If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?
nav.al
nav.al
I feel a little better than neutral when I'm at baseline. On most days, I don't need a reason to smile. I just like to smile because things are good. I didn't sprinkle this post with happy smileys to illustrate my point (for your sake!) but I would have if I were writing to myself.
I wish I could help other people. The point of this is not "look at me my life is great". I just don't know what to do.
In general, being happy is probably not something you talk about too much - it's the "normal" state of being and talking too much about it makes you look like you're either bragging or trying to sell your two week seminar. In that regard, it's a bit like money - if you have enough, you don't talk about it much unless you get really lucky (sell company, win lottery etc), but if you're lacking it, it's on your mind all the time.
I think you're right in general that there's usually no point acknowledging good things, there's no lesson to learn or corrective action to take from things being good — that's just the expected state.
What bothers me is I see people constantly talk about happiness like something you chase all your life, some unattainable goal that only an old sage that spent decades meditating would know anything about. Like it's a mythical thing, not the 'normal state of being', as you said.
I'd really like to understand what went wrong that so many people aren't feeling the way you and me would say is normal/neutral. I've started learning psychology just to understand better, but I don't know that there's anything concrete I can do to help anyone. That sort of sucks.
Definitely agree that it is not really on my mind all the time though. It is like money or oxygen that way, you only really notice when you don't have it. That might explain why we only hear about unhappy people online; the happy people simply don't post about it as much. I'll also add the insight from Epicurus that many people are confused about what brings about happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg_47J6sy3A.
It's funny that that's the expected state, because if you compute through various permutations of different geographical locations, and points in history, levels of socio-economic status etc you get a very different answer as to what the expected state is. You also realize it can change on a dime. And if you look around, it looks like it's starting to do just that.
Like someone said in one of the other comments: happiness is a choice. It is also orthogonal to the intellect. It’s just that people tend to turn their intellect against themselves and so a sharper intellect makes for more damage.
That's exactly what Naval (writer of the link in this post) preaches about happiness, if you listen to pretty much any podcast appearance of his he emphasizes how much being happy is a choice. It's funny, a lot of the stories in this thread (career-driven, not happy, achieve financial freedom, now what?) mirror very closely to his life and his path to happiness.
When I don't do yoga it fades away after awhile. I'm going back to it soon.
I am locked down this week with covid so I am not allowed to ride out so I am only medium happy, that is not happy enough to annoy my wife. :)
This largely matches my own anecdotal observations. I'm capable of experiencing happiness like everyone else but it's largely situational and unstable and tends to be hedonic. Some other people meanwhile are unflappably happy. Happiness is probably a matter of perspective, and I think it's just really, really difficult to truly and durably change your perspective. It's like asking an atheist to believe in a god or vice versa.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb...
Also a metastudy: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-016-9781-6
Unfortunately the internet has a large selection bias. Anger, outrage, etc. are more viral than quiet contentment. Misery loves company and all that.
It’s hard to change opinions online (especially when people go online to vent or already in a bad mood), but I’m sure you’re inspiring those with your real life interactions. Keep on keeping on.
This rings true anecdotally too. I was a participant on the very same forum and received an admonishment from another commenter about my posting style, which made me realize that my health-problem-induced approach to commenting on the forum was laced with subtle ad hominem barbs and other unproductive habits. Being called out helped me realize how unproductive my engagement was.
I suspect that this dynamic is in play for a lot of fora with less healthy discussion norms than r/ssc (which has to be 99.9% percentile for quality of discussion).
Mentally ill people have more time and inclination to spend time arguing with strangers online. Deducing too much from these interactions I'd simply sampling "what do insane people think about X", which is of limited usefulness.
Do you recall suffering any traumas at all during childhood?
Have you had good mental health as long as you can remember?
Now I am happy. Have been for ten years. I have a small house. Nothing fancy but it's tidy and looked after. Wife and kids. Kids get a whole other childhood than I had. It's like a restoration. Rebuilding of what I never had. Deeply meaningful. I think feeling a purpose and meaning are key
Faith is also an important component in my life.
I wonder how much of this is simply genetic...
The truth is I was not a popular kid. I had food, but I've fainted once from hunger (my fault). My parent fought for a while, the screaming was not very nice to be in the middle of. Then they divorced. So I lived with one and visited the other on the weekends.
One of my siblings went to live with the other parent, so I didn't really get to grow up with them. I didn't see them much until much later as a result.
I did not like school very much, though I'm sure the teachers weren't trying to crush my spirits. They were average people doing an average job. It only crushed me inside because it's not the right environment for me. Everyone else must have been fine.
I feel like I've been lucky, though. Mental health is not a concept I've had growing up, but I've somehow eventually managed to escape. I'm in a good environment, now. I work doing something I like, for a company that has a net positive contribution to the world. It's a small weight off my shoulders that I didn't end up working for a Palantir or a Facebook, and rationalizing to myself why that's actually okay. That would have caused some serious dissonance.
I don't know if I have trauma. I feel like if you have to ask "who doesn't?", you maybe, probably do? But I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the past. It's not that I'm trying to avoid it, everything has just changed so much that it doesn't continually affect me anymore.
I suspect the conclusion is not as obvious as it might appear. On the one hand, having had a poor childhood or a very good childhood just sets your expectations for what happiness is as an adult. An adult used to opulence will think nothing is remarkable, or particularly good, while someone who has never taken it for granted will feel comparatively better, knowing that the baseline for normal used to be worse.
And, on the other hand, trauma.
My theory is that I’ve learned from my past mistakes of being a shut-in due to social anxiety, which led me to spiral downward when things inevitably went wrong in life.
I decided to do something about that: face my anxiety head on.
Now I have a thriving network of close friends, colleagues, mentors, and family. Things will go wrong, but I have a support stem. I will be okay.
Being okay is rad.
One of the most surprising parts of this transformation is when people reach out to me after something has gone wrong in their life. I used to freeze in those moments. Unsure how to act or what to say. Now I feel honored to be there for a friend, and it’s rewarding in ways I never thought possible.
I was fortunate to have a major career change thrust upon me.. it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I took it. It required me to go from a passive customer-facing role to an active customer-facing role.
It was difficult, and I struggled early on, but I feel like I’m the type of person who can rise to a challenge. Usually that’s a technical challenge or something less personal, but I just kept tell myself that I was the type of person who can rise to any challenge and kept going.
When this career change presented itself, I had just had my first child, and I wanted to be better for him. I wanted to be a good role model.
I've noticed this kind of person is usually the most uninteresting to talk to, though. But not everyone has to be interesting. In my experience, aside from their work, they seem to have surface-level conversations and interests and live a much simpler life. It's like an extreme form of pragmatism.
Also, to paraphrase Borges, happiness is its own justification.[1] In other words, it either needs no justification or, at the most, only a surface-level justification.
[1] "He sospechado alguna vez que la única cosa sin misterio es la felicidad, porque se justifica por sí sola."
It's not some big mystery. It's just that nerds like me tend to neglect to tend to the simple but important aspects of life. Now at 30, I'm starting the hard process of trying to build some semblance of a normal life, after all but abandoning my ambitions.
Personally it had pretty large impact on me around 2018 or so. I put more effort into paying attention of what makes me happy and then doing those things. Pretty content with life right now.
Separately, in the spirit of debate, I'm happy to see the comment made by 'takes_joke_literally (meme account as it may be) actually give a strong response: the fisherman was living a day-to-day's income and perhaps wasn't in a good position to take life's unwelcome surprises.
I compare myself to my brother, we both graduated and started our working lives. When I wake up in the weekend, all I can think about is all the work I need to do. When he wakes up, all he thinks about is going out, hiking, meeting new people. I think we are just wired that way.
In my 20s, I was more like your ex. Didn't focus on my career, had tons of hobbies and a healthy social circle.
Turns out, a "social circle" isn't really a thing in your mid to late 30s. You might have a few close friends but most people are tending to families at that point.
Try starting a career in your 30s that allows you to save for retirement so you don't have to work until you die. It's not easy.
You're doing fine and you've set yourself up for success rather than "living in the moment" until you can't afford to.
Is this really still that common? I just turned 30, share a flat with two people in their mid-thirties, and we have what I'd consider a pretty good social circle going on of people from their late 20s to 40s and a lot of our friends live in similar households.
If your social circle isn't interested in children then this isn't going to be much of a difference.
Personally, I think my wife and I have a better social life than we did, but usually the people we relate to are either old close friends or folks with kids in a similar cohort. We’re active in school and little league and get to spend time with people. I think people who don’t make an effort to be involved in something end up falling out and not having a social life.
My four male cousins are all high flying finance bros and attorneys. They are in their 50s, never married, and from my perspective live like frat brothers. They’ve certainly dated more models and have been able to travel to really amazing places. Not my thing.
To each their own - nobody else knows the right way for you to live!
Obviously, childless folks are becoming more common but this is mostly due to economic situations and not due to choice.
Having spent most of my teenage years doing well in school and most of my 20s working hard before finding success in my early 30s, I was expecting more happiness after finding financial freedom. But instead had a lot of regret that I couldn’t relate to a lot of the more fun aspects of youth.
Instead, I found myself looking at folks who spent most of their younger years having fun and then found a partner that was willing (and able) to work hard as a provider and wondering why that isn’t the best of both worlds if you can get it. I know that some of them have regrets of not having much of a sense of accomplishment, but they sure do seem happy having lived life to the fullest and skipping the pressure of financially supporting a family.
Social energy should shift more towards personal growth as you get older.
We are fundamentally, innately social animals, and that extends to more than just family and work circles. To each their own, but your view is snidely dismissive of an enormous source of happiness in so many people's lives.
Dude. Those two are the same thing.
I've known plenty of people that aren't trilled with their everyday work/life but find it rejuvenating to spend a weekend doing what they love. It becomes a reset mechanism for a happy life. I highly recommend it.
I find social circumstances tend to go much better for my ex’s than they ever did for me. Pretty privilege is a real thing and it’s nearly impossible to make up for. You’ll find exceptions but they’re just that - exceptions.
The more intelligent you are the less likely you are to be happy.
This is most extremely observed in the case of the 14 year old child prodigy who committed suicide despite no pressure from his parents to succeed: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/us/one-shot-ends-the-life...
Now consider them to be multiplied and magnified by virtue of being literally one or more steps ahead, so to speak, in thinking about...anything. From an approach to doing chores, to planning recreational activities, to supposedly "higher minded" things (e.g. politics, philosophy, whatever), you name it: the smarter one is, the more likely there is friction in these everyday interactions by virtue of the fact that more and more of one's peers is simply not able to keep up as it were. Not to mention the same is true of other less mundane issues (politics, finance, etc.).
The story goes that Nick the Greek introduced Albert Einstein to his gambling buddies as "Little Al from Princeton," who "controls a lot of the action around Jersey." I've always aspired to be able to move between worlds with that kind of grace.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22998852/ [2] https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJHD.2012...
I can easily see all this creating enough pressure to crush someone sooner rather than later. Its a form of perfectionism. But not so much from aiming at perfection itself but having it expected and compelled upon you. People will want to use you if you do well and distance themselves the moment things get tough.
The weight of the mind games around that must be horrendous. Expectations would attach like mosquitoes. The price of fame. Even in a micro-version its annoying and draining. Its probably also why very famous people all solve this with giant little-worlds they create called mansions. A world within a world. Its the luxury of having enough space so you can be a special sort of anonymous in that vast space again.
Intelligence is correlated with quite a lot of things which promote happiness. There are already sources in the thread, so I'll just mention a couple factors: education/work/money, and late marriage/kids. Believe it or not, but not living close to minimum wage and having children only when married and you can afford them are both huge factors of a happy life. Huge. And both are very correlated with intelligence.
Now, why is this myth so widespread? Tbh, I don't really know. I can guess at availability heuristic - smart people see mostly themselves and smart people around them, see that the happiness level isn't that great, especially when young, imagine everybody else is happier so it's a reasonable conclusion that being smart is bad. The problems with this logic are that less smart/poorer people have it a lot worse, but they don't have contact with them. And also that extra education will indeed delay your earning years somewhat, so being young, not-yet-earning and smart does feel pretty bad.
Maybe it's just me, but when I read something like this I just think of a teenager trying to be edgy. Less intelligent people (assuming they're still at a functional IQ) can just as much get a depressed view on society or live. They're actually at a disadvantage, since they're most likely in a less paying position and have less options to change something.
Now, I can also see the counter-point that being smart puts a bit of pressure on you to actually archive something and it's easy to feel like you wasted yourself. But having a massively bad view on society summarized by a few sentences does not mean you're smart, and neither does excessive cynicism - at least to me it just seems like someone is desperately trying to look smart.
> You see the cynicism and manipulation behind so many things portrayed as being good for you or society. You become cynical, and you signal your intelligence through cynicism. Very smart people often communicate in purely cynical observations.
I didn't want to include the whole quote since I mostly responded to the quoted part and the quote would get quite long overall.
I would phrase it a little differently: it seems more to me like an ego-saving excuse for being a sad sack and not accomplishing anything you want to do.
IMO the living in the moment thing mentioned elsewhere is probably the best known connection to happiness that has broad "proof" around it, but again I'm not convinced this has anything to do with intelligence.
If we're gonna get deep about it I suppose you could argue that "beginner's mind" is what is required to assume states of now-ness, and at a stretch you could say that a beginner's mind could be equated with a stupid mind...but really, it's not like that at all. Meditative states, flow states, just being content - these can be attained by anyone, irrespective of intelligence.
In the words of the author: "If you’re smart, you can figure out how to be happy within your biological constraints." Rephrased, the title could be "If you're so smart, why can't you figure out how to be happy".
On this subject, here's a video discussing these types of arguments: https://youtu.be/Q6wmIehW6EM?list=LL&t=47
For example, let's say I ask you "do you matter?". Here's what you might say depending on the size of the space your brain currently occupies.
The room you occupy - Yes I matter greatly to my girlfriend and my cats.
Your neighborhood - A little bit, my neighbors seem to like me and probably appreciate that I'm courteous.
Your city - A tiny amount, my taxes help pay for stuff I guess.
The planet - A very tiny amount, I contribute to society and that counts for something.
The universe - I'm a spec of dust in an endless void. My existence is meaningless.
My hypothesis is that intelligent people are attracted to larger spaces, but larger spaces tend to be more depressing and meaningless. On the other hand, a less intelligent person might only think about what's immediately around them, and as a result they are more present in the moment. This also helps explain why meditation can be helpful, it's practice for shrinking your mental space.
This expansiveness - the knowledge that one is nothing - is actually a huge source of comfort. But like everything in this realm, it's a paradox that is hard to explain with experiential reference points.
Ultimately I think you're right but what you describe seems a bit advanced and not as far as most people will go. I think your average person would probably be happier focusing on mindfulness and shrinking their mental space to the present moment.
It’s so strange to think that as an adult, I’m still that kid. I can rationalize past it, but I still recoil from life like a child.
Many of us do. We learn some things as kids and have a hard time letting go of it. Especially if it’s meant to protect us.
I have a hard time doing more than rationalizing. The act of letting go and carrying on with more positive or even neutral thoughts is actually a staggering task to accomplish at times.
Hopefully with practice I can get there. I’m realizing it’s important not only for me, but everyone around me. I’m not a black cloud or anything, but I could be a much better person to be around if I could overcome stuff like this. If anything, I’d just be more present and available. I tend to disappear when I’m unhappy - not many people have to experience it.
In my experience, being happy or not, mostly depends on my emotional responses to any given situation. For example, reading about highly accomplished people here on HN can make me feel envious and unsatisfied with my performance.
Intelligence makes it possible to understand facts like:
- There is a huge range of possible emotional responses to a single situation. Some are beneficial for me and some are not.
- How I react now is simply a habit. It is not something hard-coded in the situation itself. Instead of envy, I can be happy for these successful people, rejoice in their success. Feel inspired by their example. Doing that is being kind to myself. The more we work with our emotions, the more flexible they become. There is a lot of freedom here.
- The perceived space where my life is happening can be expanded by noticing that what I focus on (myself, my work, my family, my home...) is not the whole reality. There are other people, other countries, other beliefs, all the nature... and all of that is my world.
- Other people are just like me in wanting to be happy and avoiding pain. My happiness is not more important than their - but also not less. We are all doing our best. A kind of feeling of closeness comes through this insight.
Any of these facts will make our life better. And all are discovered through intelligent exploration, through using our smartness.
> If you’re smart, you can figure out how to be healthy within your genetic constraints and how to be wealthy within your environmental constraints.
Dumb and unhappy here (maybe? not sure, probably because dumb).
I think there's a lot of us in the middle that can do some things reasonably well enough to be happy, but not all the things. It's hard to be happy if you're smart enough to know you have toxic traits or unhealthy habits that need to be addressed, but you don't have the time or energy to address them.
I might be able to do a career and hit the gym, but not able to have any hobbies or enjoy social events. When I say "not able to", I mean "may cause depression and burnout that could lead to trouble maintaining employment if attempted and failed".
Other people might be able to do a career, have side projects, and network at all the important events, but can't stop smoking cigarettes and chugging energy drinks. I see this all the time.
People seem to generally alternate between goal-seeking behavior and coping mechanisms for damage caused by the former.
Real people, perhaps dumb people, might be smart enough to know that happiness is attainable, but dumb enough to be incapable of precisely juggling all of a modern life in a way that feels successful.
I can see the right answers to lots of things, but trying to keep up with all of it is exhausting.
From Buddha to Eckhart Tolle almost every book and teaching about happiness boils down to living in the present. But I guess it's much easier said than done because our minds like to wander (evolution to anticipate dangers perhaps?) and living in the present is like keeping your balance on a stationary bicycle with gravity always working against you.
But fwiw we do get glimpses of true happiness say when you're like in the zone and totally immersed in the task at hand that you're thinking of nothing else and just happy (doing what you're doing).
Honestly, speaking only in cynical observations is associated with only middling intelligence, or people who have decided to build their identity around some misguided sense of what intelligence looks like, rather than those who actually are intelligent.
Think of Einstein, Feyman, Von Neuman, they all knew how to enjoy life. Intelligence is a privilege, and one should appreciate it. Bemoaning ones intelligence, is as ugly and clueless as a richman complaining to the poor about how he has too much freedom. If one is inteligent one should apreciate ones privilege, and think how to use it to help others
If you can figure out a way to be able to control your time as much as possible, you’ll likely be happy.
What people really want is not infinite amount of money. It’s actually ~100% control of their own time .
The capacity to be happy, or to become happy, involves several of those dimensions. Which dimensions exactly, depend on your circumstances.
One I think is important for everyone is not about being “aware of the state of the world”, like the OP says. On the contrary, it’s self-awareness: knowing what’s going on inside your own head.
What is intelligence anyway? We don't know. Not really. We have an idea of what we associate with intelligent behavior but we don't really have a good theory of intelligence that we can use to create intelligence.
The reason I think happiness is the wrong goal is because it's a by product of the right goal. Not the goal itself. That which fulfills you should reward you with a feeling of happiness.
For example, my children give me happiness when they get to roam and be children. But when I must discipline my kids they get sad and I get sad. There's an error here in my parenting that I'm trying to minimize. It's difficult but it requires me to not take it on myself to shoulder their burdens. They have to work through most of their issues on their own and I cannot protect them from the world. Trying to shield them from it will probably make everyone unhappy.
My work makes me feel important but it doesn't make me feel happy. Having a good working relationship with my co-workers rewards me with happiness and meaning.
I don't aim for happiness but I'm quite happy. Not all the time but when I care about the right things I do feel genuinely happy.
Perhaps I don't fully understand the word "happiness", but I've always considered it to be a rather transient state of mind: it's always on the order of hours for me, which means I don't feel happy for most of my waking hours (although one can certainly argue that one only needs e.g., 2 hours of a day of happiness, to be "happy"). Combined with the hedonistic treadmill, happiness is more like golden nuggets that one stumble upon on a path to somewhere rather than the path or destination itself.
The problem with this view though, I've found, is that it's difficult to find goals and meanings elsewhere. The vast, vast majority of people are after happiness, which makes much of the social construct centered around obtaining it and conditions me for that goal as well. It's very difficult to find alternative an alternative goal (I do believe it's easier to live life if there's a goal, not that there should be one).
Fundamentally, happiness is about desires/expectations meeting reality in agreement.
A human's also a complex being capable of being happy about some things while upset/angry about others and so on. A human also ages, so definitely happiness means something different across those ages. A new born baby, for instance, will largely use cries to communicate more than adult, for I hope obvious reasons. But the takeaway, I think, is that happiness is when expectations or needs are met by reality.
Anyway, I refute this claim that "smarts" have some inherent relationship to how much happiness a person should have for the above reasons. Happiness is a feeling. "Smarts" is probably how efficient your brain is at using the accumulated facts within it. Quite obviously, those are independent things.
There are different types of intelligence. Some people are smart and happy because they don't think about how unsafe the world/situation/etc is. Also possible that people adopt a mindset that embraces risk.
From Buddha to Eckhart Tolle to Dalai lama almost every book and teaching about happiness boils down to living in the present. But I guess it's much easier said than done because our minds always like to wonder (evolution to anticipate dangers perhaps?) and living in the present is like keeping your balance on a stationary bicycle with gravity always working against you.
But fwiw we do get glimpses of true happiness say when you're like in the zone and totally immersed at the task at hand that you're thinking of nothing else and just happy (doing what you're doing).
If one of these are chaotic, the other one can't keep you happy for long
If you think that's all you need to be happy, you're mistaken. Got a promotion a few months ago. Great title. Love the job. Massive raise in pay. After about two days I sunk into a depression because it literally didn't change anything in my life.
"Great. I am a success. Now what?"
I could go on but I think I've made my point. So many people today live in what could only be described as hell. Sitting in the western world with our cushy lives, regardless of how many headlines we read about war, famine, rape and death, it just doesn't really matter to us. It's not our world and it's not our problem. If only we could see things from their perspective. If only we could feel their suffering the way they do, I don't think we could be unhappy for a day in our lives.
But as humans naturally we are never satisfied with where we are and what we have. We always want more. Even when we have enough to eat, we want more. Even when we are surrounded by people who love us, we want more. Even when we have money, we want more.
In many ways I suppose this is both a blessing and a curse. The constant desire to make things better, faster, stronger, and never being satisfied with what we have is what fuels us. Without it we would not have made all the astounding innovations that, to an observer from the past, could only be characterized as magic.
So essentially you argue that “it could be worse”? This doesn’t seem materially different to me than “it could be better”.
Perhaps a person could see those things and he incredibly depressed to be born into a world with no apparent practical solution to those problems.
Perhaps a person could come here from those conditions and never actually adapt properly to their new life, living each day waiting for the bottom to fall out.
For myself, I’ve seen plenty of shit. I also have plenty that I’m thankful for. Neither of those facts predisposes me to happiness, in any particular sense of the word.
I think there is great wisdom in the buddhist idea of desire being the root for all suffering. But if we want to make progress we have to desire for more. So then we have to embrace the Buddha's idea that "life is suffering".
Another factor I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread, which undoubtedly plays a role in our happiness is genetics and upbringing. Some of our brains are just wired in ways that predispose us to being (un)happy.
In other words, intelligent people might become addicted to thinking. Meaning that the rest of their life suffers. For example, intelligent people might be more interested in solving tough problems, ignoring the business side, talking to people, making money and building a normal life.
For example, they may see two people having diner and discussing their recent holiday and the TV show they watched last night. To the thinker, this is all incredibly unimportant, mundane and boring. Yet those two people had a good time, the thinker not so much.
Thinkers also over-think, are risk averse and always worried. They may understand that the financial system is due for another crash, that war is about to break out, polarization increasing, and all kinds of bad things trending in the wrong direction.
This superior understanding leads to misery compared to just being ignorant about it.
Thinkers are frustrated by media and social media catering to the non-thinkers. All this effort the thinker went through to get a deep understanding seems just pissed away, irrelevant.
Thinking is overrated. The human brain is an advanced defensive device. It's job isn't to think for the sake of it, it's job is to keep you alive. Most of the things it's feeding you isn't even true. It doesn't have to be.
There are a lot of things to be unhappy about in this world that no amount of individual intelligence can fix. Climate change, war, disease, poverty. Even if my life is pretty great, relatively speaking, the fact that our society sucks is the primary source of my unhappiness.
If I was less well informed, I wouldn't know about all the terrible things going on, and would probably be much happier. But because I know and care, that's just how it is.
I look around at the world and see the same wretchedness that you do, but perhaps I don't see it as you do. I take solace in knowing it could all be a lot worse.
Pleasure is the state of being happy because of something you're actively doing.
Satisfaction usually has a relatively low ceiling but a very high floor compared to pleasure. Satisfaction is also usually gained through the sacrifice of pleasure.
My experience is that smart people often try to maximize satisfaction, at the cost of all of the pleasure.
I believe you need both to live an enjoyable life. It's hard to strike a balance.
Presumably, someone who is otherwise smart but is also unhappy persistently is smart enough to notice things that then lead to unhappiness but not smart enough to fix them given the constraints of their life.
That is, there is a valley of unhappiness as you trend upwards in intelligence.
Just my 2cents hypothesis :)
I've been coping by delving into intellectually stimulating hobbies, but that comes at the expense of other areas of my life. There are only so many hours in the day.
Joy is the first-order derivative of good things happening, or more precisely, your brain noticing improvement.
The surest way to maintain lifetime happiness would be to start it in the shittiest possible conditions and see them steadily improving over your lifetime.
When you are born in heaven, you don't realize you're living in it. Funnily from what I've observed, the same goes for hell.
Flow or (focus mode) is my "ignorance is bliss" equivalent.
Stanislaw Lem handles these kind of themes in his books. A person, living his life, suddenly gets a revelation and sees the reality for what it is - all that he believed was really a sham.
Sure, maybe some people wish they never had this disillusionment. But if it's happened, what do you do then? How do you work, outside or within, the "sham" system?
But in honestly I believe this to be a case where intelligence which is not pruned and cared for correctly like a bonsai tree will lead you to dark paths
To educate oneself in how the world works, why violence is used, what's the global context of things and understanding that this is a matter of systems pinging against each other will go a long way
It is sort of better angels of out nature but without the deluded liberalism than pinkers book had
As recommendations read Bismark biographies and life, Kissinger, theucydides (my favorite passage is the Melos debate) , Mark fisher, nick land, Marcus Aurelius, confusius, vedas, Adam curtis
I feel that the most important thing that one can do, is to take good care of one's mental ecology, and that first comes with taking care of the mental-soil where your ideas will sprout from, learn from the errors of others, we have lots of past wise people whom have made a lot of errors in the past (or things that they thought of errors but weren't so!!), learn from that
The world is rough, don't take it personal because it is not, you are just a tiny spec whom might have happened to land in a specific time and place, be grateful of having been born where you have and not as a poor peasant during the 30 years war or wherever
Anyhow have a nice evening guys
A historian in the future will have lots to make say about our present time.
One might easily posit the idea that the rejection of the ideas of whats important to happiness from our ancestors might be a large part of the reason why there's unhappiness now.
It is entirely possible to have a fulfilling and happy life rejecting traditional human things and embracing virtual things. It’s just significantly harder.
To me, happiness is a peripheral - something that might or might not occur - I don't really care. I would rather be based in truth and do what I think is right, than live an illusory but happy life.
And being smart is about #10 of the list of attributes I value too! (Honesty, bravery, curiosity, authenticity are certainly ones that I value more.)
If you're out of touch with yourself and aren't free, you will not find a genuine purpose in your life; your whole life will be about channeling the will of those who have power over you.
https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Smart-Why-Arent-Happy/dp/B01DYF...
Not sure if this was deliberate, but I'd love to know the conversion rate of this CTA.
In my opinion, of course things are going to happen that are beyond your control, but on an everyday basis, being happy or unhappy is a choice. You can choose to dwell on negative thoughts or you can choose to dwell on positive ones.
Some of the most miserable folk I've met are genuinely stupid people whose every endeavour fails.
The world and society is disappointing.
Look at kids. Kids are generally stupider than adults. They're also happier. So if anything that proves that being smart does not make you happy and it hints at the possibility that being stupid actually makes you happy.
>So if anything that proves that being smart does not make you happy
This means, in your words "no correlation" of higher intelligence and happiness.
>and it hints at the possibility that being stupid actually makes you happy.
This means the possibility of lower intelligence and happiness.
I was very careful with my words.
That’s because one anecdote doesn’t “prove” anything regardless if one says the word “prove” or not. You got one datapoint and you extrapolated negatively from that—all I am saying is there is an equally valid conclusion that can be drawn from the anecdote. I.e I could also say that since children seem happier, that “proves” that it’s being short and loud makes you happier.
In science nothing can be proved. But all it takes.is one data point to disprove something.
I hypothesize that all zebras have black and white stripes. This hypothesis can never be proved no matter how many zebras we observe. But all it takes is the observation of one zebra with purple stripes to disprove the entire statement.
As einstein once said no amount of experimentation can prove him right, but all it takes is one experiment to prove him wrong.
That being said. The hypothesis here is that being smart makes you happy. To disprove this statement all you need is one instance of a person who is smart and not happy. That's it. Keep in mind I never said being smart makes you unhappy.
This premise does not lead to this conclusion:
> Stupid people are happier then smart people.
Which is your first sentence and seemingly the thesis of the first comment.
> Kids are generally stupider than adults.
Yes, granted this may be true but my point is there are also a lot of differences between kids and adults independent of intelligence. Ones that can quite obviously affect happiness. Such as, say, social pressure or other obligations.
I can rewrite your first comment as: "Loners are happier than social people. Look at kids. Kids have less social obligations than adults. They're also happier. So if anything that proves that social obligations don't make you happy and it hints at the possibility that not having social obligations actually makes you happy."
and this is an equally valid conclusion as the one you came up with (thus both are kind of meaningless).
You actually can't.... You really need to reread what I am writing because you are missing the point.
>Yes, granted this may be true but my point is there are also a lot of differences between kids and adults independent of intelligence.
If you read what I wrote ^^ the above is LITERALLY what I am saying. I am saying that it is COULD BE an independent variable. That is LITERALLY the thesis here. This is what I mean by you should read what I wrote very carefully because you're not.
>> one instance of a person who is smart and not happy >This premise does not lead to this conclusion: >> Stupid people are happier then smart people. >Which is your first sentence and seemingly the thesis of the first comment.
It does. Read carefully. Did I write all stupid people are happier than smart people? No.
I replied to you because your initial reply was in complete agreement with what I am saying but you just didn't realize it.
Nope, by any measure, smart kids are way smarter than most adults I encounter. People who throw basic logic out the window because they want to believe that something is a certain way for emotional reasons often behave worse than kids.
Not all kids of course, but I think I've known more reasonable kids than reasonable adults overall.
> Stupid people are happier then smart people.
I know people who are much smarter than me and seem genuinely happy all the time.
I think it's more about how strong one's social mesh is, how happy people in one's entourage are, and one's own approach to life. If you're very smart and surrounded by smart people who you also like, you're happy.