This book will walk you through the various strategies and approaches that people throughout history and in modern times have employed to sustainably induce happiness.
We will cover how each strategy provides new key insights, and how they build on top of all of the previous strategies.
Rather than thinking of each camp as a competing approach, think of each camp as building on top of everything that has been realized before.
We aim to show, among other things, how we can tackle problems such as the dissatisfaction that comes from habituation to pleasure, describe the low hanging fruit to pick for getting rid of pain and suffering, and share some innovative methods and frameworks to unlock sustainable superhappiness.
This book is about happiness. More precisely, about how to achieve long-lasting happiness. Superhappiness, if you will.
The book is broken down into various “camps” of a fictional future World Happiness Festival. It details how various approaches to happiness have emerged throughout history and where we’re at currently. Each chapter builds on the previous one; the strategies you pick up as you go along are additive and complementary rather than exclusionary. Think of it as an opportunity for enriching your toolkit for happiness.
How should you think about each camp?
First, we think that a lot of people could be accurately described as belonging to a specific given camp. So one could think of each of these camps as clusters of people. Alas, clustering in the real world is rarely clean. We are not saying that each person belongs cleanly to a single cluster. But learning that a person has certain beliefs, attitudes, and participates in activities associated with a given camp increases the chances that such a person also has other characteristics of that camp. In other words, the properties of each camp are correlated with each other.
Second, from another perspective, each camp can be viewed as expressing a worldview about the nature of happiness. The beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of each camp coalesce together to form a coherent picture.
And third, the worldview of each camp works to generate further beliefs, attitudes, and practices. So while casually picking and choosing strategies to increase happiness can be quite useful, mastering the core ideas behind the worldview of a given camp unlocks the ability to come up with novel and even customized practices that fit that worldview. Presenting each worldview by describing its core constituents is much akin to the old saying: “Give a man a fish/carrot and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish/farm and he’ll eat for the rest of his life”. Once you understand the core insights that underlie a given camp, you will be able to generalize them and apply them to your life (and the lives of your loved ones) in new ways.
In brief, you can think of these camps as either (1) clusters of people, (2) worldviews, or (3) generators of ideas. They are, in fact, all three at once.
May this be of benefit to you, your loved ones, and the world at large!
Organization
Engineering
QualiaResearchInstitute
a nonprofit that is working toward innovative ways to
reduce suffering,
increase the hedonic baseline
of experience, and
achieve new heights of wellbeing.
We take a ‘full-stack’ approach:
better philosophy of mind should translate into better neuroscience, which should in turn translate into better neurotechnology.
Our aim is to make a dent in the world’s stock of suffering with innovation in philosophy, neuroscience, neurotechnology.
At QRI, we are building the theoretcal and methodological foundations for paradise engineering.
To a large extent, we are constrained by funding. By supporting us, you would help us formalize these frameworks, run key experiments to demonstrate their value to academia and the world at large, and allow us to create a live community of people who live and practice this approach to superhappiness.
Begin your journey through the camps here.
ideation: Andres Gomez Emilsson
content curation: Mike Edward Johnson
team coordination: Elin Ahstrand
web design: Wendi Yan
web development: Hunter Meyer
illustration: Wendi Yan
article summaries: Tanvi Antoo, Mira Guetzow, Jasmine Wang