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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Monday, February 20, 2006

entry arrow8:55 PM | I Am Sad. Therefore: I Am.

We are biologically hardwired for unhappiness. This is the theory laid out by Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis, and Darrin McMahon in Happiness: A History. The New Yorker reviews:
People who have scant control over their lives are bound to place tremendous importance on luck and fate. As McMahon points out, "In virtually every Indo-European language, the modern word for happiness is cognate with luck, fortune or fate." In a sense, the oldest and most deeply rooted philosophical idea in the world and in our natures is "Shit happens." Happ was the Middle English word for "chance, fortune, what happens in the world," McMahon writes, "giving us such words as 'happenstance,' 'haphazard,' 'hapless,' and 'perhaps.'" This view of happiness is essentially tragic: it sees life as consisting of the things that happen to you; if more good things than bad happen, you are happy.

I don't know how to react to this. Am I supposed to say, heck, I'm unhappy. I'm being true to the heritage that is my evolution?

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