19 ms·

How To Be Happy Anywhere

211 points by superasn 15y ago

rodolphoarruda 15y ago
No wonder all great philosophers were depressive people.
josscrowcroft 15y ago
This is really, really well written... first time in years I've felt compelled to print something so I could keep a hard copy.
Hitchhiker 15y ago
" For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. " - Ecclesiastes 1:18
- jcromartie 15y ago
  There really is nothing new under the sun.
- jzycrzy 15y ago
  "living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." - John Lennon
- mikecane 15y ago
  As soon as I saw the HN tagline, I wondered if anyone here had read Ecclesiastes. Good for you.
- edwinnathaniel 15y ago
  I think Bible is the only self-help book I've ever need in my life. Side joke: C# in the Nutshell 4.0 is way thicker than the Bible yet the technical book will be outdated soon.
jinushaun 15y ago
I really resent the fact that, in my older age, I care way too much about politics. Causes me nothing but stress.
- Retric 15y ago
  I don't think it's aging or knowledge as much as advertizing that's the problem. I am reasonably well off and get to drive a nice car, but I only get to drive one and improvements come out a lot faster than I can buy them. I never wanted a Yacht as a kid, but now I think it would be cool to have enough money to support a gigantic hole in the water for throwing money into. The president is just about irrelevant in my personal life but listen to a few attack adds and it's hard not to really care. Luckily, I find I am a lot happier now that I stopped watching TV and installed an add blocker. And what really surprised me is changing how I look at people, my standard of what's good looking has literally changed now that I don't see the extremes pushed in my face all the time.
- fuzzix 15y ago
  "I really resent the fact that, in my older age, I care way too much about politics. Causes me nothing but stress." How much? I found stressing too much was unhealthy (since I have little or no control over these machinations) but I need to keep an eye on it, get angry once in a while about how the terrible decisions have a real and negative day-to-day effect on how I live. I'll remember it next time I squeak in the ballot box. As for the article, appears that it does indeed come down to your community and/or family - emotional, economic and physical well-being come down to how your community (the physical community around you rather than any online/remote association) regard you. Do you live a lonely, densely urban existence where if you don't work you starve? Or do you have a community around you who would, to an extent, entertain your whims to pursue goals other than the perennial career/home/toys/family name franchise path? There's also the pursuit of crap you can't take with you, but is that necessarily a dichotomy? Maybe there's an unhealthy weight placed on the toys and widgets we geek types surround ourselves with... I like to think I have a healthy relationship with these things but I know if someone took my ZX Spectrum away I'd be pretty miffed. Could be, could be... we saw people today flying into a rage because they couldn't get their hands on a cheap, underpowered Linux box. Did they feel their happiness actually depended on acquiring this widget?
berthamilton 15y ago
ignorance is bliss!
- 16s 15y ago
  Yes, we'd rather not know that the water we drink, factory we live next to and the things our children chew on may cause cancer.
- sycren 15y ago
  Perhaps it would be fairer to say: Ignorance is bliss when there is no foreseeable way around the problem.
  - berthamilton 15y ago
    Perhaps. Would be hard to work that into the poem tho.
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- slig 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
  - pedrolll 15y ago
    What a horrible article. Complete lack of in-text citations. There's no way of verifying any of the claims there, unless one goes through all of the listed references. To me it seems like the article was created by someone with very mild depression, wanting to back up his subjective feelings on the matter with vague citations.
- deleted 15y ago
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- dasil003 15y ago
  Why wait? It seems to me writing something like this ought to be able induce yourself into a depressive downward spiral.
  - ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
    Naa, it's a cycle. Like day and night, dry and wet, healthy and sick, cold and warm, hungry and full. Without one you can't appreciate the other.
- VMG 15y ago
  As far as I know what you describe isn't what is called "clinically depressed". There are people who are so depressed that they literally can't get out of bed. I'm not an expert though.
- true_religion 15y ago
  As a believer in solipsism, I would much rather live a lie and be happy than be miserable in the 'truth'.
meric 15y ago
If you have the ability to improve the situation then you don't need to worry, but OTOH there's no need to worry if you don't, either. "Contentedness" is a state you can choose to be in. You can recognise horrible events but you don't have to be unhappy over it. I feel like thinking about how "the reality" is pretty good to convince yourself to feel better isn't the way to go. What if things aren't going well? What if there's war everywhere, does that means you must then be unhappy, that you can't be content? Stake yourself not on fantasy, dreams, goals, people or events, but as it is. You still can have those things but having or not having them doesn't need to affect you.
guelo 15y ago
I'm sure he used randomized blind statistically significant samples in each location to come to the conclusion that there were fewer smiles in the Chinese neighborhood. And he conducted experiments with isolated control groups to come to the conclusion that this was caused by the TV in their living rooms.
- pleasebehonest 15y ago
  Is it necessary to do this before ever reaching any conclusion? Should we never trust our own observations until they've been approved with such vigor?
  - lurker17 15y ago
    Only if we care about getting reliablly correct answers.
llambda 15y ago
While I generally find myself agreeing with the sentiments of this article, let's not forget: the plural of anecdote is not evidence. Apply this axiom to OP's observations. So he goes to some rural regions of the world, sees some kids being kids and concludes that because he doesn't see that same behavior in a modern region of China it must therefore be because of modernity or technology or whatever that these people aren't happy. But wait, how does he know they aren't happy? Who is he to say that because he "didn't see a smile" among them they must therefore be hopelessly depressed? Equally how do we know that because he saw some kids playing in the street these communities are "happy"? I could use some of my own anecdotes, experiences I've had in the barangay of the Philippines that would contradict his observations despite having the same hallmarks, but again, these are anecdotes and even if you have a large set of them they still aren't a supplement for evidence. The crux of this article is weak. Based almost entirely on the touchy-feely reality of observational anecdotes. Again, I don't disagree with some of the broader points. But this article is not a good example of a case supporting them.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  It's hard to come up with a scientific, fool-proof study to prove his point. And honestly, that's not his job, and not the purpose of the article anyway. Positing a theory based on anecdotes is important because it forces us to re-analyze our lives and our values. It makes us ask the tough questions, and come up with our own conclusions
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jacknews 15y ago
Ask those aspirational chinese if they want to go back to the straw huts. Sure people are happier with less information. Just like a ostriches.
iterationx 15y ago
I would say that one must remember that knowledge isn't an end in itself. If you waste your Saturday reading Wikipedia or Quora without purpose, that will make you unhappy, because you are wasting time. So some portion of the happiness equation comes from acting purposefully.
spodek 15y ago
Information and emotion are orthogonal. If you want to connect them you can, but you don't have to. In other words, you can use more or less information to make yourself happier or unhappier. The ability to manage your emotions is different than the ability to process information, but it can be learned just as well, they just don't teach it in school.
- bdg 15y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I can demonstrate that time passed and population create a common trend line, but it's absurd for me to state that time is responsible for creating people.
- wr1472 15y ago
  Ignorance is bliss
  - georgekv 15y ago
    [Rational] ignorance [can be a qualified] bliss.
    - wr1472 15y ago
      There you go again, trying to make everyone more informed. Stop it.
    - Klinky 15y ago
      One person's rational is another person's irrational.
      - pjscott 15y ago
        In perception, yes, but not in reality. If you want to be alive tomorrow, jumping off a tall building will be irrational even if you think it's the last step in a convoluted ritual to grant yourself immortality. That's an exaggerated example, but the principle holds in general: people's desires may differ, but the rationality of any actions taken in the pursuit of those desires is something you can evaluate objectively, at least in principle.
bradleyland 15y ago
So the author's conclusion is that we should temper our unhappiness over the state of the world, because the facts are that we live in the "best world" that has ever existed. I can't disagree with that, because I enjoy being happy, but I think this is an easy pathway to apathy. I also think that one of the very reasons we live in the best world ever is that we are so well informed. It's easy to send warriors off to slaughter a village if you never have to witness death. The last century has seen an accelerating increase in the connectedness of the human race. When a single man's life is threatened on the other side of the globe, it's possible for millions of people, thousands of miles away, to learn about it. Our natural empathetic instincts kick in, and that simple knowledge causes a stirring discomfort within us. Most people I've met don't really want to be uhnappy. So, once we have this knowledge, we have two choices. We either do what we can to stop the source of our unhappiness -- injustice, war, abuse, etc -- or we become apathetic. Because I am an optimist, I believe most people will chose the former, and I believe that is why our best days are ahead.
overshard 15y ago
If you are more informed and less happy you aren't doing something right. Information doesn't make you unhappy, you thinking about certain information is making you unhappy. Whilst I've been to college, listen to NPR every day, keep up-to-date on the lastest news in my field via Hacker News and various blogs I can still be happy. I do this in the face of NPR telling me people are dying in Japan from radiation, my clients walking in and complaining all day about random x feature being broken when they simply don't know how to use it (even with clear warnings and arrows pointing to unfilled out fields). It's a matter of what you choose to think about, I choose to focus heavily on what I love such as music, StarCraft 2 and creating beautiful software. If I decided to focus on suffering in the middle east, or how my programming language of choice simply doesn't perform as well as "x" programming language of course I'm going to be unhappy or unsatisfied with what I do. I know this information I just don't focus on it all the time. It's something for me to bring up in a conversation with people to discuss rationally and use in my job to better my work but not dwell on and make myself unhappy.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  I think there are 2 levels of being informed: informed about global events, and informed about others better off than you. The first is generally harmless, but the 2nd can lead to comparing yourself to others, and negativity. You can even argue the first makes you happier since you hear others are worse off than you.
- jakeonthemove 15y ago
  Haha, seriously, watching/listening to the news depresses the hell out of people...
paleolithical 15y ago
Not true - the more you know, the more you realize how little you know, so...
- zyeljanee 15y ago
  So if you use the information that you know well you will raalize that you need o much more convinced?
waterside81 15y ago
I share the author's general sentiment, but arrived at the conclusion a bit differently. I remember as a child and even a teenager thinking that all of the "adults" knew more than me, were smarter than me, and could solve all the problems in the world. It was up to me to become as smart as them. But once I got older and saw first hand how clueless the "adults" were (in the financial sector, in the travel industry, in software development, in politics) - I began to long for the days when I thought everyone else had the right answer and all I had to worry about was to make sure the teams were fair for football at recess. When you're young(er) and not aware of how things really work and the problems that exist out in the real world, life is good.
Swizec 15y ago
>> "Our brains are not really wired to accommodate such a proliferation of bad news, regardless of it happening thousands of miles away. One disaster after another compounds, and increases feelings of helplessness. " I, also, have noticed a lot of the older generations growing up without the internet to have this idea that the world is going to shit. But whenever you ask someone who's been used to this epic proliferation of any news since early childhood, the compounding bad news doesn't really seem to have an effect. We see a tsunami happening and an earthquake and a ship sinking and new riots rising and we don't think to ourselves "Wow, the world really sucks" instead the thought process seems more like "Oh cool, that's interesting. I wonder if there are any new lolcats" You might say we've become less sensitive to people's suffering, but really we've just learned that not all news is our news.
bdg 15y ago
The assertion is littered with flaws. It may have been an enjoyable story about life outside of our offices, computers and techno-lives... yet littered with logical flaws. The micro scale doesn't represent the macro scale. The relationship has not been proven. Long-term and short-term impact were not explored. Motivation models for happiness were not explored. Multiple repeatable cases where it was indeed information and not just "Bad stuff happens, here's a bunch of it at once" was not explored. An underlying theme here is that knowing of less than favorable events in the world impacts your quality of happiness, and that people strive for happiness through greater consumerism and status. I flatly disagree with this whole premise. It's a lovely read, but it's (and I don't use this word often) total bunk.
justjimmy 15y ago
I wished the author would've made explicit distinction between 'being informed' and 'influenced by mass media'. Being informed to me means being educated and aware of the world around you – how the clothes on your back is made, the resources that are used to make your fancy gadgets – of course anyone would be depressed. But it's different than to being sucked into a 'lifestyle', the mass media throws at you as stated in the article for obvious reasons. I wished the author made this distinction.
- forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
  Exactly, it is the difference between "go and see it yourself" and using intermediaries to tell you about the world. The intermediaries could distort this information for their own profit like "war on terror" to create wars, or to sell more, or to eliminate adversaries(portray only what is bad about them). I don't think everybody would be depressed if they saw how their gadgets are made, in fact it would be very useful to know to decide and choose those that make your gadgets right, but it cost a little more.
vseorlov 15y ago
It is obvious. That's why children are often very happy.
OneBytePerGreen 15y ago
It's not about the amount of information you take in, but about how much you identify with it. You can hear all day long about how much money other people make, but if you take it merely as a fact and do not construct a personal identity/story from it ("I am upset because others earn more than me", "Life is unfair" etc.), the information will not affect your happiness at all. I believe the article is flawed as it seems to require of us to artificially restrict the amount of information we are exposed to, when the key is to manage one's perception of the information. Seems that many Chinese have developed a strong "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality lately; I would suspect that is the source of the unhappiness, rather than the wiring in their new homes.
nate 15y ago
This isn't exactly relevant to the article, but somehow shares some of the spirit of what happens to us as we educate/inform ourselves more: "this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called 'impostor syndrome.' The clinical definition is a 'psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.' It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing." - Kleon, Austin (2012-02-28). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
mvzink 15y ago
"I came to realize that the more informed we are, the less happy we become because of our tendency to get caught up in constant comparisons." This should have been his conclusion, not some made up theory about why the state of the world seems worse than it really is. This isn't news. Rousseau called it amour propre.[1][2] It is the unhappiness and dissatisfaction peculiar to modern society, wherein constant comparisons with others give us new values, breed competition and the urge for power, and prevent happiness. It also leads to a sort of schadenfreude written about by others: you only enjoy what you have insofar as nobody else has similar enjoyments. And Rousseau is mostly known as a political theorist; who knows how many others have noticed precisely this phenomenon. Yet nobody seems to know how to overcome this, despite this also being written about. (Sorry, I don't have any more sources off hand, ask me and I'll come up with them when I have time.) The surest way: ego-death. The longer yet easier way: realize that others are not their belongings, accomplishments, or even their past or their future; these are effects, the person is the cause. Internalize this fact by acting in accordance with it: deliberately try to see others only as themselves, not as a collection of effects. Then realize the same is true of you and start acting like it. [1] The wikipedia article is useful, but doesn't give a good understanding of amour propre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality [2] The SparkNotes glossary puts it plainly: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/inequality/terms.html http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/inequality/terms.html
jakeonthemove 15y ago
"I’ve seen what you can get, and we still don’t have many of the things. So, we need to work harder. Then, I’m sure, one day we will get there." - That's the spirit! The only reason why they're not happy is that they make the (very common) mistake of delaying the happiness until the end result. With so much to learn and so much to achieve in this world, that end result never comes, that's why we need to learn to enjoy the process of getting there itself. Enjoy the road, not the destination! Look back at what you've achieved - be proud! Look at what others have achieved - be happy for them! Set your eyes on the next thing you want and go ahead and try to get it - that's the best way to be happy, even in a first world country (that sounds weird :-)).
brudgers 15y ago
A branding expert recommends ignorance...call me a cynic. What he observes is that people who are connected to their communities are happier. People who are disconnected (or even dislocated) from their community and obsessed with "stuff" are less likely to be. The idea that people living in a favela are uninformed demonstrates ignorance in the same way that shouting at people who don't speak English would. They are simply informed about a different set of facts - and in general that set of facts may make their lives richer because it is about people they know - i.e. who their cousin has a crush on rather than the Jonbenet Ramsey's of the world. I've seen escalator's, but knowing how to find potable water that doesn't come with a monthly bill would make me better informed.
hammerbrostime 15y ago
I better not read the article then
DanielBMarkham 15y ago
I find it easy to find counter-examples to these anecdotes. There are a lot of people very aware of how rich other people are without it affecting them one bit. I think it boils down to this: very rarely will you receive just plain vanilla information, if such a thing exists. Almost always the information will be wrapped in some kind of value system. As you absorb the information, you end up taking in the value system as well. Let's use TV as an example. So yep, if you spend your time on one of those cable channels where you watch rich people all the time, pretty soon it's not that you'll understand how rich people live, it's that pretty soon you'll start believing that it is better to live like they do. Same goes for the other channels - military, cooking, whatever. These channels are purveyors of information, sure, but what they're really selling is indoctrination. That's fine if you understand it. You should be able to compensate (without having fits about "the man" or "the system") After all, why would they spend time sharing information with you that they felt wasn't trendy and something you'd want to emulate? There might be a boring stuff nobody cares about channel, but I've never seen it. Truly happy people can filter out the value system from the information. They can watch MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. They just compare sources and make their own value decisions. It's like this guy got halfway to the actual state of things, then just gave up. Yes, if you have no information you have no external values being pimped out to you, but you also are missing a huge amount of learning about your fellow man and other ways of thinking about things. No information means no choices. You don't want that.
- gwern 15y ago
  > Let's use TV as an example. So yep, if you spend your time on one of those cable channels where you watch rich people all the time, pretty soon it's not that you'll understand how rich people live, it's that pretty soon you'll start believing that it is better to live like they do. In Brazil and India, rich people on soap operas don't have many kids; sure enough, when you correlate the opening of TV stations with birth rates... http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/fertility-fall-still-puzzling.html#comment-435086 http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/fertility-fall-still-p...
  - dripton 15y ago
    It's also possible that there's a co-factor: TV appeared about the same time as reliable birth control.
theorique 15y ago
This seems to be a very clear example of the contrasting effects of entitlement versus gratitude. Experience and research show that looking at examples of people with "more" (for some definition of "more") and comparing your own lifestyle to that of those people, is a recipe for resentment, envy, and frustration. These emotions tend to work against a person experiencing happiness and inner peace. On the other hand, looking at what's good in your own life situation - regardless of how it compares to anyone else - and deliberately seeking out opportunities to feel gratitude for those things, this tends to increase subjective well-being. This habit is simple, but not easy. The challenge is greater with so much media attention on those people who have more than others (Hollywood red carpet, MTV Cribs, Forbes 400, etc). The key to happiness and inner peace is to tune out the noise and focus on specific opportunities to feel grateful within your own life situation.
robfig 15y ago
I think that much rich world unhappiness stems from spending a lot of time watching TV or playing video games. If you spend your time playing (e.g. hanging out with friends, playing sports) or working (e.g. accomplishing something), then I think happiness is more likely. The last sentence in particular resonated with me: “Happiness is not measured by the number of days you live but, rather, by the number of days you remember.” Every day I've spent consuming media is a day I can not remember.
Jun8 15y ago
Although true in a practical sense (NYT cited a study on older people where in which more introspective types were less happy) I reject the option of extra happiness brought about by lack of knowledge, e.g. To each his sufferings: all are men, Condemned alike to groan; The tender for another's pain, The unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. (Thomas Gray, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College", this is the origin of the term "Ignorance is bliss". The notes on this stanza are worth a read: http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/comment.cgi?text=odec&fromline=99&toline=99&type=explanatory&sort=annotation http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/comment.cgi?text=odec&...). Would you rather be Cypher happily eating his steak in a fictional world or the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar living in a real but wretched world? I would choose the latter but this is by no means an easy question.
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victorhn 15y ago
In my opinion it is ultimately up to you, to decide wheter you are happy or not, information certainly can give us certain truths that are "ugly" or unpleasant, but in the end you can control how you feel about it.
teju 15y ago
It's not information that's to blame, it's the condition of the world we live in. Knowing about glaring inequities will either Cause resentment because one is at the bottom of the pyramid OR Create guilt because one is at the top of the pyramid Add to that the realization that very few people are "self-made" and timing, family, culture and conditioning play a huge role in success and you have a recipe for self-doubt/flagellation. In my case, I just hit a wall when self-preservation kicked in and said "I WILL BE HAPPY, DAMMIT!". I still work at projects I think will make the world better, but don't let their success or failure cloud my feelings. I'm content most of the time.
superasn 15y ago
Oddly enough only today I was watching this movie "better luck tomorrow" in which there was this dialogue that is quite relevant as to why the author feels that way: http://pastebin.com/KnVgnjM3 http://pastebin.com/KnVgnjM3 (posted as a link since the text is kind of long)
personlurking 15y ago
We've all heard something to the effect of "you need to be happy with what you have". For me, this rings true. I've forgone the notion that I need to be working towards doing my dream job, having my dream house, etc. and instead looked for what can give me happiness on a daily basis. Some cultures (usually found in developing nations) celebrate happiness more than others because they live in the moment. Some countries have amazing geography and lots of options to be in nature in a matter of minutes after leaving your house. This is why I live in Brazil and why I left the US.
jostmey 15y ago
One must draw a distinction between satisfaction and happiness. Money and success may bring satisfaction, but never happiness. May you never be satisfied, for the day when that happens is the day you cease living.
RickHull 15y ago
Hm, I'm still not sure how to be happy anywhere. At least, not in the sense that I would understand how to install a doorknob after reading a corresponding article.
frasertimo 15y ago
Well good god that was awful. I agree with the Author's final points; that there are less wars, disasters, etc, and that the world is a better place than before. But it seemed like he just wanted to go on a long-winded pleasure cruise telling us how much happier people are who don't know how happy they are. What an obvious attempt at pulling at our heartstrings. Instead I just wanted to vomit.
melling 15y ago
I've been to Medellin and that's not their first escalator. Maybe it's their first outdoor escalator. The city is actually modern and a great place to visit. It's 75F/24C all year. You read stories like this and you'd think it's 3rd world. In much of Central/South America, you will find slums, but a lot of people live quite well and you'd think you were in an average European or US city.
lurker17 15y ago
Pablum. Kids are happy everywhere because they are carefree kids.

211 points by superasn 15y ago

No wonder all great philosophers were depressive people.

This is really, really well written... first time in years I've felt compelled to print something so I could keep a hard copy.

Hitchhiker 15y ago

" For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. " - Ecclesiastes 1:18

jcromartie 15y ago
There really is nothing new under the sun.
jzycrzy 15y ago
"living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see." - John Lennon
mikecane 15y ago
As soon as I saw the HN tagline, I wondered if anyone here had read Ecclesiastes. Good for you.
edwinnathaniel 15y ago
I think Bible is the only self-help book I've ever need in my life. Side joke: C# in the Nutshell 4.0 is way thicker than the Bible yet the technical book will be outdated soon.

jinushaun 15y ago

I really resent the fact that, in my older age, I care way too much about politics. Causes me nothing but stress.

Retric 15y ago
I don't think it's aging or knowledge as much as advertizing that's the problem. I am reasonably well off and get to drive a nice car, but I only get to drive one and improvements come out a lot faster than I can buy them. I never wanted a Yacht as a kid, but now I think it would be cool to have enough money to support a gigantic hole in the water for throwing money into. The president is just about irrelevant in my personal life but listen to a few attack adds and it's hard not to really care. Luckily, I find I am a lot happier now that I stopped watching TV and installed an add blocker. And what really surprised me is changing how I look at people, my standard of what's good looking has literally changed now that I don't see the extremes pushed in my face all the time.
fuzzix 15y ago
"I really resent the fact that, in my older age, I care way too much about politics. Causes me nothing but stress." How much? I found stressing too much was unhealthy (since I have little or no control over these machinations) but I need to keep an eye on it, get angry once in a while about how the terrible decisions have a real and negative day-to-day effect on how I live. I'll remember it next time I squeak in the ballot box. As for the article, appears that it does indeed come down to your community and/or family - emotional, economic and physical well-being come down to how your community (the physical community around you rather than any online/remote association) regard you. Do you live a lonely, densely urban existence where if you don't work you starve? Or do you have a community around you who would, to an extent, entertain your whims to pursue goals other than the perennial career/home/toys/family name franchise path? There's also the pursuit of crap you can't take with you, but is that necessarily a dichotomy? Maybe there's an unhealthy weight placed on the toys and widgets we geek types surround ourselves with... I like to think I have a healthy relationship with these things but I know if someone took my ZX Spectrum away I'd be pretty miffed. Could be, could be... we saw people today flying into a rage because they couldn't get their hands on a cheap, underpowered Linux box. Did they feel their happiness actually depended on acquiring this widget?

berthamilton 15y ago

ignorance is bliss!

16s 15y ago
Yes, we'd rather not know that the water we drink, factory we live next to and the things our children chew on may cause cancer.
sycren 15y ago
Perhaps it would be fairer to say: Ignorance is bliss when there is no foreseeable way around the problem.
- berthamilton 15y ago
  Perhaps. Would be hard to work that into the poem tho.

deleted 15y ago

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slig 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism
- pedrolll 15y ago
  What a horrible article. Complete lack of in-text citations. There's no way of verifying any of the claims there, unless one goes through all of the listed references. To me it seems like the article was created by someone with very mild depression, wanting to back up his subjective feelings on the matter with vague citations.
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dasil003 15y ago
Why wait? It seems to me writing something like this ought to be able induce yourself into a depressive downward spiral.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  Naa, it's a cycle. Like day and night, dry and wet, healthy and sick, cold and warm, hungry and full. Without one you can't appreciate the other.
VMG 15y ago
As far as I know what you describe isn't what is called "clinically depressed". There are people who are so depressed that they literally can't get out of bed. I'm not an expert though.
true_religion 15y ago
As a believer in solipsism, I would much rather live a lie and be happy than be miserable in the 'truth'.

meric 15y ago

If you have the ability to improve the situation then you don't need to worry, but OTOH there's no need to worry if you don't, either. "Contentedness" is a state you can choose to be in. You can recognise horrible events but you don't have to be unhappy over it. I feel like thinking about how "the reality" is pretty good to convince yourself to feel better isn't the way to go. What if things aren't going well? What if there's war everywhere, does that means you must then be unhappy, that you can't be content? Stake yourself not on fantasy, dreams, goals, people or events, but as it is. You still can have those things but having or not having them doesn't need to affect you.

guelo 15y ago

I'm sure he used randomized blind statistically significant samples in each location to come to the conclusion that there were fewer smiles in the Chinese neighborhood. And he conducted experiments with isolated control groups to come to the conclusion that this was caused by the TV in their living rooms.

pleasebehonest 15y ago
Is it necessary to do this before ever reaching any conclusion? Should we never trust our own observations until they've been approved with such vigor?
- lurker17 15y ago
  Only if we care about getting reliablly correct answers.

llambda 15y ago

While I generally find myself agreeing with the sentiments of this article, let's not forget: the plural of anecdote is not evidence. Apply this axiom to OP's observations. So he goes to some rural regions of the world, sees some kids being kids and concludes that because he doesn't see that same behavior in a modern region of China it must therefore be because of modernity or technology or whatever that these people aren't happy. But wait, how does he know they aren't happy? Who is he to say that because he "didn't see a smile" among them they must therefore be hopelessly depressed? Equally how do we know that because he saw some kids playing in the street these communities are "happy"? I could use some of my own anecdotes, experiences I've had in the barangay of the Philippines that would contradict his observations despite having the same hallmarks, but again, these are anecdotes and even if you have a large set of them they still aren't a supplement for evidence. The crux of this article is weak. Based almost entirely on the touchy-feely reality of observational anecdotes. Again, I don't disagree with some of the broader points. But this article is not a good example of a case supporting them.

AznHisoka 15y ago
It's hard to come up with a scientific, fool-proof study to prove his point. And honestly, that's not his job, and not the purpose of the article anyway. Positing a theory based on anecdotes is important because it forces us to re-analyze our lives and our values. It makes us ask the tough questions, and come up with our own conclusions

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jacknews 15y ago

Ask those aspirational chinese if they want to go back to the straw huts. Sure people are happier with less information. Just like a ostriches.

iterationx 15y ago

I would say that one must remember that knowledge isn't an end in itself. If you waste your Saturday reading Wikipedia or Quora without purpose, that will make you unhappy, because you are wasting time. So some portion of the happiness equation comes from acting purposefully.

spodek 15y ago

Information and emotion are orthogonal. If you want to connect them you can, but you don't have to. In other words, you can use more or less information to make yourself happier or unhappier. The ability to manage your emotions is different than the ability to process information, but it can be learned just as well, they just don't teach it in school.

bdg 15y ago
I couldn't agree more. I can demonstrate that time passed and population create a common trend line, but it's absurd for me to state that time is responsible for creating people.
wr1472 15y ago
Ignorance is bliss
- georgekv 15y ago
  [Rational] ignorance [can be a qualified] bliss.
  - wr1472 15y ago
    There you go again, trying to make everyone more informed. Stop it.
  - Klinky 15y ago
    One person's rational is another person's irrational.
    - pjscott 15y ago
      In perception, yes, but not in reality. If you want to be alive tomorrow, jumping off a tall building will be irrational even if you think it's the last step in a convoluted ritual to grant yourself immortality. That's an exaggerated example, but the principle holds in general: people's desires may differ, but the rationality of any actions taken in the pursuit of those desires is something you can evaluate objectively, at least in principle.

bradleyland 15y ago

So the author's conclusion is that we should temper our unhappiness over the state of the world, because the facts are that we live in the "best world" that has ever existed. I can't disagree with that, because I enjoy being happy, but I think this is an easy pathway to apathy. I also think that one of the very reasons we live in the best world ever is that we are so well informed. It's easy to send warriors off to slaughter a village if you never have to witness death. The last century has seen an accelerating increase in the connectedness of the human race. When a single man's life is threatened on the other side of the globe, it's possible for millions of people, thousands of miles away, to learn about it. Our natural empathetic instincts kick in, and that simple knowledge causes a stirring discomfort within us. Most people I've met don't really want to be uhnappy. So, once we have this knowledge, we have two choices. We either do what we can to stop the source of our unhappiness -- injustice, war, abuse, etc -- or we become apathetic. Because I am an optimist, I believe most people will chose the former, and I believe that is why our best days are ahead.

overshard 15y ago

If you are more informed and less happy you aren't doing something right. Information doesn't make you unhappy, you thinking about certain information is making you unhappy. Whilst I've been to college, listen to NPR every day, keep up-to-date on the lastest news in my field via Hacker News and various blogs I can still be happy. I do this in the face of NPR telling me people are dying in Japan from radiation, my clients walking in and complaining all day about random x feature being broken when they simply don't know how to use it (even with clear warnings and arrows pointing to unfilled out fields). It's a matter of what you choose to think about, I choose to focus heavily on what I love such as music, StarCraft 2 and creating beautiful software. If I decided to focus on suffering in the middle east, or how my programming language of choice simply doesn't perform as well as "x" programming language of course I'm going to be unhappy or unsatisfied with what I do. I know this information I just don't focus on it all the time. It's something for me to bring up in a conversation with people to discuss rationally and use in my job to better my work but not dwell on and make myself unhappy.

AznHisoka 15y ago
I think there are 2 levels of being informed: informed about global events, and informed about others better off than you. The first is generally harmless, but the 2nd can lead to comparing yourself to others, and negativity. You can even argue the first makes you happier since you hear others are worse off than you.
jakeonthemove 15y ago
Haha, seriously, watching/listening to the news depresses the hell out of people...

paleolithical 15y ago

Not true - the more you know, the more you realize how little you know, so...

zyeljanee 15y ago
So if you use the information that you know well you will raalize that you need o much more convinced?

waterside81 15y ago

I share the author's general sentiment, but arrived at the conclusion a bit differently. I remember as a child and even a teenager thinking that all of the "adults" knew more than me, were smarter than me, and could solve all the problems in the world. It was up to me to become as smart as them. But once I got older and saw first hand how clueless the "adults" were (in the financial sector, in the travel industry, in software development, in politics) - I began to long for the days when I thought everyone else had the right answer and all I had to worry about was to make sure the teams were fair for football at recess. When you're young(er) and not aware of how things really work and the problems that exist out in the real world, life is good.

Swizec 15y ago

>> "Our brains are not really wired to accommodate such a proliferation of bad news, regardless of it happening thousands of miles away. One disaster after another compounds, and increases feelings of helplessness. " I, also, have noticed a lot of the older generations growing up without the internet to have this idea that the world is going to shit. But whenever you ask someone who's been used to this epic proliferation of any news since early childhood, the compounding bad news doesn't really seem to have an effect. We see a tsunami happening and an earthquake and a ship sinking and new riots rising and we don't think to ourselves "Wow, the world really sucks" instead the thought process seems more like "Oh cool, that's interesting. I wonder if there are any new lolcats" You might say we've become less sensitive to people's suffering, but really we've just learned that not all news is our news.

bdg 15y ago

The assertion is littered with flaws. It may have been an enjoyable story about life outside of our offices, computers and techno-lives... yet littered with logical flaws. The micro scale doesn't represent the macro scale. The relationship has not been proven. Long-term and short-term impact were not explored. Motivation models for happiness were not explored. Multiple repeatable cases where it was indeed information and not just "Bad stuff happens, here's a bunch of it at once" was not explored. An underlying theme here is that knowing of less than favorable events in the world impacts your quality of happiness, and that people strive for happiness through greater consumerism and status. I flatly disagree with this whole premise. It's a lovely read, but it's (and I don't use this word often) total bunk.

justjimmy 15y ago

I wished the author would've made explicit distinction between 'being informed' and 'influenced by mass media'. Being informed to me means being educated and aware of the world around you – how the clothes on your back is made, the resources that are used to make your fancy gadgets – of course anyone would be depressed. But it's different than to being sucked into a 'lifestyle', the mass media throws at you as stated in the article for obvious reasons. I wished the author made this distinction.

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
Exactly, it is the difference between "go and see it yourself" and using intermediaries to tell you about the world. The intermediaries could distort this information for their own profit like "war on terror" to create wars, or to sell more, or to eliminate adversaries(portray only what is bad about them). I don't think everybody would be depressed if they saw how their gadgets are made, in fact it would be very useful to know to decide and choose those that make your gadgets right, but it cost a little more.

vseorlov 15y ago

It is obvious. That's why children are often very happy.

OneBytePerGreen 15y ago

It's not about the amount of information you take in, but about how much you identify with it. You can hear all day long about how much money other people make, but if you take it merely as a fact and do not construct a personal identity/story from it ("I am upset because others earn more than me", "Life is unfair" etc.), the information will not affect your happiness at all. I believe the article is flawed as it seems to require of us to artificially restrict the amount of information we are exposed to, when the key is to manage one's perception of the information. Seems that many Chinese have developed a strong "Keeping up with the Joneses" mentality lately; I would suspect that is the source of the unhappiness, rather than the wiring in their new homes.

nate 15y ago

This isn't exactly relevant to the article, but somehow shares some of the spirit of what happens to us as we educate/inform ourselves more: "this very real thing that runs rampant in educated people. It’s called 'impostor syndrome.' The clinical definition is a 'psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments.' It means that you feel like a phony, like you’re just winging it, that you really don’t have any idea what you’re doing." - Kleon, Austin (2012-02-28). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

mvzink 15y ago

"I came to realize that the more informed we are, the less happy we become because of our tendency to get caught up in constant comparisons." This should have been his conclusion, not some made up theory about why the state of the world seems worse than it really is. This isn't news. Rousseau called it amour propre.[1][2] It is the unhappiness and dissatisfaction peculiar to modern society, wherein constant comparisons with others give us new values, breed competition and the urge for power, and prevent happiness. It also leads to a sort of schadenfreude written about by others: you only enjoy what you have insofar as nobody else has similar enjoyments. And Rousseau is mostly known as a political theorist; who knows how many others have noticed precisely this phenomenon. Yet nobody seems to know how to overcome this, despite this also being written about. (Sorry, I don't have any more sources off hand, ask me and I'll come up with them when I have time.) The surest way: ego-death. The longer yet easier way: realize that others are not their belongings, accomplishments, or even their past or their future; these are effects, the person is the cause. Internalize this fact by acting in accordance with it: deliberately try to see others only as themselves, not as a collection of effects. Then realize the same is true of you and start acting like it. [1] The wikipedia article is useful, but doesn't give a good understanding of amour propre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality [2] The SparkNotes glossary puts it plainly: http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/inequality/terms.html http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/inequality/terms.html

jakeonthemove 15y ago

"I’ve seen what you can get, and we still don’t have many of the things. So, we need to work harder. Then, I’m sure, one day we will get there." - That's the spirit! The only reason why they're not happy is that they make the (very common) mistake of delaying the happiness until the end result. With so much to learn and so much to achieve in this world, that end result never comes, that's why we need to learn to enjoy the process of getting there itself. Enjoy the road, not the destination! Look back at what you've achieved - be proud! Look at what others have achieved - be happy for them! Set your eyes on the next thing you want and go ahead and try to get it - that's the best way to be happy, even in a first world country (that sounds weird :-)).

brudgers 15y ago

A branding expert recommends ignorance...call me a cynic. What he observes is that people who are connected to their communities are happier. People who are disconnected (or even dislocated) from their community and obsessed with "stuff" are less likely to be. The idea that people living in a favela are uninformed demonstrates ignorance in the same way that shouting at people who don't speak English would. They are simply informed about a different set of facts - and in general that set of facts may make their lives richer because it is about people they know - i.e. who their cousin has a crush on rather than the Jonbenet Ramsey's of the world. I've seen escalator's, but knowing how to find potable water that doesn't come with a monthly bill would make me better informed.

hammerbrostime 15y ago

I better not read the article then

DanielBMarkham 15y ago

I find it easy to find counter-examples to these anecdotes. There are a lot of people very aware of how rich other people are without it affecting them one bit. I think it boils down to this: very rarely will you receive just plain vanilla information, if such a thing exists. Almost always the information will be wrapped in some kind of value system. As you absorb the information, you end up taking in the value system as well. Let's use TV as an example. So yep, if you spend your time on one of those cable channels where you watch rich people all the time, pretty soon it's not that you'll understand how rich people live, it's that pretty soon you'll start believing that it is better to live like they do. Same goes for the other channels - military, cooking, whatever. These channels are purveyors of information, sure, but what they're really selling is indoctrination. That's fine if you understand it. You should be able to compensate (without having fits about "the man" or "the system") After all, why would they spend time sharing information with you that they felt wasn't trendy and something you'd want to emulate? There might be a boring stuff nobody cares about channel, but I've never seen it. Truly happy people can filter out the value system from the information. They can watch MSNBC, Fox, or CNN. They just compare sources and make their own value decisions. It's like this guy got halfway to the actual state of things, then just gave up. Yes, if you have no information you have no external values being pimped out to you, but you also are missing a huge amount of learning about your fellow man and other ways of thinking about things. No information means no choices. You don't want that.

gwern 15y ago
> Let's use TV as an example. So yep, if you spend your time on one of those cable channels where you watch rich people all the time, pretty soon it's not that you'll understand how rich people live, it's that pretty soon you'll start believing that it is better to live like they do. In Brazil and India, rich people on soap operas don't have many kids; sure enough, when you correlate the opening of TV stations with birth rates... http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/fertility-fall-still-puzzling.html#comment-435086 http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/fertility-fall-still-p...
- dripton 15y ago
  It's also possible that there's a co-factor: TV appeared about the same time as reliable birth control.

theorique 15y ago

This seems to be a very clear example of the contrasting effects of entitlement versus gratitude. Experience and research show that looking at examples of people with "more" (for some definition of "more") and comparing your own lifestyle to that of those people, is a recipe for resentment, envy, and frustration. These emotions tend to work against a person experiencing happiness and inner peace. On the other hand, looking at what's good in your own life situation - regardless of how it compares to anyone else - and deliberately seeking out opportunities to feel gratitude for those things, this tends to increase subjective well-being. This habit is simple, but not easy. The challenge is greater with so much media attention on those people who have more than others (Hollywood red carpet, MTV Cribs, Forbes 400, etc). The key to happiness and inner peace is to tune out the noise and focus on specific opportunities to feel grateful within your own life situation.

robfig 15y ago

I think that much rich world unhappiness stems from spending a lot of time watching TV or playing video games. If you spend your time playing (e.g. hanging out with friends, playing sports) or working (e.g. accomplishing something), then I think happiness is more likely. The last sentence in particular resonated with me: “Happiness is not measured by the number of days you live but, rather, by the number of days you remember.” Every day I've spent consuming media is a day I can not remember.

Jun8 15y ago

Although true in a practical sense (NYT cited a study on older people where in which more introspective types were less happy) I reject the option of extra happiness brought about by lack of knowledge, e.g. To each his sufferings: all are men, Condemned alike to groan; The tender for another's pain, The unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. (Thomas Gray, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College", this is the origin of the term "Ignorance is bliss". The notes on this stanza are worth a read: http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/comment.cgi?text=odec&fromline=99&toline=99&type=explanatory&sort=annotation http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/comment.cgi?text=odec&...). Would you rather be Cypher happily eating his steak in a fictional world or the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar living in a real but wretched world? I would choose the latter but this is by no means an easy question.

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victorhn 15y ago

In my opinion it is ultimately up to you, to decide wheter you are happy or not, information certainly can give us certain truths that are "ugly" or unpleasant, but in the end you can control how you feel about it.

teju 15y ago

It's not information that's to blame, it's the condition of the world we live in. Knowing about glaring inequities will either Cause resentment because one is at the bottom of the pyramid OR Create guilt because one is at the top of the pyramid Add to that the realization that very few people are "self-made" and timing, family, culture and conditioning play a huge role in success and you have a recipe for self-doubt/flagellation. In my case, I just hit a wall when self-preservation kicked in and said "I WILL BE HAPPY, DAMMIT!". I still work at projects I think will make the world better, but don't let their success or failure cloud my feelings. I'm content most of the time.

superasn 15y ago

Oddly enough only today I was watching this movie "better luck tomorrow" in which there was this dialogue that is quite relevant as to why the author feels that way: http://pastebin.com/KnVgnjM3 http://pastebin.com/KnVgnjM3 (posted as a link since the text is kind of long)

personlurking 15y ago

We've all heard something to the effect of "you need to be happy with what you have". For me, this rings true. I've forgone the notion that I need to be working towards doing my dream job, having my dream house, etc. and instead looked for what can give me happiness on a daily basis. Some cultures (usually found in developing nations) celebrate happiness more than others because they live in the moment. Some countries have amazing geography and lots of options to be in nature in a matter of minutes after leaving your house. This is why I live in Brazil and why I left the US.

jostmey 15y ago

One must draw a distinction between satisfaction and happiness. Money and success may bring satisfaction, but never happiness. May you never be satisfied, for the day when that happens is the day you cease living.

RickHull 15y ago

Hm, I'm still not sure how to be happy anywhere. At least, not in the sense that I would understand how to install a doorknob after reading a corresponding article.

frasertimo 15y ago

Well good god that was awful. I agree with the Author's final points; that there are less wars, disasters, etc, and that the world is a better place than before. But it seemed like he just wanted to go on a long-winded pleasure cruise telling us how much happier people are who don't know how happy they are. What an obvious attempt at pulling at our heartstrings. Instead I just wanted to vomit.

melling 15y ago

I've been to Medellin and that's not their first escalator. Maybe it's their first outdoor escalator. The city is actually modern and a great place to visit. It's 75F/24C all year. You read stories like this and you'd think it's 3rd world. In much of Central/South America, you will find slums, but a lot of people live quite well and you'd think you were in an average European or US city.

lurker17 15y ago

Pablum. Kids are happy everywhere because they are carefree kids.