Kieran Setiya (continues)
Monday, October 20, 2025
Facing facts, living well, grieving aptly, being happy
A mantra for the philosophy of self-help: feeling happy is not the same as living well. Philosophers make the case with “experience machines” that offer streams of blissful, meaningless illusion; but this is extravagant and metaphysically contested. Better to cite the mundane reality that, other things equal, we should feel bad when we hear bad news. This is what it means to face the facts, as we do when we grieve the lost; and it is part of living well...
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"We should feel bad when we hear bad news." Tell that to a stoic!
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who was prescribed ketamine. After starting, her fiance broke up with her, she lost both of her jobs, and she stopped speaking to her family. In response to my comforting, she responded, totally straight faced, that she was happier than she had ever been. She experienced a lot of trauma but the ketamine kept her from feeling any negative feelings associated with the trauma. It was a very very difficult transition for her to come off of the stuff. I don't think it does this to everyone, but it literally created delusions inside of her that propped up her feelings. Watching my friend deal with this was a sad way to learn to appreciate my bad feelings. Another sad truth is that a doctor prescribed the ketamine to her.