> Note that I'm responding to a specific comment that implies being happy is extremely difficult. Those two things are in my book of "extremely difficult", and I'm bringing them up as examples of the fact that goals are not choices. You can choose to train, but you can't choose to become an Olympian. But I can't figure out if you agree or disagree with happiness being extremely difficult to achieve.
I would say difficult, but not extremely difficult. Your examples require a lot of external resources and material goods to achieve, and the services of others. What we're talking about is possibly altering your food intake, maybe a supplement or two, and other than that it's just your own self discipline.
> I don't think I can make sense of this statement... if something has many requirements, and something to a great degree, how can you say that it is merely a choice, and that anyone can do it?
Because everyone has a brain and a will and those are in the vast majority of cases all you need to do it.
> The average person, by definition, is not great. So why are you saying anyone can do it, in the end, that anyone can be great? Simplicity is not relevant here. Winning a race is simple - just run faster than everyone else.
I would say the gateway to happiness is realizing that you are in fact not great, that you are not destined to be famous or wealthy, and to embrace just being the best you that you can be. Embrace average, buy better beer, enjoy the luxuries you can afford instead of pining for the ones you can't.
> What made you decide that changing how you think is simple, easy, and readily available?
Well again I said no such thing, I said in comparison to becoming an Olympian or being elected President that this was easy. There are a lot of other things that are easier than those two things. Altering the way you think just requires self discipline, self policing, and commitment. There's no magic solution or program or book, it's not self help tapes or a twelve step program. It's something you decide to do for you with the resources you were born with.
I've made radical changes to how I think in the last few years and in so doing have greatly improved the quality of my life, and the first step on that journey was realizing that I was just a regular guy, I would never be a celebrity, never be very wealthy, never be famous and never be some massive achiever, and that there was nothing wrong with that. It hurts at first because our society tells us to a large degree that that is how you succeed in life, but after awhile, you learn to appreciate average. Since then I've never been happier.
> Your examples require a lot of external resources and material goods to achieve, and the services of others.
I find it interesting that you think this about becoming an Olympian, but not about being mentally stable and happy. Are you sure you are not simply labeling the thing you are unable to do as something requiring a lot of external resources, and then labeling the thing you are able to do as something not requiring such?
Because I would certainly argue that becoming purposefully happy seems sufficiently out of reach for most people that it probably requires some external resources. Like a good social influence, for starters. Someone at least needs to be there to even tell you about such things.
> What we're talking about is possibly altering your food intake, maybe a supplement or two, and other than that it's just your own self discipline.
That's quite a caveat. Self-discipline is a fairly nebulous thing, how are you going to evaluate it? What is it chemically? Why do some seem to have less and some more? At what point would you stop saying: "Just get more self-discipline" towards a problem?
Why is self-discipline not recommended for people with depression, anxiety, etc., if what you're saying is true?
> Because everyone has a brain and a will and those are in the vast majority of cases all you need to do it.
This looks like a claim, but I'm not sure what you're supporting it with. Some people have very poor brains, where does that fit in in your hypothesis? Should this have been prefixed with "healthy, standard brain"? Because that cuts out a pretty big chunk of people.
> I've made radical changes to how I think in the last few years and in so doing have greatly improved the quality of my life, and the first step on that journey was realizing that I was just a regular guy, I would never be a celebrity, never be very wealthy, never be famous and never be some massive achiever, and that there was nothing wrong with that.
I think the main problem with this thinking is that it's very unlikely that you're an average guy, and I'm curious as to when was the last time you've seen a truly average person. Or how about below average person. Chances are, that by all standard metrics - intelligence, social skills, income, health, etc., you're not average. You're not a celebrity, either, but I don't know why you're so concerned with the top 1% when there's 49% in between you could be in.
The core question here is this: if it is all so available, and so straightforward, and open to everyone, and requires one to simply be human with a brain and nothing else, why is it, then, that nobody does it? Why do people choose to be unhappy, why do they choose to be fat?
Indeed. And I would argue that if you're not, on the whole, living a happy life then something is broken and needs to be fixed.
> I don't think anyone genuinely holds the belief [...]
Oh, lots of people hold this belief, at least in the US. I think it's reductionist in the extreme (if you aren't a productive drone, you have no value as a person), but it's not all that rare.
My response is "if that's the sort of life that makes you happy, who am I to argue?"
> I fully agree, but it's really hard to do so even if you know that's the right way.
Yes! I agree it isn't easy to do this and I struggle daily, but haven't found a better path.
Certainly alcohol, partying, entrepreneurship, clubs, sports, travel, and adventure (the main paths I've tried) haven't succeeded in providing immediate happiness without effort on my part. (They all had their good aspects, don't get me wrong, but nothing intrinsically made me happy all the time and I was always left wondering "what's over there".)
> I don't feel that people wanting to be in their own very special niche class of genre, race or whatever category is sane, good and healthy, or some form of progress. Happiness isn't finding some form of very individualistic achievement.
1) That's not a feeling, that's an opinion. 2) And really? Do you think you have the answer to how people should find "happiness". Then you should write one more book on the subject and become another self help millionaire. You seem appropriately sure of yourself so, go nuts!
> I think focusing on happiness is a poorly defined goal.
If you think happiness is boring or somehow implies not being able to grieve or feel angry, then you are most likely using the wrong definition of happiness. I think happiness a poorly defined word, allowing you to collapse it into a definition that you saw fit enough to justify ranting about change and evolution.
> I cannot stand people who complain when they live in a first world country.
Saying someone shouldn't be unhappy because there others who have it worse is a bit like saying someone shouldn't be happy because there are others who have it better.
"...once you stop setting yourself impossible goals, lead a simple life, find humility, have a minimum amount of discipline, you won't be so unhappy."
"I read so many people on facebook quoting weird happiness, meditation stuff that makes no sense at all to me."
I think if you looked into it a bit more, you might discover these two statements are contradictory.
> If you did, you would do these things that you think make them better with no effort.
There is a whole lot of assumptions in that sentence. To start, why would doing the right thing be effortless?
Add to that, if you are in a bad state you are likely to be pessimistic of the outcome of the task which makes it even harder. And fighting that is anything but effortless.
You could argue that when you are in a perfect state stars will align but even if you truly believe that the effort to get to that place will often be nothing but heroic and most people will never achieve it.
So it just feels like moving the goalpost? Which is fine if framing it like that gets you closer to where you want to be. But I'd need more convincing to believe that would be easier (for me).
>But wouldn't life be easier if we didn't rely on such purpose-driven mental states? Is it not possible to simply enjoy doing everyday things -- taking shower, eating, working, walking -- without contingent goals?
> Not everyone, but I'd say modern society is hedonistic—we seek happiness instead of achievement and get neither.
I agree on the hedonism but I'm not sure the happiness-achievement struggle is as simple. There are plenty of people who have achieved stuff my some metric (fame, wealth, etc.) and are still deeply unhappy
> I'll be honest, I don't know how to answer this without rambling about virtue vs consequential ethics.
That’s OK. This is just a discussion on the web we’re both likely to eventually forget. Were we speaking in person, I’d find it valuable to discuss it further, ramblings and all.
Worth noting that of the two points I expressed in my original comment, I find the other one to be the more interesting of the two.
> It seems like you feel like you life a life where you are happy with the choices you make. Not everyone gets this.
I feel confident in saying the answer to the first sentence has no bearing on my opinion on the matter. By that same token, I also agree with the second sentence.
> Some people have a harder time finding that path, and need to remember to check in with themselves more often.
Fair enough. Someone said “it’s never your successful friends posting the inspirational quotes”, though (assuming it’s true) that could just very well be because those are precisely the friends who don’t need external reinforcement.
I feel that given more time and a better setting to discuss, one or both of us might begin to tweak our view. I would have enjoyed that. Thank you for a constructive (though brief) conversation.
> Given that the entire journey is single steps, if you take one step and then beat yourself up because one step is nothing...
When did I ever say to do that? What I'm saying is, if you're so happy, and happiness is so important as people claim, then what motivates you to go through the pain of 10000 steps in the first place?
No, I submit that happiness is at best orthogonal to success.
> You've worked hard to go from self-hate to self-hate
Yes, and now without the comfort of being able to eat a pint of ice cream when I've had a bad day or pick up a pizza on the way home from work, or enjoy a carefree dining experience with friends. Such is life. One must sacrifice to attain goals.
> Why not feel happy and successful at every moment of calorie counting
Good fucking luck with that.
> If every moment you play a tune, you hate how badly you play, and it drives you to play more precisely, but you hate playing and feel bad afterwards, are you better off or worse off than someone who plays imprecisely, but loves every moment they play and can't wait to play more and feels better afterwards?
That depends on if your goal is to play better or be happy. To attain success one must not be satisfied with being not successful or one will have too little motivation to succeed. The fact that people put themselves through miserable, agonizing slogs to succeed at things should tell you something about happiness: it isn't actually what people want, deep down. If it were, I know from first hand experience that opioids are a great way to make yourself feel good pretty much all the time without doing anything.
No, people want to be satisfied, and are sometimes confused into thinking that satisfaction will bring happiness, but it won't. Likewise, if someone wants to accomplish something, happiness and failure will not satisfy.
> Now you’re changing the goalpost to “reason”. My god. There’s a reason for everything.
What goalpost?
> Who cares what “well-adjusted” people think?
I imagine the person claiming universal knowledge of the human condition would care. If well adjusted people are an exception to your rule, it's not a great rule.
> The only claim that I care about is if it is possible to think that basically everything that you have to do suck
Oh, if that's the claim then sure. I thought the claim was "everything you have to do sucks", not "it's possible to believe everything you had to do sucks."
Totally agree then. I've met lots of unhappy people that believe that. 100% true.
> Where you appeared to be justifying creating dissatisfaction on the basis that you are providing a solution to that dissatisfaction. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your point here.
Touché. I did say that. Balderdash.
My point (poorly stated) was that while I think it's cruel to create a problem where it doesn't exist, it's not cruel to promote the solution to a real problem that already exists. However, promoting the solution involves reminding you of the problem, which creates or emphasizes a dissatisfaction you may have been ignoring.
> I suppose that I did -- and I still do, because I don't see how my reply was unresponsive.
My point in using heroin as an example was to say there are plenty of ways to create happiness that aren't necessarily beneficial in the long run.
Perhaps some better examples would be:
- Sitting on the beach all day
- Not exercising
- Spending every dollar I have today and ignoring my future needs
All of these would lead to me being happy for a while. But eventually they're detrimental. Yes?
>> There's no way to hack life and make it better in any real way.
This is a very close-minded statement. You've found happiness in your personal life by successfully aligning your actions with a traditional value system, and that's great! But, it's apparent you haven't fully considered other walks of life that align with different value systems.
Take, for example, a man I know who is paralyzed from the neck down, has no family to call his own, yet is probably the happiest man you'll find around. He has found meaning in his injury and its ability to help others grow.
The mind is extremely resilient and adaptable. I would argue that your life path is the EASIEST path to long-term fulfillment in modern western society, but it is NOT the ONLY way. Making such a claim is doing a huge disservice to people like the woman in the article.
> It seemed to suggest or question the point of improvement, betterment, or desires entirely.
That says a lot about why I made that comment to begin with. It’s this way of jumping to conclusions and feeling attacked that seems to be quite deeply conditioned in many of us. Hence, I admit my comment was kind of provocative.
To clarify: By no means did I want to indicate that betterment and improvement aren’t worthwhile endeavors generally speaking. My point is rather that they should be embedded in something greater. Otherwise, they might yield counterintuitive results which can, in extreme cases, become dangerous.
To support my point: Look at what’s currently considered “successful” in our contemporary society. Then look at its detrimental effects which become more and more pronounced in many areas. A bit more balance would be desirable at times.
A lot of this stems from the deeply entrenched believe in a false conceptual self. At least that’s what I am convinced of. That’s why I made that comment in the context of this article.
> I think much of human suffering due to competition stems from lack of security, or the lack of reassurance that basic needs will be met.
Good comment - there are two places I disagree with you:
1) See the hedonic treadmill theory[0]. You could point to someone, relatively speaking, who is on top of the world. But they are still unhappy. Why is this? It's sometimes theorized that we are at a "set point" in happiness, and while we can run faster on the treadmill, or slow down on the treadmill from time to time, we are stuck at this set level of happiness.
2) Surely the vast majority of the developed western world is not at a lack for "basic needs", but why is there so much anger and despair? Because I believe you might be missing more of the "basic needs" than just Food and Water. See Maslow's hierarchy of needs[1]. While it is also theory which has arguments against it, it utilizes a more comprehensive definition of "needs."
Surely there are many people in the western world who lack psychological stability or lack companionship.
> All of the needs of your friends and family are met.
You will need to define "needs" because IMHO, that is not true. I have relatives who are veterans of war, friends who have had psychotic breaks, friends who have everything they need but something just doesn't "click" with them.
> I find it interesting that you think this about becoming an Olympian, but not about being mentally stable and happy.
Now hold on, you never said anything about mental state, we're talking about a healthy person choosing to be happy here (or at least I was). If you have depression or stress disorders or anything of that nature then yes, obviously more is required. The flip side of that: Someone who is otherwise in a fit mental state can choose to be happy in the way we've discussed.
> That's quite a caveat. Self-discipline is a fairly nebulous thing, how are you going to evaluate it? What is it chemically?
Why do we need to evaluate it?
> Why do some seem to have less and some more? At what point would you stop saying: "Just get more self-discipline" towards a problem?
I think a lot of it has to do with how you're raised and the values you're given in your developmental years, but like anything else it's something that's practiced and honed. I'm not perfect by any stretch, I have down days like anyone else.
As to when you stop, I feel like that's connected to this:
> This looks like a claim, but I'm not sure what you're supporting it with. Some people have very poor brains, where does that fit in in your hypothesis? Should this have been prefixed with "healthy, standard brain"? Because that cuts out a pretty big chunk of people.
And:
> Why is self-discipline not recommended for people with depression, anxiety, etc., if what you're saying is true?
Which yes, I am talking about otherwise mentally healthy people but I'd disagree with you that such a statement excludes a lot of people. I think a lot more people are what we would say are "normal" than not.
> The core question here is this: if it is all so available, and so straightforward, and open to everyone, and requires one to simply be human with a brain and nothing else, why is it, then, that nobody does it? Why do people choose to be unhappy, why do they choose to be fat?
Well speaking as someone who's also working on being way too fat for my own good, it's because that's what we're programmed to be. Growing up poor food is the only luxury you really have so every celebration, the good times, are built around big meals and as such I have an issue with comfort eating. It's getting better but just like cultivating happiness it's something that takes constant self policing. The nice thing is, the happiness went first, and that makes comfort eating less necessary by itself.
As has been said elsewhere in the thread, advertising, a huge part of all our lives is built on the idea of convincing people who otherwise wouldn't be aware of a product that they need that product to be happy. Is it such a logical leap that this constant barrage of messages would make people unhappy if they weren't consciously aware of the message and why it's being used that way?
>So, one hour spent Really Happy, outweighs a year spent Just Happy, because that Really Happy is all received by your present self.
I find making decisions that end up along lines of this really, really difficult. The rational part of my brain knows very well which one should I choose, but it has really, really hard time arguing with that more... I don't know, primal? part of me.
I think it's really fascinating, how relatively weak our conscious self is in arguments with our short term desires.
I would say difficult, but not extremely difficult. Your examples require a lot of external resources and material goods to achieve, and the services of others. What we're talking about is possibly altering your food intake, maybe a supplement or two, and other than that it's just your own self discipline.
> I don't think I can make sense of this statement... if something has many requirements, and something to a great degree, how can you say that it is merely a choice, and that anyone can do it?
Because everyone has a brain and a will and those are in the vast majority of cases all you need to do it.
> The average person, by definition, is not great. So why are you saying anyone can do it, in the end, that anyone can be great? Simplicity is not relevant here. Winning a race is simple - just run faster than everyone else.
I would say the gateway to happiness is realizing that you are in fact not great, that you are not destined to be famous or wealthy, and to embrace just being the best you that you can be. Embrace average, buy better beer, enjoy the luxuries you can afford instead of pining for the ones you can't.
> What made you decide that changing how you think is simple, easy, and readily available?
Well again I said no such thing, I said in comparison to becoming an Olympian or being elected President that this was easy. There are a lot of other things that are easier than those two things. Altering the way you think just requires self discipline, self policing, and commitment. There's no magic solution or program or book, it's not self help tapes or a twelve step program. It's something you decide to do for you with the resources you were born with.
I've made radical changes to how I think in the last few years and in so doing have greatly improved the quality of my life, and the first step on that journey was realizing that I was just a regular guy, I would never be a celebrity, never be very wealthy, never be famous and never be some massive achiever, and that there was nothing wrong with that. It hurts at first because our society tells us to a large degree that that is how you succeed in life, but after awhile, you learn to appreciate average. Since then I've never been happier.
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