Happiness and Problem Solving Revisited
Hello everyone, I hope you are well and that you will continue to be so. It appears that the number of cases worldwide of COVID-19 are still increasing. It seems as if the curve is yet to flatten — at least globally. Many individual countries appear to be doing well. In...
An Internet that Sparks Joy
What if we designed it to maximise the happiness of its users, rather than the time spent on the platform? What if the efforts of our software engineers helped us reflect on our day as time well spent?...
A Beatific Vision
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I have made some technical updates to the website in the past week, I made what are called embed cards which allow me to style embedded content so that it is more streamlined with the rest of my website. You can...
The Evidence for Goodness
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing well. That's the goal of this enterprise of life, after all, a world in which all of us are doing well. What more is there to achieve than this? An attitude that many of us hold that never ceases to bother...
A Better World
I want you to have the confidence that you can part with more of your income and still live happily and I want you to have the trust that others can solve their problems. Throughout history, we have encountered many problems and have made immense progress in solving them. We can improve the world....
The Arbitrariness of it all
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing well and that my letters are making a humble contribution to this. Aside from well-being and our ability to enhance it in others, I see no real basis for meaning in this life. Fortunately, this is more than enough. "Happiness is...
The four thoughts that turn the mind
Hello everyone, Are you in high spirits? This email will be long and fun. I hope you have had a good week, for you will never get it back... This week I launched my first major update to the website in a while, you should have all received an announcement...
Happiness and Problem Solving
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. Since I have written about cutting through suffering, I think this time I will talk a little about happiness. Let me start with these two quotes from the marvellous Karl Popper. “The best thing that can happen to a human...
Journey to the Present
Life is suffering. This statement is widely recognised as the first of the four noble truths of Buddhism. The only thing is, it’s wrong. The Buddha never said it. The word he used to describe life was the Pali word “dukkha”. This word often is mistranslated as suffering, but...
Quote
When the Dalai Lama was asked what had been the happiest point in his life, he answered, "I think right now."Daniel Goleman
Don't Stress
In life we come across a whole myriad of different kinds of situations, each requiring us to respond in different ways. Not knowing how to address the different vicissitudes of life is a cause for much of the difficulty in it. There isn’t a single clear cut solution to...