The unhappy intellectual

Often, you will find really smart, successful people who tend to be unhappy even with all of their achievements. When I refer to happy in this post, I mean general contentment in life. Everyone has good and bad days, but when I mean unhappy it is someone who spends a significant amount of time in a gloom. Not all intellectuals are unhappy, but intellectuals tend to be be less happy than the general population. Of the professors whom I met in my 10 years of college, I can only name 3 or 4 who were happy as the typical populace. One famous instance is Nobel winning writer Earnest Hemingway having a tumultuous life with several wives who he deserted. Hemingway finally took his own life. I believe there are two main factors behind this trend, socialization and the acceptance of issues in life.

I am going to talk about what makes individuals happy as an argument point. I have browsed over many studies to happiness and they seem to come to many conclusions, but three seem to stick out. First, happiness has some roots in genetics. People are born with a certain amount of happiness or lack thereof. It is pick of the genetics draw, thus this is not relevant to making intellectuals less happy than the general populace. Second, having strong interpersonal relationships helps. Good supportive family and friends to talk with and depend upon in times of trouble and need. Finally, one factor that leads to happiness is being religious. I do not think it is the religiousness that makes one happy, it creates an explanation of the universe. It creates a coping mechanism for unpleasant items such as injustice and inequality. Everyone has religious beliefs, but following an organized set of ideals allows greater coping skills or acceptance of the thorny issues found in life.

Intellectuals are not known to be the most social group. They often tend to spend many hours in their cubicles working on ideas. They are valued for their ideas not their brawn or teamwork. Is the lack of socializing part of their personalities? Is it the quest for bringing new ideas? Is it conquering the next challenge? I do not know. What does take a toll are relationships: family and friends. This makes it difficult to have trusted people within a social circle. It makes happiness less plausible.

Pondering this great thing called life brings about a great deal of questions. The vast universe has many wonders to explore. It also has a dark side of discrimination, injustice, inequality and finally death. Bad things happen to good people. The average person knows these things exist, he/she is typically not pleased with the darkness, but also does not dwell on them. The intellectual tends to dwell on these dark concepts wanting to make the world's wrongs all right. Logical ideas like if this person does this action or behavior, the problem will be solved. The wish to tell the multitude they are wrong! This dwelling on unobtainable change is lack of acceptance. Standing up to a fight without any possibility of winning. It breeds discontent out of unnecessary frustration.


Lack of acceptance also appears in the inability to enjoy life's simple things. Having a complex, curious mind leads to the desire for more knowledge. Teach me more, I want to know! However, this prevents an individual from deriving more than just fleeting pleasure from life's simple things like sunsets, flowers and etc. The result is boredom. If someone is bored, this prevents the appreciation of good things in an individual's life. It eventually leads to a lack of acceptance for what is and not what should be. I want a better job, car, house and etc because what I have makes me bored. In a bad situation (poverty or other extreme adverse situations), this can be good leading to an improvement in one's life. There is a point where one has to accept the good things in life to ever have happiness. I believe intellectuals struggle with this out of boredom.