6 ms·

There's More to Life Than Being Happy (2013)

66 points by kareemm 11y ago

dang 11y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223. This is not a dupe, because that was well over a year ago.
ssaddi 11y ago
very nice article. The book, Man's Search for Meaning, was listed as one of the 10 most influential books in US
mark_l_watson 11y ago
A great story. Made me think of the story in the movie 'Woman in Gold' (recommended).
Aqueous 11y ago
sounds a lot like we sour on the "pure" happiness of merely providing for our own selfish needs, then have children, a deliberate hardship, to satisfy our "un-selfish" need for meaning. this is pointed out by the article's scientific sourcing. but - devil's advocate here - isn't having children also fundamentally selfish? (says person in a quite possibly crowded room of parents)
- rifung 11y ago
  I think having children may be fundamentally selfish, but not raising children.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I'll add to this that raising children can be selfish as well if you overdo it and apply "Hollywood morality" in your life - i.e. "they hurt my child, so I'll hurt hundreds or even thousands of people to get my revenge on the one who did it to my child, and it's OK and I am a good person". That is, doing things for your own benefit at the expense of everyone else around is selfish, but I believe so is doing things for your loved ones at the expense of the society at large. Call it recursive selfishness, or sth.
- koonsolo 11y ago
  It might start out as selfish. But once you have them, their life matters more to you than your own.
  - ionised 11y ago
    But that's just instinct isn't it? You can't really control how you feel about your children once they are born. It's not like you are making a deliberate, conscious decision to value their life over your own. That decision has already been made for you by your biology.
    - epalmer 11y ago
      To some extend I think you can control how you feel about them and parenting. There are days that just go on and on with parenting. Sick kids, crying,, whatever. You can choose to let that get to you or just solder on. That is a choice. I know parents that think of parenting as jail for 18 years. I think of it as a gift to me to help shape their lives.
    - tripzilch 11y ago
      Well it may be instinct, but I also happen to agree with that instinct. I believe I have free will at least in the sense that I can choose whether to follow my instincts or fight them. Remember, we have many instincts other than caring for our children, and a bunch of those aren't really meaningful in today's society anymore, and a few of those actually need to be fought, and the majority of well-adapted people succeed at that just fine, because they choose to. There are other instincts we do not fight, because they align nicely with our sense of what is "good" and what is "right" (which I believe is not based on instinct), and in cases like raising children they even aid us and strengthen our resolve. Sounds like a win to me. (not a parent, btw).
ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
Moral of the Story don't be a Jerk, find your special purpose
rifung 11y ago
I'm curious to know how others deal with meaning in the context of their jobs. I certainly live for things outside of work, but at the same time work is a necessity to survive. How do you balance how much time you devote to work when your source of meaning is unrelated?
- vijayr 11y ago
  I keep wondering about this too. If one is stuck in a 9 to 6 job, with a 2-3 hour commute added to it, it is really hard to find time for things outside of work. In this case it becomes important to find work that is meaningful and enjoyable but that is easier said than done.
  - tspike 11y ago
    Programmers are in a distinctly privileged position with respect to freeing up time, if that is a priority for you. For us there are only two prerequisites: 1) Be good at what you do. 2) Keep your expenses well below your means. With these two things, there are many ways to arrange your life to have enough time to pursue your passions. You can freelance or contract 20-30 hours a week, or work for a year or two in a regular job and then quit and take months off, or you can take Mr Money Mustache's approach and bust your ass to save up enough to retire within 10 years.
- zenogais 11y ago
  If you're stuck in an unsatisfying situation, accept it for what it is at the moment and keep looking for ways to get out of that situation. I grew up in a really small town with little to no industry and a massive drug subculture because of it, it really felt like a trap, but it's this method that got everyone I know who got out out.
- grecy 11y ago
  >work is a necessity to survive While your statement might be true very broadly, you don't need to work anywhere near as much as you think you do to survive. I worked 9-5 for 18 months and saved enough money in that time to then spend 2 years driving Alaska-Argentina. [1] I've just been working 9-5 for 4 years and have now quit and have saved enough money to spend two years driving around Africa [2], then hpefully 2 years from Europe->SE Asia. If I only wanted to earn enough money to "survive" (i.e. food and shelter) I bet I only need to work 2 months a year. Less when I throw in hunting, doing my own maintenance and growing my own vegetables. [1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-africa http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-africa
bcook 11y ago
Contentedness might be a more logical goal. Be emotionally open to either happiness or sadness by default.
mordrax 11y ago
> Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. I have to either strongly disagree with the outcome of this research or disagree with the definition of happiness used here. If you were to ask parents (myself included), if having children makes you happier in life, I think you would get a resounding yes it does! Having kids is stressful at times, and you can be constantly tired and stretched to your limits but the heights of joy one experiences as a parent has no bounds. I'd hate to think that the majority of parents think of child rearing as some sort of meaningful suffering...
- kedean 11y ago
  I have no children, but those studies always seem to focus on parents who are, at that moment, raising small children. They are asked at the most stressful point in the process if they are happy, of course they'll say no. These studies need to amortize happiness levels over a number of points in the childs life: birth, a few intervals likke 2/5/10/15, and once the child has moved on and left their house.
- kjs3 11y ago
  Yup. Parenting, like jobs, can involve significant ups and downs, and I fear studies like this are confusing an point-in-time assessment with a global assessment. If you asked me last week "does having your son make you happy", I'd probably have said "no" preceded by a couple of expletives. That doesn't mean that over the course of having him he hasn't increased the happiness of my life.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Yes. The way I've seen it explained is people (particularly younger people) confuse euphoria with happiness in the same way people tend to confuse infatuation with love.
- tripzilch 11y ago
  Did you stop reading there? I have to ask because IMO this is such a wonderful article, and that particular statement (counterintuitive and questionable as it may be) is really a rather minor point to the larger thesis. Though I can understand your point of view, I'm not a parent myself, but when I read that bit, I immediately had to think "whether this is actually true or not, most parents are probably going to disagree vehemently". But on the whole, IMO it's a rather minor point. I'm not sure if it's true either (but if it was I can easily imagine most parents to have a bias that still makes them disagree), and because of that it distracts.
gglitch 11y ago
This seems like an unsophisticated view of what 'happiness' is. In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for no other reason. Viewed from within that frame, it seems like the response to this essay would be, if not to be more happy, why pursue a life with great purpose and meaning? Edit--it feels more pompous not to cite my sources than to do so, so I'm getting this mainly from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and equating "happiness," with what he calls "eudaimonea," which is not to be falsely equated with a simple good feeling.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  One could almost say, there's more to happiness than "being happy".
- tripzilch 11y ago
  > In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for no other reason. What you seem to be describing is a concept called "value" in the philosophy of ethics. "Happiness" is a pretty universal value. But it's not the only one, "Freedom" for instance. There's some hypothetical thought experiment that illustrates this, about people being offered to get hooked up to a VR eternal-happy-machine simulator, it's a bit more nuanced than that, you should probably look it up if you want to know :-) Anyway, it seems to me that the article is arguing that "Caring for/Giving to others" is somewhat of a neglected, "forgotten" value. But then, I happen to agree with most of what it says.
tim333 11y ago
>by ... "giving" rather than "taking" -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness. Yeah but you can do both. And pursue happiness for others which often as a side effect makes you happier in yourself. The article mentions Frankel and the holocaust. If Hitler had had a philosophy of making people happy rather than "German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an 'Aryan race' and an extreme form of German nationalism", as Wikipedia puts it, things could have been more chilled. You can overdo the deep philosophy and end up avenging some historical slight or slaughtering unbelievers when just being nice would work fine. Disclosure - member of Action for Happiness which promotes that sort of stuff.

66 points by kareemm 11y ago

dang 11y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5123223. This is not a dupe, because that was well over a year ago.

ssaddi 11y ago

very nice article. The book, Man's Search for Meaning, was listed as one of the 10 most influential books in US

mark_l_watson 11y ago

A great story. Made me think of the story in the movie 'Woman in Gold' (recommended).

Aqueous 11y ago

sounds a lot like we sour on the "pure" happiness of merely providing for our own selfish needs, then have children, a deliberate hardship, to satisfy our "un-selfish" need for meaning. this is pointed out by the article's scientific sourcing. but - devil's advocate here - isn't having children also fundamentally selfish? (says person in a quite possibly crowded room of parents)

rifung 11y ago
I think having children may be fundamentally selfish, but not raising children.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'll add to this that raising children can be selfish as well if you overdo it and apply "Hollywood morality" in your life - i.e. "they hurt my child, so I'll hurt hundreds or even thousands of people to get my revenge on the one who did it to my child, and it's OK and I am a good person". That is, doing things for your own benefit at the expense of everyone else around is selfish, but I believe so is doing things for your loved ones at the expense of the society at large. Call it recursive selfishness, or sth.
koonsolo 11y ago
It might start out as selfish. But once you have them, their life matters more to you than your own.
- ionised 11y ago
  But that's just instinct isn't it? You can't really control how you feel about your children once they are born. It's not like you are making a deliberate, conscious decision to value their life over your own. That decision has already been made for you by your biology.
  - epalmer 11y ago
    To some extend I think you can control how you feel about them and parenting. There are days that just go on and on with parenting. Sick kids, crying,, whatever. You can choose to let that get to you or just solder on. That is a choice. I know parents that think of parenting as jail for 18 years. I think of it as a gift to me to help shape their lives.
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    Well it may be instinct, but I also happen to agree with that instinct. I believe I have free will at least in the sense that I can choose whether to follow my instincts or fight them. Remember, we have many instincts other than caring for our children, and a bunch of those aren't really meaningful in today's society anymore, and a few of those actually need to be fought, and the majority of well-adapted people succeed at that just fine, because they choose to. There are other instincts we do not fight, because they align nicely with our sense of what is "good" and what is "right" (which I believe is not based on instinct), and in cases like raising children they even aid us and strengthen our resolve. Sounds like a win to me. (not a parent, btw).

ZoeZoeBee 11y ago

Moral of the Story don't be a Jerk, find your special purpose

rifung 11y ago

I'm curious to know how others deal with meaning in the context of their jobs. I certainly live for things outside of work, but at the same time work is a necessity to survive. How do you balance how much time you devote to work when your source of meaning is unrelated?

vijayr 11y ago
I keep wondering about this too. If one is stuck in a 9 to 6 job, with a 2-3 hour commute added to it, it is really hard to find time for things outside of work. In this case it becomes important to find work that is meaningful and enjoyable but that is easier said than done.
- tspike 11y ago
  Programmers are in a distinctly privileged position with respect to freeing up time, if that is a priority for you. For us there are only two prerequisites: 1) Be good at what you do. 2) Keep your expenses well below your means. With these two things, there are many ways to arrange your life to have enough time to pursue your passions. You can freelance or contract 20-30 hours a week, or work for a year or two in a regular job and then quit and take months off, or you can take Mr Money Mustache's approach and bust your ass to save up enough to retire within 10 years.
zenogais 11y ago
If you're stuck in an unsatisfying situation, accept it for what it is at the moment and keep looking for ways to get out of that situation. I grew up in a really small town with little to no industry and a massive drug subculture because of it, it really felt like a trap, but it's this method that got everyone I know who got out out.
grecy 11y ago
>work is a necessity to survive While your statement might be true very broadly, you don't need to work anywhere near as much as you think you do to survive. I worked 9-5 for 18 months and saved enough money in that time to then spend 2 years driving Alaska-Argentina. [1] I've just been working 9-5 for 4 years and have now quit and have saved enough money to spend two years driving around Africa [2], then hpefully 2 years from Europe->SE Asia. If I only wanted to earn enough money to "survive" (i.e. food and shelter) I bet I only need to work 2 months a year. Less when I throw in hunting, doing my own maintenance and growing my own vegetables. [1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure [2] http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-africa http://theroadchoseme.com/new-jeep-new-adventure-africa

bcook 11y ago

Contentedness might be a more logical goal. Be emotionally open to either happiness or sadness by default.

mordrax 11y ago

> Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study. I have to either strongly disagree with the outcome of this research or disagree with the definition of happiness used here. If you were to ask parents (myself included), if having children makes you happier in life, I think you would get a resounding yes it does! Having kids is stressful at times, and you can be constantly tired and stretched to your limits but the heights of joy one experiences as a parent has no bounds. I'd hate to think that the majority of parents think of child rearing as some sort of meaningful suffering...

kedean 11y ago
I have no children, but those studies always seem to focus on parents who are, at that moment, raising small children. They are asked at the most stressful point in the process if they are happy, of course they'll say no. These studies need to amortize happiness levels over a number of points in the childs life: birth, a few intervals likke 2/5/10/15, and once the child has moved on and left their house.
kjs3 11y ago
Yup. Parenting, like jobs, can involve significant ups and downs, and I fear studies like this are confusing an point-in-time assessment with a global assessment. If you asked me last week "does having your son make you happy", I'd probably have said "no" preceded by a couple of expletives. That doesn't mean that over the course of having him he hasn't increased the happiness of my life.
tsotha 11y ago
Yes. The way I've seen it explained is people (particularly younger people) confuse euphoria with happiness in the same way people tend to confuse infatuation with love.
tripzilch 11y ago
Did you stop reading there? I have to ask because IMO this is such a wonderful article, and that particular statement (counterintuitive and questionable as it may be) is really a rather minor point to the larger thesis. Though I can understand your point of view, I'm not a parent myself, but when I read that bit, I immediately had to think "whether this is actually true or not, most parents are probably going to disagree vehemently". But on the whole, IMO it's a rather minor point. I'm not sure if it's true either (but if it was I can easily imagine most parents to have a bias that still makes them disagree), and because of that it distracts.

gglitch 11y ago

This seems like an unsophisticated view of what 'happiness' is. In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for no other reason. Viewed from within that frame, it seems like the response to this essay would be, if not to be more happy, why pursue a life with great purpose and meaning? Edit--it feels more pompous not to cite my sources than to do so, so I'm getting this mainly from Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and equating "happiness," with what he calls "eudaimonea," which is not to be falsely equated with a simple good feeling.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
One could almost say, there's more to happiness than "being happy".
tripzilch 11y ago
> In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for no other reason. What you seem to be describing is a concept called "value" in the philosophy of ethics. "Happiness" is a pretty universal value. But it's not the only one, "Freedom" for instance. There's some hypothetical thought experiment that illustrates this, about people being offered to get hooked up to a VR eternal-happy-machine simulator, it's a bit more nuanced than that, you should probably look it up if you want to know :-) Anyway, it seems to me that the article is arguing that "Caring for/Giving to others" is somewhat of a neglected, "forgotten" value. But then, I happen to agree with most of what it says.

tim333 11y ago

>by ... "giving" rather than "taking" -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness. Yeah but you can do both. And pursue happiness for others which often as a side effect makes you happier in yourself. The article mentions Frankel and the holocaust. If Hitler had had a philosophy of making people happy rather than "German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an 'Aryan race' and an extreme form of German nationalism", as Wikipedia puts it, things could have been more chilled. You can overdo the deep philosophy and end up avenging some historical slight or slaughtering unbelievers when just being nice would work fine. Disclosure - member of Action for Happiness which promotes that sort of stuff.