Intelligence Mutes Happiness

It is easier for stupid people to be happy. I don’t say this with cruelty. I say it with something closer to envy.

The person who does not think too deeply about the nature of things, who accepts the surface of life without needing to peel it back, who eats a meal and enjoys it without wondering about the supply chain or the ethics of agriculture or the fleeting nature of pleasure itself—that person has access to a kind of contentment that the highly intelligent may never know. Those with powerful minds fall victim to a specific curse: hyperanalysis. They are always looking for answers, always turning things over, always unsatisfied with what they find because what they find only reveals more questions. The engine never stops. And an engine that never stops eventually burns through everything, including joy.

The first way intelligence undermines happiness is by pulling a person out of the present moment.

Most of what we call happiness is experiential. It lives in the body, in the senses, in the feeling of sun on your face or laughter with someone you love. It does not live in the head. But intelligent people are almost always in their heads. They are watching themselves have the experience rather than having it. They are at dinner with friends but mentally dissecting the group dynamic. They are on vacation but calculating whether the trip was worth the cost. They are holding their child but thinking about the school system, the economy, the world that child will inherit. The mind, unable to stop performing its primary function, interposes itself between the person and the moment. It becomes a pane of glass—you can see the life in front of you, but you cannot quite touch it.