Let me tell you a secret.

You don’t have to experience negative emotion.

I risk coming across as implying that “happiness is a choice,” and that's not what I mean. I’m not implying that it is something easy to do, I’m not implying that it is something you should be able to do right now...

But I’m bringing up the possibility. Have you ever imagined it? Living your normal, ordinary life, from now until you die, but with the distinction that you choose not to experience negative emotion?

It’s likely that you have not thought of it. After all, negative emotions are just part of life, aren’t they? They aren't things we can change, right?

The Serenity Prayer goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

The last part is invariably the most tricky one. I think people systematically underestimate the scope of the things that they can change, and that becomes more and more true as technology advances.

As Eliezer has pointed out,

“We have a concept of what a medieval peasant should have had, the dignity with which they should have been treated, that is higher than what they would have thought to ask for themselves.”

A medieval peasant accepted infant death, slavery, and the like as “part of the plan,” as “just the way things are.” Just like people nowadays accept death as “just the way things are,” and say things like “it is impossible to avoid negative emotions altogether because to live is to experience setbacks and conflicts.”

The same can be said of us who grew up in abusive families, as well as oppressed groups in authoritarian societies — they may consider normal things that to us are abject, merely because they haven’t known of anything better.

I think if there is something close to making me feel indignation, it is the fact that the ways in which life can be better are not self-evident.

Storytime!

Throughout my childhood and adolescence I had a host of internalizing mental disorders — depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, dysthymia, suicidal ideation, all that good stuff. I regularly met with several psychotherapists, but unfortunately none provided much help.

When I was 16, however, I...

Natália Mendonça

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