Even if the world is probably doomed, there’s a certain sense of—I don’t call it joy, more like a mix of satisfaction and determination, that comes from fighting until the very end with everything we have. Poets and writers have argued since the dawn of literature that the pursuit of a noble cause is more meaningful than any happiness we can achieve, and while I strongly disagree with the idea of judging cool experiences by meaning, it does say a lot about how historically strong the vein of humans deriving value from working for what you believe in is.
In terms of happiness itself—I practically grew up a transhumanist, and my ideals of joy are bounded pretty damn high. Deviating from that definitely took a lot of getting used to, and I don’t claim to be done in that regard either. I remember someone once saying that six months after it really “hit” them for the first time, their hedonic baseline had oscillated back to being pretty normal. I don’t know if that’ll be the same for everyone, and maybe it shouldn’t be—the end of the world and everything we love shouldn’t be something we learn to be okay with. But we fight against it happening, so maybe between all the fire and brimstone, we’re able to just enjoy living while we are. It isn’t constant, but you do learn to live in the moment, in time. The world is a pretty amazing place, filled with some of the coolest sentient beings in history.
Even if the world is probably doomed, there’s a certain sense of—I don’t call it joy, more like a mix of satisfaction and determination, that comes from fighting until the very end with everything we have. Poets and writers have argued since the dawn of literature that the pursuit of a noble cause is more meaningful than any happiness we can achieve, and while I strongly disagree with the idea of judging cool experiences by meaning, it does say a lot about how historically strong the vein of humans deriving value from working for what you believe in is.
In terms of happiness itself—I practically grew up a transhumanist, and my ideals of joy are bounded pretty damn high. Deviating from that definitely took a lot of getting used to, and I don’t claim to be done in that regard either. I remember someone once saying that six months after it really “hit” them for the first time, their hedonic baseline had oscillated back to being pretty normal. I don’t know if that’ll be the same for everyone, and maybe it shouldn’t be—the end of the world and everything we love shouldn’t be something we learn to be okay with. But we fight against it happening, so maybe between all the fire and brimstone, we’re able to just enjoy living while we are. It isn’t constant, but you do learn to live in the moment, in time. The world is a pretty amazing place, filled with some of the coolest sentient beings in history.