I find this really interesting, and definitely sad. I wonder if it's because as people become more educated, they understand (or at least perceive) that their individual life is insignificant when contrasted against the great big universe of things and beings, and this results in deep and profound unhappiness.
I think it is more that one has the ability to see "the man behind the curtain", and at how badly the deck is stacked against you for most things. Seeing and hearing the lies promulgated absolutely everywhere and knowing they are so where others do not.
It's (also) more mundane than that. Think about those minor annoyances one has with their partner in a relationship (friendship, romantic, doesn't matter--everyone has something they could pick nits about in their friends, spouses, etc.).
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.).
Wow well said. I think this is the real core of the issue. I have experienced this since I can remember and people would get mad at me as a child for explaining how something worked or how to look at something from a different perspective. I struggle with sharing my understanding about anything due to the depth of explaining I have to do for people to understand why I arrived at my conclusion. One thing I have found helps as I get older is to let go of the feeling of importance of things going a certain way. I can now live with small mistakes and misunderstandings way better than when I was young.
I have the complete opposite experience right now and it's killing me. Even with dating. Gotta explain why I do this or that. Because bit it's contradictory in their eyes
Any advice?
Interesting, without context its pretty difficult to offer advice. From your comment, and I'm reaching here, you might not have a great awareness of how your actions/choices are perceived by others before you make them. You seem to in hindsight, which is great. Also it could be the stage of life you are in where the people you are surrounded by are still exploring options of how to live and are curious when they see someone make choices outside their realm or expectation. In either case it comes down to how much you want them to understand your what and why. I have really tried hard at accepting that most others are not going to see why I make my choices so what is the point of explaining any of them. This is all conditional on who it is and how much I love them but it is a constant in my thought process. Letting go of the need for people to understand your motivations is liberating, when you can achieve it. :) I hope this helps.
Now, sure, you might attribute that to being so smart. But graduating from high school at 10 would totally stunt your social development. His parents reject that idea but I am less than persuaded.
How can you possibly connect to your peers when you have forgotten more than they will ever know? They have nothing to offer you. Every interaction predictable and boring. It must be supremely lonely being the odd one out.
I will tell you what. He probably would have liked to have a girlfriend more than to hang around a bunch of kids in their early twenties treating him like their baby brother, no matter how smart he was. It seems like a very narrow notion of the value of relationships with others if you think that any interaction where you’re not being intellectually challenged is worthless.
I can tell you form experience having a significant other with a sufficient "gap" gets very demoralizing and frustrating. That, or I just can't appreciate what I have.
That can be frustrating, but the kind of isolation you'd get being a young kid in a college milieu would be much worse.
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.
No pressure? There's the pressure right there in that word prodigy. That's enough pressure. Everything the kid does is an example of what a prodigy does. Oh the prodigy is writing a story! Must be great! The prodigy is playing sport! He'll be an expert for sure! No? Well then he's not such a prodigy after all! Haha the prodigy tripped over that step! Can't even walk!
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.
I have nothing to add to this so I'm sorry for commenting if i shouldn't. But thank you for writing this because i felt a little insane looking at the world around me and coming to some of the same conclusions as you have arrived at, that result from treating people a certain way. I'm not sure why most other people don't seem to get this.
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.
Interesting points but I think it basically doesn't come down to intelligence but rather 1) Do you like what you do for a living 2) Are you happy with the life you have outside the workplace
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.
Some more questions to add to this list:
1) Are you short of food or water 2) Are you or your loved ones in constant fear of being enslaved and/or blown to bits 3) Has there been a systematic effort to drive out your culture and replace it with another
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.
> 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.
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.
Thinking it could be worse makes us grateful that it is not. Thinking it could be better makes us desire for more. In that way I think the two ideas are different.
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.
I think it's a lot about very intelligent people have a lot of potential and can't develop and use it at full capacity to improve the world. So they have a meaningless feeling of their life.
I think that’s half of it. The other half is recognizing just how hard it is to actually improve the world in a way that doesn’t introduce negative externalities or other unintended consequences.
Odd discussion. I think happiness is much simpler but perhaps deeper than they're alluding to here. There's a bit to happiness which is immediate - a factor of the present. There's longer term happiness, but there's something of a discount function to happiness in the future or past to the present. (This will vary person to person.)
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.
My personal theory: intelligent people might become more interested in the internal world than the external world. But they are still emotionally and physically connected to that external world, so there is a feeling of not belonging here.
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.
Exactly, some people think so much that they basically live in their heads, most things outside of it considered uninteresting.
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.
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.
I’ve noticed that smarter people are more likely to reject “traditional” things - religion, family, having roots in a home base, community things, etc. They also tend to be “terminally online” i.e. having a very rich and sustaining existence in digital spheres rather than the real world.
It is entirely possible to have a fulfilling and happy life rejecting traditional human things and embracing virtual things. It’s just significantly harder.
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
Intelligence is multidimensional. You can be a great mental calculator and at the same time have a very hard time memorizing random data, or learning new languages.
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.
I can compare myself to my ex-girlfriend. We both face problems in life, but she is more consistently happy than I am.
I think the main reason is that I was always more ambitions, and more eager to take risks, and this lead to quite drastic changes in my life. Which were good for my career, but which destroyed my social life in the process. Also I abandoned all other interests I had such as hobbies or sports, to single mindedly pursue my goals.
My ex on the other hand has consistently worked on building an ever expanding social circle. She is not so ambition and spends considerably more time tending to her social circle. And when she is alone she has her hobbies that she has been cultivating over many years.
At the end of the day, I go to sleep thinking about the day when everything will turn out great and I will be happy. And she goes to sleep with fresh memories of her amazing day out with her friends. Of course she's happier.
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.
Oh man, I'd literally been looking for this for so long, very glad to have rediscovered it.
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 really appreciate the sentiment, and think I would like to live the suburban version of that life. With some luck, and by maintaining thrifty habits, I think some semblance of that life is within reach for a good fraction of the population today.
That text is indeed open for interpretation. Neglecting your girlfriend. Or being dismissive of her lack of drive/ambition. Maybe it's not meant like this at all, but I don't see any acknowledgement towards her way of life or admission of regret.
The text as I intended it to be read, was me learning a hard and very useful lesson from her.
I am by no means dismissing her way of life. Quite the contrary.
I think this is the most applicable case for most of us really. In my free-time I think of what better things I could be doing or working on, reading the news, new technologies, working or studying for my masters degree. Not exactly friend-making activities or memorable ones that you will think fondly of in the future. When I think back, its all a big blur of being all by myself, with a few actual memorable moments with people sprinkled in it.
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.
I figured it out.. I do the same thing, and for me, it's about my mortality. I, u/pizza, lived, because of all these projects I did.. stark realization, that over the next couple of years probably, I need to undo what I've learned to do w/ my free time.
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.
>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.
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.
Depends on the city, you and your circle's life goals, and so on. As a recent parent I can say that I only maintain a few close friends whom I see sparingly. Between a full-time job, raising a child, and keeping a marriage healthy there isn't much time for much else.
If your social circle isn't interested in children then this isn't going to be much of a difference.
It depends. Most of my friends got married from age 25-35 and their closeness usually aligned with the age of the kids.
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!
If you’re in SV - you’re not uncommon but that’s still uncommon when it comes to the greater US. The COL is main reason people do this practice. People around 30 are supposed to be in relationships, looking to be married soon if not already, having kids soon, and settling down.
Obviously, childless folks are becoming more common but this is mostly due to economic situations and not due to choice.
Maybe it’s a grass is always greener on the other side argument.
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.
Finding the hard working partner is something mostly reserved for women though in US culture. It’s rare to find a woman in the US who will buck gender norms and be the breadwinner of the house while you frolic. We expect the inverse in the US as far as gender norms go. (And the stats back this up)
You're creating one big false dichotomy. This notion that you either focus every bit of your being on your career or otherwise be a wage slave is absurd. Having a strong community around you is an incredible financial tailwind, beyond the fact that it is just a generally a positive thing and makes your life emotionally richer.
I didn't say that at all. Putting effort into maintaining a social circle has greatly diminishing returns as you get older. It's just a fact of life. Priorities change as our age, and if they don't, you'll find yourself a 30+ yr old child.
Social energy should shift more towards personal growth as you get older.
I’ve found it to be the opposite. Almost all of my friends in my 30s I made in my 20s. Being married is a huge boon to socialization and that happened due to socialization in my 20s.
All the opposite. the effort you put into keeping a social circle of quality friends and acquaintances in your 30s and beyond can be extremely rich in terms of pleasure, social activities, and even work or business connections, and there's nothing whatsoever about being older that makes you a "child" if you actively cultivate irreplaceable time with good friends. Nothing about cultivating and keeping friendships in your later years stops you from pursuing rich personal interests either. It sometimes even achieves the opposite and nurtures rich experiences or interesting projects.
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.
Hobbies and sports are a great way to disconnect from the stress of everyday life. If you are able to pursue them as an enjoyable pass time then your life is going to be so much better. They bring both social and mental benefits. Pick one you find interesting and start. You'll suck at the beginning but you'll get better. that's part of the joy. Like they say it's not always the goal but the journey.
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.
The question you’ll wrack yourself over with though is - is it really possible for you to have ever had a similar experience?
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 problem I'm having, dear reader, is that I don't understand why I seem to be the only happy person on the Internet.
My twitter feed collectively has depression. Hacker News is a crowd that seems to feel okay on the best of days, when it doesn't realize it has burnout.
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.
I'll join in, so that we can be a crowd of three! :)
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.
The idea of baseline happiness makes sense to me. I generally live at a 7-8 out of 10 and always bounce back to that level no matter what happens. Many of my friends are around that tier. My wife is 7-6. She sometimes seems incredulous about my good mood. I can't really help it.
I think it's because we've gotten so used to seeing the riches and happiness of other people on social media and we see our merely neutral happiness as something to strive away from.
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.
Why you have to be happy? lol. In fact, the normal life state for the best of survival would be far from being happy. Whenever we prefer something, think Darwin and think if it makes biological sense.
Well if we want to talk about it in those terms, the “hedonic treadmill” suggests that if things haven’t just gotten much better or worse our levels of happiness should be pretty stable. If you were a hunter-gatherer or primitive farmer you wouldn’t have been thinking about how much better an American suburb thousands of years in the future would be than eating sandy bread.
You’re not the only one. :) For me it took some conscious effort but it was yoga that finally pushed me over the edge. Now it’s mostly just happy even if the circumstances don’t call for it.
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.
> Like someone said in one of the other comments: happiness is a choice.
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.
I mean - happiness is a state of mind when you’re in plenty. If you don’t have plenty or are lacking basic necessities - it’s kinda hard to argue being happy in that state is genuine.
What does genuine happiness mean? There are plenty of poor, happy people on this world. Once you can afford food and shelter everything else is kind of just a mindset if you don't mind being something of a social weirdo.
I find that people who spend the most time on the internet are the least happy. The people making 20 updates a day on social media are way more likely to be severely depressed, because they aren't spending time with friends, working on hobbies or focused on a good career. So a lot of the social media content I see is from pretty unhappy people.
There are three of us, maybe? Just not to make this a useless thread, if I find I am not as happy I just get on my bicycle and go for a quick ride.
Often to just pick up milk or bread, otherwise just to nowhere.
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. :)
I doubt you can help other people very much. Research suggests that happiness is largely a stochastic phenomenon [1] where common-sense factors like socioeconomic status, educational attainment, family income, marital status, and religious commitment all show little impact on variation in happiness. The genetic heritability of the stable component of subjective well-being approaches 80%.
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.
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.
Perhaps people on the internet are happier than they seem. Because they are grousing and complaining. Which are great guilty pleasures which until recently there was little room to indulge in day to day life. Until we invented something to let us indulge to our hearts content: the internet.
You most definitely aren’t :) I am happy most of the times but that is boring and nothing to talk about. People love to talk misery and drama. Apparently some people would rather live with a partner who is unpredictable, and even perhaps a bit dangerous, because of the drama. It’s like living in your own reality show.
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.
Were you bullied as a child? Did you have enough to eat every day as a child? Were your parents screaming at each other every day when you were a child? Did they beat you or abuse you emotionally? Did you have two parents? Did your siblings make you miserable every day, or were you an only child and constantly lonely? Did your teachers attempt to dominate you and crush your spirit?
Do you recall suffering any traumas at all during childhood?
Have you had good mental health as long as you can remember?
Not the person you replied to but here is me: Divorced parents (father secretly had another family), abusive, alcoholic stepfather. Rape and murder in immediate family. Poverty. I suffered mental illness and depression for years. Therapy and medication.
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
I have divorced parents due to father's alcoholism, and grew up in poverty by American standards (lower middle class by Russian standards I guess - we always had food, a flat and basic clothing, but no car nor any fancy stuff like cellphones or >1 TV :)), bullying exists in schools in Russia but is mellow by American standards as depicted in media. Again by what I understand from American teachers on how schools are, teachers were constantly "crushing our spirit", although I don't think of it this way, I think discipline is good. Yet, I was pretty happy throughout my life so far. I think the main contributor to my unhappiness is constantly worrying about the future, including macro future (like political instability in America) but sometimes I just look at my present life and remember that I was happy as a student who had to choose between internet and beer every month, I often didn't have money to pay for both ;)
I'm very late (I don't check my alt account too often), but I figure I'll reply anyways. Even if just for myself.
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.
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.
Exposure therapy over years. I don’t think I’m done, so I’d say I’m still at it. But not how you think.
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.
This state of mind is called "ignorance is bliss." There's nothing wrong with it. Despite people thinking "happy" people have never had any hardship in life, it really just describes not wanting to explore what has caused them any trauma, thus, not letting those things affect them (in a negative way or positive way).
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."
You're making a huge assumption here: that all happy people are ignorant to their hardships. That is empathetically false. Personally, the more I've explore the depths of my past, accepting the things that make me who I am: the traumas, the privileges, etc. The more happier I become.
> Like everything else, there is some truth to this. Generally, the more intelligent you are, the more you can see behind the façade of everyday life being easy or safe. You see all the risks and downsides—the calamities that await us.
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.
That was actually referring to the rest of the paragraph:
> 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.
Seeing all the bullshit and deciding to be cynical and do nothing is intellectually lazy and defeatist, which is the sort of short-sighted and lack of awareness a teenager would do instead of a more prudent adult.
That depends on how much time/energy/money/health/resources an adult has. Generally if Ike can spare some resource towards the collective effort into making the world a better place to live, the adult thing would be to contribute some resource. If one cannot, then focus on oneself until one is stable enough to begin contributing back. Part of the difficulty behind this is that it’s easy to become cynical and dismissive because its easier to say the world can’t be saved/isn’t worth saving than actually saving the world.
> at least to me it just seems like someone is desperately trying to look smart.
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.
I’ve always thought the search for happiness is framed incorrectly from the start. Happiness is a short term emotional state. It comes from essentially mundane activities (more specifically, your mental reaction to them) and isn’t the consequence of a larger vision or long-term project in the way “being wealthy” is. Being happy is more like feeling full after eating a meal; while you can structure your life in such a way that you eat well on a regular basis, it’s the eating that makes you feel full, not the long-term plan of always having good food around.
I wouldn't say it's a short term state. At least personally, I can pause at any point in the day and think "am I happy", to which the answer is usually yes.
Of course there are peaks and valleys, which as you described, are usually short bursts of emotion — like when you listen to your favorite song or see your best friend. But I think happiness also exists at a more baseline level when you are just... content in being.
Your happiness' biggest killer is thinking about the future / dwelling on the past. I think smart people do this a lot more, which may explain the correlation.
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).
No, I'm angry most of the time and don't really have a problem with that. Having accomplished significant goals makes me feel this time I have spent living is worth the oxygen I have consumed.
Whenever I feel sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. So they say on television.
Bluntly: If you’re so smart, then why are you conflating smartness with happiness.
IMO the two things happen in different hemispheres. You can’t reason yourself into happiness. You can compartmentalize-away unhappiness— for a time. And surprisingly unsophisticated things make you happy. It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t need to, because “making sense” is not any place along the axis of happy-unhappy.
Really strange article. It felt like someone writing "I've got cheese, so I like the colour red". The cause effect isn't clear to me, at all, and the article isn't nearly well written enough to expand on anything meaningfully. It's a false dichotomy, or at least a not well explained argument.
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.
> Really strange article. It felt like someone writing "I've got cheese, so I like the colour red". The cause effect isn't clear to me, at all, and the article isn't nearly well written enough to expand on anything meaningfully. It's a false dichotomy, or at least a not well explained argument.
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".
I saw something on the internet recently that had a profound effect on me. It was about the idea that our thoughts occur in a mental "space" and that space varies in size moment-to-moment. This space can reference a physical space or something more abstract like a social connection space.
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.
Yeh, that's an interesting idea. I'd probably nit pick about meditation (ultimately) being about shrinking. I mean, mindfulness maybe, but insight is ultimately about no self at all, and a huge and deeply meaningful connection to everything in a vast and unknowable expansiveness...
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.
Yeah I should have specified that I was talking about mindfulness.
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.
> How do you nudge yourself in that direction on a perpetual basis, as opposed to visiting it by stunning your mind into submission and silence?
>
>Subscribe to Naval
Not sure if this was deliberate, but I'd love to know the conversion rate of this CTA.
Happiness' biggest killer is thinking about the future / dwelling on the past. I think smart people do this a lot more, which may explain the correlation.
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).
You're right about the present moment stuff - but I'm not convinced smart people necessarily think more about past or future. If you're down on your luck, not very bright, working a shitty job for not much pay, you're probably thinking really hard about future logistics / rent / living conditions, no?
172 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadThe 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Smart-Why-Arent-Happy/dp/B01DYF...
It is entirely possible to have a fulfilling and happy life rejecting traditional human things and embracing virtual things. It’s just significantly harder.
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
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.
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.
Sorry if it does not come through so easily.
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.
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."
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.
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).
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.
Not sure if this was deliberate, but I'd love to know the conversion rate of this CTA.
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).