The Pursuit
2026-03-23
Last night, I was reminded of this clip from Slavoj Žižek where he discusses the futility of happiness. To summarize, he says that happiness is an "unethical category" because people think they want it but are actually more driven to objects of desire and longing. More than that, when people are in moments of inspiration, they do not find happiness there; usually, they are willing to suffer for the sake of actualizing that inspiration. He brought up America's Declaration of Independence and how happiness itself wasn't the right the Founding Fathers were proclaiming, but rather the pursuit of it. It makes me wonder if happiness is that "unethical category" Žižek proclaims it is.
Really, I find ethics in general to be a useless concept. Underneath any ethical argument is some kind of dogma, and ethics are really only applicable under some kind of authoritative force. Without that force, ethical arguments don't really stack up to anything. In the context of happiness, then, it seems that you really are damned if you do and damned if you don't. If someone tries to assert "YOU WILL BE HAPPY," then happiness can't really be found because it won't always be aligned with your personal desires. Conversely, if someone says "YOU WILL NEVER BE HAPPY," and if they have the authority to make that happen, then you're also categorically screwed.
Initially, Žižek's argument seems compelling, but the argument becomes harder to accept once you realize what he's doing rhetorically. By saying that happiness itself isn't virtuous (that "unethical category"), he allows himself to make the argument for the converse, which is that the opposite of happiness—that is, suffering—is what is actually virtuous. I've had a bad habit over the course of my life of using this as an unhealthy rationalization. I would often tell myself, consciously or otherwise, that in order for anything good to come out of my life, I had to suffer for it. Suffering has the ability to produce good outcomes. This is evident in the cliché "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But where it gets messy is believing that suffering is the only way to produce good outcomes.
Suffering can produce good outcomes, but it can also produce bad ones. Many people are socially maladjusted due to certain trauma, which in turn affects their ability to maintain good relationships, which inevitably causes more suffering. In the same light, happiness can produce bad outcomes just as much as it can produce good ones. To that effect, it is more categorically ethical to live a life that allows for suffering and happiness to coexist in some kind of way. If you put yourself in this all-or-nothing, one-or-the-other kind of attitude, that causes negativity to ripple through the lives of those around you.
Enough amateur philosophizing, though. I feel that the thesis of the original aforementioned video title—"Why be happy when you can be interesting?"—is achieved not outside of happiness, but through the intricate combinations of emotions we encounter every day. I know that for me, especially after I sobered up from drugs, my emotional registers have been heightened. Whether I like it or not, I experience plenty of emotions that I don't enjoy. However, I know that those emotions have their place just as much as the ones I do enjoy. All of them, interwoven together, consummate my perceptions and experiences in a way that I try to use to help me live with myself in a way that I can accept.
And that, to me, is the most important thing: whatever effect I have on the world is going to happen regardless of what I do, but if I can't accept myself and live in my own skin, then I will only suffer. What I've found is that suffering and happiness are both facts of life, and instead of trying to sacrifice one for the other, I really can let them both exist as simultaneous and mutually exclusive truths. As I've come to integrate this into my daily life, I've found that it makes the bad times more bearable and helps me further appreciate the good ones.
If it doesn't kill me, it'll at least give me a story to tell.
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