But, I think some of us aren’t necessarily in the hedonic treadmill game. Some of us keep working to gain more wealth not be of higher social status but because we fear being relegated back to poor-guy status.

Now, I often do want to be the non-rich guy again. I see many of my friends making 30k a year and enjoying life. And, I often take time off to hang with my old friends because it gets me out of my bubble and also because it’s more authentic to me. I get tired of wearing a mask.

But, I keep driving myself for wealth because I find it gives me security. As a poor kid, I can’t tell you how many times I was targeted by the power hierarchy. Being at the bottom of the social ladder hurts. You get abused and bullied. You have no voice or remedy when you (often) become the target of those with wealth. It hurts mentally, emotionally, financially, and - as the police are mostly paid to watch you - it can wind you in prison.

No, I can’t deal with that feeling. I want money because it gives me access and it keeps the creepers away.

There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.

The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.

Stability allowed me to have time for introspection.

Introspection allowed me to target issues in my life.

Fixing those issues is lowering my discomfort in life.

Money won't fix anything for you but it will provide you an environment where you can.

We spend a lot of our time trying to add pleasure to our lives to (temporarily) boost us above our baseline happiness level, when really we should be spending that time learning how to change the baseline level itself.

Isn't it odd that there are monks who live with nothing who are probably happier than any of us?

The hand-licking story that made the front page today illustrates this point perfectly. Approached rationally, the mom could not solve the problem, no amount of mental effort would yield a resolution or insight into the issue. When the mind expects an answer to a problem that it can't solve, it applies more and more 'force' until it breaks through. In this case, the force was destroying her family relationships. But this is what frustrated rationalism does. People don't or can't catch themselves before they create awful situations.

It is only when she applied an irrational approach to the problem, surrendering the need to control the situation, that she could finally understand what was going on.

I rail against excessive rationality on HN all the time, promoting a more cautious, traditional outlook on certain things like office politics. I expect coders to be exceptionally rational, I don't have any issue with it.

But Americans in general are succumbing to the trend of expecting to be able to answer every question they ever have in their lives and throwing away their emotional health on meaningless symbols and missing the true core nature of what it means to be happy and healthy and whole.

Perhaps the starkest example of this phenomenon is when atheists lament that there aren't any atheist churches. 50 years ago, if you were an atheist, you still went to church. They were still the pillars that communities revolved around, the very loom of the fabric of society.

Nowadays, we've thrown away every last bit of symbolism that brings people together and wonder why we're so lonely. If things aren't perfectly rational, people's minds rebel immediately and harshly, like it's my fault you don't understand a concept requiring depth of study to really grasp.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the mind will create a myth if it doesn't already believe in one. Money, job, marriage is the American Dream myth. It stems ultimately from positivism and expecting to be able to understand everything.

It doesn't have to be this way. You might not be able to fix everybody else but you can fix yourself.

Marriage (because of the kids) has been much harder, and at times more stressful. But while I would trade my job in heartbeat, I wouldn't trade my family for anything.

I would definitely say that I'm happy. But like people have said above. Happiness is something you choose. You have to choose to recognize the blessings in life, of which I have many, and to deal with the stress and problems (which I also have plenty) as they come, without letting them rule you.

Income and wealth are two completely unrelated concepts. Income doesn't mean much because you usually need to work harder to get more income; so the benefits are offset by the suffering of having to work harder.

Wealth, on the other hand doesn't require any suffering - It's just pure happiness. Wealth can buy you anything. The only downside is that it erodes your mental fortitude/willpower but if you have enough wealth, you don't need any willpower anyway because wealth makes all personality traits redundant - Everyone likes a rich person no matter what; to a rich person, personality is useless.

The standard example is kids. Having kids, especially in a place without many social supports, such as the United States, results in a drop in perceived happiness, but an increase in satisfaction, which in the long term is better correlated with mental health.

And 2) > ... happiness and sense of purpose are both at their highest among people working between 21 and 30 hours a week, and misery increases in tandem with the number of hours worked thereafter. The results are consistent across genders.

I can't say I agree with the first. I've gone from quite poor to upper middle class. Money does not make one more happy per se, but your ability to reduce stressors is much higher (and that can tip the balance to being more happy). Food running out? Unexpected bills/repairs? Water heater broke? Several years ago, that would mean I have cold water for the next few months (true story, our on-demand water heater required manual lighting from outdoors for about 7 years - couldn't afford a new one. Wind, rain, snow, day, night, go outside to light the pilot). With more income, that means I go out that evening and pick up a water heater (which I did when I could afford it!). My ability to now remove nearly all debts has made me feel so much better than I have for _years_. This only happened because I was firmly on the higher end of the middle class.

For the second part, I agree fully. All I want to do is work my property and spend time with my kids. I do want to work too, but I want that to take up much, much less of my time. If I could do 21 hours of work a week and maintain a similar ability to fix a water heater at the drop of a hat (or car issue, or whatever), that would be an easy sell.

As for happiness, you choose to be happy. And that is an easier choice when stressors are less present.

I would wager The overall thesis seems to be that non rationally proven social norms are negative influences is naive to the fact that (I would guess) strong social norms of any variety in a society lead to better community and happiness.

I feel that by arguing we change a bunch of established norms because we can be smarter than them, he’s unintentionally tripling down on the very effects he’s advocating against.

No, you shouldn't let the world dictate your choices every single day.

But also you need to conform to some amount of societal standard. Social norms exist sometimes to keep society working and moving forward.

As for happiness, if you are trying to 'get' happiness through external forces, you're never going to be happy. That's not a secret.

Our children go to a private school that is close by, and our commutes are less than 20 mins away each. My wife makes 2x more than me and she works hard but loves her job. I'm a lot more relaxed with my job even though I'm older, but I get to spend a lot more time with the kids (ex. pickup from school every day, make dinner for them, etc).

We have enough money such that we don't have to think about it, which is a luxury. We have never fought over money, but we have fought over other more mundane things like over how we raise our children. But overall, not having to worry takes a lot of conflict off the table that many other people ave to endure, so we consider ourselves very lucky.

So yes, I'm pretty happy these days. It hasn't always been this way but once we both started making > $400k combined, things got easier and easier. A lot of our happiness these days is predicated by how our children behave, are they fighting, do they have issues at school, etc.

As for myself I am generally unhappy. I left the law and back to engineering which I love, I'm married but spend too little time with my wife because we're in different cities and live apart most of the time, I'm sad most of the time when I'm not working, I don't have any life battering chronic diseases, I take home enough money that I'm not indebted other than for my house and FFS am I grateful for that. So no, I'm not happy, but I've stopped expecting happiness so there is some satisfaction in not experiencing repeated disappointment.

In my life I moved from both extremes, from a poverty level wage in a dead beat job with a friend and family support network, to a high stress, high earning job, and something in between.

In all those situations I had sources of happiness and sources of unhappiness. As you move in life you make tradeoff that think will make you better off, some work and others don't. Ironically my current high stress job makes me happier than the previous one, because I am able to learn, grow and do great things. I traded a bit of work life balance for something else and that's ok; it might work for me and not for others.

So by all means avoid the rat race and live a more relaxed life, but also don't be afraid to try different things and see what works best for you at each point in your life.

I did it to thrive in society; it increases my and my family's chances of survival.

I'd be happier by myself, with enough money to live with, and without a job. Happiness is not the most important thing in my life.

Yes.

I don't have a control group for myself, though, but it's sure a lot better than the turmoil of teens and twenties life.

The only other reason I want more money is to be able to eat out whenever I want, and not feel bad about spending the money instead of saving it.

Walk The Middle Way

Your natural state is bliss and peace but your mind's thoughts and heart's vibration pull you out of that state because the real you, the soul, the observer, the atman become identified with them.

That's the great illusion - Maya.

The lows are very different when you have money and when you don't have money.

When you are struggling financially and a single event (e.g. car breaking down) can spiral into wrecking your entire life, you it's hard to "let go" of that.

When you are financially stable there are a lot of frustrations (e.g. work stress) you can learn to cope with, control, or let go of.

- I forgot who first said this.

I think research has found that people really overestimate how much "meaningful" or "enjoyable" employment is worth to them. Last I read, it was worth about 20% of one's salary on average, at least when you survey people.

To me, this makes sense. We have a limited number of days on this earth. If we're going to trade some of them for other resources, it's easy to see that you should get the best value for that trade possible. Anything less is basically giving away parts of your life.

Now that doesn't mean you should take a job that is actively unpleasant or unethical (although it explains why people do). But, personally, I can picture being significantly more satisfied with the day to day of my job. My current workplace is pleasant but not necessarily highly stimulating. On the other hand, it is highly compensated with good hours. That's the most important to me.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/keeper-loves-flame-regin...!

> It is only when she applied an irrational approach to the problem, surrendering the need to control the situation, that she could finally understand what was going on.

I feel like you have a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of "irrational" that you're applying here.

What I took from the hand-licking story was that her initial attempt to brute-force the issue without understanding it was irrational, i.e. "not logical or reasonable", and that approach failed. Then, quite reasonably and rationally, she backed off and established trust with her child, found out the underlying cause of the issue, and provided a solution that resolved the underlying issue.

Nowadays, we've thrown away every last bit of symbolism that brings people together and wonder why we're so lonely. If things aren't perfectly rational, people's minds rebel immediately and harshly, like it's my fault you don't understand a concept requiring depth of study to really grasp.

You had me up until here. First of all, who's lonely, who's "we"? In a conformist society, those who think differently can find it more lonely, by definition. Second, atheists went to Church? Well was that because if they didn't, they were ostracized -- and, well, lonely?

Children of higher intelligence (we do believe that it's possible that we're not all blank slates at birth, right?) tend to find it more lonely than children of average intelligence.

If you consider yourself an exceptional (in some way) person -- rightly or wrongly -- you'll find things more complicated socially.

Now I think you're onto something with the rationality bit, but not in the Nietzschean way you're alluding to (religion and community). Instead, well look at how we create our social bonds in the U.S.: use-value.

Have you ever been in a position of power, and found that suddenly everyone wanted to be your friend?

Or, have you read what men and women write on dating websites in terms of what they want? These to me are more evidence of a "rationality militates against happiness" than your strange atheist example.

That isn't a rational response, that's an irrational response to an emotional need they apparently do acknowledge. My grandfather and uncles literally built their churches with their bare hands and wallets. If you're an athiest and want a church, well, the rational response would be go out and build one.

Or at least join the Unitarians. Most of them don't care.

To reason about something you have to reason from premises. But where do the premises come from?

I'm sure many of us have had that experience, when dealing with a difficult problem, where an insight comes to us out of the blue.

Where did that new insight come from, certainly not through rational deliberation. In fact, often it's not until we stop reasoning that the insight is free to appear.

Often we can't explain where the idea came from, it seems to be from some subconscious (irrational?) part of our mind.

Once we have the insight (a new premise) then we can start to reason from it. But in my opinion, reason comes in only after our mind has done the real work elsewhere.

It is an in depth criticism of the overly rational. A lot of it went over my head or didn't make sense because I don't have a strong background on some historical/philosophical touchpoints, but I thought it was a great read.