Mike Radivis just asked asked some good questions on "Chase Meaning, Not Happiness" -
How do you measure meaning if not in terms of happiness? Aren't things that create more happiness for a longer time for a larger number of individuals better than those things who lack those qualities but are proclaimed to be personal achievements anyway? Does the scope of happiness make happiness meaningful to you or not? What are achievements good for if they aren't good at facilitating happiness? Imagine you wouldn't experience any pleasant or unpleasant emotions and would have to decide rationally what to pursue (assuming that is possible at all). Then what you want to do with your life? (Another way to formulate this question maybe would be to ask what's your grand strategy in that situation.)
I'm quite interested in your answers. I like that your blog posts are so outspoken. It's just that the message of this post is hard for me to grasp, as I'm pretty much utilitarian in my thinking.
Good questions. I'll go through it line by line.
How do you measure meaning if not in terms of happiness?
What's meaningful is a personal decision everyone makes. I'd recommend everyone learn a lot about a variety of things, analyze themselves and their talents, and think about what seems meaningful to them through careful, as-unemotional-as-possible analysis.
For me, I like humanity and I want to see our species thrive. I think a significant long term priority has to be diversifying our habitat - getting it so not all humans live on Earth, moving out through the Solar System and hopefully the galaxy after that.
That's going to take a mix of science, technology, engineering, commerce, governance, and a variety of other important things. I also think art has very high value in inspiring and expressing emotional states to people. On a personal level, I also enjoy beauty and aesthetics, but I'd prioritize it a bit lower than expansion.
Aren't things that create more happiness for a longer time for a larger number of individuals better than those things who lack those qualities but are proclaimed to be personal achievements anyway?
I don't think so, no.
See, it's hard to have this discussion with anyone from modern Western culture, because happiness-as-a-goal is so deeply engrained that people don't even realize it's just a subjective call about what's important. Actually, most people never critically examined happiness at all!
For me, I had a breaking out moment when I studied other cultures that had goals other than happiness. If you could talk to a 1600's samurai and tried to discuss with him what's important, he'd say loyalty, duty, and honor. If you said, "Wait, what about happiness? Isn't that more important?" - well, he'd think you're insane. He couldn't express why - it was just a culturally inherited belief.
Well, the same thing happens to me when I say that I prize, for instance, duty and loyalty over happiness. If I'm duty-bound in a situation, I'll aim to perform my duties as best as I can, happiness be damned. A lot of times, the best solutions aren't necessarily the largest number of happiness solution. (Again, trying to explain this to a person who grew up in a happiness-is-most-important culture risks making you seem off your rocker, just like a modern Westerner trying to explain that happiness is more important than duty and loyalty would seem crazy to a samurai.)
Does the scope of happiness make happiness meaningful to you or not?
I'm not sure what this question means.
If you're talking about different kinds of happiness, I think there are some yeah. There's "low happiness" which is just a pleasurable mix of chemicals. Dopamine, serotonin, etc. Honestly, I don't think having a certain biochemical mix is very important.
Imagine Rome in the year 150 AD. Now image a 25 year old farmer on April 20th.
Does it matter at all what his dopamine and serotonin mix was? I think, pretty much no, as long as it wasn't too low.
Mind you, I do think happiness is important. I think it's as important as respiration or blood circulation or other key health factors. That's really, really important. Happiness too low makes you ineffective, and happiness to zero probably becomes fatal. So, happiness is important, just like good health is. I just don't think it's worthy of being worshiped as the meaning of life.
What are achievements good for if they aren't good at facilitating happiness?
I'm on Team Human. I want to see our species thrive and grow. A lot of times, the people that pull humanity forwards do immense amounts of suffering and go through utter brutality to bring their views forth. I think that's worthy.
Imagine you wouldn't experience any pleasant or unpleasant emotions and would have to decide rationally what to pursue (assuming that is possible at all). Then what you want to do with your life?
That's exactly the question I asked myself, and it's what I'm working on. I don't usually laundry-list all the stuff I'm working on, because it's crass, but I'm in near constant training, producing, and looking to connect with people doing fantastic things. I'd like to see commerce improve, science improve, governance improve, culture improve, communications improve... I think the easiest way to have a huge positive impact on humanity is to have children and raise them well, so that's a priority for me.
I've been trying to lay the groundwork necessary to do things at a really high level, and largely succeeding... mind you, this isn't glorious or anything. It's just a bunch of scratching and clawing to improve my habits, consistency, health, knowledge, and ability to produce and serve. I don't have all the resources I need to do what I want to do yet, so I still do a good bit of contracting, building, selling, getting assets, and otherwise getting paid.
I've been trying to develop my scientific ability and learning more about experiment design, statistics. I'm particularly interested in neurology and biochemistry type stuff, but I'm really quite an amateur in that. So far, a lot of the experimenting I've been doing is pretty low level stuff (again, amateur and working on lots of other things), but I've figured a couple interesting things out here and there.
I write this site as a sideline thing I'm doing. I've been developing my mind and trade more. I read... I don't know, somewhere between 100 and 200 books a year? (Well, a third of those I listen to on audio, and another third I "fastread" which is somewhere between reading and skimming)
I've tried a little drawing and painting, but the mediums aren't for me. Writing works okay, though I'm still developing my craft as a writer.
I've connected with a few hundred people over the last year, which is good. Many excellent, exceptional people. I'm trying to figure out how to keep track of all of them and everyone, the people I've met are so cool and so good, but man, it's hard to keep track of 300 new interesting people in my life. I really need some sort of CRM-ish-software or relational database or something.
And then yeah, I'm traveling through pretty much every country in the world, seeing how their governance works, how their law enforcement works. I go for long walks through cities while listening to audiobooks, noting the mix of businesses in each region, what people wear, how they're dressed. I look at the law enforcement and military presences. I look for shipping docks and railroads and border crossings. I've been intending to meet government officials more often, and I've started doing that - in Mongolia, I toured the Mongolian Stock Exchange, Clearinghouse, and I also met some people at their Bureau of Tourism and Central Bank.
I've been meaning to walk into an Embassy or Consular and ask if I can be of service to the American State Department somehow, but I've been too... shy or something to do that thus far. In '09, I applied to be a reserve officer of the LAPD (volunteer police officering), but unfortunately I wasn't accepted at that time. That's something I still intend to do - I think intelligent law enforcement and foreign service are the backbone of domestic and foreign affairs, respectively. I'd like to put some time in protecting and serving.
Beyond that, I study law kind of casually and amateurishly (I've taken a couple courses in it, almost became a lawyer... I read regulations and decisions sometimes for the heck of it). I've been doing lots of reading on governance, statesmanship, law, and lots of history.
Business, of course. I've written about that plenty in the past. Lately I've been putting a lot of time into getting better at distribution and marketing, which I'm starting to think are of as of core importance to business.
Finance too. I was on a finance kick earlier this year.
I don't normally like to write stuff like this, because it tends to be taken the wrong way. You know, my friends and confidants and mentors and colleagues know that I've got a silly and ridiculous amount of ambition to to do things, build, accomplish, and serve. But this is a public facing blog, and you know, people... I don't know, a lot of times they don't like stuff like this.
You asked what I'd do if emotion didn't matter? That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I fall short a lot of the time, I still waste probably around 3-5 hours a day on average, but I'm getting better.
I'm quite interested in your answers. I like that your blog posts are so outspoken. It's just that the message of this post is hard for me to grasp, as I'm pretty much utilitarian in my thinking.
Thanks.
In short, I think:
*Low happiness is a bunch of chemicals, and I don't think it's particularly important beyond getting it to a satisfactory minimum level.
*I like humanity, I think our species is cool, and I want to see it thrive.
*I'm applying myself to build and serve that goal and do what I can.
*But everyone picks this on their own. My way works for me, but everyone picks their own terminal values and life goals. I do think it's worth seriously critically examining happiness as a core goal though - did you really pick happiness for yourself as the most important thing, or did you pick it by accident from your culture? Maybe some things are more important than happiness? I think it's worth thinking about.