---
date: 2017-11-20
modified_at: 2018-05-20
tags: [philosophy, productivity, social-media]
description: Moving beyond the pursuit of happiness by understanding and mastering our impulses, creating stable habits to focus on bigger issues like the planet.
---
# The basis: what comes after happiness?

The book of Harari about superhumans (called Homo Deus) inspires me to think
many thoughts...... Among other things, he states that we will always crave more
as humans, so we will never be happy, but always remain unhappy....

Although it is a very tempting and common consensus that this is true, I don't
agree with him. What if we (humans) can become more commonly aware of our
biological workings and understand the difference between useful impulses and
unuseful impulses? Since the brain is ever adaptable, could it not be able to
adapt to such knowledge in a way that it won't appreciate unuseful impulses
anymore? Many Hindu leaders in the past seemed to have full control over their
emotions so I think that if we all understand it as a whole it could become the
norm to not appreciate short-term external pleasures. Of course this can only
happen if there is a political shift because not only are cigarettes dangerous
for us, but so are sugar and smartphones. It's all about pseudo pleasure - the
activation of dopamine.

I'm getting better and better at banning out distractions. Knowing what to
pursuit and what not. For example, I've always enjoyed creating the best food
that makes me feel good in the short term, but being aware of the above, it
doesn't make sense; it's more important to make something that doesn't distract
me from work and keeps me healthy in the long-term. Also, being more conscious
of the process of making some processed foods make me dispise them and I now
crave more natural foods instead. What if I just say to myself... Food won't
make me more happy, because I've reached a stable basis that will give me all I
need. Let's get over it and focus on other things!

I think humans are naturally quite good beings. We (the big companies) just have
to be transparent to ourselves (the crowd) for us (the crowd) to make better
decisions. Let me end with a good quote: "Measurement is the first step that
leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something,
you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If
you can’t control it, you can’t improve it." - James Harrington

I hope that at one point, I can say to myself: I'm happy now.... About my
habits. My work habits, my food habits, my sport habits, and relational habits.
Therefore I reached the maximum amount of happiness in the long-term and can't
improve it anymore. So let's stop caring about being happy. If I continue like
this, I have this problem solved. Let's care about greater, more important
things. Like this rock we live on (and some under). What's it called again? Oh
yeah, earth.