Hacking Your Happiness Set Point with Eyeliner
Ancient Barbarian Secrets Revealed!
In “Singing The Blues” Scott Alexander posits that people have a happiness set point, similar to the body-weight set point of the lipostat, that regulates their long-term mood. And that if someone feels “too happy” they will listen to sad music to bring them back to their set point.
I don’t know about the music part of this theory. As far as I can tell, all humans are always driven to seek out music that matches their current mood. We use music to reinforce where we are a lot. However, the happiness set point concept is uncontroversial among everyone I know. I spent most of my adult life depressed, and learned how to deliberately fight against this by employing techniques like “listening to music that is happy even though it feels ick to do so1” and “saying yes to everything without condition.”
This does take a lot of activation energy. It’s work that you can feel yourself doing. Fighting against your set points is hard. Going out into the sun and getting exercise and listening to happy people singing songs with peppy beats are all things that feel repellant and take a lot of effort and willpower to engage in.
Listening to sad music is easy because The Depression is already pushing you to listen to sad music. You just follow it’s flow and there you are. Staying inside in a dark room is easy, because The Depression is pushing you to stay inside in the dark. You don’t need extra energy to fight it. Shunning bright colors and cheerful vocal affect is easy, it’s being fueled by The Depression. And all these things make depression worse.
And as ever, the answer is always to create systems that don’t require willpower because they work with your natural inclinations. "Willpower is for people too weak to make systems." - Alex Hedkte
In their finite-but-vast wisdom, our ancient depressed forbearers created the Goth scene to save us.
Goth Pleases The Depression
The first secret to Goth is that is flows with The Depression rather than against it. It appropriates a lot of energy and momentum simply by doing what The Depression is already pushing you to do.
The music? Sad. The lyrics? Angsty. The aesthetic? All black (maybe with some highlight colors, preferably red or white to invoke blood or pallid death). The make-up? Hides your true face a bit. The dancing? Freeform expression of your inner turmoil. The venue? Cramped and very dark.
These things are things you’re already pushed to do by your depression. You want to hear sad, grinding music in a dark venue without lots of popping colors. The Goth scene is Judo-ing The Depression’s drives into getting you to go out. And hey, Goth is already known as the place where the depressed people are. It doesn’t feel like you’re forcing yourself to pretend to be a happy dance-bopper.
Goth Slowly Crumbles Away The Depression
The second secret to Goth is that it does a lot of things that undermine The Depression!
It gets you out of your room. Simply being in a different place is huge.
It gets you around other humans. Just being near other people is huge!
It gets you some exercise. Dancing isn’t high-impact (generally), but it’s more than you get lying in bed doom-scrolling, or playing video games.
It exposes you to some mood-lifting music. I know I said that the music is sad and gloomy, and it is… but DJs like to mix things up a little. You’ll get more dancy remixes of favorites sometimes, which are usually higher tempo and more energetic. You’ll get songs that are Goth but with a Glimmer of Dark Hope. You’ll get songs that straight-up rejoice in the necessary pain of rebirth. There’s a lot of goth music you maybe wouldn’t play for yourself that you’ll hear which is mood-lifting relative to your set point.
You feel accepted. Everyone here is also having this experience of life.
You see a LOT of natural beauty. The Goth Aesthetic is absolutely gorgeous, it makes everyone look better. Plus there will always be some cute goth chicks to watch. Exposing yourself to beauty is very mood-lifting.
You may make some new friends over time. Goths are HUGE FREAKIN NERDS and if you’re reading this you will vibe with most of them. I really really wish I had known this many years ago, back when I avoided the scene because I thought I wasn’t cool enough to hang with the Goths. We’re actually all huge dorks! The hugest! (starting conversation may be hard though, Goths have the typical nerd-shyness)
The Goth Scene won’t get you to Happy all on its own, not ever. But it helps greatly, and can permanently increase your happiness set point over time. Use this gift our ancestors gave us. It will make you strong.
Next post is about the practicalities of going Goth for your first time. It’s actually super easy!
Weird Al Yankovic is an absolute godsend for this. The lyrics to his songs are often bitterly sarcastic, which pleases The Depression, but the music itself is uptempo and cheerful and that’s what actually matters for the mood-lifting. Plus the bitterness is jokes.