Born To Be Unhappy. How We Can Overcome Our Own Biology. (Part 2 of 4)
Wisdom from the ages
In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed the state of human happiness and why so many people are unhappy. These conditions have been long understood by great philosophers across many civilizations, so before jumping into Part 3 (Ten Tenets to Guide a Better Life), let’s first reflect on what the wisdom of the ages can provide us.
This post gets a bit academic but is recommended for those looking for greater context. I also want to give proper credit to the philosophies that have influenced me.
The Philosophy of Buddhism
This is not a comprehensive analysis of Buddhism, which has enormous depth and many sects (from classical Buddhism to Zen Buddhism). I will address only core tenets and acknowledge that the entire practice of Buddhism is quite a bit more complicated. Nonetheless, let’s move forward.
Gautama Buddha is the founder of Buddhism and lived around 2500 years ago. As a sage, he observed misery and suffering in people from all walks of life and sought solutions to what appeared to be chronic human suffering.
Buddha’s noble truths say that people are unhappy everywhere and that suffering comes from our craving for more and from our fear of losing what we have.
He also said that there is a solution to mass human suffering and that it’s rooted in one’s internal state of mind.
Buddhism presents many general rules for following a positive path such as living a kind and compassionate life, but a core component of Buddhism is that the cure to unhappiness is to stop craving things that most humans naturally crave such as sensual pleasures, fame, and recognition. People must detach themselves from craving and attachment to possessions and status.
Good men, at all times, surrender in truth all attachments. The holy spend not idle words on things of desire. — Buddha
For example, one’s focus on getting promoted sows the seeds of unhappiness because once one gets the promotion he will just have to work harder for the next promotion. Similarly, there may be people who are living in fear of losing their job. In reality, neither keeping your job nor getting promoted can make you happy because as long as you remain in a state of desire you will be unhappy.
According to Buddhism, the path to happiness requires us to not crave more, to not fear losing what we have, and to be mindful and at peace with ourselves at all times.
Buddhism also directs us to avoid unpleasant but natural emotions like fear, anger, and jealousy. This all sounds great, but personally I find it rather impractical to implement. It’s difficult to undo our fundamental human nature. More importantly, I don’t want to deny my emotions and desires, I just want to control them instead of having them control me.
Buddhism is a tough sell even if it is selling happiness
A study of happiness among different religions seems to validate some of the challenges of Buddhism (spoiler: Protestants were the happiest). If Buddhists were really that much happier, I imagine we would see Buddhism more strongly sweeping the west rather than remaining relatively isolated in progressive yoga studios and hippie pop culture.
When you think of an idealized Buddhist monk you may think of somebody detached from the rest of the world. He is at a monastery on top of an isolated fog covered mountain. He is depriving himself of worldly temptations in order to avoid craving and achieving inner peace. He reaches nirvana by achieving nothingness and emptiness. That’s impressive — but not what I want to do.
I am therefore attracted to parts of Buddhism but not others. On a practical level, we are fathers, mothers, managers, workers, and just regular every day people. We have businesses to run and schools to pay for. I’m not looking to separate myself from the world.
I also don’t want to lose the sense of having a powerful passion and ambition in my life, but I do need a healthy way to manage my emotions.
Furthermore, I also believe in our ambitious progress as a species. I believe that human life dominating the galaxy and beyond some day is generally a good thing. I applaud the ambition that propels our species rather than seek to individually deny it. So there are many components of Buddhism that I take, and some that I leave.
To summarize my take on Buddhism:
- Buddhism identifies that our suffering comes from craving and desire
- Buddhism seeks to isolate ourselves from such desires and create inner peace
- I don’t want to wipe away my passions and desires, I just want to control them rather than to have them control me
The Philosophy of Stoicism
Stoicism is a philosophy with some branding challenges. The last thing my wife would want from me is to be even more stoic in the modern sense of the word in which one doesn’t express feelings and suffers in silence. When she asks me how my day went, she never seems satisfied with “it was fine.”
The origin of Stoicism comes from the Greek word stōïkos, meaning “of the porch” which supposedly refers to an ancient porch where original Greek Stoics taught. The philosophy has little in common with its modern day popular use, so please disregard the branding and let’s focus on what Stoicism is as a philosophy.
Both Buddhism and Stoicism acknowledge that the source of suffering originates from our craving, desires, and counter-productive emotions. While Buddhism encourages us to strip away those natural but unproductive behaviors, Stoicism attempts to equip us to handle them in every day life.
Stoicism teaches us how to manage our passions and desires so that we control them instead of them controlling us.
A revered Buddhist may put himself in an isolated mountain where life’s tempting urges cannot compromise his mind. Stoicism is different. It is for the single parent, for the business executive, for the farmer, for the programmer, for the every day person who is seeking to both lead a happy life and to work toward leaving a significant mark on the world.
The monk dresses in his robes. A priest puts on his collar. A banker wears an expensive suit and carries a briefcase. A Stoic has no uniform and resembles no stereotype. They are not identifiable by look or by sight or by sound. The only way to recognize them? By their character. — Ryan Holiday
Stoicism teaches us to live in the moment, to focus only on what we can control, and to treat others fairly and justly. If I were to summarize Stoicism in one sentence, I would describe it as follows:
We can’t control everything that happens to us but we can control how we interpret what happens to us and how we respond.
What appeals to me about Stoicism as opposed to Buddhism is that I don’t strip away my ambition. I just improve how I manage it.
I’m quite bullish on human progress and I want to contribute to the progress of life across the universe.
Stoicism equips me to pursue external achievement while at the same time not relying on this achievement to be the source of my happiness.
To summarize my take on Stoicism:
- Stoicism is an ancient philosophy meant to improve the every day lives of every day people
- Stoicism equips us with a perspective that enables us to control our ambition, desires, and emotions, rather than them controlling us
- At the heart of Stoicism is the idea that happiness comes from our own reasoned choices and not by outcomes and external events we cannot control
I will discuss the practical application of Stoicism in Part 3: A guide to living a better life. You can also learn more about Stoicism here.
Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they happen, and your life will go well. — Epictetus
Putting it all together
As animals, we are subject to slow forces of evolution and we’ve developed instincts, biases, and heuristics that help us thrive in the wild but which are completely out of place in the world we live in now. As discussed in Part 1: Born to be unhappy, our DNA has not caught up to the world we find ourselves in.
Many of our cognitive shortcuts lead us to the wrong conclusion and wrong decision. The emotions meant to protect us from being killed by a rival tribe or a mountain lion are now screwing with our psyche in a world of abundance.
Influenced by many authors and ancient philosophies, I have put together Ten Tenets to guide myself for a better life and help keep myself on track. I wrote them to bring clarity to my way of thinking and as part of my continuous journey of self-discovery and improvement. If it has any benefit to others than that is a graceful bonus.
Part 1: Born to be unhappy
Part 2: Wisdom from the ages
Part 3: Ten Tenets for a happier life
Part 4: Life hacks and tricks
Credits: Much of this writing has been influenced by, and sometimes borrows directly from the following: Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, Tim Urban, Shane Parrish, and Mark Manson, as well as the more scholarly works of Robert Sapolsky, Yuval Harari, Jonathan Haidt, Viktor Frankl, and many others. I have also posted an intro to the series.
