Multiple problems with this article - which do not mean it is not inherently interesting or incorrect, but I feel the author is not one well-suited to make the claims he or she is making. I am on mobile dining alone. (I plan to write a short story about dining alone at restaurants) but for now I'm putting this comment here as a bookmark, as it were.

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Happiness and unhappiness are certainly related, but they are not actually opposites. Images of the brain show that parts of the left cerebral cortex are more active than the right when we are experiencing happiness, while the right side becomes more active when we are unhappy.

Okay, so this is the first part of the article that makes me go "wtf." First, apparently in order to be opposite, things need to light up opposing parts of your brain? That doesn't make sense. For instance, I am pretty sure that I see both darkness and light with my eyes and the nerves that are related to my eyes. That doesn't mean they're not opposite. Secondly, this part about brains actually seems to corroborate the idea that happiness and unhappiness "light up" opposing brain sections, causing them to be more likely to be (awful grammar, I'm sorry) opposites than not. So first: I reject the notion that in order to be opposites two ideas must "light up" or cause activity in opposing brain areas, and second: if that is the case, then the author is proving the point that they are opposites with his comment (not the reverse as he hopes to).

Unless you are extraordinarily self-aware, how could it not make you feel worse to spend part of your time pretending to be happier than you are, and the other part of your time seeing how much happier others seem to be than you?

Intelligent control over what one posts to Facebook does not constitute "pretending to be happier than you are" or, as the author elsewhere claims, "creating a false life." I think we all display, to some extent, different aspects of ourselves based on the venue - which has been discussed on Hubski, and not long ago. If one is aware that one is filtering one's own posts (sorry, too many "one"s) then how can one not be aware of the fact that everyone else, surely, is doing so as well? It does not take "extraordinary self-awareness." It takes common sense to expect that others exhibit the same behavior you exhibit, and not being aware that you post selectively to Facebook probably means...that you don't. Also, I completely disagree with the idea that presenting a partial portrait of one's life constitutes a "fake life." No one will ever fully (or is that, "truthfully"?) experience your life. With this in mind the author would condemn all partial representations of one's life, that is to say ALL representations of one's life, as false, when really it is impossible to accurately portray one's life down to the letter to another person.

And notwithstanding the moral implications, the same principle should work for us.

(This is from his paragraph about roosters and sex.) Here the author implies that to be sexually non-monogamous is to be non-moral. I have severe problems with that and would now like the author to state his morals and what he feels morality is before he proceed further. Of course, the author having long written this piece and departed, does not do this. However, he does seem to simply state and believe that monogamy and "less sex" or "more sex with less people" is somehow morally preferable to more sex with more people. Bull.

Across men and women alike, the data show that the optimal number of partners is one.

I would be very interested to see if lesbians have been studied in relation to this statistic. Lesbian bed death is a documented phenomenon. It's also been posited that women are more likely to enjoy varied partners over time. Lesbian bed death occurs when two lesbians are together for a sustained period of time and find that they no longer pursue each other sexually or sex dies up in the relationship. Yes, sex isn't all a relationship is about, but romantic relationships are also certainly about sexual fulfillment. If you have a long term partner you're not having sex with, odds are high you aren't sexually fulfilled.

Love people, use things.

Easier said than done, I realize. It requires the courage to repudiate pride and the strength to love others — family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, God and even strangers and enemies. Only deny love to things that actually are objects.

The author had made an argument that one should not love things. The author has not made an effective argument that this, therefore, is the solution, other than the fact that this approach is not the approach that the author just broke down and demonstrated as ineffective.

In short, while I don't disagree with the article, I don't think it makes an effective argument towards what it supports.