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Alternatives and decisions
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| trancaholic |
Sorry to bother you with philosophical questions twice in one week, but one of my friends and I got to discuss this and it made for an interesting discussion so I thought it might work here as well. The problem is: Can you tell if someting is good/bad/appropriate/helpful/confusing if you know no alternatives? E.g. is a "good nights sleep" really a good thing? And what if we introduce alternatives such as "studying for exams" or "going to see my favourite DJ at a big club"? Does that alter your initial judgement of the concept? What about chocolate? Is it desirable? Compared to beans? Compared to a beer?
And what about life itself - do we define ourselves in terms of what alternatives there are? Am I content with my life, because I know that I'm not living in a sheet metal shed in some unsafe part of the world? And am I "only" content, because I see rich, beautiful, determined young people on soap operas and thus see that as an alternative way of living life?
Hope some of you have an opinion on this matter. |
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| Jah |
*philosophical hat*
intresting i think when you get into thought paterns like this you gotta realise everything is subjective when it comes down to it thats what its about its your interpretation of events and such... kind of like a dj set :P you give paul van dyk and sasha the same records theyl make a totally differant set if thats any anology... actually thats one :) at the end of the day its all relative |
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| Orbax |
| good question. I would say that on matters of happiness and satisfaction, you have a sliding bar that you place yourself on in relation to other places you could be. If you only had one thing to know it would be baseline happiness. Happiness and satisfaction for the most part are chemical states. If your brain hasnt had any way to differentiate between something better it will be happy about something. Some things take accustomization like beer...if you only had bud light (god forbid!) you wouldnt be happy with it at first, but after a while you would like it. I like to think of most happiness states as a room with a pinata on the ceiling. If you dont have anything that you consider beneath you the trampoline will put you in easy reach of the pinata and you get your reward "happiness" if, however, you think you are much lower than the level of happiness you wish to achieve, your ceiling will have to lower and the pinata gets smaller. if that makes sense...its late im tired. intersting topic hehe |
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