Happiness

[Contemporary Protestant]

Do people deserve "happiness", and can such a thing be defined or obtained?

[hrdlr110]

There are those that have everything they could ever want and will never be happy. There are those that have very little, and are very happy. Happiness comes from within. It's not having everything you want, it's wanting everything you have.

[Mr.Obvious]

Happiness is something very personal and thus very hard to quantify. Everyone deserves the right to find what makes them happy, within reason. (For instance, a serial killer doesn't deserve to be happy if being happy means he gets to cut up people who don't want to get cut up.)

It's an interesting topic. A few weeks ago we had a discussion in class. It was about choosing between constant bliss and awareness of troubles and thus knowing worry, sadness and anxiety and such. Kind of a: would you want to know if you were in the matrix kind of deal.
It suprised me how many said that if they could choose they'd choose constant bliss.
I wouldn't. Society is too focussed on happyness for my taste; the media and the public opinion seem in agreement that it's an ideal state that you should be able to be in at all times. It's simply not, and constant bliss is not something you should try to go for as it will ironically make you less happy as well as the fact that 'happiness' is worth nill if you can't appreciate it. Just like how feeling love for someone is meaningless if you can't feel the sorrow after they've died. The surrender to the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind is to abandon the great and wonderfull range of faculties and feelings our minds have evolved to utilize and perceive. It's to willingly become a zombie and to close one off to a greater world; both scary and amazing. It's to fail to realize that happiness is a subjective process with it's value worth searching and existing for.

[Contemporary Protestant]

I'm in agreement, American youth, especially, are too concerned with personal happiness

[stromboli]

I'm in agreement, American youth, especially, are too concerned with personal happiness

Why? what's wrong with being happy? I spent most of my life cowtowing to philosophies that told me I had to sacrifice and that true happiness came from being a sheep that followed orders. You have the right to be happy and do what makes you happy. You don't have the right to make others unhappy by your actions. You can do things that make you happy and also be altrusitic and giving. They aren't separate things.

Being dutiful and servile is bullshit. Do what you want with your life.

[Shiranu]

Why? what's wrong with being happy? I spent most of my life cowtowing to philosophies that told me I had to sacrifice and that true happiness came from being a sheep that followed orders. You have the right to be happy and do what makes you happy. You don't have the right to make others unhappy by your actions. You can do things that make you happy and also be altrusitic and giving. They aren't separate things.

Being dutiful and servile is bullshit. Do what you want with your life.

100% this. Having wasted 23 years of my life being unhappy because, more or less, if you are doing something that makes you happy it more than likely is an abomination to god and you are a terrible person... life is too damn short to waste being unhappy for someone else's sake. I don't particularly care if I "deserve" to be happy or not in someone else's eyes anymore, because what good will that do me when I die? Nothing. I'll have wasted my life trying to fill other people's desires and have nothing to show for it.

Now, I do struggle with the concept of, "Why do I deserve to be happy when I could have just as easily been born in Somalia or wherever, in poverty and a war-torn country where I work at a sweat shop or am beaten or sold into prostitution and worse." and that one I think is a question worth asking and addressing.

[PickelledEggs]

Why? what's wrong with being happy? I spent most of my life cowtowing to philosophies that told me I had to sacrifice and that true happiness came from being a sheep that followed orders. You have the right to be happy and do what makes you happy. You don't have the right to make others unhappy by your actions. You can do things that make you happy and also be altrusitic and giving. They aren't separate things.

Being dutiful and servile is bullshit. Do what you want with your life.

I second that. Do what makes you happy.

Watch this video with the voice of the amazing philosopher, Alan Watts if you're confused about happiness and how you should live your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnFUDVpFwFQ

[the_antithesis]

Do people deserve "happiness", and can such a thing be defined or obtained?

Happiness is a positive emotion controlled by hormones such as serotonin that is released due to environmental triggers.

Positive emotions such as this are to reinforce behaviors and compel individuals to remain with certain environmental stimuli, for example, children feel positive emotions in the presence of their parents and feel negative emotions separated from them, compelling them to stay with their parents and the relative safety and care they provide.

Such things are only mysterious if you're not really interested in finding any answers.

[Contemporary Protestant]

I don't think human emotion can be broken down to chemical processes, chemistry explains how emotions work and not why there are emotions, emotions are mysterious because to an extent, evolution can't explain it, for example the thoughts and feelings of vegetarians, there isn't an evolutionary purpose to valuing the lives of other animals

[the_antithesis]

Who said anything about evolution?

[Contemporary Protestant]

No one did, I was elaborating my point that emotion can't fully be explained by science

[Mermaid]

for example the thoughts and feelings of vegetarians, there isn't an evolutionary purpose to valuing the lives of other animals

Er. Sure there is.

[Contemporary Protestant]

Could you enlighten me then? I genuinely don't understand how vegetarianism serves a purpose

[the_antithesis]

No one did, I was elaborating my point that emotion can't fully be explained by science

And you failed to do so.

I'd rather stay away from the topic of evolution for this conversation because while it is tangential, you simply are not ready for it and discussing it here would simply muddy the waters.

As for vegetarians, they feel empathy and sympathy for other animals. We feel these emotions for other humans as well. It helps us bond together as a group, which turns out to be beneficial for survival.

[Contemporary Protestant]

How does bonding with another species help, if a hunter gather were concerned with how their prey feels, they wouldn't survive