Miswanting And The Silver Bullet Problem Of Adulthood

Nothing really saves you, even if you think it will save you.

This is a good video from Laurie Santos, who is the “science of happiness” lady and I believe is in bed with Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast network:

It’s mostly about ways to be happy, which is always a fraught term to me. I think the goal should be “contentment,” but who the hell am I, right? Most of this video revolves around social comparison — which we injected with steroids around 2011 with at-scale cell phones and social apps — and how you should avoid it. And you should avoid it, because lots of people whose lives you think are great have absolute bullshit seeping out of every corner of their existence, and if you don’t believe me — just remember that the upper middle class, in some ways, is the biggest prison of them all: