you for that travesty of a song lira...you of all_people should not defame a pretty famous japanese proverb with that song. :p
Dj Skez
quote:
Originally posted by tubularbills
:wtf: :wtf: are you for real?
what kind of question is that? what part of that concept you don't understand?
How about you? are you for real? you live in the middle of nowhere with a golden retriever, being a awkward no getting sounding like sylvester the cat fag from whatever red neck county you reside at. I know you're for real, but where I'm from you wouldn't be looked at as real, but that's over your head.
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by Schadenfreude
you for that travesty of a song lira...you of all_people should not defame a pretty famous japanese proverb with that song. :p
I can't help it! Whenever I hear that saying two things come to mind: A shirt of my fiancé with that exact saying in Japanese, and Chumbawamba :D
Schadenfreude
an atheist should write a book about chumbawumba using them to further disprove the existence of God.
Silky Johnson
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
I don't reckon there is one. Here, let's analyse three possibilities. Namely happiness, recognition, and achievement :)
Happiness: Let's suppose we take happiness as the ultimate measure, and we divide it into two categories for the argument's sake: Selfish happiness and altruistic happiness.
Selfish Happiness: A responsible party-goer that lives in festaland with his mates and dies in an accident not caused by him after spending a whole year in total bliss (whether or not drugs or alcohol were part of the mix is irrelevant - the fact is that he was happy with his lifestyle) is hardly the pinnacle of human success. Even if he was a playboy and spent his whole life partying hard and living the good life, being lucky enough to dodge the bad moments or get over them with positive thoughts, would you really say he was successful.
Altruistic happiness: Suppose the wife of a business tycoon married her husband in her early teens and never did anything other than help those in need. Her husband earned the money and she spent a substantial amount of his fortune on social projects. She did this her entire life. It can't get less selfish than that - had she made her family or friends happy, there'd be some selfishness in that because it would be her immediate social group that would benefit from her actions. But, it says nothing about the people she helped. What if they failed to do anything with the support they received and just leeched off her efforts in order to live a comfortable idle life? Would you say that their happiness still counts?
Recognition: Suppose you're a talented artist. The world considers you the apex of human creativity. Yet, you're also tormented by whatever it is that bugs you. This is how you spend your whole life: depressed, doing stuff to channel you depression into something you can earn a living from, get more depressed, and so on. By the end of this cycle, you're probably in the pantheon of great artists such as Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Mozart. But you feel like your life was a total failure because you spent most of your time wishing you were dead. Is it fair to say you lived a successful life?
Achievement: Success comes from the verb "to succeed", so it's fair to say it should have something to do with being able to do something i.e. to succeed in doing something. But, what? Let's say you become the World Sudoku Champion, or the World's Greatest Player of Super Mario Kart. Is that enough to grant you the status of "a successful person"? Probably not. What if you build a gigantic theory of the universe? Or, much more humbly, what if you isolated a protein that could save thousands of lives? Sure enough, this would be much closer to our concept of what a successful person must do. However, suppose you found the cure for cancer at the expense of your family life (so you're miserable as hell) and in a sad twist of events, your credits were all gone to someone else. You did something great in your lifetime: You found the cure for cancer, hooray! Yet no one cares about you, and there's no one happy with your achievement, quite on the contrary. Now, is this your image of a successful person?
So, roughly speaking, the measurement of success in life must be, at best, multiple (if that!)... and hardly something that I can assess in a single post, though I did my best.
Based on all that, I'd say a successful life is one in which a person's true values, talents, and desires are congruent with how they actually live their life. Self-actualization something something.
igottaknow
i read that in a book somewhere
Lira
quote:
Originally posted by jennypie
Based on all that, I'd say a successful life is one in which a person's true values, talents, and desires are congruent with how they actually live their life. Self-actualization something something.
I'd be inclined to agree with you, and I do indeed think this is the right path, but I just have my reservations towards the word "true". I reckon I need a full-working brain to have an aptitude to work with languages, for example, but since I at some point must have made a choice to work with languages, I'm not sure whether I'd ever call it a "true talent", for example.
But yeah, we'd sure reach very similar conclusions.
quote:
Originally posted by Schadenfreude
an atheist should write a book about chumbawumba using them to further disprove the existence of God.
Now that's a lovely idea :stongue:
Silky Johnson
quote:
Originally posted by Lira
I'd be inclined to agree with you, and I do indeed think this is the right path, but I just have my reservations towards the word "true".
Most def. But I suppose that's where all that about intuition comes in. :toothless
ivofivo
The measure of individual success? Is there such a thing? If there was, I would measure it based on my own merits. I could care less if I have benevolently interconnected with another human being, however, I do value knowledge and research. I value facts, data, and calculations. Emotions are empty, hence who you made happy is worthless in contrast with individual success.
Schadenfreude
quote:
Originally posted by ivofivo
The measure of individual success? Is there such a thing? If there was, I would measure it based on my own merits. I could care less if I have benevolently interconnected with another human being, however, I do value knowledge and research. I value facts, data and calculations. Emotions are empty, hence who you made happy is worthless in contrast with individual success.
all those big words and you still said "i could care less".
individual fail imo.
Silky Johnson
quote:
Originally posted by ivofivo
The measure of individual success? Is there such a thing? If there was, I would measure it based on my own merits. I could care less if I have benevolently interconnected with another human being, however, I do value knowledge and research. I value facts, data, and calculations. Emotions are empty, hence who you made happy is worthless in contrast with individual success.
What good are your merits without others to appreciate them?
ivofivo
quote:
Originally posted by Schadenfreude
all those big words and you still said "i could care less".
