Happiness Must Be Reciprocal
Don't be a Nazi. Nazis suck and ruin everything.
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As we’ve discussed here before, finding happiness1 in the happiness of others and accepting joy2 when it is offered back to you is a virtuous circle3. They feed on each other. However, it only works when everyone involved is playing the same game. It requires everyone to not only find happiness with the people you are close to, but find happiness with everybody - like everybody.
You see, there are some people who find happiness in the unhappiness of others. That kind of stupid thinking ruins the virtuous circle and thus exempts them from benefiting from our largesse. They’ve ruined the game. We don’t have to be happy for their happiness. Take for example Nazis. I want to use Nazis as an example because we all agree Nazis are shitty, shitty people. Everyone can agree on that right? Fucking right?!4
Nazis have a deep desire to cause unhappiness in others. It makes them happy. It’s in their playbook5. That’s their whole schtick. We need not be happy for their brand of bullshit.
The question is, and continuing to use Nazis as an example, why do Nazis enjoy everyone else’s unhappiness? People aren’t born evil. We don’t pop out filled with hate (Rosemary’s baby aside). Hate is a learned behavior just as much as love is. We don’t have to like everyone, that’s unreasonable, but hating everyone outside your social circle is on a whole other level.
HATE COMES EASY
Hate is a residual of our fight or flight response. When saber toothed tigers kept eating members of our tribe, we began to hate saber toothed tigers - it wasn’t completely unjustified. It wasn’t just saber toothed tigers keeping us up at night, our ancestors had a whole shitload of things to worry about. They had earthquakes, diseases, droughts, the sun disappearing midday every so often - all sorts of weird heretofore unexplained things that just might kill them happened all the time6. No wonder we, as a species, can be so damned jumpy.
It’s easy to hate any unknown perceived threat. It’s self preservation at its most primitive. Evolutionarily speaking, the odds were better just to hate everything - cover all the bases, so to speak7. But we’re social creatures. We need each other. So what did we do? We built our tribes and hated the rest.
Yet, since we crawled out of our caves, our collective lives have improved dramatically. We have fewer and fewer threats that we don’t fully understand well in advance. Hating the unknown is unnecessary because there aren’t many threats left that are unknown. Hate, as a survival instinct in this day and age, is superfluous.
ARE YOU BEING SHITTY?
No one is going to answer “yes” to that question. But you have to find out if your default response is hate. If so…(8). You have to ask yourself if you are being happy for other people's happiness. Not just your close social group, but are you happy for the happiness of people you don't associate with? Maybe even people on the margins that aren't remotely like you. You don't have to be a champion. I'm not asking you to carry signs and march, but those groups are the easy ones to target with hate.
Can you say that you are happy for the happiness of people whose skin is a different color than yours? People who have come to your country looking for a better life? What about people who follow a different religion than you? Do you understand their desire for happiness? How about gay people? How about trans people? Again, you don't have to be one, just that you want them to be happy. How about pregnant women? Are you looking out for their happiness?
If you said no to any of those questions, you might be on the shitty side of the argument.
You can't just say, well they aren't looking out for my happiness, so I'm not looking out for theirs. That is an unvirtuous circle and gets us nowhere. That spiral looks like the swirling of a toilet. Regardless of which piece of shit you think you are, everyone is going to get flushed.
This may sound like I am arguing counter to the whole “Find Happiness In The Happiness Of Others” thing I constantly yammer on about, but it isn’t. The “Others” I refer to are everybody who is willing to play the game. You don’t get to thwart the rules and still demand to receive the same benefits that everyone else, who is working concertedly, is striving so hard to achieve.
Again, I'm not asking you to join a march or fight the fight, but if you're not happy for their happiness, you might already be in the fight, just on the wrong side. These people want to pursue their happiness unfettered. If you champion the impediment of that, you might not be deserving of their happiness for you - or anyone’s happiness for you.
If you've lost family and friends recently because of your views, maybe they're not the assholes. It might be because they can't abide your happiness for the unhappiness of others. I’m not going to invoke Godwin’s Law here, that might be a tad extreme and not very helpful, but if you find yourself rooting for the misfortune of others, it might be time for a little soul searching before you lose more people in your life.
You have to believe everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and be happy for all of those who take a run at that ideal. If you can do that, if you can truly enjoy the mere thought of strangers finding joy in their lives, the world gets a whole lot less scary.
The first phase of the philosophy:
FIND HAPPINESS IN THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS
I am a selfish man. Seriously. My first and foremost concern is me. Regardless of what you might need, I need to take care of myself first. Food, shelter, clothing… then all the other stuff. This is the natural order of things. Self preservation is the primary goal. You are selfish too. No shame. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s what we humans do. Your prim…
The second phase of the philosophy:
ACCEPT JOY WHEN OFFERED BACK TO YOU
A funny thing happened as I was finding happiness in the happiness of others - I also found that other people wanted to make me happy. What the what? It was weird. I thought I found the secret code to happiness and all the while other people were using it on me.
Actually, it is a Virtuous Spiral, and looking at it might get you hypnotized:
I know we all agree that Nazis suck because of Godwin’s Law which states: "As a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of a person/s being compared to Hitler or another Nazi, increases." When everyone agrees that the shittiest thing you can accuse someone of is being a Nazi, then we all agree that Nazis are shitty. Right? FUCKING RIGHT?!
I’m not going to link out to their playbook. They don’t need the PR. But you should read The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. It discusses why seemingly good people would feel compelled to join such a horrible movement.
Or not. They had no idea.
Could you imagine if we evolved benefiting from heretofore unexplained phenomena? If love was the easiest and most advantageous response? Right now you’re thinking, “Yeah, there’s a sucker born every minute,” but that’s your cynical, prehistoric you talking. Stop that.
Sorry to break it to you, but you’re probably being shitty.