Thread by @jposhaughnessy

“The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer

In his book "Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine," @DerrenBrown writes "The vital changes to our happiness do not come from outside circumstances, however appealing they might seem." and our failure to understand this leads many to mount the hedonic treadmill.

He illustrates how many of our desires--things we think will make us happy--are actually chased in order to impress other people, thinking that the approval of these 'other people,' many of whom we don't even know, will lead to happiness for ourselves.

He refers to the book "On Desire: Why We Want What We Want" by William B. Irvine that posed a clever question: You wake up one morning to discover you are the last person alive on earth. But everything else, from cars to houses and beautiful art was still exactly were the

now gone former owners had left them. Now, ignoring the question of the crushing loneliness you might feel, do you think that you'd want all the things that you currently covet in the real world? Irving suggest that while you might go on a Lambo spree for the first few months,

and try these and other "luxuries for a while but would soon, for example, find a dwelling that was easy to maintain rather than live in a palace, obtain clothes that were comfortable rather than expensive, and would probably lose all interest in your appearance.

The thought experiment shows that we choose our lifestyles – our houses, our clothes, our watches – with other people in mind. One way or another, we project a style designed to make others admire or envy us."
Indeed, we might quickly find that, absent other people to impress,

things we currently obsess over having would simply lose all appeal for us. This thought experiment is excellent in that it forcefully reminds us that happiness always comes from within, never from outside ourselves. As a young father, I was lucky to believe this--in the first

of what would become a volume of letter to my children, I wrote to my then 6 day old son:

"You will always be only as good, only as happy, only as successful as you perceive yourself to be. Happiness springs from within, never from without. Virtue too; honor; and love.

All the things that make a life worth living. Thus, if you are unhappy, don’t look outside yourself for causes, the reside within; likewise, if, like me, you are happy, understand the source within your soul.”

And yet how quickly and often I forgot my own advice. We're all

sometimes completely unconsciously influenced by the opinions of other people, and given the tribal nature of our species, it's pretty hard for us to consistently remember this and ask 'Is this REALLY something I think will make me happy, or is it simply be trying to impress

other people?' If we're brutally honest with ourselves we probably would find that, much like Professor Irving's thought experiment, a great deal of what we do is to impress others.

@robkhenderson, a guest of mine on @InfiniteL88ps, has written that we all--ALL--signal

even if we think we're not: "sometimes the strongest signal is refusing to play the signaling game (which itself sends a signal. There’s no escaping signaling)"

I've read that this is not only in the base code of all HumanOS, but also in every species from ants to apes.

So, what does this have to do with happiness? A lot. Since we're not going to wake up in a world where we are suddenly the last human alive with all of the goodies growing ultimately pale to us, we need to understand that happiness is not a goal in itself, it is rather a

by-product of other endeavors that we find meaningful. And a lot of our contentment comes down to the stories we tell ourselves.

As Brown writes: "We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves." But we often forget that, as the author and editor, we can CHANGE

the stories we constantly tell ourselves and EDIT out stories that others, from our parents and family to our teachers and friends, tell us about ourselves. We are often totally unconscious of the effects these external narratives have on how we see ourselves. In the book

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values" author Robert Pirsig points out, rather caustically, that this is imprinted on our HumanOS as a perceived means of creating a stable social order, where society and system much prefer you to do what THEY want:

"Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but…but what?…Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like”

then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you."

And for the shorter version, just listen to @pinkfloyd's album "The Wall." All of these example remind us that, our

stories are just that, OUR stories, which we can learn to rewrite and reimagine. I wrote a thread called The Thinker and the Prover that blended ideas I originally saw in the works of Robert Anton Wilson that showed the reader how they might rewrite and reprogram themselves.

I've done it for quite a while, and you'd be amazed at how much you can uncover in beliefs that you think of as your own but realize when going through the exercise that the authorship came from other people and organizations

https://twitter.com/jposhaughnessy/status/1343371350493319169

But I will now add a recommendation to read Brown's book on Happiness. He is a pretty amazing thinker who puts things in a way that make them easy to understand and act upon. I honestly don't think I've seen a better explanation of why Stoicism can be such a helpful

philosophy to understand and embrace as well as a highly readable takedown of some of the more popular self-help books that often mislead readers truly trying to better themselves and create a more happy, productive mental state for themselves.

I learned a lot reading it, and I think you might too--as Marcus Aurelius said "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." Brown's book is an excellent guide to your journey.

amazon.com/Happy-More-Les…