Curving Unhappiness

Civilisation And Its Discontents: Sigmund Freud

“Life as we find it is too hard for us; it entails too much pain, too many disappointments and impossible tasks”

So we have three means of avoiding life’s hardships:

• ‘Powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery. (Sports, Gym)
• Substitutive Gratification, which lessen it. (Social media rewards you with likes, favourites)
• Intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it

Freud discusses that the purpose of life is a difficult question to answer. So he considers what the behaviour of man, suggests what the purpose of life is. “They seek happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so… the aim is to eliminate pain and discomfort and on the other end, to intensify pleasures.”

But there is a serious problem, the world isn’t set up to be all sunshine and roses, we know this. So it’s much easier to be unhappy. This unhappiness comes from:

• Our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution.
• The outer world, Nature — capitalism and the laws of Physics.
• Other people.

To counter this, I’d use a Charlie Munger tip: Inversion. So DON’T let your body decay by eating healthily, exercising, looking clean and feeling clean. DON’T let the outer world bring you down by finding your path in this capitalist western world and crushing it. DON’T let other people bring you down, find love and rich friendship, be charismatic and learn how to win friends and influence people.

Freud suggests that you must get Work (wealth) right in order to obtain Happiness. “When a man/woman knows how to heighten sufficiently his capacity for obtaining pleasure from mental and intellectual work.” In short a great way to obtain happiness if through finding a career you find fulfilling. But he notes a problem, “The great majority work only when forced by necessity, and this natural human aversion to work gives rise to the most difficult social problems.” Problems such as anxiety, depression, stress and all the things that keep you away from happiness. If you take away anything from this, it’s that finding what Work you should be in is one of the most important decisions we can ever make.

Freud also suggests that you get Love right in order to obtain happiness. “I am speaking, of course, of that way of life which makes love the centre of all things.” Love is powerful. Scientists would agree that humans are naturally Social beings, and the social part of your life is at it’s best when there is lots of love. It’s however, very easy to get crushed by the social part of life— like moving away from a best friend, cutting ties with a family member or breaking up with a partner. Nonetheless, it’s our job to overcome any hardships and paint a beautiful Love(social) life.

I believe Freud missed out Health. As Steve Jobs said, “I don’t want to be the richest man in the graveyard.” Why have a great bank account, and loads of cool friends if you are too overweight to get out of bed…

Freud concludes by talking about how even though it is difficult to find happiness, we MUSNT give up. And that we all have different paths in our search for it. And we must realise that there is no black & white answer.

Albeit, there are many believe 3 main parts : Health, Wealth, Love. But these are broad and we each have ‘different ingredients for our soup.’ For some, a lot of happiness will come from a great Social life and not so much from health. And for others it’ll come from immense wealth and health and not so much love. But they must all be sufficient if one is to become truly happy.

Anyway, I hope that’s given you some good insight. Keep going and stay strong.

~ Tyler