Pursuing happiness is a value of the modern world. Do you think Zeus
gave a shit if people were happy? Do you think the God of the Old Testament
cared about making people feel good? No, they were too busy planning to
send swarms of locusts to eat people’s flesh.
In the old days, life was hard. Famines and plagues and floods were
constant. The majority of populations were enslaved or enlisted in endless
wars, while the rest were slitting each other’s throats in the night for this or
that tyrant. Death was ubiquitous. Most people didn’t live past, like, age
thirty. And this was how things were for the majority of human history: shit
and shingles and starvation.
Suffering in the pre-science world was not only an accepted fact; it was
often celebrated. The philosophers of antiquity didn’t see happiness as a
virtue. On the contrary, they saw humans’ capacity for self-denial as a virtue,
because feeling good was just as dangerous as it was desirable. And rightly so
—all it took was one jackass getting carried away and the next thing you
knew, half the village had burned down. As Einstein famously didn’t say,
“Don’t fuck around with torches while drinking or that shit will ruin your
day.”
It wasn’t until the age of science and technology that happiness became a
“thing.” Once humanity invented the means to improve life, the next logical
question was “So what should we improve?” Several philosophers at the time
decided that the ultimate aim of humanity should be to promote happiness—
that is, to reduce pain.^14
This sounded all nice and noble and everything on the surface. I mean,
come on, who doesn’t want to get rid of a little bit of pain? What sort of
asshole would claim that that was a bad idea?
Well, I am that asshole, because it is a bad idea.
Because you can’t get rid of pain—pain is the universal constant of the
human condition. Therefore, the attempt to move away from pain, to protect
oneself from all harm, can only backfire. Trying to eliminate pain only
increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering. It
causes you to see dangerous ghosts in every nook, to see tyranny and
oppression in every authority, to see hate and deceit behind every embrace.
No matter how much progress is made, no matter how peaceful and
comfortable and happy our lives become, the Blue Dot Effect will snap us
back to a perception of a certain amount of pain and dissatisfaction. Most
people who win millions in the lottery don’t end up happier in the long run.
On average, they end up feeling the same. People who become paralyzed in
freak accidents don’t become unhappier in the long run. On average, they also