Most people don't feel "little bored", as I said, negative feelings are basically their default feeling. It makes no sense to call yourself "happy" when most of your life you are not experiencing said happiness.
Where I worked, 55 hours per week, I'm pretty sure my co-workers weren't "content" while stuck 11 hours a day in that shithole of company, especially with the boss swearing and making the atmosphere unpleasant almost every Friday.
It's hilarious that some people still think the majority of the population is "content" even though most people live situations like that.
no, contentment wasnt made to last long, there is evolutionary evidence for this.
Happiness is a human construct, an abstract idea with no biological basis. But this is something to be happy about.
theconversation.com
Everyone expects to be happy. Evolutionary theory suggests that wouldn't be adaptive ,and instead we need to be otherwise motivated. However, equanimity may be more accessible.
www.psychologytoday.com
Even if you achieved your dream now, your mind would still find a way to make you miserable, because you will always want more. Lasting unhappiness is much more effective, while happiness only serves to be the "diamond", that vicious feeling that makes people run insanely after it because it never lasts that long.
The comparison with drugs fits. it is precisely that quick euphoria that makes people addicted - Just like everything we achieve, until we realize its no longer enough and we need 'more' to get that same effect. Just like a drug
What do you mean people can't feel a 'little bored'? I don't know how else to say this other than you literally can. There's varying degrees of feeling emotions. There's no other way I can put that and I don't think it can really be argued that it's
not the case.
I'm not saying they're not experiencing happiness either. I'm saying they're experiencing a lesser degree of happiness. It's not some ecstatic high they feel at all times, it can also be a much more muted feeling.
As for where you worked? Yeah, most people don't like work. Most people also aren't working 11 hours a day and it sounds like you had incredibly shit working conditions. That's just anecdotal though. Some people enjoy their jobs more than others. Some cope better than others. Using it as some form of evidence to suggest that people aren't content, especially when you have absolutely
no clue what goes on in your coworker's heads necessarily, just doesn't work. That anecdote was also kind of a nothing-burger since you were trying to use it as evidence for people not being content but that seems like it's more an issue with people not having the time nor the money to be content, not that it's an impossible state to reach, or even a difficult one from a biological viewpoint.
"There is evolutionary evidence for this" yet none of it is given. Not only that, but the first article is quite short-sighted in their view of why contentment exists. It exists so that guards
can be let down. If an organism isn't going to let its guard down, that tends to actually be detrimental to the mental health and the function of it over a longer period. Rest periods are needed for almost all life, if not all life, in some way. That way happens to be winding down in a state of contentment. It very much is a vital part of life. In fact, let's imagine if you
couldn't wind down. You had to work every hour of every day, eat for a few minutes, drink for a few minutes, then go back to working, or just sleep. And this isn't just your 55-hour working week that you didn't like; this would be 84+ hours. Now imagine the mental health of someone who goes and does that. It's not brilliant, is it? The fact that we don't have 84+ hour work weeks (at least, the vast,
vast majority of people don't) is evidence that winding down and being content is a necessity of life. You remove that aspect from an organism and you effectively remove the brakes off of it. Sure, they're going to work hard, but at the cost of extreme stress, which decreases lifespan, most likely into the reproductive ages for many organisms, which directly goes
against what evolution wants. So no, there isn't evolutionary evidence.
I also want to add that those URLs provided absolutely no scientific evidence for why this would be the case. They just basically quoted psychologists in saying "Yeah, I don't think you're meant to be happy." That's not "evolutionary evidence", those are the statements of flawed individuals who, shockingly, have the ability to be wrong. As for my argument, though, it doesn't require any evolutionary evidence. It's just basic logic you can derive from a mundane, everyday life.
As for your last line, I don't see it that way at all. I see contentment as some sort of line on a graph. You can reach it, but then you'll drop back down from it as a result of your needs changing, or no longer being satiated. You must then climb back towards contentment by satiating those needs. Trying to get to contentment isn't a drug, it's more of a state of being than anything. There isn't a "quick euphoria" in it either - the whole point is that it's
not euphoric. You experience a mild pleasure from it, and nothing more, because that mild pleasure allows your body to put its guard down and relax. If you didn't do that, you'd die a
lot earlier.
