Maybe I'm just drunk, having just been kicked out at bar time from the place around the corner[1], but this resonated with me: "When does the magic of a situation fade? When do we get acclimated to the exceptional?...We define a pattern, no matter how exceptional, and acclimate ourselves to it?"
I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane. Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signed a record deal with Sub Pop Records. Earlier this week, I landed a development contract for an iOS app that I think will revolutionize its market come early next year. It goes on from there. These sorts of things seem normal to me now. At 15, I would've been, to quote the article, gobsmacked by my involvement—however tangential—in any of them.
Are human beings just so easily adaptable to their circumstances that they start missing the depth of these 'big' events after a while? What must it be like to be Bill Gates or Bono? "Had dinner with Queen Rania of Jordan and the food was middling to fair. My Gulfstream's flight to New York was delayed due to weather issues. What a joke. Don't they know I'm supposed to have coffee with Bill Clinton tomorrow morning to talk about his philanthropic efforts?"
Where's the magic? What does it take to surprise and delight us? Obviously not a pony.
[1] the haagen-dazs ice cream bar I'm chewing on right now doesn't hurt either: having a 24 hour supermarket across the street is the bomb. Get kicked out of the bar, go buy ice cream. Not a bad way to end a Friday night.
There is a well-known corollary here with happiness. People think that if they are million- or billionaires, or have a super-fit girlfriend, or drive a ridiculous car or live in a massive house or whatever they'll be happy, or at least happier. However all studies have shown that rich people are not happier than poor(er) people. And more interesting is people that have suffered catastrophic accidents or contracted disabling diseases: on average these people are no less happy than anyone else.
Living with no money is sure to impede happiness. When lack of money puts you living in a place that has higher crime / lower life expectancy, I would imagine happiness suffers.
I am curious on the studies on how they measured. People on different places on the survival pyramid must have been a consideration.
Your statement is just wrong. Angus Deaton at Princeton found "Each doubling of national income is associated with a near one unit increase in average life-satisfaction measured on an eleven point scale from 0 ('the worst possible life') to 10 ('the best possible life')". I'm all for deluding yourself with baseless platitudes to rationalize your lack of success, and then getting a Yeah! Yeah! rally of upvotes from people similarly situated, but please don't advance such falsity here.
I think the point retube was trying to reference is that studies have shown that people vastly overestimate the magnitude and duration of changes in happiness due to a windfall or catastrophe (the most recent source I have for this is Dan Ariely's Upside of Irrationality). While there is a shift of overall life satisfaction, major changes are much less impactful to your long-term happiness than you would predict (presumably due to growing familiarity, adaptation, and the general "the grass is greener" bias we all have).
At any rate, I, specifically, would be happier without reading personally-attacking rebuttals on HN. Is that really needed to make your point?
"A worldwide survey of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries included questions about happiness and income, and the results reveal that while life satisfaction usually rises with income, positive feelings don't necessarily follow, researchers report."
And some further recent research on the matter reviewed here:
Basically - increasing wealth makes you immune to the smaller/simpler joys in life.
From the paper you quoted, this was also in the abstract:
"HIV prevalence in Africa has little effect on Africans’ life or health satisfaction"
which actually supports my other assertion that those with disabling diseases or conditions are no less happy than those more fortunate (assuming you equate life-satisfaction with happiness).
I am not saying that and the study is not saying that. Hijacking a statement through abandonment of context is a poor way to make a point amongst intelligent people.
I'm surrounded by exceptional situations every day and they just seem mundane. Tonight I congratulated a guy who just signed a record deal with Sub Pop Records. Earlier this week, I landed a development contract for an iOS app that I think will revolutionize its market come early next year. It goes on from there. These sorts of things seem normal to me now. At 15, I would've been, to quote the article, gobsmacked by my involvement—however tangential—in any of them.
Are human beings just so easily adaptable to their circumstances that they start missing the depth of these 'big' events after a while? What must it be like to be Bill Gates or Bono? "Had dinner with Queen Rania of Jordan and the food was middling to fair. My Gulfstream's flight to New York was delayed due to weather issues. What a joke. Don't they know I'm supposed to have coffee with Bill Clinton tomorrow morning to talk about his philanthropic efforts?"
Where's the magic? What does it take to surprise and delight us? Obviously not a pony.
[1] the haagen-dazs ice cream bar I'm chewing on right now doesn't hurt either: having a 24 hour supermarket across the street is the bomb. Get kicked out of the bar, go buy ice cream. Not a bad way to end a Friday night.