Would you rather live a life of happiness or intelligence?

I love feeling like I’m intelligent. I like looking beyond the surface, diving into the water, and exploring what’s there. I like my inquisitive and analytical nature. But the whole point of everything I do—every decision I make each and every day—is to be happy (or make someone else happy, which makes me happy).

So I’d choose happy and dumb over smart but unhappy.

“To choose a life of happiness over intelligence is to consciously choose an emotion over ego.”

In order to be happy you have to be proud. In order to be proud, you have to be accomplished. In order to be accomplished, you have to be effective. In order to be effective, you have to make positively directed choices. In order to make positively directed choices, you have to have a reasonable grasp of reality. In order to have reasonable grasp of reality, you have to be reasonably intelligent.
They are not mutually exclusive. ;)

Yes.

@josie disagree. Some of the happiest people I have seen are “mentally challenged” folks who are happy just to be taking care of themselves and working simple jobs found for them. They, too, are proud.

I would like to live a life of intelligence so that I can make the right choices to be happy!

I wouldn’t want to be all one or the other. To think like a human being you must have feelings as well as intelligence.

@anartist My point exactly. They are accomplished. And being mentally challenged does not mean oblivious to the nature of reality.

do we have to choose? like, is it a binary hypothetical or are you asserting that it’s easier to be happy when you’re dumb?

I do value my intelligence highly as one of my best assets, nonetheless I do believe that ‘ignorance is bliss’ and maybe if I were a shallower person I would be a happier person. That said, I wouldn’t give up my intelligence.

If I had to relinquish one, with the guarantee that I would have the other, I would keep happiness. I can see no profit in being smart and miserable.

I don’t perceive “happiness” as a way of life or even a goal. Happiness happens when you love what you do. I love intellectual pursuits. I don’t see how I can be intelligent and NOT be happy.

I can’t connect with the idea that if I’m intelligent I am unhappy or the opposite. I choose to be intelligent and happy. One does not exclude the other as @josie said.

Intelligent but unhappy doesn’t sound all that intelligent to me. I’d choose intelligence, with the faith that true intelligence includes a path to happiness.

I can’t resist commenting on how very, very, very few people are sticking to the parameters of the question. ;-)

Happy. I’d never want to lose the ability to be happy again. If I ain’t smart no more…I’m not going to know what I lost.

Imagine the existential angst associated with the truly brooding intellectual.

Happy

Intelligence… I’ve seen Idiocracy

I have no choice. My intelligence keaves me alone in life.

Happy.

Happiness for sure!

What good is intelligence if you’re not happy? What good is intelligence if you’re not doing anything with that intelligence?

This is not an easy choice, believe me, but I think I’d rather be happy. I know some people who are not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but they’re happy and nice to others and well-liked by others. I just don’t see much wrong with it.

But another question closely related to this one is: “Would you rather be well-liked/nice and unintelligent or a total asshole that everyone hates and intelligent?”

To me happiness is a surface-bubbliness. It’s a smile, it’s an overall lightness, it’s a laugh that starts in my throat rather than my gut. And it feels good to be happy, sure. But it’s a shallower feeling. Other light feelings, like joy, ecstasy, are like a glow spreading out from my core, or a tingling shooting out from my back to my limbs. Happiness is this border feeling, that is more outward-facing, more apparent to others, but gives me less.

To me intelligence is different from smarts, in that intelligence encompasses all sorts of smarts. It’s your mind’s ability to utilize your brain, your body. To be discerning. It’s an awareness and understanding. Smarts are inside of intelligence; they’re the individual, and often overlapping, skills and knowledges. I agree with Gardner’s Theory of Mulitple Intelligences, that intelligence isn’t one ability we have, but many that combine into unique balances within everyone. So, we have these smarts that are inside these intelligences that are inside our minds.
I don’t think that those with “disabilities” aren’t intelligent, just that they have a different balance of intelligences than is typically deemed by society as the proper and over-arching “Intelligent”

That said, because of how I see the two particular words, my answer is I’d rather live a life with intelligence.—I’m changing the phrase slightly, because it wouldn’t be a life only of intelligence, but one where I had my intelligence to go forth with.
I’d rather be fulfilled than just happy, even if that fulfillment is based in deeper, and sometimes darker, emotions. With just happiness I’d feel like I’d be living inside a bubbly shell.

To me, to choose a life of happiness over intelligence is not to just choose happiness over intelligence, but also surface over depth.

As to @DominicX‘s question: Well-liked/nice and unintelligent. sure don’t want to be an asshole!!

I don’t understand why it’s an either or situation. You have happy vs. unhappy and intelligent vs. unintelligent. That’s 4 possibilities. (Maybe more? I don’t do well with numbers.)
To choose a life of happiness over intelligence is to miss the opportunity to enhance your happiness. On the other hand, choosing intelligence over happiness is kind of stupid.

I’m sorry. I’m not playing the game, am I.

To choose a life of happiness over intelligence is to make a standard and easy choice.

Being intelligent, I must opt for intelligence.

Today’s happiness is all too often gone in the morning. If you have intelligence today, you will have more of it tomorrow.

Intelligence provides a means of dealing with the vagaries of life that happiness cannot.

Happiness is not self-sustaining, and its source of strength lies within the vagaries that often desert it.

Intelligence.

To choose a life of happiness over intelligence is to live blindly, ignorantly, and lost.

To choose a life of intelligence over happiness is to live a life of truth where everything is visible and everything is understood – where nothing is mysterious or unclear or deceiving.

@mrlaconic Intelligence does not necessarily imply that one makes the right choices to be happy. Don’t forget the emotions, which are not always, nay, not even often, guided by intelligence.

@cbloom8 You realize that most of the world is not especially intelligent? I don’t remember when they last calibrated the IQ scale, but it’s supposed to have 100 as the average. It obviously isn’t that bad.
—And there are no guarantees of clarity or that there would be no mysteries. Look at philosophy – they’ve been arguing about that for millennia and are no closer to a verdict than when Thales predicted an eclipse. And deception! Intelligence can be as blinding as foolishness.

What if intelligence is what makes a person happy? Fine, I’ll stop.

It’s a close call, but I guess I’d prefer to live happily at the expense of intelligence. Being smart is great, it will certainly bring you places in the world – but at the expense of happiness, why even bother exploring those all of those places?