Do you think you would be happy in a perfect life?

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Originally Posted by SilentMute

One of my favorite books at the moment is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. What I found interesting about this book is her concept of heaven.

Heaven is sculpted by each person's point of view. It smells differently for each person, and it has different landscapes and activities. Oddly enough, a person may not meet the people they love right away who have predeceased them. Heaven expands and offers more as the person grows emotionally. For instance, the main character didn't initially see a beloved grandfather in her heaven until she started to let go of her unrequited desires for life on earth.

That is actually very close to my idea of the afterlife. It isn't the concept of perfect that is popular, but it would probably be very satisfying because there would still be challenges to interest us.

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I was actually going to push you a little and ask what you meant by a perfect life, since it isn't easy to conceptualize. Survival, at least in Darwinian terms, seems by necessity inefficient and brutual, and yet humans have lost sight of this for the most part because we domesticated ourselves, both too successfully and not well enough.

The foundation of Buddhist thought addresses just this problem of whether a perfect life is achievable.

In Buddhism it says that there's a fundamental dissatisfaction within us, which I suppose explains why every rich person is not automatically ecstatic with pleasure.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

The foundation of Buddhist thought addresses just this problem of whether a perfect life is achievable.

In Buddhism it says that there's a fundamental dissatisfaction within us, which I suppose explains why every rich person is not automatically ecstatic with pleasure.

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I think this might well be true, although there are probably moments when we are relatively satisfied with life. I think that great wealth is also a burden for many people because money imposes responsibilities. I do feel, that a certain amount of money can bring a measure of contentment that would not easily be attainable otherwise. As for happiness, it is such an undefinable quality
that supreme contentment is probably as close as we will get to it but, as John Stuart Mill wrote: Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be so.

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

I think this might well be true, although there are probably moments when we are relatively satisfied with life. I think that great wealth is also a burden for many people because money imposes responsibilities. I do feel, that a certain amount of money can bring a measure of contentment that would not easily be attainable otherwise. As for happiness, it is such an undefinable quality
that supreme contentment is probably as close as we will get to it but, as John Stuart Mill wrote: Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be so.

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Happiness is an income of £50,000 annual salary.

That is what some reaserach has found. Any further additional income does not make one happy...

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Originally Posted by Lote-Tree

Happiness is an income of £50,000 annual salary.

That is what some reaserach has found. Any further additional income does not make one happy...

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As long as it keeps pace with inflation it seems like a reasonable sum, but I would replace the word salary with income: work doesn't fit into my idea of happiness.

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Originally Posted by Brian Bean

I think this might well be true, although there are probably moments when we are relatively satisfied with life. I think that great wealth is also a burden for many people because money imposes responsibilities. I do feel, that a certain amount of money can bring a measure of contentment that would not easily be attainable otherwise. As for happiness, it is such an undefinable quality
that supreme contentment is probably as close as we will get to it but, as John Stuart Mill wrote: Ask yourself if you are happy, and you cease to be so.

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I agree. A good income certainly helps.

I once knew a croupier who said that the players who came to the casino seemed to be the most unhappy people she had met. Mind you - they probably lost a lot.

I don't actually think about it this way, that my life is either happy or unhappy.
I live for the moments that make me feel, whatever the emotion is - feel it, live it through and live on.
Perfect is just another concept and I often let it "float" - it is and it isn't.
I think about it and then I don't - otherwise I would go crazy.
Life is serious yet no reason to obsess over it.

I can only speak for myself, but feeling and feelings have a way of creeping up on me. They constantly ambush me - even though I'm supposed to be a tough bloke, (or so I tell myself).

I think coolness and being cool at it's very worst is another word for being unfeeling/ being detatched from humans. (I'm not talking about the mere image thing).

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Originally Posted by Lote-Tree

Happiness is an income of £50,000 annual salary.

That is what some reaserach has found. Any further additional income does not make one happy...

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Yet countries with higher GDP per capita tend to also have higher suicide rates... hmm...

When I used to have fans, they annoyed me, which is probably a contradiction in terms for a writer. I did have them, oddly, letters and manuscripts sailing into my ghetto address from Canada, England. People literally drooling over my ability, and there I was, living on instant noodles. When I had my career, whether in the inner city or in the tamer area I bounced too, I rolled home in tears most of the time. I made good money for a cripple, but the stress?

Can't say my ex made me happy, and I see little to get me out of my downward slide back to being indigent, and I can't blame other able-bodied posters this time. I can no longer handle a 40 hour work week.

Writers like Morrison lose themselves in their work, and maybe that is a kind of happiness, and very rarely, I do enter that zone, but not often, because I hear a countdown in my head. Unlike Morrison, I never established my brand and that is unlikely at this point.

But, if anything can make me happy, it would be earning respect in some way, beating out on marginalization, and at least doing a few things that I wanted, my inability to hold a man aside. Material acquisition only goes so far, and being online dissatisfies me, though I am on, if not here, then to network editors, read, whatever we do, but it makes me feel empty more often than part of something.

I am too self-aware to be happy. It takes a certain lack of self-conscious empathy to be happy, I believe. Children are much better at it than adults.