Why Derren Brown’s Stoicism Is The Solution to Happiness You Didn’t Know You Were Looking For
How pessimistic thoughts lead to rich lives
Derren Brown is a celebrity magician and philosopher. Counterintuitively, to live a happy life he recommends that you should become a pessimist.
To explain, suppose that you enter a raffle and win a new car. Suppose further that it just happens to be your dream car. Picture that car. Imagine its color. Imagine how it feels as you drive it. Imagine how envious others will be watching you drive it (I’m joking). Now how much happier will you be? For how long?
When answering those questions, did you consider how much it would cost to maintain? How expensive the insurance might be? How, eventually, it won’t look as shiny and sexy as the new models?
Some pessimistic people are mildly depressed. But contemporary research supports the view that the mildly depressed are better at predicting how they will feel in the future than their jauntier counterparts. In academic jargon, they are better affective forecasters.
One reason the mildly depressed might be better than the rest of us in predicting how they will feel in the future is that they are less likely to suppose that getting some item or achieving some goal will change…
