Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Malamazu t1_jcaks4k wrote

Gonna have to criticise this questionable paragraph of essentially toxic positivity.

Firstly happiness isn't one thing. It's personal and not defined by assumptions. It isn't necessarily only rooted in appreciation but rooted in the values that you hold, which differ from person to person.

Saying relax is useless wisdom. It's dismissive of the issues at hand. Why can't people relax? Usually it's because their needs aren't met.

Saying someone is enough and has enough and does enough is simply delusional. Everyone's situation is different, it's actually insulting to say we all have enough, when inequality in this world is at utterly ridiculous and evil levels. We should all be far more angry and motivated but we've been conditioned to live in fear of losing what little we have.

Living in the moment is all well and good but without awareness and planning being included in that ethos, then it's simply living without responsibility and thus living immorally.

Letting go is also one of those useless wisdom snippets, that oversimplify something complex about life. Letting go of various things can be useful to you, but it can also be detrimental to many too. Do you let go of your anger, and thus let go of your motivation and thus let go of your hope. Things might not seem so black and white.

I understand the overall message here is supposed to be aimed at people who are overworked and stressed, and to take a step back to be positive about things overall but the wisdom contained is endemic to the usual nonsense about there being easy answers to things in life, when this idea is far from universal.

Being negative and critical about things, especially yourself can help you grow and change. And if you delude yourself into thinking everything you have is enough and someone else is worse off, so don't complain, then you maintain the evil heirachy of society and maintain your own delusion.

22

quantumkatz t1_jcd1mqd wrote

I have to disagree abit. The post can also be seen as setting a base line for being enough. Savoring, being grateful about the little things and putting your perspective about “enough” are healthy self-care practices.

Why? Because in general we have 2 very harmful features of our brain:

  1. It gets used to stuff really quickly.
  2. Our strongest intuitions (predictions) are often wrong.

Any change no matter the degree over time will quickly diminish in value so there is a constant desire for more. This is called Hedonic Adaptation. The second point is that we tend to catastrophize and overestimate the value of needing. Like we need to pass this test or need this particular type of job to be happy.

If you’re interested there’s a course on Coursera call the Science of Well Being by Yale University. It’s free to audit.

TLDR: Setting base lines of being enough or having enough can increase our enjoyment of what we do have and reduce catastrophizing and Hedonic Adaptation.

3

SorcerousFaun t1_jcdf5sr wrote

Yeah, I agree 100%. Imagine a billionaire saying this to an impoverished community.

2