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Happiness is mysterious and elusive: we like to associate it with things like wealth, status, and success, and yet we see people wealthier than us, higher status than us, and more successful than us, who don’t seem particularly thrilled with their lives. At the same time, people who have nothing are perfectly capable of [...]

In no particular order…
1. Having a great dream, and remembering it vividly after waking up.
2. Sharing a smile with a cute stranger.
3. Getting invited to a party.
4. Making new friends and hanging out with old ones.
5. Publishing a great article.
6. Solving a tough math exercise I’ve been stuck on.
7. Making passionate love.
8. Eating [...]

This is a follow-up to my previous article, Reality Escapes. Here is a list of one hundred things which might be classified as Reality Escapes. Such classification is arbitrary and subjective. The point of the list is for you to ask yourself which items you look down on. Every item on [...]

The thing about reality escapes is, there is no such thing. It’s not like you can run away from the universe, because even if you could, the universe would just expand definitionally to include your new location. When I play We Love Katamari for hours at a time, I’m not escaping from “the [...]

A hedonist is someone who actively pursues pleasure. In a sense, we’re all hedonists, for even Mother Teresa made the sacrifices she made because ultimately she calculated that was how to maximize her own pleasure. A more precise title for this article would be: “Ten Reasons to be a Conscious Hedonist”. [...]

A common argument invoked by critics of an all-powerful deity is: “Why does God let bad things happen?” The idea is that if the universe were run by a super-god with infinite power, then surely He wouldn’t let kids starve to death in Africa. It’s very interesting and illuminating to look at [...]

Idle hands, it’s said, are the Devil’s workshop. Let me say, though, if the Devil is still relying on human handwork, then he’s extremely behind on technology! Someone should tell him we’ve invented computers and robotics, and he can start shutting down some of those idle hand workshops and laying off the workers.
A [...]

All my goals and ambitions are the offspring of one selfish master goal: happiness. Does that make me greedy? Well, if it does, then there isn’t a non-greedy person in the whole world. The only difference between me and the critic of hedonism is that I’m consciously aware of my overarching desire [...]

Hedonism is the belief that seeking and enjoying pleasure is the ultimate calling in life. The hedonist consciously puts pleasure first. The truth is, everyone is a hedonist, but there are two different levels of following this philosophy: the subconscious level and the conscious level. In the former, a person makes [...]

What would it be like to live to a thousand? The average human lifespan in the Western world is about 80 years old. In parts of Africa, it’s less than 40. There’s also a correlation with gender, women tending to have slightly more time in this mortal coil. That’s all statistics; an individual person’s life [...]