You can be poor and happy or rich and happy, but the smarter you are the less likely either of those are true. Though being rich certainly helps.
If you're smarter, it means you can learn more efficiently. If you learn more efficiently, you get a deeper understanding of the world.
If you understand how something works, you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy.
There are lots of big problems in the world, too big to be fixed by a single person. Dwelling on these can be depressing, they don't say that ignorance is bliss without a reason.
This is often a problem. Some say ignorance is bliss, and I am not sure they are wrong.
> If you understand how something works, you stop having the wrong expectations, so you're less likely to be unhappy.
While one may not have the wrong expectations, it can be painful sometimes to see how deep the rot goes and how that rot impacts people’s lives deeply (often negatively).
Additionally, changing the rot may be outside of your sphere of influence, so feelings of helplessness are possible.
This seems like a big leap in logic.
Here's an exaggerated example: are you upset because you can't fly like a bird? Probably not, because you know that the world doesn't work that way.
A more subtle example: If you understand why people act the way they act, you stop being angry when they act in a way that is harmful to others or themselves. It doesn't mean you just let them do it. You stop them if you can. But it doesn't make you unhappy. Just like it doesn't make you unhappy if a wild animal attacks you when go into its cage, for example.
> it doesn't make you unhappy if a wild animal attacks you when go into its cage
Maybe we have different definitions of unhappiness at play here, because being attacked by an animal would definitely make me unhappy. I mean at the moment it would mostly make me fear for my life, but afterward when dealing with the damages I got, I think I would be quite unhappy, and understanding that really I'm the one to blame wouldn't help. It could make me more unhappy, leaving me kicking myself for doing something so stupid.
I wouldn't blame the animal if that's what you mean, but that's different from happiness/unhappiness.
> are you upset because you can't fly like a bird
I think that's more because my hopes and dreams are shaped by the environment that I've grown up in and, living amongst other humans that can't fly like a bird, the possibility of doing that has never occurred to me, at least not for seriously enough to become an issue of happiness.
Had I been a born an elephant with huge ears that all my so-called elephant friends would torment me for... yeah it would make me pretty unhappy if those ears wouldn't at least give me the ability to fly.