“you can train your own mind”

Even though so much in life is out of your control, you can train your own mind and regulate your own nervous system. That is huge — and that is in your control. IPMF. —Dan Harris https://www.threads.com/@danharris/post/DZshi34lTd_?xmt=AQG0KCeu8oOIJW-MzSPXEot-Ap_7iRX5apTe42lZdoUoBKTAOmkfPlcjPdwXL4f_Yo38sBM&slof=1

How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic by Massimo Pigliucci

Celebrated CUNY philosopher Massimo Pigliucci investigates the practical applications of Cicero’s skepticism, weaving together ancient wisdom, personal narrative, and practical insights to help readers find meaning through doubt

You may have picked up this book because you’re searching for a philosophy of life. Beware that it is dangerous to accept a philosophical or religious practice without questioning it. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers believed that, without a healthy amount of doubt, you could be tricked into thinking you have found the ultimate Truth…

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/806907/how-to-be-a-happy-skeptic-by-massimo-pigliucci/

hetero-optimism

… It’s become a self-fulfilling ideology. Now, nearly 70 percent of college-educated singles feel negatively about the possibility of finding a partner who’s right for them.

I propose something new: hetero-optimism, in which one does not shy away from the ills (real and imagined) of heterosexuality but considers our own potential for navigating them, still believing that some hope for our romantic future exists.

Much of the disappointment in heterosexuality stems from a place of mismatched expectations. According to the Survey Center of American Life, just over half of single women believe they and their peers are happier than married women. They’re wrong, at least on average: Married women are more likely to report being “very happy” with their lives than single women, and the same goes for men, the General Social Survey has found...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/opinion/heteropessimism-straight-dating-love.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

hetero-optimism

… It’s become a self-fulfilling ideology. Now, nearly 70 percent of college-educated singles feel negatively about the possibility of finding a partner who’s right for them.

I propose something new: hetero-optimism, in which one does not shy away from the ills (real and imagined) of heterosexuality but considers our own potential for navigating them, still believing that some hope for our romantic future exists.

Much of the disappointment in heterosexuality stems from a place of mismatched expectations. According to the Survey Center of American Life, just over half of single women believe they and their peers are happier than married women. They’re wrong, at least on average: Married women are more likely to report being “very happy” with their lives than single women, and the same goes for men, the General Social Survey has found...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/opinion/heteropessimism-straight-dating-love.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Want to ‘Optimize’ Your Happiness? This Happiness Expert Says: Don’t.

Laurie Santos on what will really bring meaning and fulfillment to your life, and what won’t. 

Lots of philosophers have tackled the question of happiness going back to ancient Greece, and there are two main types of happiness according to ancient Greek philosophers as far as I can tell: hedonic and eudaimonic. Can you explain the difference? Hedonic happiness is what a lot of laypeople mean when they say happiness — just a sense of good feeling. Often when we’re thinking of hedonic pleasure, we’re thinking of the really basic stuff: good food, good sex, a feeling of accomplishment. Eudaimonic happiness is bigger. It’s about living a good life. Happiness that comes not just from your own success, your own pleasure, but from other people and from building character. If you look back at the ancient folks like Aristotle, they knew about both, but when push came to shove they were like, Go for the eudaimonic.

In ancient Greece, the big philosophical debate was also if happiness was nature or nurture. What does science say? Are certain people more predisposed to be happy? The way scientists study this is they do these classic studies with twins, and what they generally find is that happiness is heritable. The important thing to know, though, is that the heritability factor is pretty low. It’s about the same rate as what you’d see for religiosity or risk-taking. If your parents were super religious, maybe you’re more likely to be super religious, but it’s not set in stone. That’s the message of happiness: There’s probably some component that’s a little built in, but so much more of it is under our conscious control.

So we can learn to be happy? That’s the premise of my work...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/magazine/laurie-santos-interview.html?smid=em-share

Thinketh again

… The “good” side of his thought ledger seems to contain such stereotypically manly virtues as power and certainty and control. Every man, he writes, must “manfully control his thoughts. … Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded.” (It’s a little like “The Secret,” but for men.) With total confidence, Allen swaggers right into some very ugly ideas. “The truth is that oppressor and slave are cooperators in ignorance,” he writes, “and, while seeming to afflict each other, are in reality afflicting themselves.” I shivered in recognition — it’s the kind of pseudo-intellectual rationalization of evil you can still find all over modern social media…

What I discovered, in my brief experiment in thinkething, is that, in the absence of clear definitions of “good” and “bad,” it is easy to prune the garden of your thoughts into self-serving shapes. But I believe we have some responsibility to make our thoughts correspond to reality — not just to expect reality to swing its huge weight around, magically, to align with our thoughts. This is especially true now, in the vortex of chaos we call 2026. Maybe this will sound like bragging, but I would rather be unhappy and weak and full of self-doubt than dishonest and cruel and puffed up with false certainty. If I ever write a self-help book, I think I will call it “As a Man Muddles Through the Disappointing Confusion of True Self-Knowledge.” Maybe, a hundred years from now, it could be a best seller, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/magazine/man-thinketh-book.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The Good Life Paradox

Matthew Hammerton points out that a meaningful life and a life that goes well for you might not be the same thing.

Picture two people on their deathbeds. The first lived comfortably, surrounded by loving family and friends, enjoying diverse pleasures and achievements throughout a long life. The second dedicated herself entirely to fighting injustice, achieving remarkable social change, but at great personal cost. Who lived the better life?

Your answer might depend on what you mean by ‘better’. Philosophers have long recognized that when we call a life ‘good’ we can mean different things. So we could be talking about a life’s moral goodness – how virtuous the person was – or its prudential goodness – how well the life went for the person living it. But there’s a third dimension we often overlook: how meaningful the life was. This gives us three distinct questions we can ask about any life: 1. Was it morally good? 2. Did it go well for the person living it? 3. Was it meaningful?

These questions pull in different directions. A morally exemplary life might involve suffering for others’ sake, making it less prudentially good. A meaningful life might also require sacrifices that reduce personal well-being. Understanding these tensions can help us navigate our choices about how to live.

Is Meaning Just Well-Being in Disguise?

Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. When we examine what makes lives meaningful, we find striking similarities to what makes lives go well. Theories of both meaning and well-being come in subjective and objective varieties, appealing to overlapping goods, such as love, knowledge, achievement, and aesthetic experience. This raises an uncomfortable question: Is ‘meaning in life’ just another way of talking about well-being? Perhaps then when someone complains that their life lacks meaning, they’re really just saying it lacks important components of well-being.

Consider the parallels. Subjective theories of well-being say your life goes well when you’re satisfied, your desires are fulfilled, or you experience pleasure. Some theories of meaning make identical claims about meaningfulness. Objective theories of well-being point to goods like knowledge, love, and achievement as being valuable for the person who has them. Theories of meaning point to exactly the same goods as sources of life’s significance.

This similarity is puzzling. If meaning and well-being are genuinely distinct, why do their theories look so alike? The most obvious explanation is that they’re actually the same thing – that ‘meaning’ is just a fancy way of talking about certain aspects of well-being…

https://philosophynow.org/issues/171/The_Good_Life_Paradox

The Nobel-Winning Psychologist Who Believed He Found the Secret to Happiness

James said it first.

“My father simplified his life in terms of his daily habits,” Katherine wrote, “thus eliminating the need to make little decisions about everything.” By taking the small decisions off his plate, that simplification freed his attention for the people and work that actually mattered to him...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/opinion/decision-making-herbert-simon.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Happy ambition

Happy ambition