Fixing Happiness — Adding neutrality and negativity to the mix.

There is an endless number of books and quotes about choosing happiness over unhappiness and they are all potentially dangerous and stupid, just like most forms of black and white thinking.

“You can be happy or you can be unhappy. It’s just according to the way you look at things.” — Walt Disney

Disneys happiness scale:

When we view the world through this black or white lens everything that is not “Happy” is interpreted as “Unhappy” by our minds, and since we are not really happy most of the time the scale risks getting skewed.

This skewed scale is actually one of the things (one out of many) that I believe is contributing to the seemingly ever-increasing number of unhappy people.

Skewed happiness scale:

What Disney, as well as the majority of media and culture, seem to forget most of the time is that you can also be at “Neutral”, not just “Happy” or “Unhappy”.

This introduction of the neutral state is of paramount importance because we know have some breathing room and we do not instantly have to jump from one to the other. Important to remember is also that neutral is just that, it is Neutral. It does not sound sexy and nice because it is not, but it is also not bad. You most likely feel neutral right now, and that is quite normal.

Fixed happiness scale:

In philosophy, as well as life in general I suppose, a good way to judge things is by looking at three variables: Good — True — Beautiful. So, let's apply this to the scale.

Beauty, being the trickiest of the three for me to argue for since my mind seems to be least tuned in this domain is usually somewhat hard to express in words, but at least I for one find this scale more beautiful than the two previous ones. Truthfulness is given since it is a better representation of the real world since we spend most of our time feeling kind of neutral. The utility of it is that by introducing the neutral it decreases the total amount of redness i.e. “Unhappy” possible by a HUGE margin compared to the skewed version.

But there is a way to increase the three variables even more!

Real happiness scale:

Once again, beauty is hard to discuss, but you have to admit it is quite nice? The truth is once again given because we all know it is a gradient and not fixed states. And thirdly, the utility/good is that it decreases overall redness — “Unhappy” even further and it also increases the level of detail for higher discernment of where you are at.

A bonus is that the increase in detail introduces the chance to use another philosophical trick. The Stoics called this “Premeditatio Malorumor” and it could be translated to the “Premeditation of negative events” or more simply “Negative visualization”, as professor William B. Irvine calls it in his great book — A guide to the good life.

What this technique does is that it moves you in the right direction. I would go as far as to argue that the “Pursuit of happiness” is wrong and that it is simply this movement i.e. “The pursuit of less unhappiness”, that is where it is at, but I will save that rant for some other time.

Simply put it works like this:

You look at the situation you are in and assess where this puts you at the scale. Maybe you are in quarantine and not being able to hang out with your friends and or loved ones, this puts you at “A bit unhappy”, a very mild form of redness.

Now think what it would be like if you were in quarantine and not being able to hang out with your friends and or loved ones BECAUSE THEY HAD ALL DIED, this would put you at “Super unhappy” and not your current “A bit unhappy”.

Really think this through for a moment, if this was actually the case, how much would you not have paid to be right where you are now?

In theory, this should now lead to you feeling grateful for the fact that you have friends or loved ones. This gratitude should push you in the right direction. Aside from that the Stoics were really wise, there is a lot of emerging science about gratitude (I’ll write up a review of this in the future) but for now, I just wanted to mention the technique itself.

P.S I felt really stupid for being lazy and only using paint and not a vector-based drawing tool for doing the scales and the gradients. So yes, I am aware that the beauty of the scales is not optimized. But before you complain I just wanted to say that I was already punished enough through all the extra work this resulted in, making me go from an ok — “Neutral” state to a not so good — “Quite Unhappy” state while doing them.

P.P.S The Disney quote actually holds some merit in its second part because they way we perceive the world is very important.