8
votes
Is it possible to not want to be happy?
This is sort of a philosophical, logical, and psychological paradox. If you are content when being unhappy, then your preferences are satisfied. So, you wouldn't want to change anything and, in that sense, you are happy. But if you're happy, then your preference is unsatisfied and so you're unhappy. But, it seems plausible in real-life that someone, for some complicated reason, actually doesn't want to be happy. If we accept that such a thing exists, then what exactly are we talking about?
I think when people say they are content with being unhappy, instead of having their preferences satisfied like you said, they instead have found a comfort zone and are afraid of actually making steps to achieve happiness. Those are just my thoughts though. Feel free to correct me.
Oh yeah this happened to me for a while. I think it's fairly common, when you're depressed, to want it to get worse. If I had to try to access that mindset now -- it's foreign to me, with so much distance -- I'd say that happiness feels impossible, so inconceivable that you can't even imagine how you would begin to pursue it, and every suggestion towards that end becomes trite. But depression -- misery, malaise, an awful adhesion between the back and the bedsheets, every morning -- it's not a place you can imagine living. It's too dull, too purgatorial. To get worse is to have a direction, the only one you can imagine. Towards suicide, I guess, or some other kind of self annihilation. And it's not all bad, going downhill. There's all kinds of tiny thrills: the thrill of pity, from those around you; the thrill of novel thinking, as you invent new arguments to justify the unjustifiable. The thrill of wind in your hair, chills and goosebumps. From other depressed people, I've heard similar sentiments. It's even a line from the suicidal alcoholic protagonist in Disco Elysium: "I don't want to get better, I want to get worse."
To want to be happy is to think it's possible. To want to be unhappy is to avoid the fear of disappointment.