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I am reading a book named dark nights of the soul by Thomas Moore. It is very disturbing. He advocates that instead of trying to cleanse your dark side try to appreciate your dark side. It may help you to overcome your tough period. Is it not negative oriented?
Mohan Kumar
On the contrary, sounds liberating.
Mono,
Do you advocate hedonism then? Or is that more pleasure-oriented than happiness-oriented?
The problem with happiness being the goal is that it is an internal, egocentric thing, unless you are talking about creating happiness for others.
Mono, (and others)
how is happiness defined? do you think there is a measure (universal?) by which happiness is defined? (but more importantly should we adhere to such a measure ? if we can find it of course)
Ulalle
Supposing we discovered a synthetic drug that made us totally soporific but let us live the rest of our lives in a state of happiness. Would it be purposeful to take this drug? Would we not have far more purpose if we were to lead a life free of this drug, filled with mixed quantities of happiness and unhappiness?
S-o-m-a !!!
Perhaps it's relevant to mention that Wittgenstein didn't even think the purpose of therapy was to be happy, but to make people better at thinking. I half go along with this - I think the greatest happiness comes from being able to think well. Any happiness to be gained from a drug is just a pale imitation.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma
<S-o-m-a !!!>
Nice one Scheher.
<I think the greatest happiness comes from being able to think well.>
I would say that this is a contentious issue. Firstly, many great minds, who thought extremely well, were seriously unhappy. Wittgenstein was a case in point. Secondly, it would appear that often people who do not have the capacity to think well, can seem to be happy. Its far too difficult to assess happiness on a scale of how well somebody can think.
There is often a biological cause to unhappiness. One might look again at the Wittgenstein family to see that it had an extremely high number of suicides and attempted suicides within the family network. Maybe some of us are born with the biological components to be extremely happy but dull thinkers; and others to be great thinkers but rather unhappy. That is not to say that only dull thinkers can be happy of course. I can easily imagine a great mind having a great deal of happiness, it just doesn't always follow.
happiness cannot the same for you than for me.....everybody s happiness is different and may be begins when you know yourself enough to accept yourself with your good and bad.... :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulalle
It seems to me that many people equate purpose with personal happiness. But why? This seems such a selfish focus. Why shouldn't purpose in life be more to do with usefulness or utility? Look around you. All those people (it seems to me), who are most driven by purpose in life, are exactly the kind of people that feel useful, that feel that they are providing some meaning to something or someone beyond themselves. Maybe this is the measure of purpose: to how many people am I useful? to how many people do I provide happiness? to how many people do I provide some form of meaning? Doesn't everyone want to feel wanted?Quote:
Originally Posted by mono
I would like to think that the pursuit and perception of happiness comes entirely subjective to every individual. Personally, I do not find that uplifting, transcendent sense of happiness through Hedonism, and could never advocate for someone like Epicurus, but entirely understand that some people call the indulging of the senses the closest to happiness possible; in a concept of John Stuart Mill, I suppose I attempt indulging other faculties, rather than endorsing into "Hedonic Calculus" (Jeremy Bentham).Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguyha_padma
I honestly have not found an ideal happiness, as, to its full definition, I think happiness would last, void of the occasional bouts of depression and moodswings. As you seem to ask me, personally, AP, and my opinions can seem quite extreme, happiness proves definitely a individually-sought state; some people search through religion, philosophy, knowledge, wisdom, Hedonism (as you mentioned), free will, and the list proceeds for the other nearly 7 billion people.
Eh, I suppose that summarizes my opinion in a nutshell. :p
You read my mind, Ulalle. As I mentioned in my reply to AP's question, the search for happiness seems, to me, entirely subjective and individual; whether there exists an absolute happiness, I cannot say, adhering too strongly to skepticism, but if it does exist, then, according to me, merely, I find it easy to say that there subsists multiple means to one end.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulalle
The definition of happiness? I have no idea; maybe that would fall within the winding bounds of subjectivity too. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics would call happiness "the perfection of virtue," but "never attainable during life." Life, he claims, proves in a constant state of flux, and happiness, in its purity, must solidify as a strong, persisting state, impervious to the mere small swings to sadness or anger.
Whether I agree with Aristotle or not, I have questioned since reading much of his material. I strongly agree with him that happiness does involve virtue and constancy, yet its attainability extends universally devoid of a proper definition; it proceeds from something so much more within one's self (which seems the reason why I do not consider myself an Hedonist - a philosophy that seeks from outward extending indulgences - no offense), balancing a unity with one and his/her surroundings - contentment, in a way.
Of course. Because it depends on what one means by 'think well'. But you are wrong to assume as you do that it it automatically synonymous with being/having a great mind. I'll come back to this point.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma
I don't think you can use a high number of instances of unhappiness in one family as anything other than the flimsiest circumstantial evidence for a biological cause for unhappiness. When you talk to an unhappy person about what is making them unhappy, they usually reveal patterns of thought, belief and behaviour in which they are imprisoned. They might be afraid of being hurt in a love situation, fixated on unpleasant things in their environment, any number of things. These things are often highly irrational and absurd - they can seem like the beliefs and perceptions of children and perhaps they are simply residues of childhood. If the child had parents who were similarly 'stuck', there would have been no one to help them through this and if those parents were irrational, unloving, stressful in various ways because of their unhappiness, this would have affected the child's view of the world too. I'm not insisting that this is the way it is for ALL unhappy people, but I find this a considerably more plausible explanation for unhappiness existing in multiple members of the same families - and particularly so because I have known people who took Prozac and other drugs that were supposed to counteract the biochemical cause of their unhappiness and while they said it made them feel better, it did not appear to improve their behavior. In some instances, at least, it seems likely that unhappiness is something learned and it can also be unlearned and this process is also a process of learning to think better - more three dimensionally, less dogmatically, with more complexity, more humility about what one does not know and more of a sense of how people lie, especially to themselves. I think it is possible to be very intelligent indeed and still fall down on some or all of these.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma
To give you your due, however, I've heard there's an opposite biological condition to autism where the 'sufferers' are of subnormal intelligence, but
have exceptionally high capacities for empathy and usually appear extremely happy and alert. I'm afraid I can't remember the name of it.
<When you talk to an unhappy person about what is making them unhappy, they usually reveal patterns of thought, belief and behaviour in which they are imprisoned.>
I would say that patterns of thought, belief and behaviour always have a biological basis. I mean put it this way, I've never seen a pattern of thought or a belief or a behaviour pattern that wasn't attached to a biological function.
With all due respect and none of the animosity these words imply, this sounds like pedantic, disingenuous hair-splitting. It's quite obvious that biology plays some part in all of this, so much so as to be a meaningless observation, but it also seemed fairly obvious in the post of yours I was referring to that you were using biological to suggest a physical predisposition to unhappiness that could be inherited by one person from another.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma