I was scrolling on Twitter, and I ran into this tweet:

Hot take:

Do what makes you happy.

Especially if someone with an anime profile picture disagrees with you.

— Media Pyre (@MediaPyre) June 30, 2024

I’ve seen a lot of people on social media echo this sentiment: let people do what makes them happy. This seems to make sense to a lot of people, and why shouldn’t it? We all want to be happy. If someone does something that makes them happy, who are we to judge?

If you think about this statement even a little more, you’ll see that it’s pretty surface level. A lot of things make people happy. Should anyone be able to do something simply because it makes them happy?

The easiest counterexample to this is to look at parents and children. Imagine your child wants to eat crayons because he likes the way they taste. Are you going to let him? Hell no. But, it makes him happy! We don’t care, because we know better. He shouldn’t be gnawing on these cancerous plastic coloring sticks.

Are we limiting his freedom to choose? Yes, we are, because he doesn’t understand the consequences. The same sort of logic applies to everyone else. We see our friends choose to something they think will make them “happy,” often without understanding the consequences. Maybe they want to try that one hardcore drug, hookup with their toxic ex, or party in that suspicious-looking club. They want to chase that cheap thrill while warning signs are screaming in your head. Do you stand back and let them, simply because they think it’ll make them happy?

As a society, we are responsible for looking after one another. Happiness isn’t a justification to do whatever you want. It never has been and never should be. Nowadays, we are far too willing to let people get away with this excuse. How do we even quantify happiness? It might temporarily make them happy while they regret it in the long run. Even if nothing bad happens, they may have been more satisfied with an alternative.

Happiness is a vague and fluctuating emotion and is not always aligned with reality. Our impulses often control us more than we’d like to admit. Don’t you think that thief who stole that TV from Best Buy just wanted to be happy? This is a more clear cut example that obviously everyone understands because there’s collateral damage. We don’t like when people’s happiness intrudes on someone else’s happiness. But, what if there is no collateral damage? We are more willing to let people get away with things then. But usually, who takes the hit? It’s the person themself.

At the end of the day, we don’t have control of most people like parents have over their children. We cannot compel anyone to do anything, nor should we be able to. But, we can have a say, particularly for people that we care about. Don’t let someone do something dumb because it might make them happy. They might not even know what happiness really means. You might just be the one to save them.

Sacrificing Happiness

In many cases, happiness is a rather selfish desire where we prioritize our personal wellbeing at the expense of others. We might roast someone else for laughs, take someone else’s opportunity, flake on a birthday party for something more fun, and more. In these cases, sometimes it’s okay not to be happy because it’s more important to be virtuous. Even in our short and potentially meaningless lives, we can do a lot of good and a lot of bad. The universe may have chosen to make you suffer more than others. Some of us might just be unlucky. But in the end, our pursuit of happiness should not be at the cost of others. Somtimes, it’s okay to suffer. It’s what makes us human.

You might agree with everything I’ve said, so I want to challenge you to the following situation: let’s say you get married and have a child with your signficiant other (SO). But at some point, you realize you and your SO are not meant for one another. You don’t love each other anymore and want nothing to do with one another. You may choose to divorce. What’s the collateral? The collateral is your child, who will suffer from the lack of a stable household with both parents, which is stasticially shown to do undue harm to them¹. Despite this, most people I’ve asked would choose to divorce in order to be happy. How is this more acceptable than stealing a $100 item from Walmart? You’re doing a lot more damage than that, but divorce is not as frowned upon as theft. What would you choose?

I talk about issues in this piece that are pretty uncontroversial in nature. This was intentional. I want you to think about some more serious situations where this thought process might be relevant.