The Greatest Men Aren’t Necessarily The Happiest Men

Happiness, as a disposition, is widely admired these days.

This breadth of agreement alone should be sufficient to dissuade us from such a simple pursuit, but some of us are still caught up by its elusive spell.

Let’s put this pursuit to bed.

I don’t give a fuck if I’m happy or not. It matters not one lick whether people think I’m a glowing ball of blissful sunshine. I don’t want to live in a bubble of niceness, free of trolls, and smugly removed from the big bad world. I only care if I’m intelligent and powerful enough to challenge the status quo. I only care if I can make something.

I only care if I’m great.

Cherryl Brooks: I read a book once where it said that great men are always unhappy, and the greater – the unhappier. It didn’t make sense to me. But maybe it’s true.
Jim Taggert: It’s much truer than you think.i

Why would greatness be inversely correlated with happiness? Perhaps because, as with all things fleeting, happiness is simple and short-term, whereas greatness is complex and long-term. Take paper money and Mother Nature: the more paper money there is, the more Mother Nature suffers. That is, the more fake wealth there is in the hands of fake people, the more plastic shit there is clogging the airways, landways, and waterways.

This is why Bitcoin is so attractive to great men: it makes the killing of the fleeting nihilists in no way optional. And those who answer its call to action inevitably find themselves drawn to La Serenissima, that inner sanctum of Bitcoin; high, high above the shepherdless masses.

Happiness is the lowest form of human satisfaction.ii 

In #b-a, our only definition of happiness is Fuck You Money, that which gives one the power to tell anyone, anywhere where to go.iii While this has different definitions for different people, regardless of what it takes, La Serenissima’s definition of happiness is greatness, which is far more about power than comfort.

To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.iv

Happiness, as defined as gooey giddiness and detached luxury, is for the birds and the birdbrained.v When the great Charles de Gaulle was asked by a journalist if he was happy, he replied:

What do you take me for, an idiot?

That’s pretty much it. The greatest men are the greatest because we’re the most powerful, not the easiest to please.

It’s no wonder we aren’t the happiest.

The bar is high.

___ ___ ___

  1. Via Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
  2. Via Nassim Taleb.
  3. This power is, of course, entirely a matter of perspective. Hell, Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky was there by age 12. For others, those who want to fund their pet projects without working as someone’s slave, and who want to sleep when they’re tired and awake when they’re not, it can take… millions.
  4. Via Albert Einstein.
  5. This largely explains the latest “happiness literature” craze littering the bookstore shelves and similar torrents of socialist derpage.