“Become master over yourself, master of your own good qualities… acquire power over your aye and no and learn to hold and withhold them in accordance with your higher aims…” Friedrich Nietzsche

What is it all about, and what does any of it matter? We get so emotional about the constant swarm of ‘things’ happening around us. Things that we have no control over whatsoever. Even the things that we ourselves are making happen, rather than those that are ‘happening to us’. If, like me, you believe that we don’t have free will, then we have no genuine control over our actions either; or at least we couldn’t have done any different.

Aside for the fact that getting emotional about any of what is, then seems completely irrational; does it even matter what the nature of our emotions are? Whether we are feeling the greatest joy or the deepest sorrow; elated or full of dread; loving or fearful. None of these last; they come and go. Even those that stay for a while, fade away eventually if they’re not taken from us by inevitable circumstance.

As long as we can function in the world – whether that is important or not is a different question, but for now let’s assume it is – surely it doesn’t matter what our emotional state is. If this is true, then surely our only task when it comes to controlling our environment to influence our emotional state, is to do all that we can to produce the emotional state within ourselves that leads to the greatest output.

This seems like a far better strategy than allowing our lives to be led by our emotions. So perhaps our very first task is to study what environments bring about the most desirable – in terms of positive outcome, rather than momentary pleasure – emotional state in us. In other words, in which environments to we thrive?