7 ms·

I think a large part of the problem is that when people talk about finding "happiness" they are actually talking about "winning at life". Which is impossible of

I think a large part of the problem is that when people talk about finding "happiness" they are actually talking about "winning at life". Which is impossible of course. Every time that you do something that you think will make you happy, and you ask yourself 'is this it?' you allready know the answer, because someone who's satisfied wouldn't ask 'is this it?'. And if you spend years thinking about "finding happiness" I don't think there's anything that will stop you from asking "is this it?". I think you have found happiness when the idea "life is meaningless" seems obvious and irrelevant. If we could get rid of the concept of happiness we probably should. As with a lot of existential problems it is only really a problem if you know about it.

digi_owl 10y ago
Wonder how much of that can be blamed on consumerist marketing, and its drive to amp our desires.
- Fraterkes 10y ago
  I think that is a part of it, but also a lot the films we see and books we read have convinced us that we'll recognize happiness when we'll find it.
- scalio 10y ago
  I think a lot would be your answer. Not strictly new as a concept, kids get raised to hunt happiness. Every stupid action movie that ends with a big party, celebrities whose job it has become to look happy, every ad promoting x because it will make you a happier person... Kids get raised being told they can buy stuff that'll make them happy, and it's only when you become an adult and get a bunch of real world thrown your way that you get the chance to realize how much crap that is actually worth. And yet the majority of the western population doesn't seem to understand that you can't buy happiness. Sure, it's nice to have central heating and a full fridge, but these would make less fortunate people extremely happy! For a while, until the pipes bust and you need to make the guy come 'round to fix them. Still, heating and fridging have at least some intrinsic value. They keep you from freezing over during sleep and keep your food from rotting. But everything else, after the initial surge of serotonin or whatever other hormone, just becomes part of the annoyances that keep you going throughout the day. At best, it blends into the furniture, so that you forget you have it and buy it again. There is something seriously wrong with our lifestyle, but it's not clear to me how it can be fixed peacefully. Or violently. Or at all. Because human nature led to this, and how are we supposed to overcome that?
scalio 10y ago
> You have found happiness when the idea "life is meaningless" seem obvious and irrelevant. Precisely. To the best of our knowledge, we're just robots. There is no meaning behind the universe, it just kinda, is. The realization that the only sense you can find in life is the one you create yourself, makes a lot of things clearer. This is also why it should be irrelevant that life is meaningless, since what do you care about the true meaning of life (which probably doesn't even exist) once you found something better, more satisfying, that you can cope with and develop in?
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  I'm curious as to why, when faced with unpredictable phenomenon, you chose to go with the hypothesis "everything is random" rather than "everything is choice" when you have an experience that appears to be choice, and would probably have a hard time naming a truly random phenomenon.
  - jshevek 10y ago
    The parent didn't say "everything is random", nor anything that absolutely requires this viewpoint. To declare that "everything is choice" strikes me as putting one's beliefs ahead of inquiry.
    - scalio 10y ago
      Indeed, when I say life has no meaning, I don't mean that it is devoid of rules. Quite the contrary is true, since our modern life revolves around mathematics. In that sense, the universe is exquisitely meaningful, it's full of mathematical meaning, but that's not massively useful for us humans trying to figure out how to spend our time.
      - CuriouslyC 10y ago
        At the small scale, the world is unpredictable. As the scale grows, for well behaved linear systems the law of large numbers kicks in, and you get predictable, mathematical behavior. For complex nonlinear systems, however, the unpredictability of the small scale can "propagate up" and render the system at the large scale completely unpredictable. Remember that mathematics is just a model, not the territory. For starters, you have incompleteness; for any formal system you can make true statements that are unprovable. Additionally, two constructs which are central to mathematical analysis, infinity and truth, don't exist. For hundreds of years epicycles were used to model the orbits of the planets. Now we're elevating grand theories that embed the universe in an 11-dimensional manifold.
FungalRaincloud 10y ago
In my personal experience, I agree, it's a misunderstanding of what happiness is, that causes people to miss the mark when trying to find it. Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you make. The universe is meaningless, it exists, devoid of any reason of its own, and yet, it exists. Your job, when trying to become a happy person, is to find your own meaning, and work at that, until you master it.
- ycombinatorMan 10y ago
  Theres no need for meaning...
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  This way lies hedonism.
  - triangleman 10y ago
    In what way? Are you sure, based on what the parent wrote? Perhaps he was not clear about the difference between "finding meaning" and "finding your own meaning", but few people are clear about that. A search for meaning, personal or otherwise, does not necessarily lead to hedonism--to get there you have to throw out all kinds of useful things, and it doesn't really get you very far, and eventually life loses meaning and you go somewhere else. In short, I don't think telling someone to find their own meaning would necessarily lead to hedonism.
    - apatters 10y ago
      No, he's right. If you abandon the notion that there's anything which possesses an intrinsic or higher meaning, it's almost inevitable you'll end up gratifying your most basic instincts first because they're the strongest. At least until they're sated. The only thing I don't get is why more people don't do it. People walk around with all sorts of hangups and narratives about why they're denying themselves and they take these to the grave with them. I'd much rather overindulge until I'm bursting at the seams and then having learned where my limit is, dial it back from there. Much fewer regrets in the long run.
Kenji 10y ago
I noticed that a lot of people (including myself) condition happiness on something. For example "when I get my degree, I'll be happy" or "if I get in a relationship with this person, I'll be happy" or whatever their desire is. However, such events always lie in the future: You always postpone your happiness and never actualize it. And even when the desires are actually satisfied, they quickly stop being a source of happiness and new desires take their place. Why not be happy right now? The right way to go about it is that you tell yourself "I am pursuing my goal and I am happy, right now, to do so." It is incredible how this changes the quality of life, plus you can detect problems with yourself and the environment early because if you can't be happy with your present situation at all, it's time to change something.
- scalio 10y ago
  I think this has to do with a certain short-sightedness concerning achievements, purchases, general life decisions... Is there a particularly good reason why a degree would make you happy? It'll land you a good post at a high-paying company, I'm sure. But what will you do with your money? Or are you the type of person who takes pleasure in big, positive numbers as their account balance? I often get on peoples' nerves by asking 'why?', until they realize something I've seen coming two hours earlier not because I'm a genius, but simply because I'm used to thinking ahead and exploring the possibilities. I've been doing that long enough (was raised that way) so that it happens automatically and very, very quickly.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    I've found that a large percentage of people get annoyed when you ask them, "why?". I don't mean to be harsh, but this is the only way I can describe it: I think it's because they actually don't have well thought out reasons for lots of the things they do, and they don't want that exposed because it could weaken their already shaky worldview because then they'd be standing on shifting sand, not a stable bedrock of unquestioned ideas. So they just continue accumulating possessions like the happy people in the movies do, ignoring the mounting evidence that these things haven't made them happy in the past, but just one more possession, maybe that'll be the one before I happily drive off into the sunset with the end credits rolling. Maybe I'm rambling, but I struggle to understand why some people keep doing the same things and expecting a different outcome, and asking them "why?" rarely seems to elicit a well thought out answer. The answer in the end just seems to come down to, "because that's what I do". Some people are not introspective. As an introspective person myself, I always attempt to understand why I do what I do, admittedly that can be draining at times and doesn't always come up with meaningful answers, but I'd personally prefer to at least attempt than to wander around in wilful ignorance.
summarite 10y ago
I think happiness is very well possible. But the problem is that, whether you want to blame social pressure, education, advertisement or something else, most people seem to think happiness means satisfaction of all desires and eternal feeling-good. That's not it. It's about finding satisfaction in and with yourself and not let circumstances tip your boat over. With or without kids, office job, park ranger or astronaut, married or celibate (or both), if you manage to derive meaning and satisfaction from the moment you'll be happy. You're probably somewhat right people confuse it with winning at life (my house has to be bigger than the neighbours, my job have shorter hours than my brother's and bring more income than my friend's, any my wife had to be the prettiest in town and our kids the smartest), but i think that just scratches the surface of the misconception. It's really about what happiness is and how to reach/keep being happy, and that the outside world or your possessions have surprisingly little to do with it.
taneq 10y ago
> [W]hen people talk about finding "happiness" they are actually talking about "winning at life". Which is impossible of course. Winning at life is a process, not an event or a one-off result. It can be anything from really enjoying a hot chocolate while watching a sunrise, to nailing a product demo, to that first (or third) date with your crush. Winning at life is not something you can be 'done with', except maybe by dwelling on and reliving past wins. But then isn't that a kind of winning, too?
- Fraterkes 10y ago
  I don't disagree with you that what you discribe sounds like a good way to live. But I meant that talking about 'winning at life' is problematic because it suggests there is a finish line. Which is wrong, because as you say, being happy is a process.

digi_owl 10y ago

Wonder how much of that can be blamed on consumerist marketing, and its drive to amp our desires.

Fraterkes 10y ago
I think that is a part of it, but also a lot the films we see and books we read have convinced us that we'll recognize happiness when we'll find it.
scalio 10y ago
I think a lot would be your answer. Not strictly new as a concept, kids get raised to hunt happiness. Every stupid action movie that ends with a big party, celebrities whose job it has become to look happy, every ad promoting x because it will make you a happier person... Kids get raised being told they can buy stuff that'll make them happy, and it's only when you become an adult and get a bunch of real world thrown your way that you get the chance to realize how much crap that is actually worth. And yet the majority of the western population doesn't seem to understand that you can't buy happiness. Sure, it's nice to have central heating and a full fridge, but these would make less fortunate people extremely happy! For a while, until the pipes bust and you need to make the guy come 'round to fix them. Still, heating and fridging have at least some intrinsic value. They keep you from freezing over during sleep and keep your food from rotting. But everything else, after the initial surge of serotonin or whatever other hormone, just becomes part of the annoyances that keep you going throughout the day. At best, it blends into the furniture, so that you forget you have it and buy it again. There is something seriously wrong with our lifestyle, but it's not clear to me how it can be fixed peacefully. Or violently. Or at all. Because human nature led to this, and how are we supposed to overcome that?

scalio 10y ago

> You have found happiness when the idea "life is meaningless" seem obvious and irrelevant. Precisely. To the best of our knowledge, we're just robots. There is no meaning behind the universe, it just kinda, is. The realization that the only sense you can find in life is the one you create yourself, makes a lot of things clearer. This is also why it should be irrelevant that life is meaningless, since what do you care about the true meaning of life (which probably doesn't even exist) once you found something better, more satisfying, that you can cope with and develop in?

CuriouslyC 10y ago
I'm curious as to why, when faced with unpredictable phenomenon, you chose to go with the hypothesis "everything is random" rather than "everything is choice" when you have an experience that appears to be choice, and would probably have a hard time naming a truly random phenomenon.
- jshevek 10y ago
  The parent didn't say "everything is random", nor anything that absolutely requires this viewpoint. To declare that "everything is choice" strikes me as putting one's beliefs ahead of inquiry.
  - scalio 10y ago
    Indeed, when I say life has no meaning, I don't mean that it is devoid of rules. Quite the contrary is true, since our modern life revolves around mathematics. In that sense, the universe is exquisitely meaningful, it's full of mathematical meaning, but that's not massively useful for us humans trying to figure out how to spend our time.
    - CuriouslyC 10y ago
      At the small scale, the world is unpredictable. As the scale grows, for well behaved linear systems the law of large numbers kicks in, and you get predictable, mathematical behavior. For complex nonlinear systems, however, the unpredictability of the small scale can "propagate up" and render the system at the large scale completely unpredictable. Remember that mathematics is just a model, not the territory. For starters, you have incompleteness; for any formal system you can make true statements that are unprovable. Additionally, two constructs which are central to mathematical analysis, infinity and truth, don't exist. For hundreds of years epicycles were used to model the orbits of the planets. Now we're elevating grand theories that embed the universe in an 11-dimensional manifold.

FungalRaincloud 10y ago

In my personal experience, I agree, it's a misunderstanding of what happiness is, that causes people to miss the mark when trying to find it. Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you make. The universe is meaningless, it exists, devoid of any reason of its own, and yet, it exists. Your job, when trying to become a happy person, is to find your own meaning, and work at that, until you master it.

ycombinatorMan 10y ago
Theres no need for meaning...
AstralStorm 10y ago
This way lies hedonism.
- triangleman 10y ago
  In what way? Are you sure, based on what the parent wrote? Perhaps he was not clear about the difference between "finding meaning" and "finding your own meaning", but few people are clear about that. A search for meaning, personal or otherwise, does not necessarily lead to hedonism--to get there you have to throw out all kinds of useful things, and it doesn't really get you very far, and eventually life loses meaning and you go somewhere else. In short, I don't think telling someone to find their own meaning would necessarily lead to hedonism.
  - apatters 10y ago
    No, he's right. If you abandon the notion that there's anything which possesses an intrinsic or higher meaning, it's almost inevitable you'll end up gratifying your most basic instincts first because they're the strongest. At least until they're sated. The only thing I don't get is why more people don't do it. People walk around with all sorts of hangups and narratives about why they're denying themselves and they take these to the grave with them. I'd much rather overindulge until I'm bursting at the seams and then having learned where my limit is, dial it back from there. Much fewer regrets in the long run.

Kenji 10y ago

I noticed that a lot of people (including myself) condition happiness on something. For example "when I get my degree, I'll be happy" or "if I get in a relationship with this person, I'll be happy" or whatever their desire is. However, such events always lie in the future: You always postpone your happiness and never actualize it. And even when the desires are actually satisfied, they quickly stop being a source of happiness and new desires take their place. Why not be happy right now? The right way to go about it is that you tell yourself "I am pursuing my goal and I am happy, right now, to do so." It is incredible how this changes the quality of life, plus you can detect problems with yourself and the environment early because if you can't be happy with your present situation at all, it's time to change something.

scalio 10y ago
I think this has to do with a certain short-sightedness concerning achievements, purchases, general life decisions... Is there a particularly good reason why a degree would make you happy? It'll land you a good post at a high-paying company, I'm sure. But what will you do with your money? Or are you the type of person who takes pleasure in big, positive numbers as their account balance? I often get on peoples' nerves by asking 'why?', until they realize something I've seen coming two hours earlier not because I'm a genius, but simply because I'm used to thinking ahead and exploring the possibilities. I've been doing that long enough (was raised that way) so that it happens automatically and very, very quickly.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  I've found that a large percentage of people get annoyed when you ask them, "why?". I don't mean to be harsh, but this is the only way I can describe it: I think it's because they actually don't have well thought out reasons for lots of the things they do, and they don't want that exposed because it could weaken their already shaky worldview because then they'd be standing on shifting sand, not a stable bedrock of unquestioned ideas. So they just continue accumulating possessions like the happy people in the movies do, ignoring the mounting evidence that these things haven't made them happy in the past, but just one more possession, maybe that'll be the one before I happily drive off into the sunset with the end credits rolling. Maybe I'm rambling, but I struggle to understand why some people keep doing the same things and expecting a different outcome, and asking them "why?" rarely seems to elicit a well thought out answer. The answer in the end just seems to come down to, "because that's what I do". Some people are not introspective. As an introspective person myself, I always attempt to understand why I do what I do, admittedly that can be draining at times and doesn't always come up with meaningful answers, but I'd personally prefer to at least attempt than to wander around in wilful ignorance.

summarite 10y ago

I think happiness is very well possible. But the problem is that, whether you want to blame social pressure, education, advertisement or something else, most people seem to think happiness means satisfaction of all desires and eternal feeling-good. That's not it. It's about finding satisfaction in and with yourself and not let circumstances tip your boat over. With or without kids, office job, park ranger or astronaut, married or celibate (or both), if you manage to derive meaning and satisfaction from the moment you'll be happy. You're probably somewhat right people confuse it with winning at life (my house has to be bigger than the neighbours, my job have shorter hours than my brother's and bring more income than my friend's, any my wife had to be the prettiest in town and our kids the smartest), but i think that just scratches the surface of the misconception. It's really about what happiness is and how to reach/keep being happy, and that the outside world or your possessions have surprisingly little to do with it.

taneq 10y ago

> [W]hen people talk about finding "happiness" they are actually talking about "winning at life". Which is impossible of course. Winning at life is a process, not an event or a one-off result. It can be anything from really enjoying a hot chocolate while watching a sunrise, to nailing a product demo, to that first (or third) date with your crush. Winning at life is not something you can be 'done with', except maybe by dwelling on and reliving past wins. But then isn't that a kind of winning, too?

Fraterkes 10y ago
I don't disagree with you that what you discribe sounds like a good way to live. But I meant that talking about 'winning at life' is problematic because it suggests there is a finish line. Which is wrong, because as you say, being happy is a process.