What is happiness?

[foxfire667]

Re: What is happiness?

Revenge can be satisfying. I would consider satisfaction the same or very similar to happiness. Someone else's suffering could easily make you happy and satisfied if you are that kind of person.

This is true. I can personally say that happiness is generally a situation where any form of self satisfaction or gratification occurs to a being.

As for satisfaction being generally equal to happiness, let's look at it in an a-b prospective.

If I am satisfied with a situation, then I am happy
If I am happy, then I am satisfied with a situation

When flipping these two variables, the statement still remains true. As I cannot personally think of any experience where I was not satisfied but happy, or happy but not satisfied. This does not mean that you must be absolutely satisfied to gain happiness, but the amount of happiness you will receive will be dependent on how satisfied with a situation you are. As you all know that happiness can come at a variety of different levels for an individual, and this is based off of the amount of satisfaction one has regarding the situation:

If, as an example, I were to take a test:
100: Fully satisfied with my results
97: Generally satisfied
94: still decently satisfied
85: not very satisfied
65: loathe the result (severe dissatisfaction)

You can again replace all of the words "satisfied" with the word "happy" and come to the same conclusion of how I am feeling. Now again how MUCH happiness is dependent on the amount of satisfaction you get, which also depends on how much this particular thing affects you in life. Like:

Rose in my yard is not stepped on: No satisfaction / dissatisfaction)
Rose in my yard is stepped on: No satisfaction / dissatisfaction)

To a Gardner, this may be very different...maybe they love Roses, and this could severely dissatisfy them to step on the Rose (making them, in turn, severely unhappy).

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

So many things to say...
"I believe that happiness is when you actually forget yourself because you enjoy something." Not for me. My utmost happiness has come from instances when I'm fully engrossed in myself. I guess I feel like I 'forget myself' while doing any number of menial tasks too, and I certainly don't find that to be happiness.

"Quote:
Originally Posted by rushyrulz
I remember being happy only in comparison to not being happy which is what I am now.

(this is more than a song reference for a lot of people)

This is horrible, and can't possibly be true. Your life can't be a constant lowering of your happiness level. You'd eventually stop feeling bad at all if you never felt any sort of happiness (this is not a paradox. You'd just feel neutral). I've heard of this happening many times when people are held in captivity for too long, for example."

I don't know how to tell you you're wrong, except from personal experience you are so wrong mhss. The perception that the happy times of your life have always been in the past is one that I've possessed before. No matter what your logic about emotions dictates, it runs counter to some people's perceptions, and if I perceive I have been unhappy for 10 years, then I really have been unhappy for 10 years at the moment that that thought happens. Whether or not that is possible is irrelevant, because its possible to feel that that's the case. You're also assuming that emotions are always controlled by the outside, which they aren't. People can be more or less chronically happy or chronically depressed. And then there's other, non-social things that change from day to day, like being tired and having PMS.

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Re: What is happiness?

Happiness is nonexistent.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

"Hatred only exists when something you love is confronted in some way, threatened or destroyed, be it a person, object or whatever."
So when I flip out in a hatred and rage and start to break **** over the world sucking because I have crumbs on the kitchen floor one morning, though I've never really cared about having crumbs on my kitchen floor before, certainly never enough to elicit such a reaction from myself, it is because I love my floor at that one point in time?

"You need to love something before you can hate another, but you don't need to hate something before you can love another (I didn't hate anything related to the lack of ice cream before I ate ice cream for the first time). Well, that proves that hatred is always equal or lesser than love."
Sentence 2 follows sentence 1, but sentence one is unfounded. For instance, I don't need to love not being in pain to hate someone who causes me physical pain. Not being in pain is specifically neutral. And don't give me some bull**** about that's just them hurting my love for myself. I'm talking about physical pain, not emotional pain.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

Enough arguing, happiness for me would be I don't know what, because what makes me happy changes too often because my mind changes too often. I can think about going on a trip and loving the idea, and I can think about going on the exact same trip when I'm feeling tired, and it instead causes something close to anguish about having to do things and all the responsibility involved with it. Because of this, I've found the most success at 'happiness' in my life with a sort of middle ground. I'm doing something that's menial so that I can lose myself in it, but is something that won't petrify me those days when the thought of anything challenging is horrible. Which is, in fact, not what I consider happiness at all.
Happiness for me is would either be to have no responsibilities and yet to constantly be learning and sharing ideas and knowledge with people in novel ways.

[fido123]

Re: What is happiness?

Happiness is relative to how each individual perceives the world so there aren't really any things that make us all happy as happiness is just chemicals reacting with your brain. Most people these days in North America though are depressed cause they think they know what would make them happy (materialism etc etc) and end up being disappointed. I just live life doing what I want to do.

[mhss1992]

Re: What is happiness?

So when I flip out in a hatred and rage and start to break **** over the world sucking because I have crumbs on the kitchen floor one morning, though I've never really cared about having crumbs on my kitchen floor before, certainly never enough to elicit such a reaction from myself, it is because I love my floor at that one point in time?

If you do it BECAUSE of the floor, like you've said, then you DO care.
If you DON'T care about the floor, it's obviously due to something else.
Has this happened before?

Sentence 2 follows sentence 1, but sentence one is unfounded. For instance, I don't need to love not being in pain to hate someone who causes me physical pain. Not being in pain is specifically neutral. And don't give me some bull**** about that's just them hurting my love for myself. I'm talking about physical pain, not emotional pain.

It's not unfounded. It's based on everything I've ever seen in my life.

"Not being in pain is specifically neutral"
Untrue. Don't you feel comfort when you are in bed, for example?
You obviously don't need to love every moment of not being in pain, but pain deviates further from your idea of comfort, causing anger or hatred.

It's not about whether you love your current situation or not, it's about your perspective of the best situation and how distant things are from it.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

Yes, I've flipped out over having crumbs on the floor when I've never really cared that much about them before. The point of that example was to show that I was not in a very sane state of mind at that time, such that the slightest thing I found annoying was blown way out of porportion. Its not that I had just cleaned it and it got dirty again in 2 seconds and I had cleaned it because people were coming over, or that I had just gotten into a fight with my bf or some other misplaced anger. I was having a typical day but I just snapped.

As to being in bed all cozy and warm, of course that's nice, and then that's not neutral either. But that's not the example; the example isn't 'I was feeling comfy and then I start getting hurt by someone'.

I can also very much enjoy not being in pain when it goes away. This happens to me every month when I have bad period cramps and then I take a pain killer. The relief of not being in pain anymore is so overwhelming it feels sooooo good. In that example, the happiness of not being in pain anymore was specifically caused by the unhappiness in the first place, which is another counter-example to needing happiness to cause unhappiness. I surely would not suddenly feel relief and happiness had I not been in pain a few minutes ago. And there are thousands of examples where the usual, everyday stuff becomes enjoyable only because you experience unenjoyment firstly. Going to bed when you're super tired is much more enjoyable than when you're tired, food tastes way better when you're super hungry than just a little peckish. Playing a video game is much more enjoyable when you've been itching to play it all week but didn't have the time or chance compared to if you've been playing it all week. (Well, that depends on the game I guess.) Enjoyment of debugging a program is like the enjoyment you get when you've been banging your head against a wall and then you stop.:-p

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

AND, to be more dumb and make more multiple posts, to bring up something I haven't seen mentioned, I think happiness is almost more of an anticipation of happiness. Like how striving for a goal is better than reaching it. I guess that depends a lot on the goal, but the anticipation of knowing you're reaching your goal, and what it will be like once your goal's reached, is often better for me than the actual act of reaching the goal. And there's things like the weekend. Friday is often a more enjoyable day than Sunday, even though I'd be working Friday (ok, well, I don't have a mon-fri 9-5 job, but you get the gist), and even though I'm doing things I want to do on Sunday. It's all in the thought of what's to come, not what's actually happening.

[TimeShaper]

Re: What is happiness?

Like how striving for a goal is better than reaching it.

Exactly. That's why never achieving supreme happiness is better. Once we do it, there won't be any motivation for us to reach perfection.

That's why supreme happiness is more like drugs. Sure, it makes you feel alright and have no worries but it won't get you anywhere. Once you start drugging, you stop existing.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

But that begs the question, what is wrong with not trying for perfection? Why is it wrong to just have enough, and that's that?

[TimeShaper]

Re: What is happiness?

But that begs the question, what is wrong with not trying for perfection? Why is it wrong to just have enough, and that's that?

You might be pleased with your current lifestyle but many other people are suffering out there. Aren't you being selfish for that kind of mentality?
Perfection is utopia.

We've been racing for perfection since the beginning of our existence and it can't be helped.
It's soley our human nature that sets us on top of the food chain.

[mhss1992]

Re: What is happiness?

Let's analyze:

Yes, I've flipped out over having crumbs on the floor when I've never really cared that much about them before. The point of that example was to show that I was not in a very sane state of mind at that time, such that the slightest thing I found annoying was blown way out of porportion. Its not that I had just cleaned it and it got dirty again in 2 seconds and I had cleaned it because people were coming over, or that I had just gotten into a fight with my bf or some other misplaced anger. I was having a typical day but I just snapped.

Then, obviously, there was an accumulation of different small annoying things, not just the crumbs. It happens to everyone, but the explanation is the same. You don't need to be conscious of the reasons for them to exist.

As to being in bed all cozy and warm, of course that's nice, and then that's not neutral either. But that's not the example; the example isn't 'I was feeling comfy and then I start getting hurt by someone'.

And I did answer this as well. I said this in that same post: "It's not about whether you love your current situation or not, it's about your perspective of the best situation and how distant things are from it. "

Also from my first post in this thread, I mentioned several examples explaining this perspective thing.

I can also very much enjoy not being in pain when it goes away. This happens to me every month when I have bad period cramps and then I take a pain killer. The relief of not being in pain anymore is so overwhelming it feels sooooo good. In that example, the happiness of not being in pain anymore was specifically caused by the unhappiness in the first place, which is another counter-example to needing happiness to cause unhappiness. I surely would not suddenly feel relief and happiness had I not been in pain a few minutes ago...

I know. The change from a worse situation to a better one brings happiness due to contrast, just like the change from a better to a worse one brings suffering. No mystery here.

When you feel pain for too long, you get used to it. Your once high perspective becomes lower, which prevents you from going insane. Therefore, you suffer less.

We tend to adapt to every situation, good or bad. It will eventually become the "neutral".

But the fact remains: there is no actual "bad" feeling that exists independently. There are feelings and models. People can have very different models and even things like pain can be a good thing for some.
If something is close to the model, it's good. If it's far, it's bad. If your model is too harsh, that means you have experienced near perfection before, which also means it will be much easier to make you suffer.

But you can't know the "model" if you haven't experienced something GOOD before. The good feeling determines the model, which determines the bad.

A simple way to understand why the "good" determines the models and not the "bad" is this: there is no model for "badness". No such thing as "perfect ugliness". If someone actually tries to find something like this, it's most likely a case of "so bad it's good". Models are always centered on good stuff.

[mhss1992]

Re: What is happiness?

Exactly. That's why never achieving supreme happiness is better. Once we do it, there won't be any motivation for us to reach perfection.

That's why supreme happiness is more like drugs. Sure, it makes you feel alright and have no worries but it won't get you anywhere. Once you start drugging, you stop existing.

What if ultimate happiness is perfection?

Did you read the last answer I gave you?

Also... You probably didn't notice it, but when you say that seeking perfection is better than supreme happiness, that is the same as saying that the idea of seeking perfection satisfies you more. Think about it, it's a bit paradoxal. If you think that something is better than this supreme happiness, then you don't really think that this supreme happiness is supreme.

[Cavernio]

Re: What is happiness?

"there is no actual "bad" feeling that exists independently"
"But you can't know the "model" if you haven't experienced something GOOD before. The good feeling determines the model, which determines the bad."

But you're still not backing this up in anyway whatsoever, and I feel like I've given counterexamples of these things particularly, and yet you gloss over them. I can stub my toe and its bad. Why must I know happiness in order to have my toe feel bad? You yourself agree that there is a neutral, so why must a bad feeling emerge only when it differs from good, instead of solely differing from neutral? You're not making sense. I mean, you are, except you're not really talking about anything that I've addressed. You're not addressing one of the underlying principles of your theory, you just expect everyone else to, upon thinking about that tenet, agree with it. I don't. You're essentially saying that pain and hurt, on an emotional level, only exist when happiness doesn't. I mean, GAH, pain is an opposite of happiness, but its certainly not a negative happiness...its a positive pain. It exists, its not solely a lack of happiness. We can be sad and happy at the same time because even though we like to think of them as opposites, they're still separate entities. And since they are separate entities, there's no reason to believe that they must be linked. If you've never been happy and sad at the same time, then I guess you wouldn't understand this. For anyone else who has, they'll get what I'm saying. And even if you did think they were linked, you have yet to say anything, (besides an example as to how unhappiness can happen because we lose happiness), about why happiness must always be the precursor here.

It seems to me that if you acknowledge that we can feel fairly 'neutral', then we can feel bad in comparison to that. Now, I could understand if you thought that 'neutrality' never really exists, so that one would always be on the good/bad side of it, but you're not saying that at all.