If happy people do nothing?

There's a book called How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell that I highly recommend. There's so much good content in that book it's almost hard to find the right quote to respond with, but I'll give you this one by Thoreau to start:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to tach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to life so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swatch and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. - Henry David Thoreau

To answer the question on focus, Odell actually argues that we need to focus (i.e pay attention) more to things; just different things.

If it's true, that collective agency, both mirrors and relies on the individual capacity to "pay attention" then, in a time that demands action, distraction, appears to be (at the level of the collective) a life and death matter.

I wrote a little bit about this the other day, too. Attention is something the modern world has unitized and turned into a sort of currency to be collected for profit. But in doing so, we are starved of context. We continue to outsource much of what makes us human, and sometimes we don't even realize the tradeoff we're making.

Spacial and temporal context both have to do with the neighboring entities around something that helped to find it. Context also helps establish the order of events. obviously, the bits of information were a sailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can't help but wonder: what am I supposed to think of all of this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn't make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding, but dull and stupefied dread.

There's also a really interesting concept I was first introduced to in the book about "I-It vs. I-Thou Thinking" that really resonated with me.

• I-It: - In "I-It" thinking, the other thing (or person) exists only as an instrument or means to an end. It's something to be appropriated by the "I". An I-It thinker will never encounter anything outside of himself because he does not truly "encounter" in life. He only encounters the "feverish" world to use it. When he says "you" he means "my ability to use you!".
• I-Thou: "I-Thou" recognizes the irreducibility and absolute equality of the other. One meets the other ("thou") in their (or it's) absolute fullness by giving them/it full attention. You don't project/interpret the other. The world collapses into a moment of magical exclusivity between the two.

If we go through the world as I-It thinkers, we end up in situations like this:

"If I don't make a conscious decision about how to think, and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food shop, because my natural default setting is certainly that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness in my fatigue, and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way?" - David Foster Wallace

The world is so rich, and tapping into that requires some pushback against a myriad of instincts that are maladapted to the modern world. It requires a little more Thou, and a little less It. Or as Odell put's "an I-It world without Thou's is an impoverished and lonely place to live."

Yes, life is driven by what life lacks, it's not news to most people. Is Haig's commentary prescriptive or just rather descriptive? His observations are just the merchant class doing its thing, the political classes doing their thing, the psych and beauty classes doing their thing. We're humans and we're doing things, that's what we do.

Aristotle thought eudaimonia was a kind of happiness born out of having a sense of purpose, contributing to the greater good, having meaning etc. This was contrasted with hedonic happiness, which was defined as happiness for its own sake.

You could argue that hedonic happiness doesn't require a lack of something. Drinking a good tasting beverage simply because you wanted to taste something, or just reading an enjoyable story, or participating in a good match could well give you hedonic happiness, and these don't have to be born out of a lack of something. In the same vein, a person could experience eudaimonic happiness simply from having created a beautiful piece of art or literature, or just by getting to know themselves better, or simply from learning about a subject they're passionate about. These don't necessarily require a lack of something either.

In the book Happiness: A Very Short Introduction, the author Daniel M. Haybron, whose academic research interests include moral psychology and philosophy of psychology, argues that happiness includes flourishing in life—not just being subjected to and surviving things, but taking charge and making things happen. This doesn't sound like doing nothing to me.

I think while the quote by Matt Haig has a point, we shouldn't take it to mean that happy people do nothing, or that drives are always created by pain or a negative emotion.

And could this be used against us?

Anything could be used against a person. We think of altruism as good, but many of the atrocities were committed by followers of altruistic ideologies. A nationalist enlisting and willingly going to war against a foreign nation is doing it for altruistic reasons, for his in-group. Similarly, people with a sense of duty often commit or contribute to horrible atrocities. An imperialist officer dedicated to his nation is worse than a lazy imperialist officer who slacks on his job.

This is the same for hedonic and eudaimonic happinesses. You can make it so that hedonic happiness feeds into unhealthy hyperconsumerist behavior, and you can use eudaimonic happiness to create, well, "the hustler" culture. There's a lot of ideological structure around succeeding in capitalism, promoting a capitalist version of eudaimonic happiness, while undermining worker rights.

Does this mean any of these concepts are bad in themselves? I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that that's the case. But it shows that anything can be turned against a person.

I think elimination of dissatisfaction and pursuit of happiness are two sides of the same coin. One cannot exist without the other, right? To identify dissatisfaction, you've had to have felt happiness before, and vice versa. Everyone's got their own set of external and internal factors affecting their physical and emotional wellbeing.

From the outside, it might seem like some happy people are "doing nothing". But it's not up to us to decide what happiness looks like to other people. Everyone's also got their own inner lives and internal motivations. "Simple" goals like enjoying hobbies, having a dog, or raising a family (which is a full time job in itself) can be enough to bring fulfillment. Others might like organizing events, running a company, pursing careers, whatever.

Maybe what happy people are doing is focusing on value add rather than the elimination of dissatisfaction. They already know that suffering is inevitable, so deal with it as it comes - or else be driven mad by fear. Fear as a motivator vs. value add: Which mindset will let you live your life to the fullest?

One day a meditation student approached the Zen master Suzuki Roshi crying, clearly in pain. The student yelled out, “Why is there so much suffering?” Suzuki Roshi replied, “No reason.” - From Love Hurts by Lodro Rinzler, citing David Chadwick, ed., 11

“You speak of destiny as if it was fixed. Where’s my free will, if you please?”
“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not,” said the witch, “or die of despair.” - From The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

What about boredom? If you're happy doing what you're doing, then I guess you're not bored, but most people get bored doing nothing, so they'll want to find something to do.

I don't strive to do nothing so much as I strive to be content. That's a word that you will very rarely hear in our capitalistic culture - "contentment" - because you can't sell something or push someone or incite an argument with someone who is content.

Sometimes I think I could make more money. I could buy more things. I could gather many more experiences... but the bigger question is why?

And that is all the philosophical reasoning I can do for this day. I am content to leave it there.