What is the value of Stoicism? Is life more meaningful when you’re happy?
What is the value of stoicism?
I should preface this by saying that there is value in Stoicism. Not the hottest take, but it’s worth saying, given the context of this post. Negative visualization, the trichotomy of control, psychological fatalism, the internalization of goals are all of great utility to the individual. What I’m attempting to ascertain is where the utility ends. It is useful to not get angry at others stupidity, say, in traffic. It’s useful to recognize the finitude of all things so as to increase your gratitude for them. It is useful to understand that things are what they are, and to greatly concern yourself with something that is, is wasted effort and tranquility. It is useful to alter your goals so that you are striving only for what you know you can control.
The aim of the stoic sage is to achieve maximum inner tranquility. Much like a Buddhist monk, the stoic sage will be someone unaffected by the outside world. Content in all they have, infinitely grateful and minimally emotionally influenced by tragedy. If such a person could exist, they would be joyful and delighted irrespective of their circumstances. That is the aim of stoicism.
Is life more meaningful when you are happy?
Think of a time where you’ve been purely happy. Chances are, you’ve never experienced pure bliss and pure delight. How could you? Experiences are much more nuanced than that. Even at your own wedding, there will be sweetness and bitterness, happiness and sadness, and probably everything in between. So, you might be asking, what then is “pure happiness”? It is a perversion of the experience of man, an augmentation of the neurochemistry of your brain. It is drugs.
I have regretfully done many drugs, and most experiences can be rather nuanced in the emotions you feel. However, some are what I would describe as “pure happiness”. MDMA is one of these drugs. I must be clear. I do not refer to happiness in the sense that a man with a wife and kids refers to happiness. What he is referring to is meaning. He is not happy all of the time and so when he says that they make him the happiest he’s ever been, he is saying that his life is the most meaningful that it has ever been. I am talking about chemical happiness. pure joy, pure delight. The lack of negative emotion. This state, to the stoic sage, is the optimal state, though they would certainly advise against achieving it through chemical means.
I bring up drugs because it reveals a truth. I often find that, to know the truth/value of a statement, philosophy or assertion, one imagines it in its most extreme from. For example, if I assert that sacrificing for others is invariably noble, you might investigate that by imagining I give my life so that a murderer might be spared. That certainly calls the veracity of my claim into question. If a stoic says that pursuing happiness and the avoidance of negative emotion is the key to living a good life, I’m compelled to think back on a time where I have been a stoic sage. Unbothered by my circumstances, blissful and delighted. Obviously, being strung out on MDMA is different than training your mind to be happy irrespective of its circumstance, but I digress. I bring it up because the truth that it reveals is that happiness IS categorically different than meaning. It is for this reason that I might suggest that life isn’t more meaningful when you are happy, rather you are happier when life is meaningful, but what does it mean to live life meaningfully?
Psuedothought 
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