courses of action which were readily adopted, thus putting an end to the problem for good.
It's unclear from the write-up whether any maternal instincts were involved, but the peer pressure which pushed her to force the issue was clearly irrational and played on her instinctive desire for acceptance. Instincts and emotions are a good thing and shouldn't be ignored, but it's a mistake to follow them blindly—they can lead you into trouble just as easily as they can get you out of it. It's best to look at them as valuable inputs into the rational process, to be evaluated alongside other data before drawing any conclusions.
Only in retrospect did the actuality of the situation make itself known. There was no logical way to weigh one alternative against another. Sure, one later manifested, but it didn't exist in the moment.
This is why I say she used irrational means to decide to lay off. I recognized maternal instincts in her reasoning, which I'll quote here:
> Finally, I had this moment where I felt that my efforts to ramp up the pressure to force him to stop had crossed some line. I felt I was turning into an abusive parent.
> At that moment, I decided this had to stop. I didn't care if he licked his hands the rest of his life. It couldn't be worse than this.
Rational analysis failed, some other way of deciding how to handle it took hold. Notice the semantic shift here. She moved from articulating her decision-making process in a cold, logical fashion, then after the failure, she shifts to an empathic, emotional basis.
Over-reliance on and unexamined belief in rationality drives this. Sometimes there are multiple truths out there that you are going to have to choose between, with nothing to help to distinguish them. The over-rational mindset will concoct meaningless and even counter-productive forms of "rationality" to paper over their fundamental ignorance. The colloquial term at hand is lamp posting.
>> At that moment, I decided this had to stop. I didn't care if he licked his hands the rest of his life. It couldn't be worse than this.
> Rational analysis failed, some other way of deciding how to handle it took hold. Notice the semantic shift here. She moved from articulating her decision-making process in a cold, logical fashion, then after the failure, she shifts to an empathic, emotional basis.
I see the same shift that you mentioned, but unlike you I see the original exclusion of empathy and emotion from the decision-making process as irrational. Up to this point she'd been reacting instinctively and emotionally to the external pressure to make her son stop licking his hands, without considering whether that was really a worthwhile goal or what it might cost in terms of their relationship. Taking her empathy and emotion into account was the rational choice, and allowed her to set aside the peer pressure and clearly see and evaluate how her actions thus far failed to satisfy her own priorities and goals. At that point she rationally chose to stop forcing the issue.
> Sometimes there are multiple truths out there that you are going to have to choose between, with nothing to help to distinguish them.
The "colloquial term at hand" is false dichotomy. You are never forced to choose one potential truth over another. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable response. Naturally you still need to decide on a course of action despite not knowing where the truth lies, but that doesn't require committing to a particular version of the truth and rejecting all others as false.
> The over-rational mindset will concoct meaningless and even counter-productive forms of "rationality" to paper over their fundamental ignorance.
When one is actually ignorant, admitting ignorance is the rational choice; proceeding as if one were not ignorant (for example, by choosing one version of the truth over another when there is nothing to distinguish them) would be the hallmark of an irrational mindset, not an "over-rational" one.
This is because you're reifying rationality onto past events, conflating correct with rational. When she made the decision to stop, she didn't have a rational basis to make that decision, rational means you can connect a decision to logic. She didn't discover that logic, those reasons, until a full year later. That's when she finally had all the pieces.
> doesn't require committing to a particular version of the truth and rejecting all others as false.
This is a non-sequitur. Whatever you choose is going to have consequences. The very course of action is what does the rejection of all the other forms of looking at it, not your mindset. Your actions belie what you consider to be important.
> When one is actually ignorant, admitting ignorance is the rational choice; proceeding as if one were not ignorant (for example, by choosing one version of the truth over another when there is nothing to distinguish them) would be the hallmark of an irrational mindset, not an "over-rational" one.
What if you don't even know what you're ignorant of or that you are in fact ignorant? This is how this ties back to money, job, marriage. You can have these things, and be happy, or you can have these things, and be unhappy. I'm arguing that the reasons why you chase them are important, and you have to make the decision anyway.
If you are comfortable with irrational ways of gathering information, like listening to your gut, then you're way better off than trying to force rational ones.
So is your next argument going to be that "going by your gut" is a rational approach?
She explained the rational basis in her write-up, which you quoted. The rational basis at the time of the decision was that her actions appeared to her as bordering on those of an abusive parent, which was not her intent, and consequently that stopping her son from licking his hands wasn't worth the cost. Based on these facts she made the rational decision to stop.
> Whatever you choose is going to have consequences.
Choices do have consequences, but there is no need to choose between "multiple truths"—only between multiple actions. If two or more "truths" are equally consistent with the facts, equally valid, then there is no reason why you can't defer judgement pending additional information. The fact that you chose to act in a way consistent with one version of the "truth" and not the other in a particular situation does not imply that you believe the first version to be true and the other false. You could turn around and choose the opposite action the next time without the slightest hint of hypocrisy.
The key point I'm trying to make here is that, having chosen to act in a way consistent with one particular version of the "truth", one should not then lie to oneself and pretend that this version is true, excluding all other possibilities, in the absence of evidence. It's OK (and rational) to admit that your action was chosen arbitrarily, and that you still don't know which version of the "truth" is real.
> What if you don't even know what you're ignorant of or that you are in fact ignorant?
Then the first step is to admit that you have a problem. Recognizing "unknown unknowns" is a hard problem, but it's an important skill to learn.
> If you are comfortable with irrational ways of gathering information, like listening to your gut...
If it has a history of providing useful information, it isn't irrational to pay attention even if you don't know how that information was obtained.
> So is your next argument going to be that "going by your gut" is a rational approach?
Just "going by your gut" without considering other factors isn't any more rational than acting purely on instinct or emotion. It is, however, one component you can use as input to make a rational decision. Acting rationally does not mean you disregard instincts or emotions or "gut feelings" or any of the other hard-to-quantify aspects of our existence. These things are important and exist for a reason. They aren't always right, however, and that's where rational thought comes in. Giving full reign to one's impulses and emotions, without filtering them through the lens of reason, is harmful both to oneself and to others.
I didn't spot this the first time, let me address it now. The actions were rational, because they were grounded in reasons that usually work for that kind of situation.
They were incorrect because they didn't have the desired outcome. When she corrected her course of action, they started to have the desired outcome, and the whole thing became clear a year later.
When she corrected course, she used an irrational basis to make that determination. What makes it irrational? The decision to not try to solve a problem is inherently irrational.
There's nothing wrong with using irrational bases for decision-making. What's wrong is making incorrect decisions. If you're irrational, and wrong, then that's a bad thing. If you're irrational and right, then that's a good thing. It's better to be rational and right, but in the absence of the foundation for reason, when you can't determine how things work or why, you're forced to operate along irrational lines.
I'll allow that her course correction was at least somewhat rational, after all we can articulate and understand her reasons, which we couldn't if they were totally irrational. But they're less rational than her earlier approach. Your perception that her second approach was more rational is the conflation of rationality and correctness. It was more correct. It was less rational. Reason could only enter the picture again when she had concrete evidence.
The only reason her story is salient at all is precisely because it messes with our conception of rationality.
Nowadays, we've thrown away every last bit of symbolism that brings people together and wonder why we're so lonely. If things aren't perfectly rational, people's minds rebel immediately and harshly, like it's my fault you don't understand a concept requiring depth of study to really grasp.
You had me up until here. First of all, who's lonely, who's "we"? In a conformist society, those who think differently can find it more lonely, by definition. Second, atheists went to Church? Well was that because if they didn't, they were ostracized -- and, well, lonely?
Children of higher intelligence (we do believe that it's possible that we're not all blank slates at birth, right?) tend to find it more lonely than children of average intelligence.
If you consider yourself an exceptional (in some way) person -- rightly or wrongly -- you'll find things more complicated socially.
Now I think you're onto something with the rationality bit, but not in the Nietzschean way you're alluding to (religion and community). Instead, well look at how we create our social bonds in the U.S.: use-value.
Have you ever been in a position of power, and found that suddenly everyone wanted to be your friend?
Or, have you read what men and women write on dating websites in terms of what they want? These to me are more evidence of a "rationality militates against happiness" than your strange atheist example.
American distrust for religion began in the sixties and seventies. Before, it was a normal and accepted part of life. People wanted to go to church. Even if you didn't believe in it you still wanted to go. It's hard to believe but that's how all of the world's societies were up until very recently. Religion aided life, not hindered it.
The Enlightenment was a comparatively small movement that really only took root in the intelligentsia. You would have had to pry religion out of the cold dead fingers of the common folks.
Now, even religious folks often stay home on Sunday.
That isn't a rational response, that's an irrational response to an emotional need they apparently do acknowledge. My grandfather and uncles literally built their churches with their bare hands and wallets. If you're an athiest and want a church, well, the rational response would be go out and build one.
Or at least join the Unitarians. Most of them don't care.
To reason about something you have to reason from premises. But where do the premises come from?
I'm sure many of us have had that experience, when dealing with a difficult problem, where an insight comes to us out of the blue.
Where did that new insight come from, certainly not through rational deliberation. In fact, often it's not until we stop reasoning that the insight is free to appear.
Often we can't explain where the idea came from, it seems to be from some subconscious (irrational?) part of our mind.
Once we have the insight (a new premise) then we can start to reason from it. But in my opinion, reason comes in only after our mind has done the real work elsewhere.
It is an in depth criticism of the overly rational. A lot of it went over my head or didn't make sense because I don't have a strong background on some historical/philosophical touchpoints, but I thought it was a great read.
Marriage (because of the kids) has been much harder, and at times more stressful. But while I would trade my job in heartbeat, I wouldn't trade my family for anything.
I would definitely say that I'm happy. But like people have said above. Happiness is something you choose. You have to choose to recognize the blessings in life, of which I have many, and to deal with the stress and problems (which I also have plenty) as they come, without letting them rule you.
Income and wealth are two completely unrelated concepts. Income doesn't mean much because you usually need to work harder to get more income; so the benefits are offset by the suffering of having to work harder.
Wealth, on the other hand doesn't require any suffering - It's just pure happiness. Wealth can buy you anything. The only downside is that it erodes your mental fortitude/willpower but if you have enough wealth, you don't need any willpower anyway because wealth makes all personality traits redundant - Everyone likes a rich person no matter what; to a rich person, personality is useless.
The standard example is kids. Having kids, especially in a place without many social supports, such as the United States, results in a drop in perceived happiness, but an increase in satisfaction, which in the long term is better correlated with mental health.
And 2) > ... happiness and sense of purpose are both at their highest among people working between 21 and 30 hours a week, and misery increases in tandem with the number of hours worked thereafter. The results are consistent across genders.
I can't say I agree with the first. I've gone from quite poor to upper middle class. Money does not make one more happy per se, but your ability to reduce stressors is much higher (and that can tip the balance to being more happy). Food running out? Unexpected bills/repairs? Water heater broke? Several years ago, that would mean I have cold water for the next few months (true story, our on-demand water heater required manual lighting from outdoors for about 7 years - couldn't afford a new one. Wind, rain, snow, day, night, go outside to light the pilot). With more income, that means I go out that evening and pick up a water heater (which I did when I could afford it!). My ability to now remove nearly all debts has made me feel so much better than I have for _years_. This only happened because I was firmly on the higher end of the middle class.
For the second part, I agree fully. All I want to do is work my property and spend time with my kids. I do want to work too, but I want that to take up much, much less of my time. If I could do 21 hours of work a week and maintain a similar ability to fix a water heater at the drop of a hat (or car issue, or whatever), that would be an easy sell.
As for happiness, you choose to be happy. And that is an easier choice when stressors are less present.
In my experience, jobs that pay upwards of 100k require significant time/energy investments. I make good money, but I have to be mentally engaged all day long. I also have to deal with situations that come up nights/weekends/holidays. My average work week is about 50 hours of time I'd call "billable" plus another 20 hours of time spent on keeping current with my field.
I would GLADLY trade half of my salary to work half the hours, but that's not very easy to do: companies want employees on standard hours, and I still have to keep up with what's changing in my field to be relevant and continue pulling in the salary I have.
So I think there's a sweet spot where a job is good enough to avoid the financial stressors like missing payments or not being able to replace necessities, but not so demanding that the stress of the job itself approaches the same level.
On the extremes: Stress from finances (low income), stress from very taxing job (high income). I agree with you that I'd prefer the job stress, but not by all that much. They both make me anxious, worried, drained.
I would wager The overall thesis seems to be that non rationally proven social norms are negative influences is naive to the fact that (I would guess) strong social norms of any variety in a society lead to better community and happiness.
I feel that by arguing we change a bunch of established norms because we can be smarter than them, he’s unintentionally tripling down on the very effects he’s advocating against.
No, you shouldn't let the world dictate your choices every single day.
But also you need to conform to some amount of societal standard. Social norms exist sometimes to keep society working and moving forward.
As for happiness, if you are trying to 'get' happiness through external forces, you're never going to be happy. That's not a secret.
My problem with these sorts of articles that pop up every now and then is that folks tend to absorb less the 'evaluate your life in its own context' message, and instead hear 'you can be a hot weirdo with no repercussions'. Which is just flat wrong.
I fully agree with you that every person needs to evaluate their place in society and see whether their role is their role or just what they believe is expected. (completely separate tangent, I also believe more people should experience psychedelic drugs for this very reason)
Our children go to a private school that is close by, and our commutes are less than 20 mins away each. My wife makes 2x more than me and she works hard but loves her job. I'm a lot more relaxed with my job even though I'm older, but I get to spend a lot more time with the kids (ex. pickup from school every day, make dinner for them, etc).
We have enough money such that we don't have to think about it, which is a luxury. We have never fought over money, but we have fought over other more mundane things like over how we raise our children. But overall, not having to worry takes a lot of conflict off the table that many other people ave to endure, so we consider ourselves very lucky.
So yes, I'm pretty happy these days. It hasn't always been this way but once we both started making > $400k combined, things got easier and easier. A lot of our happiness these days is predicated by how our children behave, are they fighting, do they have issues at school, etc.
That's a fine goal if that's what you want, and if done well it can lead to financial freedom, but it's also entirely reasonable to remove fixed expenses in order to make it possible to change from a high paying and stressful job to a lower paying but more fulfilling job.
If I have $100 in an investment at 6% yearly and $100 in debt at 4% yearly, after 1 year I have $106 in the investment and $104 in debt, so $2 more than I had a year ago. If I pay off the debt now, I have exactly the same amount of money I had a year ago.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong...
Thinking errors get in the way of contentment.
As for myself I am generally unhappy. I left the law and back to engineering which I love, I'm married but spend too little time with my wife because we're in different cities and live apart most of the time, I'm sad most of the time when I'm not working, I don't have any life battering chronic diseases, I take home enough money that I'm not indebted other than for my house and FFS am I grateful for that. So no, I'm not happy, but I've stopped expecting happiness so there is some satisfaction in not experiencing repeated disappointment.
In my life I moved from both extremes, from a poverty level wage in a dead beat job with a friend and family support network, to a high stress, high earning job, and something in between.
In all those situations I had sources of happiness and sources of unhappiness. As you move in life you make tradeoff that think will make you better off, some work and others don't. Ironically my current high stress job makes me happier than the previous one, because I am able to learn, grow and do great things. I traded a bit of work life balance for something else and that's ok; it might work for me and not for others.
So by all means avoid the rat race and live a more relaxed life, but also don't be afraid to try different things and see what works best for you at each point in your life.
I did it to thrive in society; it increases my and my family's chances of survival.
I'd be happier by myself, with enough money to live with, and without a job. Happiness is not the most important thing in my life.
Yes.
I don't have a control group for myself, though, but it's sure a lot better than the turmoil of teens and twenties life.
The only other reason I want more money is to be able to eat out whenever I want, and not feel bad about spending the money instead of saving it.
(At least, that's the way I usually hear that expressed.)
Walk The Middle Way
Your natural state is bliss and peace but your mind's thoughts and heart's vibration pull you out of that state because the real you, the soul, the observer, the atman become identified with them.
That's the great illusion - Maya.
It answers the question of why cancer patients can miss being sick, why soldiers miss being on the frontlines and why I was happiest living in a third world hole in a beat up apartment vs the luxury I’m living in now.
> When we look again at the ATUS, happiness and sense of purpose are both at their highest among people working between 21 and 30 hours a week
We have birthday parties and celebrations all the time. Why? Because life is miserable and we should take every opportunity to celebrate when we can.
Well, that's wonderfully patronizing.
>We have birthday parties and celebrations all the time. Why? Because life is miserable and we should take every opportunity to celebrate when we can.
So finding reasons and opportunities to be happy is the goal?
I think life is awesome.