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Originally posted by Arbiter We hear it everyday. We see it on TV. We read about it in the newspaper. We could not escape it, even if we wanted to. Ceaselessly, the people of this world clamor for changes, "improvements", to one aspect of our society or another. Politicians get themselves elected promising to make these changes. Wars are fought to make these changes. I myself have frequently advocated change. Yet, while I would like to believe that we could make a better world, there is a part of me that remains doubtful. What, after all, are we really trying to accomplish? To make ourselves and/or others "happy"? While instantiated phenomena can certainly provoke the chemical reactions we humans perceive as happiness, there is no scientific evidence that the long term state of one's condition has any correlation to the aggregage "happiness" one experiences over that time. That is to say, it is apparent that the wealthy, the impoverished, and even the terminally ill, in the absence of a neurochemical imbalance, will typically experience approximately the same amount happiness over a significant period of time, such as a few weeks. To an extent, this seems obvious. Human beings can understand nothing that they have not perceived, hence all phenomena and events affecting them are experienced on an entirely relative scale. We can only know happiness by contrasting it with unhappiness. This being the case, we must experience unhappiness in order to experience happiness. So, what are we trying to accomplish by all these changes? Perhaps someone can answer this question which has been haunting me: If the human perception of happiness is indeed bound by a relational equilibrium of happiness and unhappiness, are not all attempts to alter phenomena such as to create a society where people would be "happier" ultimately exercises in futility?

I guess that all depends on what it is that makes you happy. I'd like to think there are a lot more emotions involved than just oscillating between states of happy and unhappy. What about fear, love, courage, pain, anguish, elation, confusion, etc. What gets me is that a lot of the progress that we as a society strive for is progress that we probably won't ultimately live to truly see an appreciate. Some progress we may live to see, but a lot of it will be enjoyed by future generations.

I like your question, but I think you might be thinking a bit too black & white.

And you are correct. One must first experience unhappiness to truly know what happiness is to him. And vice versa.

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If the human perception of happiness is indeed bound by a relational equilibrium of happiness and unhappiness, are not all attempts to alter phenomena such as to create a society where people would be "happier" ultimately exercises in futility?

It all depends on what you mean by happiness. There are two ways of looking at it:

- Happiness is a positive condition (i.e. it is a prevalent emotion usually involving a sense of "elation" or "excitement")
- Happiness is a negative condition (i.e. it is the absense of a prevalent emotion, usually sadness or pain - this is what Schopenhauer believed)

I generally go with the first definition of happiness and call the second condition "contentment" (maybe the French take a different approach though - their word for happy is "content"). Now if, as I have defined, contentment is merely the absense of pain and suffrage, then I believe that it isn't difficult to increase the "net" sum of contentment in any given society through political action. Have we not, via politics, made the working class man's situation much more tolerable now than in the days of the Industrial Revolution? Would you say that - on the whole - there is less suffering today (in the west at least) than there was back then?

"Happiness" though, again according to my definition, is something much harder to tap into politically. In the world's most "content" society there will still be much sadness and in the world's most "discontent" society (i.e. where there is much pain or suffering) you will still find happiness. Nonetheless, I am still of the belief that it is much easier to find happiness when you are first content - that is, you have the material well-being not to have to worry about hunger, thirst, poverty or any other element capable of inflicting pain or suffering. It is, after all, difficult to be happy when you submerged in suffrage.

Therefore, my solution to this "happiness" problem is to ensure as many individuals as possible in a given society have access to the basic essentials necessary to be content - from this foundation, although happiness cannot be guaranteed in this way, you give a society the best possible chance of - on the whole - being more "happy".

Still it's a loaded question, happiness. So, to everyone in this forum:

Are you happy?

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Originally posted by Renegade Are you happy?

I usually drink until I'm happy.

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Retro ...

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Originally posted by occrider I usually drink until I'm happy.

Good policy. I'll drink to that.

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Originally posted by Renegade Are you happy?

I'm happy to enjoy one of the highest standards of living, opportunities, and - most important - the opportunity to lead a normal life where I'm free to make choices regardless of what anyone thinks/says, and to pursue various activities which bring me positive emotions, such as listening to Trance music.

If you ask me am I personally happy in the sense of being satisfied with my personal life, I would say not quite; I don't have a soulmate or a girlfriend right now, and I believe this negatively affects some of my life experiences, be they social (as in a sense of belonging and having a loving partner) or sexual (biological needs).

What I usually do is the same thing as occrider

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The concept of 'non duality' has always interested me. For example, how can sound exist without silence; darkness without light; pain without pleasure; good without evil? Although these opposite pairs have characteristics that greatly contradict each other, they are 'connected' in the sense that the existence of one is a necesary prerequisite (a background) for the existence of the other. Therefore, opposites are not necesarily seperate from one another but rather two sides of the same coin. So the circumstance of happiness/unhappiness presents a dilemma: a world in which there is ONLY happiness or ONLY unhappiness cannot exist because there would not be any way to contrast that state of mind (i.e. we wouldn't know if we were happy or unhappy).

So in this respect, all attempts to create a 'happy' society are futile. However in understanding 'non duality,' what happens when we as a society do not try to achieve either happiness or unhappiness? What if each of us eliminates all similar forms of contradiction from our lives? What happens then?

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