How to Be Happy

We have lost the art of teaching people how to have a philosophy of life. We teach people how to have a craft. We teach basic morals. In religious households you may even be taught a pretty comprehensive "life philosophy", but it is often underpinned by many practices that defy rationality, and I think, lead many to unhappiness.

A few years ago I stumbled on some pretty interesting reading about Stoicism and I have since read much of ancient greek philosophy and a bit of more modern stuff like Kant. It still sort of blows my mind just how insightful the ancient greek philosophers were about human nature. One of the key principles of Stoicism that has an analogue or similar set of features in many other philosophies is that it is essentially not things that happen to us that cause us pain/grief/sadness/unhappiness but our judgement and reaction to those things. It seems a little trite in a short post like this, and I can't sum up something as complex as an entire school of philosophical thought, but it has worked well for me.

I have been in conversations where life philosophies like Stoicism and other related ancient greek philosophies get dismissed out of hand. Only to have a conversation wind over our current empirical approach to happiness. This less wrong article is /exactly/ what I call this empirical approach to happiness. Study all of the correlates, take all the best modern science about which behaviors yield the most happiness and which yield the least happiness and optimize accordingly.

Yet, 1800+ years ago, ancient philosophers identified many of the same principles articles like this are encouraging us to apply to our lives. What is missing from this article, and I think that can often cause many people to fail at sticking with a plan, is a coherent and binding strategy for all of this disparate "strategies for happiness". The ancient philosophies are not perfect, us moderns have learned a thing or two since Socrates and Epictetus, but their insights on the human condition are too keen to ignore. We know a lot more about genetics, and I have witnessed the ravages of deep nearly incurable depression on my family. Even the ancient stoics knew of depression and how it could destroy rationality of the most adept philosophers. Outside of these parameters, I would argue, strongly, that we could all live with a little more Socrates and Epictetus in our life and a little less religious extremism and modern consumerism.

And this brings me to my main point, without a rational, modern, and scientifically palatable life philosophy for how to think and feel about /everything/ it is very easy to put yourself into negative emotional states. I have found with a system to judge and evaluate emotions, and a keen understanding of the basic tendencies of my nature, I don't need a lot of empirical scientific knowledge to stay happy, though it does inform my approach.

When I read your post it made me think of myself and my old strategy of decreasing pain/bad moments and increasing good moments where good feelings are more likely. Now, I proceed in a manner as I see fit and I simply accept that much of my feelings are up to me and that jealously, sadness, and anger are just my judgement or feelings about something. I have also, often found, that when properly analyzed, I am not truly sad about a situation, merely that my judgements were wrong. I have definitely embraced many stoic principles into my life, and when I continue to work at maintaining and improving my understanding and ability to apply the principles I have adopted, I stay very even keeled, neither greatly happy or greatly sad. Content. I try to stick close to my baseline and take joy in every day life (since most of life is every day life) :)

What seems natural for most of us, though, is to become desensitized to what's good and feel only about the surprises, which eventually end up negative (mean-reversion and things over-enthusiastically taken for granted - I'll always win, they'll always love me, etc.)

I think knowing that helps a little. Just like it helps knowing that your blue mood when you're sick will pass on its own as you recover.

Some people are naturally more or less happy, I'm sure, in their baseline no-surprise state. I wouldn't worry about it until someone figures out how to change it. As long as you have energy to want+do things, you're ok.

As for purpose it isn't that hard to have one; it can be as simple as to having a little happiness and trying to make the world around you just a tiny bit better rather than worse.

There is also no reason why for most people days should be things in general to "suffer through".