[52-6F-62]

The question of what would most benefit a person's path toward happiness isn't the question of what do people need to be happy, though.

Sloppy analog: If I won the lottery tomorrow, it would allow me to buy a guitar I want sooner than another method; but not winning the lottery doesn't preclude any possibility of my acquiring that guitar.

I'm not sure that not winning the lottery means the path without winning the lottery is harder.

Winning the lottery may even prevent other conditions from developing in the course that would otherwise sustain the goal.

Humans and Islands analogies have been waged in many philosophical battles, but I never gathered that one was settled. Personally, I've subscribed to every man being and island and no man being an island all at once, and think both are fundamentally true in constant contradiction of one another and the contradiction is all you can really point to being true. (the original line "No man is an island" was Donne remarking of man's nature with regard to the Christian god, at least as far as I understood it)

I think if you [general you, not personally] hang your happiness on any one thing you're going to struggle or cause undue burden on someone or something else. And that's what the incel crowd gets so wrong; and I must say the proof kind of seems in the pudding there...