Are you in college? I don't mean that as an insult, I'm just curious. I associate this kind of over-the-top writing with the kind of writing I did when I was 18

Are you in college? I don't mean that as an insult, I'm just curious. I associate this kind of over-the-top writing with the kind of writing I did when I was 18 years old. About this: “You aren’t as happy as you think/report” is as silly I don't know why anyone would write like this. Who are you trying to convince? There is an incredibly rich literature about people's ability to lie to themselves. Here is a starter course: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201508/the-psychology-self-deception https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201508... https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/selfdeception/ https://lifelessons.co/personal-development/selfdeception/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deception Unhappy people often convince themselves that they are happy. This is a well-studied subject. If these unhappy people are lucky, they have friends, and the friends try to intervene, to get the person the help they need, or perhaps, to simply confront them with reality. We often have an easier time understanding others more than we understand ourselves. Again, there is a rich literature on this. Spend 5 seconds on Google researching self-deception and you'll understand how well studied this is. About this: “Happiness comes from within” is a core element of every major religion and most secular life philosophies across all cultures on Earth for thousands of years. Wow. You might want to re-read that in a year and see if it still sounds as intelligent as you thought it did. You might eventually feel that you've exaggerated the strength of your argument. Stated simply: people do often understand one another. Humans engage in conversation with other humans, and by this process we learn about each other. And over the years we build up a complex "theory of the mind" so as to better estimate what is going on in someone else's head. We can generally tell when someone else is miserable. And if the miserable person says they are happy, we can take note of the discrepancy. If you don't want to read a few articles on this topic, you can simply refer to your own personal experience. Surely at some point you've had a friend who seemed depressed, and you realized they were depressed without being explicitly told? About this: The champions of the thesis that “Happiness comes from without, not within” tend to be marketers and salespeople of products, ideas, ideologies, etc. who need to generate discomfort with the status quo in others to make a buck I suspect that you are smart enough to realize that if you had a strong argument you would not have to resort to putting words in my mouth. One of us has an agenda. The other one is linking to articles that will be educational if the good people of Hacker News decide to read them.