Facing Horror To Bring Happiness

Interesting article here:

…I was having a panic attack.

What I wanted to know was: why now – my life was going uncharacteristically well – and what could I do about it?

“You need to think about death for five minutes every day,” Ura replied. “It will cure you.”

“How?” I said, dumbfounded.

“It is this thing, this fear of death, this fear of dying before we have accomplished what we want or seen our children grow. This is what is troubling you.”

“But why would I want to think about something so depressing?”

“Rich people in the West, they have not touched dead bodies, fresh wounds, rotten things. This is a problem. This is the human condition. We have to be ready for the moment we cease to exist.”

…Actually, by suggesting I think about death once a day, Ura was going easy on me. In Bhutanese culture, one is expected to think about death five times a day. That would be remarkable for any nation, but especially for one so closely equated with happiness as Bhutan. Is this secretly a land of darkness and despair?

..Unlike many of us in the West, the Bhutanese don’t sequester death. Death – and images of death – are everywhere, especially in Buddhist iconography where you’ll find colourful, gruesome illustrations. No one, not even children, is sheltered from these images, or from ritual dances re-enacting death.

The most amazing brain hack you will ever experience is to endure a chronic misery for a period, and become happier for weeks afterward, as if by taking a drug.

I remember flipping around the TV long ago. Pre-breakdown Brittany Spears was being interviewed, and all I saw was how her eyes lit up in a crazy way as she said something like, “Oh my God, when I am on stage, performing, and everyone is cheering, I feel so alive!” It was said in such a strangely enthusiastic, gleeful way, that my mind immediately filed it away as a human oddity before I continued flipping channels.

A couple of years later I saw pictures of a shaved headed Brittany beating some guy’s car door with an umbrella as she freaked out epically. Her brain was addled by pleasure and euphoria. As she experienced it, she became like an addict, and her brain adapted similarly. As it did, the most minor adversity became intolerable.

It works the other way as well. Unpleasantness is unpleasant. But it molds your brain similarly, and creates the structures that will allow you to enjoy happiness with greater ease. I have seen this myself, enduring a chronic irritation for weeks on end, and finding myself feeling less stressed about minor things during my downtime for months afterward. Now when I encounter a chronic hardship that lingers for long periods, I embrace it and welcome the stress. To me the feeling is no different than lifting weights until I feel the burn in the muscle. That amygdala burn is my amygdala growing, and I know it will make me stronger, more resilient, and even happier later on. Just as a drug addict experiences much more misery than the brief pleasure which the drugs bring him, a chronic hardship experience will ultimately grant much more happiness and peacefulness than the transient hardship endured will amount to.

Here, in this article, people who fear death focus on it, and experience the fear chronically to acclimate their brain to that baseline terrified state. Once they do, their brain puts all other problems in perspective, and when they turn their focus away from death and onto something else, it is positively relieving by comparison, triggering happiness. Notice, if someone fears death, then as they focus on it, they are lighting up their amygdala, and exercising it. I would bet as they do, they develop the structure, and this would manifest as a volumetric increase. Literally this is the “mortal salience” John Jost identified as a key element in fostering the adoption of a conservative ideology.

I would bet as you look out on the neurotic left, it is in reality merely an epidemic of amygdala atrophy produced by a lack of adversity in the modern world.

It is quite counter-intuitive to think that the single greatest thing which might increase human happiness will be a total civilizational collapse. But that just might be the case.

I know as I am razing socialist cesspools, and running down fleeing leftists, I am going to be a mighty happy camper.