Arthur Brooks: preference

Transcript context

…Maybe it’s better when savoring isn’t an illusion, that you’re actually going to live to 94 and not die when your Dad did. Is there something to the notion that the real meaning of life is to have a fairly mentally thin existence, not too much introspection, a la Marc Andreessen? People who have high meanings of life, they’re facing death, or they’re in Ukraine, they’re confronting the Russian monster, and so on. Isn’t meaning for life, in a way, quite overrated? It’s possibly the case, but it really depends on why we would think it’s overrated in the first place. Most of the reason that people would object to a deeply philosophical life is because that requires a lot of suffering. That kind of introspection actually leads to plenty of pain, but therein lies the contradiction of happiness itself. Happiness requires a lot of unhappiness. Now, the definition of happiness is really the right place to start. Happiness isn’t a feeling at all. Happiness has feelings associated with it, like the smell of the turkey is associated with your Thanksgiving dinner. The smell of the turkey isn’t the same thing as the turkey dinner. The turkey dinner is protein, carbohydrates, and fat, which are the macronutrients. Similarly, I think the most compelling definition of happiness is the combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Meaning that we’re talking about here is just one macronutrient. The thing that a lot of people like to focus on when meaning becomes painful is enjoyment. I get that. They feel like they’re a lot happier under the circumstances, but that’s an evanescent macronutrient. The one that’s longest term actually requires that we live fully alive. That means that we let suffering find us. If happiness is not so special, and if the meaning of life is not so special, what is the value you use, a la Sidgwick, to trade off these other values against each other? What’s your unit of account, so to speak?…

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