In my ninth grade science class, the teacher told us that heat was essentially energy. I raised my hand and asked, “If heat is energy, what is cold?” The teacher said, “Cold is the lack of energy.”
I always remember that because, like coldness, the lack of something often feels like its own something. In art, for example, the use of empty space can be just as important as the stuff you see.
Recently I was wondering if life as a rock would be superior to life as a conscious entity. My first reaction was no, because a rock has no capacity to enjoy itself. This made me wonder if happiness is nothing more than the absence of pain, which a rock has.
In the end, I decided I’d rather be me than a rock, because the rock isn’t conscious of its lack of pain. So forget about the rock, but I think there might be some merit to the idea that happiness is nothing more than the absence of pain.
Perhaps you think that sitting around pain free would not be enough to make you happy. It would be boring and unfulfilling. And it’s hard to be happy when you are bored and unfulfilled. But boredom and lack of fulfillment are types of pain. Imagine sitting around doing nothing while having no tinge of boredom, or lack of purpose, or loneliness, or any other discomfort. I think it would feel like happiness.
The ideal happy creature would be a rock with consciousness. It would have no discomfort and no goals beyond eroding.
This explains why I don’t fear living to the age of 140. The common, and I believe incorrect view, is that it’s impossible to be happy when you are that old. Your body would be a mess, and you’d have no capacity to go out and do the things that make people happy. But I’m counting on a big demographic bubble of old people to have lots of political clout. The first thing we oldsters will do is get rid of drug laws for people over 100. We’ll argue that all the reasons for drug laws don’t apply at that age. We won’t be driving cars or damaging our careers. We’ll just be sitting in rocking chairs and staring out the windows. All we will want is to be pain-free, like rocks.
We’ll probably have a name for that condition, such as getting “stoned.”