The Happiest People in America Are Older, Female and Believe in God

Your conclusion is very reminiscent of the mouse-hope experiment. Very fascinating.

Hope is just “optimistic nihilism”.

It’s not feeling guilty for existing and just experiencing being human.

Humanoids went millions of years collaborating before language, building muscle memory for enough heat, food, water, etc. and navigating 3D space.

IMO human language is behind all human atrocity of scale. Implanting and reinforcing hallucinations. It’s 2D written form decouples us from interaction with realities color gradients, range of sounds, distribution of matter. It’s thought in a box; constrained to socially acceptable list of appropriate semantics.

Be optimistic but also don’t care if we all die. Simple framework that eschews all the human language religion relies on. We sure feel like we accomplished something learning English but humans were tackling our real challenges before language came about. Language processing feels like work but it’s really just parroting tropes that are meaningless.

Or the only women left to believe in god are those who didn't face gods wraith in sense of being raped, beaten, gotten cancer or left with no money.

Independent of this, I can't believe in god as it doesn't make any sense to do so for me.

For me believing would mean ignoring everything which makes god either non existent or a really really shitty asshole god.

Believe would be for me borderline dillusional

You don't think that anyone who truly believes in a God has fallen into a deep sadness? I think some slaves & jewish people would like to have a word with you.

You can learn happiness by indeed ignoring most of the real world. Thing is, much of the real world you read and hear is not real; first start ignoring all news and online blabber. Ignore anything that you don’t see happening yourself. Then move to a country with a social safety net and a soft stance on crime so if something happens you are less likely to get unrepairable unhappy. Then move to the countryside where nothing happens.

Never care about ‘stuff’ or having stuff. I have a phone and nreal glasses and a keyboard with trackpad. Further I have a passport and creditcard. That’s the stuff I mildly care about but it is replaceable within 1 day so not really. I buy clothes secondhand and don’t care about them at all, so losing a suitcase when travelling is incredibly uninteresting. I have seen people cry on airports for losing (well, probably delayed receiving of) their clothes: how sad can you make your life?

What also helps, and which is the opposite of thinking there is a deity watching over you (which to me is borderline insanity really), is accepting the universe doesn’t care about you or anything, so you should neither. Shit happens, there is no reason for anything and then you die. So just do whatever you want to do and stop caring what anyone thinks or does or says. You don’t ‘need’ to do anything; the universe is large and cold and you owe it nothing. Nothing cares if you make a spaceship to Mars or sit home drinking beer and playing games. It’s the same thing. Pick the one that makes you happy, not the one you get forced on you by society. Humanity might care (often seems they don’t), but humanity is a minuscule blib in time/space and the universe still doesn’t care anyway.

I fixed my miserable life I thought I had before with this and I am known by everyone as that weird guy that always smiles.

naive? so all the doctors who believe in god are naive? or are they more curious and think of a higher purpose?

Hurts to be self-aware I guess.

By flourishing you don’t mean progress but happiness? The Star Trek form of flourishing seems very unlikely to me; when you don’t have to do anything but just be happy, you might end up doing what you want and that might not benefit anyone but yourself.

Totally misread as single-prayer healthcare, oof.

Hmm. If you can point me to drugs that keep me happy in a sustainable way, I'm all ears. Nothing else seems to do that, so if it's that easy I'm really missing out!

I'd say those are different concepts, contentedness as opposed to euphoria.