There is a Greek myth about the king of Corinth I hope you find interesting. Condemned to a life of hard labour, Sisyphus struggled to roll a large boulder up to the apogee of a hill, only to watch the boulder roll back down, laying waste to all of his efforts. A didactic piece of mythology is among my favourite, mostly because of its familiarity.

I’m willing to wager that if you were to survey any given sample from around the world, there will not be a single respondent answering the question ‘do you want to be happy’ with anything other than some variation of a categorical ‘yes’. We are born into a world ensconced with the assumption that happiness is the desired state in which to be. Platitudes such as ‘do what makes you happy’ or ‘as long as you’re happy’, although decidedly hackneyed, are considered earnest by most. On a situational level, happiness is given preference to every other emotional state. If someone gets into an argument, feels angry, sad, uncertain, or nervous, there is an insistence both internally and socially to have the experience expedited in anticipation of a happier outcome. Parents assuage the mercurial temperament of their newborn, exacting their children to dwell in naïve euphoria. In the same way, as crying, impassioned adults, we are quickly calmed, but when we are happy, we indulge in the feeling.

Some of us use drugs to feel this kind of euphoria. We call this ‘escapism’ – a desire to circumvent reality, especially through some level of distraction. The term is originally used for art, like escapist fantasy novels, but I use it here to denote our search for tools to invoke happiness. The music we listen to on the radio makes us want to dance. Those who exclusively listen to overly compensating ‘happy’ music may be suffering from a (perhaps lack of) substance abuse – a kind of Soma. What makes our dependency on perpetually celebratory music any different than escapist drugs? We partake in hedonistic heroin.

Hedonism: this culture’s incessant need for impetuous jubilation. Why do we celebrate if there is nothing to celebrate? If we are celebrating without something to celebrate, but we need something to celebrate in order to celebrate, then instead of finding something to celebrate we are celebrating to find something. In other words, our desire to constantly be happy is indicative of the degree to how unhappy we have become. We don’t realize that happiness, like any other emotional experience, is ephemeral. It is not meant to last. By nature, it cannot. People will naturally retort by saying life is about duality, that non-happiness (some say sadness, but I think this is a misconception) gives happiness meaning and worth; there is a dichotomous interdependency. To this, I absolutely agree. If I may add a single nuance, it is that there is gradation to our happiness and non-happiness, the duality is misleading, but that is another point. The nature of happiness that necessitates its antithesis does not justify our extolment of it. Our evident preference of happiness over non-happiness requires an inequality between the two experiences in the totality of our life. We know it cannot logically be the case that the inequality lends excess to the side of happiness, as paradoxically our pursuit of greater happiness results in an equal, or greater, presence of non-happiness. Therefore, the default position in life is net non-happiness, or suffering.

Indeed, this is the basis of my personal antinatalism. From the outset, human life is fraught with inadequacy – feelings of hunger, low self-esteem, lack of attention, competitiveness, rejection. Yes, it is true that these experiences can be complemented by feelings of adequacy, but to extol adequacy is to make our primary preoccupation a perpetual search for this feeling. We will not one day feel adequate enough to cease our efforts to live. What a thought, though.

And then there is the issue of ‘transcendental happiness’. It is otherwise regarded as a feeling of fulfillment, or purpose in life. Most respondents to the survey I proposed at the beginning would interpret the question as relating to this usage of the word happy. From the advent of civilization, the world’s religions have inculcated this obscure idea of happiness. They have mendaciously promised a solipsistic happiness that greets you only in death, legitimizing all of the suffering you endured during your unpleasant life. Christopher Hitchens writes in Letters to a Young Contrarian,

‘we do not naturally aspire to any hazy, narcotic Nirvana, where our critical and ironic faculties would be of no use to us. Imagine a state of endless praise and gratitude and adoration, as the Testaments ceaselessly enjoin us to do, and you have conjured a world of hellish nullity and conformism. Imagine a state of bliss and perpetual happiness and harmony, and you have summoned a vision of tedium and pointlessness and predictability.’ (24-25)

Hitchens talks of the inherent evil of the afterlife proposed by religion. It is nothing more than an exploitation of man’s deepest existential questions. To suggest that our earthly pursuits and consequent achievements should be met with the reward of intellectual suspension is an insult – for it is not what we have come to know that is our intellect. Rather, our intellect is about which we seek to further learn. We do not naturally wish to be immersed in state of absolute, unadulterated euphoria. This is the reason why the vast majority of us do not opt for drug-induced happiness, and why Aldous Huxley warns us of Soma in Brave New World. There is an innate revulsion towards lurid happiness and it is within us all to embrace the miscellany of life’s experiences. The only reason we blithely dabble in gratuitous hedonism is because it’s easy and it feels really ‘nice’.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to do what feels ‘nice’. Denying our most fundamental desires would makes us inequitably irascible. A healthy equality of emotional experiences requires us to ‘observe’ our feelings rather than dwell in them. It shouldn’t be depressing to be skeptical of your happiness and to understand that the feeling will expire, only to return in cyclicality.

As for transcendental happiness, we are not cretins to acknowledge the meaninglessness of life. Religions paint a sordid picture of existential nihilism, but remember that real cretins are beguiled by illusory promises. For a moment, I would like to take from Albert Camus, who modified the story of Sisyphus. In Camus’ version, Sisyphus does his job while ‘smiling’. Our jobs are wholly ineffectual, but like Sisyphus, there is no reason our work must be inherently meaningful.

And finally, you may be wondering, have I embraced this life of emotional observation? Do I have any less desire to be happy in the way I once did? The answer is no. The fact is, despite all that I’ve just written, I am still prisoner to my own ephemeral desires. I ask myself, knowing firsthand how difficult the task of understanding happiness is, what is next for our civilization? Suffering from the ills of overpopulation, we reproduce to our detriment. The prospect of Motherhood and Fatherhood fills us with a poorly advised, self-aggrandizing happiness. For this question I have no answer. I am sorry if I have wasted your time, as I have not turned my ideas into anything palpable for my reader. Admittedly, I am bereft of a real point, and taciturn when asked what’s next? What does a life of my proposed level of awareness look like, since I cannot exemplify it myself? It’s at this junction I find the apogee of my greatest challenge. And despite my sincerest efforts, I am watching as the boulder slowly rolls down the hill.

Regrettably, I wish I was smiling.