happiness

This note last modified September 1, 2024

A general guide to happiness is impossible, it’s so specific to each person. Here are my thoughts, I don’t expect it to fix you, but maybe it will help.

There are lower pleasures (a cheeseburger, a nice massage, unexpected money) and there are higher pleasures (eudaimonia, justified pride, stability). Both are intertwined, but there is a sense in which lower pleasures are fleeting while higher pleasures can last years or even your entire lifetime.

I think the key to finding happiness is avoiding fragility, decreasing your reliance on your identity and external validation.

One issue is that it’s easy to put in a lot of effort for absolutely nothing. So many people assume that climbing their mountain or finding their white whale will bring them happiness and silence the voices in their head, but it’s easy to do that and still feel hollow. To avoid this trap, stoicism and self reflection are useful to understand what you really need. Are you someone who values achievement, or is that just a proxy for other insecurities?

Also, facing the absurd can’t hurt.

stoicism
- Stoicism is a philosophy of emotional intelligence. A stoic understands why an event makes them feel happy or sad, and understands the value of those emotions, without letting emotions control them. A stoic might be happy, but their happiness does not derive solely from their surroundings, and will retain their happiness even if they lose their material wealth. Similarly, a stoic might endure some hardship, and feel sad as a tool to deal it, but won’t let their sadness define them, won’t lash out in anger.
phronesis
- happiness
paradox of hedonism
- The harder you try for happiness, the more it eludes you. z:tag/todo
jealousy
- money can't buy happiness. Fulfillment, happiness, and eudaimonia can only come from the work you do, and are entirely within your control.
hedonism
- Hedonism is the philosophical analysis of happiness. Here are my personal views on happiness
- Hedonism is the philosophical analysis of happiness. Here are my personal views on happiness
fragility
- People cling to identities for their happiness. “I’m part of this religion”, “I listen to this music”, “I wear this kind of fashion”, but if your happiness comes mostly from that identity, it’s fragile because deep down you know that you aren’t really good if you follow a certain religion, you aren’t really cultured if you listen to a certain kind of music, and you aren’t really cool if you follow a certain brand of fashion. All it takes is some pressure against your identity, things as simple as “your music sounds stupid” to begin to crush you. Furthermore, knowing deep down that you may not actually be who you think you are is a feeling that eats away at you.
- On a more abstract level, people look for external validation for happiness. “People think I’m funny”, “People think I’m smart”, “People think I’m cool”, but external validation is fragile too, because it constantly needs to be fed.
- I think the key to becoming happy is finding sources of happiness that avoid fragility, e.g. eudaimonia
anger
- I feel so oddly on the fence about this because anger is such a poisonous emotion, and so much of the philosophy of happiness talks about letting go of anger. On the other hand, I can’t deny that a lot of good has come out of anger. People have improved their lives because of anger at their circumstances. Corrupt regimes have been overthrown because of anger at their corruption.