As I sit in a hotel lobby at 4:00 AM drinking awful coffee (story for another time), I’m reflecting on:
If happiness from a boon or gain or accomplishment is just the loss of the pain of not having that gain, then maybe we can just short circuit that process and stop wanting the thing in the first place
Of course, this is a well-studied idea1. But what gets me is: Is that what happiness is? Can I really be happy by removing desire (which, presumptively, prevents happiness by showing me a future I don’t have). Certainly, some class of happiness can be “solved” by this anti-FOMO strategy. But it seems so zero-sum.
view full postI recently read a wonderful piece by the New York Times titled “What happened when 7 Trump voters and 6 Biden voters tried to find common ground”. What struck me was how quickly even the most middling of issues quickly diverged along party lines, often with classic party narratives appearing. It is absolutely worth a read.
These folks are living profoundly different American experiences, and yet both feel that the future is bleak. Today, one person can blithely say that an entire political party, or an entire race, or an entire economic group, or even the entire country is to blame for what they believe is the fundamental problem in the country. “Systemic racism”, “Illegal immegrants”, “White people”, “Corporations”, “Billionaires”, “Religion”. At least one participant all but admitted this, saying the country needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
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