Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

hintjens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 171 posts

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#41

Post by refurb »

To me it’s all about expectations (realistic or not) and wether they are met.

Expect to be poor and if you hit middle class you’ll be happy and grateful.

Expect to be rich and the same outcome will produce depression.

Not to sound like a stoicism fanatic, but that’s one aspect that helps. Reminding yourself of everything you could lose drives some appreciation for what you have, whatever it is.

And yes, acknowledgement that humans evolved to never be satisfied with their current situation helps as well. Breaking free of “things need to get better” is great for mental health but means your also fighting against hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#42

Post by corecoder »

virtualritz wrote: post #12

'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.

It much depends: if trains are very frequent, train stations easy to reach and you only take one single train, that's one kind of experience. If there's few trains, you have every day the anxiety of risking to loose the train and the be very late, or in some cases, absent for the day.

If the train station is hard to reach, you have stress along the way.

If you have to switch three trains, you cannot concentrate on your book/podcast/whatever, because you must always check if it's your stop, and then maybe you have to sprint to take the next train.

Can be unpleasant.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#43

Post by JoshTriplett »

virtualritz wrote: post #12

'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.

I enjoy traveling by train, but I'd never want to commute by train. Even if you can use the time for something else, you're still pre-committing to spend that time in transit, which changes the effective workday from ~8-9 hours (counting lunch) to ~11-12 hours. It doesn't matter that that isn't "work" time; it's still time that's pre-committed and constrained. That makes a substantial difference in how much free time you have that's not spent in transit.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#44

Post by Kinrany »

lukebuehler wrote: post #28
drclau wrote: post #14

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.

> 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.

I don't think the author of the quote would agree that giving up and doing exactly what the system was designed to force you to do is the best solution.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#45

Post by pdimitar »

refurb wrote: post #41

To me it’s all about expectations (realistic or not) and wether they are met. Expect to be poor and if you hit middle class you’ll be happy and grateful. Expect to be rich and the same outcome will produce depression. Not to sound like a stoicism fanatic, but that’s one aspect that helps. Reminding yourself of everything you could lose drives some appreciation for what you have, whatever it is. And yes, acknowledgeme…

I agree with your comment a lot. Don't think of me as a nitpicker, I simply want to add a nuance to this statement:

> Reminding yourself of everything you could lose drives some appreciation for what you have, whatever it is.

I have observed many people having trouble with that and I agree with you that this is very much needed in our lives to give us some humility.

That being said, to some people -- myself included -- this happened way too many times and they can't have appreciation through that vector anymore. My brain switched to "I am sick of hearing this! I will level up and won't have to think about never being threatened with living under a bridge ever again!".

Of course, the hedonistic treadmill the article mentions is very much real -- we are never satisfied with what we have. However, it's very possible to arrive at the mindset where you are like "eh, I'd feel a bit better if I had a $500K in the bank and not only $200K" but objectively, when you've grown up and lived in a poor country for most of your life, I think it's easier to NOT get stressed about the statement in quotes.

And I agree on the evolution part. I'd theorize this mindset of ours has evolved because we developed in a very harsh environment (ice age) and we wanted to optimize our lives for less work and more leisure. Ironically, nowadays humanity at large fails miserably at just that... but that's really a very different topic.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#46

Post by heresie-dabord »

drclau wrote: post #14

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…

States of satisfaction and euphoria are normal. Being good and doing good are fine objectives in of themselves. To be in a constant state of satisfaction and euphoria is unrealistic, unless it's an illusion achieved by a soma pill [1] or a hallucinatory sociological construct.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#47

Post by Aeolun »

d3ckard wrote: post #40
lukebuehler wrote: post #28

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.

It kind of works, honestly. 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.

Depends on age, I think. At 3 years old mine is quite capable of invoking an anxiety attack at will.

On the other hand, you are basically forced to deal with it instead of running away, can’t leave the kiddo alone.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#48

Post by Aeolun »

laputan_machine wrote: post #16
virtualritz wrote: post #12

'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.

For you, perhaps. Public transport for me involves having to fight for a space in an incredibly crowded environment, having to take multiple buses or a bus + tram, it's expensive, smelly and a vector for illnesses. I read a lot of books on my commute, but for me the cons outweigh the pros by quite a margin. No thanks!

Hmm, in my time we’d have said something like that builds character.

Re: Steps Towards Happiness (2015)

#49

Post by DecayingOrganic »

lukebuehler wrote: post #28
drclau wrote: post #14

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.

When you have children, why should evolution be seen as under pressure to make you happy? If the ultimate goal is to ensure that you will care for them for the time necessary for the offspring's wellbeing, there are various ways to do this without making the parents happy; in fact, making the parents happy may be counterproductive.
Post reply on HN