Long-term happiness isn’t possible without rational thinking and rational action.
If you’re not rational, you will engage in actions that will make you happy now but unhappy later.
The problem is that taking irrational action is usually much more emotionally satisfying.
For example, an American living in the Collapsing USA, if he were rational, would look around and say something like, “This country is getting worse every year by every possible economic and cultural measurement, and has been doing so for at least the past 25 to 30 years, regardless of who is in charge. Much or most of this country’s problems are not even fixable logistically. Therefore, I need to make plans to leave this country as soon as I’m able to.”
It’s 100% accurate and factual, and it’s the right course of action. But it’s not very emotionally satisfying.
It’s much more emotionally satisfying to be completely irrational, and instead say something like this:
“But we need to defeat those right-wingers! They’re a bunch of racists!”
“But we need to defeat the woke left and save America!”
“Everything will be fine because Barack Obama is going to change politics.”
“Everything will be fine once Donald Trump builds the wall.”
“Everything will be fine when Bernie Sanders goes after the billionaires.”
“Everything will be fine when Joe Biden puts everything back to normal.”
“Everything will be fine when Donald Trump has Elon and DOGE cut government spending.”
All of the above viewpoints, shared by literally hundreds of millions of Americans over the past 20 years, are completely false, totally irrational, and frankly, childish and insane.
But… you have to admit… they’re very emotionally satisfying, which is why irrationality is so popular.
This also extends to one’s personal life.
Irrational: “I don’t want my wife or girlfriend maybe having sex with some other guy someday, because my head would explode, so I’m just going to try monogamy. Hey, I’m a pretty smart guy; maybe I’ll be the exception to the rule, and it will all work out, and we’ll be together forever! ”
Rational: “Long-term monogamy doesn’t work in a free society, and I’m not going to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan anytime soon, so I’m going to have to figure out how to make non-monogamy work for me.”
And in business:
Irrational: “I hate this AI slop all over the fucking internet! It’s garbage! Therefore, AI is garbage. Therefore, AI will never put me out of a job because it’ll never get that smart. All these guys talking about this are just grifters full of shit.”
Rational: “Hm. With the rate of improvement AI has been experiencing over the last several years, my job as an accountant/attorney/copywriter/IT nerd/whatever is probably in trouble. Maybe not right this minute, but soon. I better seriously start putting time into my own business that’s AI-resistant, so I’ll be okay if there’s a problem in the future with my position.”
Once again, in both of these cases the irrational statement is much more emotionally satisfying, reassuring, and validating. It’s so much easier.
The rational statement, while being the correct statement, is not very fun. In many cases it’s downright scary.
The way to offset the natural tendency of the human monkey brain to love irrationality is to instead make the irrational option sound as fun and enjoyable as possible.
For example, you could change this:
“This country is getting worse every year by every possible economic and cultural measurement, and has been doing so for at least the past 25 to 30 years, regardless of who is in charge. Much or most of this country’s problems are not even fixable logistically. Therefore, I need to make plans to leave this country as soon as I’m able to.”
Into something like this:
“Wow, if I lived in Paraguay instead of the USA, everything would be about one-sixth the cost and I would live like a fucking king down there! And the women are super cute and I’d get laid much more easily than I could ever could in the United States! This is awesome!”
Or instead of:
“Long-term monogamy doesn’t work in a free society, and I’m not going to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan anytime soon, so I’m going to have to figure out how to make non-monogamy work for me.”
You could say:
“Man… just imagine… I could be married to the woman of my dreams and also have sex with smoking hot babes on the side whenever I wanted, without any lying, cheating, or drama from any of them, and do that for the rest of my life. OMG, that would be living the dream!”
Or instead of:
“Hm. With the rate of improvement AI has been experiencing over the last several years, my job as an accountant/attorney/copywriter/IT nerd/whatever is probably in trouble. Maybe not right this minute, but soon. I better seriously start putting time into my own business that’s AI-resistant, so I’ll be okay if there’s a problem in the future with my position.”
You could say:
“Wouldn’t it be cool if I had my own business doing something that I actually gave a shit about and doing something fun using AI tools and things like that? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could just sleep in every morning and wake up and do whatever I wanted every day instead of having to report to a stupid 8-to-5 job, and constantly worry about getting laid off or not, and not have to work with stupid-ass people all day?”
We are humans with irrational monkey brains. We’re not a Vulcan like Mr. Spock nor are we a computer. Even if we choose rational action, we have to back it up with some positive emotions.
Otherwise, we’re just going to fall right back into the trap of having the easy, fun, but totally false and destructive irrational thoughts like everyone else.
It’s actually not that hard. You just have to remember to do it and not default to your monkey brain.
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