31–40 of 171 posts
[0]: https://twitter.com/hintjens/status/783254242052206592?s=20
Every time I hear or read about happiness, I remember this quote from Thomas Metzinger. I hope you’ll find it useful, too: “Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. It invented the reward system in the brain; it invented positive and negative feelings to motivate our behavior; it placed us on a hedonic treadmill t…
Well, if you want a really reductionist view of happiness, which also happens to be largely true, you could say: have children.
The link is weird. What is :99 at the end of it?
'Commute less' should be taken with a grain of salt unless one talks about cars. Any form of transport I take where I am not driving the vehicle myself gives me time to read, relax, think – even meditate (trains are great for this). I know for a fact that I read most books/month in my life in times I had a job that included at least 20 mins of commute (one way) on public transport.
Anything up to 20 minutes is zero in my mind.
I used to commute 90 minutes via public transport. Twice daily. Did I read a lot? Sure. It still was a nightmare.
I now commute 17 minutes by car. Biggest improvement of life quality I've ever had.
Every time I hear or read about happiness, I remember this quote from Thomas Metzinger. I hope you’ll find it useful, too: “Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. It invented the reward system in the brain; it invented positive and negative feelings to motivate our behavior; it placed us on a hedonic treadmill t…
It's even worse than that. From an evolutionary point of view happiness is a dead end. There is no reason to evolve if you are happy.
I don't like his proposed end goal. His happiness sounds like a mere absense of pain, but other methods will get you there more reliably. I like the first items on his list: go into the world and mess around, but then he begins to prescribe mental cleanliness: finish your plate, associate only with good people, don't cling to material possessions. It's like he's picking arbitrary chapters from Hesse's Siddhartha. I f…
At 41 y/o I have arrived at most of the same wisdom but I can't see how and where can I implement it.
As others commenters said, I wish I could take a pay cut and work on things I love more than my current job. I absolutely can't afford it; not because I can't take the income hit month by month -- I surely can, let's not forget us the programmers are rather privileged -- but I can't afford not saving, especially having in mind where does the world seem to go (potential economical crisis on the horizon).
If I arrive at a point in my life where I can unquestionably abide by the philosophy described in the article, I might cry emotionally, while yelling of pain and happiness at the same time. For now though, it's still not happening.
(And that's leaving aside the fact that I don't necessarily agree that material minimalism leads to happiness necessarily.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if you want a really reductionist view of happiness, which also happens to be largely true, you could say: have children.
What does that mean?
'Commute less' should be taken with a grain of salt unless one talks about cars. Any form of transport I take where I am not driving the vehicle myself gives me time to read, relax, think – even meditate (trains are great for this). I know for a fact that I read most books/month in my life in times I had a job that included at least 20 mins of commute (one way) on public transport.
Every time I hear or read about happiness, I remember this quote from Thomas Metzinger. I hope you’ll find it useful, too: “Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. It invented the reward system in the brain; it invented positive and negative feelings to motivate our behavior; it placed us on a hedonic treadmill t…
Well, if you want a really reductionist view of happiness, which also happens to be largely true, you could say: have children.
Since my son was born earlier this year (first kid), I certainly see how he can effortlessly make me happy in a way I found hard to achieve earlier.
While I handled most of my depression-like issues before (mostly anxiety), he seems to have a great impact on making me feel fully recovered, motivated and wanting things from life again.