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-- What is happiness?

What is happiness?

and, is it only relative?

Say a person does something that makes him happy. This action A gives him "3" in happniess.

Then imagine this person discovers something new, this new activity B gives him "5" in happiness.

If then this person goes back to doing thing A, it won't be as fun as before. Why is that?

And can a person that has never done anything more fun than a category "1", have a more fun life if he is not aware of the higher categories than if he would be aware of these or tried these?

Etc.

Re: What is happiness?

quote:

Originally posted by St_Andrew and, is it only relative? Say a person does something that makes him happy. This action A gives him "3" in happniess. Then imagine this person discovers something new, this new activity B gives him "5" in happiness. If then this person goes back to doing thing A, it won't be as fun as before. Why is that? And can a person that has never done anything more fun than a category "1", have a more fun life if he is not aware of the higher categories than if he would be aware of these or tried these? Etc.

happiness occurs when your brain releases some seratonin i guess, it releases the seratonin because the action is somehow beneficial to you.

is happiness relative? i think so, at the top of my head i can't think of anything that isn't relative.

to me activity A will still be just as much fun as it was after the discovery of activity B, though i don't think it is that way for most people.

and about the last question, i dont have a direct answer, but i can pose a similiar question: if you had a choice between a life of constant "1", nothing below and nothing beyond, or a life that jumps from "0" to say "4" every once in a while (and sometimes to negative values aswell), which would you choose?

Re: Re: What is happiness?

quote:

Originally posted by Psy-T happiness occurs when your brain releases some seratonin i guess, it releases the seratonin because the action is somehow beneficial to you. is happiness relative? i think so, at the top of my head i can't think of anything that isn't relative. to me activity A will still be just as much fun as it was after the discovery of activity B, though i don't think it is that way for most people. and about the last question, i dont have a direct answer, but i can pose a similiar question: if you had a choice between a life of constant "1", nothing below and nothing beyond, or a life that jumps from "0" to say "4" every once in a while (and sometimes to negative values aswell), which would you choose?

I'll take a constant 1, rather than jump to 4 like every few years, than into minus numbers as well for a while. The reason why is simple: if you do reach a 4 when you're usually around -2 to 1, you'll want more 4s. If you can get more 4s, the 1s & 2s will feel like -2s & -1s once felt, as you're more used to 4s now. So, I'd easily take 0/1/2 back & fourth gradually rather than suddenly jumping from -4 to +4, then 0/1 for a while, unpredictably... This is just me, though. Very interesting, though.

St Andrew I implore (that's about as emphatic as I can get!) to listen to the following (about 20mins long)

Click ME REAL AUDIO link

these threads never work

Re: What is happiness?

quote:

Originally posted by St_Andrew and, is it only relative? Say a person does something that makes him happy. This action A gives him "3" in happniess. Then imagine this person discovers something new, this new activity B gives him "5" in happiness. If then this person goes back to doing thing A, it won't be as fun as before. Why is that? And can a person that has never done anything more fun than a category "1", have a more fun life if he is not aware of the higher categories than if he would be aware of these or tried these? Etc.

I don't think that you can say that some activity has an absolute happiness-factor. Say, if I recieved a thousand dollars I would be most happy, but once I tried that a few hundred times the experience would not provide me with the same happiness. If you have to put a measure of happiness on activities, then of course you'll have to do so in relation to a current state of mind. For instance, it is plausible that the poor prostitute on the streets of Calcutta would be happy about being screwed by an ugly client who pays decently and doesn't spit her in the face afterwards. Some hot model living in wealth would most certainly not.
Having established that the happiness caused by some action is relative to the state of mind, it is clear that you cannot say that "I did A, then I did B, and then I did A again, and I rate A as a 3 and B as a 5", unless you at the same time state that experiences do not change your state of mind. Contrarily, if doing B somehow opens up your mind to new possibilities, or makes it apparent that something has been missing in your life before, then the "I" that does A the second time, is not the "I" that did it the first time - hence, it makes no sense to speak of "I" as rating the A experience.

But come on, all this is just a charade. What you're really asking is whether you can blame the beauty of an old flame for you not appreciating your new love, right?

The problem is that I don't think that "happiness" is ever really directly caused by actions or experiences. Certain actions or experiences will stir up a biological response within you, but it is the biological response that dictates whether you will feel "happy" or not, not the actions or experiences in themselves. You can perform exactly the same activity twice and "feel" different on each occasion, simply because the biological responses that the activity stimulates - which you obviously have no control over - can vary depending on other circumstances.

Although, I suppose all this does depend on how you go about defining "happiness" as opposed to mere "contentment". Happiness, I would argue, necessitates a feeling of "elation" or "excitement" which is usually stimulated by the biological responses I was talking about (primarily, I'd imagine, neurochemcial responses - i.e. releasing of adrenaline, seratonin and other hormones). You won't be able to feel this type of happiness, regardless of how you act or what you experience, if your brain is incapable of producing such responses (such an inability would probably constitute clinical depression).

Contentment, on the other hand, as Schopenhauer contended with regards to happiness generally, is merely the absense of pain. For no other reason that I find there to be something incredibly amusing about the most miserable figure in the history of Western Philosophy discussing "happiness" (and because it is a genuinely interesting piece of literature that's relevent to the topic), I've gone to the trouble of scanning his essay "On the Suffering of the World":








(Apologies for the shitty cropping. I'm new to this sort of thing.)

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 these threads never work

Yeah, especially not when you post in them!

[img-owned]

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade (Apologies for the shitty cropping. I'm new to this sort of thing.)

Text was a bit small but given the fact that it wasn't a ton of pages manageable.

I'm curious if you know what he meant by "Very good!" ( I think its an exclamation point ) which he places at the end of his mention of Brahma

quote:

Brahma is supposed to have created the world by a kind of fall into sin, or by an error, and has to atone for this sin or error by remaining in it himself until he has redeemed himself out of it. Very good!"

I am not familiar enough with Schopenhauer to infer any context that would help me understand what he meant by it.

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 these threads never work

this isn't the COR

what is happiness? a release of chemicals in the brain.

quote:

Originally posted by Subey I'm curious if you know what he meant by "Very good!" ( I think its an exclamation point ) which he places at the end of his mention of Brahma I am not familiar enough with Schopenhauer to infer any context that would help me understand what he meant by it.

Well, he mentions it in the context of the insufferability of life (in the previous line he says that "the world is hell and men are the tormented souls and devils within it"), so I imagine he finds a sort of delicious justice in this creation myth, which says that the world was created out of a fall into error and that there can be no greater punishment for it than to actually have to live within the world as a consequence. Schopenhauer was very receptive to eastern religions, it must be said, and was one of the first western philosophers to commonly incoporate eastern philosophies into his own, so I'm assuming that there wasn't anything facetious about his "very good" remark. I think he genuinely would have felt some sort of affinity towards this Hindu creation myth, if only in a poetic sense.

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