Too busy to read?

I take the view that it is this remembering self with which we should be more concerned. Kahneman gives examples that support this preference: would you go on a holiday knowing that all memory of it would be wiped from your brain (and camera) the moment it was over? Probably not. Mere pampering to the experiencing self is not enough; we want memories too.

'Everything we need is easy to procure, while the things we desire but don't need are more difficult to obtain.'

Our unique quality is our capacity for reason, and if we exercise that well, the Stoics argued, we gain a psychological strength that protects us from disturbance. This continues on from Aristotle's thoughts about judging a thing by how well it does the thing it is uniquely supposed to do.

'Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.'

Advertisements generally work on the principle of creating in us a feeling that we lack something and then providing the means to fill it. The writer David Foster Wallace describes their goal as to 'create an anxiety relievable by purchase'.

Confirmation bias occurs when we notice things in the world that support our beliefs and pay less attention to things that contradict them.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.'

Epicurus also encourages us to avoid unhealthy attachment in our relationships. He says: 'Those who possess the power of securing themselves completely from their neighbours, live most happily with one another, since they have this constant assurance'.3 This is a warning against neediness, which, according to the poet Lucretius (who brought Epicurus to a later Roman audience), is the destroyer of love. Neediness sets up another futile aim: we can never get enough from people towards whom we feel needy. They may provide on one occasion, but when they fall short of our inflated expectations the next time, we worry and quickly revert to our previous insecure state. This kind of unnecessary attachment, 'unnatural' according to Epicurus's distinction, is therefore difficult to satisfy and endless in its desire.

(Alain de Botton's The Course of Love and Sam Harris's Waking Up are both excellent attempts to provide just that.)

avoiding the swing from pain to boredom and back that would carry us passively through life like a plastic bag in the wind.

'He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing'

contentment. If happiness lies in the relationship between what we desire and what we have, we are being encouraged to consider the first part of that equation rather than obsess over the second.

learn to desire what you already have, and you will have all you need.

hedonic treadmill. Ancient philosophers such as the Stoics and Epicureans - and we will look more closely at them later - were very aware of it, though the term was first coined in the 1970s1 and later developed by a psychologist called Michael Eysenck in the nineties. It refers to the cycle of desire-fulfilment ('hedonism' means 'the pursuit of pleasure'): we want something, we perhaps get it, we feel good for a while and then return to whatever default level of happiness or sadness we enjoyed before. Nothing really changes.

it is absurd to work at something you don't enjoy, purely to make more money to be able to live longer and continue doing something you don't like.