What If Unhappiness Contains the Secret to Happiness?
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For people with such perspectives, I would say that what they experience is less like “something that was no fun in any part but still fun as a whole”, but rather “an input of a non-fun activity that is expected to pay out in happiness down the line”—in other words, the same kind of experience that working at a job to earn money is.
As such, people (for whom this calculus works out) don’t actually have to be irrationally drawn to having kids by addictive brain signals. They have perfectly rational reasons to do so!
Not the way I see it. Adversity followed by salvation gives you confidence that you can overcome future challenges.
For example, learning a skill to an advanced degree. Moment by moment it's not type 1 fun, but as you progress and look back, you realize that you've grown and improved. It -does- make me happy to see how far I've progressed in the hobbies/studying that I've invested a lot of time in. Conversely, seeing how much time I wasted doing "type 1" things all the time a few years ago makes me somewhat sad.
Consistently playing the slots [highly engineered products designed to be addictive] has to do with addiction and dopamine rushes when you get a hit. I wouldn't categorize that as the same as doing things like hiking or whatnot.
How did I survive that? When can I come back to it?
"When I was here, I wanted to be there, when I was there all I could think of was getting back into the jungle."
There's been a fair few happiness articles on here lately. I've commented on all of them, it's not necessarily happiness that you should care about. Someone suggested equanimity as the thing to strive for.
There's a point where you've seen all the major life events. Either they happened to you or someone you know. There's no avoiding them, and they happen to everyone. It's part of the marvel of existence, a thing that had endless content whether you zoom in or out.
Rather than having an expectation, have no expectation. Don't have an expectation, and you won't be disappointed at a different outcome. Don't have a desire, and you won't be unhappy when it goes unfulfilled. Don't expect the sun, and the clouds won't make you sad. Don't desire pleasure, and you won't feel cheated when you receive none.
Aside from your feelings, you can of course change things in your life if you want to. You can right a wrong, improve your standing, paint your room green, move to a new city, whatever. But don't do those things in order to chase a feeling of happiness; that's a dog chasing its tail.
I get that this is kind of what is meant by the Buddhist concept of nirvana; but I’ve always wondered what the difference is between “achieving nirvana and then living for a hundred years” and “achieving nirvana and then immediately committing suicide.” If you don’t care any more, why are you still going on? Why is the sensory tape still playing, if nobody is watching to learn anything from it?
It may also be stamped upon in the next moment by a passer-by. But because you did not expect this gift, when it is gone, you won't despair. So if life gives you a gift, receive it with humility and gratitude, but do not expect to be given it.
I think there's more to it too, like how you can use your time here to create things that will also bring you peace and happiness, and not being disappointed when they don't work out. Hard to explain here as it's kind of a broad topic and I'm no Buddhist monk ;)
I mean that in a neurological sense—is there really any kind of reward you can experience from sensory data other than the dopaminergic kind that is attempting to potentiate you toward a specific response to said stimulus (e.g. increasing place preference for places that have pretty flowers in them)? If you were to permanently shut down your dopaminergic reward system—to cease to want—would you still experience sensory stimuli as rewarding? (I honestly don’t know; it’s an interesting question.)
If you truly have no desires whatsoever—if all is equal in your mind—I would expect you to also have no aesthetic experience. You wouldn’t see “a beautiful flower”; you’d just see “a flower.”† Seeing a flower and seeing a garbage dump would be strictly equivalent to you, just as they are to someone who is heavily depressed. (And this is what I was getting at by mentioning delirium: people in a delirious state do not bother to move their heads to look at things, unless doing so is necessary to do something they’re forced or ordered to do. This is because they don’t prefer the experience of looking at a flower to the experience of staring at the wall—so why stop staring at the wall?)
† Which is, again, a thing they say that reaching Buddhist enlightenment gets you: “mountains are mountains, and waters are waters.”
Pleasure is a subjective, aesthetic experience. Increased dopamine levels certainly map to increased feeling of pleasure, but you can also experience pleasure without increased dopamine levels. You can feel pleasure about just about anything - it's just an idea in your head. You don't even have to "want" that idea, as in expecting it, working towards it, etc. It can just kind of pop up in your brain and you can feel good, or you can search for it and make it pop up.
I think the distinction is really whether you have pleasure as your goal, and whether you let outcomes change your state of mind. If the root of suffering is the dissonance between desire and reality, avoid suffering by not having a stake in the outcome. Decide to experience pleasure when you want to, without attaching it to an expectation. Go for a walk to look for pretty flowers, but don't expect them to be there. I would again compare it to a gift: don't feel bad when you don't get one, but enjoy it when you do.
Sometimes. If I didn't desire it to be pretty, then I may have never planted it. By not desiring it to be pretty, we limit ourselves to enjoying only those flowers planted by others or by nature. Maybe that's enough. Or maybe there's less in the world to enjoy when so many people stop desiring to enjoy. Or maybe our appreciation for the beauty of a flower is simply heightened when it's the fruit of our investment in planting and nurturing it, which was motivated by our expectations and desire for it to be pretty.
> It may also be stamped upon in the next moment by a passer-by.
It has less chance to be trampled if my desire for it to live motivated me to take measures to maximize its chances of survival, such as planting it in a garden where it's less likely to be trampled, or watering it, or giving it better soil in which to grow.
There are probably good lessons to be learned from both points of view. Having expectations may be the necessary evil that drives us to change things for the better. But it also makes us less happy when they don't pan out. In fact, I think that's the message in the many sayings about changing what we can and accepting what we can't.
It felt like much more of an internal crisis than it likely was, but your post echoed the innate desires I struggled with last week.
FWIW I feel that I have much more respect for “things as they are” since setting out on this journey. Desire for prettiness may lead you to plant flowers, but I have found myself much more appreciative of the world around me on a much wider spectrum than I used to. Prettiness isn’t inherently good - it’s just another aspect of things. I still smell roses, and they are often pretty, but the unprettiness of their surroundings is equally valid and in a sense necessary to enjoy their prettiness together. The beauty is in the system as a whole, not the prettiness of the roses.
By the way, I ultimately let the caterpillars and roses duke it out on their own.
It's kind of funny, because your second point about the unprettiness of the rose's surroundings being equally valid as the prettiness of the roses reminds me of how I started liking some of the foods I had hated as a child.
At some point in my young adulthood, I started appreciating tastes for what they were, as experiences. In this way, I began thinking about the sensations that foods triggered, and how interesting and different the foods I didn't used to like were. It made me start appreciating them just for being able to experience the uniqueness of the taste and texture, and next thing I knew, I no longer disliked those foods.
Happiness comes from the attainment status and progress, and those two things tend to be correlated. That's why beating a video game level or getting an award or promotion makes you happy. it does not come from reflecting on failure or any abstract philosophical belief/teaching. The idea that happiness is encoded in failure seems ludicrous unless one means not repeating mistakes, but that is learning , which is not the same as happiness as an emotion. Not a fan of stoicism either. I think people should express how they feel. Bottling it up only makes it worse later.
Being stoic doesn’t mean not expressing your feelings.
Issues that someone would have to bottle up because it introduces entropy in their feelings about life might be a non-issue/non-existent to a stoic. i.e. why get angry and express my feelings if someone that cuts me off on the highway, when I’ve learned not to care about such events? There’s plenty of other things a stoic can express their feeling about.
The Discourses of Epictetus
> According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or fear of pain, by using one's mind to understand the world and to do one's part in nature's plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.
> Stoicism teaches the development of self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions; the philosophy holds that becoming a clear and unbiased thinker allows one to understand the universal reason (logos).
> A Stoic of virtue, by contrast, would amend his will to suit the world and remain, in the words of Epictetus, "sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy," ...
"It doesn't have to be fun to be fun."
What is the relation between this seemingly unrelated topic and technology in general? Did this article make it to the front page because engineers are unhappy or did it make it to the front page because people in general are unhappy?
What if creating happiness in others was our fundamental objective as individuals and societies?
Only with compassionate honesty can we root out the truly bad seeds and strip them of their power to harm others.
Without compassion as our basis, our prejudices blind us and lead to callous, destructive competition via blind ambition.
Only in compassionately equal cooperation can we determine which individuals and groups seek to oppress others, for cooperation is anathema to those filled with hatred and cruel self-superiority.
Our callous attitudes and systems of competition are destroying the Earth and inflicting misery upon the vast majority of humanity for the benefit of the few.
Committing oneself to become consumed by selfless compassion that motivates us to shape our societies into compassionate systems of mutual benefit and cooperation for ALL human beings is the ONLY path to happiness. Happiness for the individual begins in every interaction we have with each other and the Earth itself. The goal of that happiness is to spread this wisdom far and wide.
To achieve that ideal we must strip the cruel, hypocritical, hateful liars of their power to cause misery for others. And this unfettered capitalism must be tamed to serve everyone while allowing the ambitious to reap the benefits of their hard work.
Happiness is not pleasure and is so rare these days because very few people learn to selflessly, compassionately serve others' happiness. Worse yet, the most ruthless, amoral people have usurped the power structures of the world: governments, corporations and religious institutions.
Selfless compassion is the root of happiness and we much each hurry up and implement it because the evil bastards are running rampant over our precious, beautiful Earth and the vast sea of poors.
As with all things human, it is equally each our choice.
The most ruthless people didn't usurp the power structures, they created them. Before they existed we had lawless anarchy.
We can live in harmony with the earth until a comet hits or a super volcano erupts at which point humanity goes extinct. To survive as a species we must continue to push technology forward as fast as we can. That's where capitalism, ambition and competition come into play. They are positive forces that are human's only path to long term survival.
The obvious positives of technology and capitalism must be weighed against their long-term drawbacks. The unfettered capitalism the corporations have put into place via their lawyers and lobbyists has kept the negative outcomes from public view while shielding their owners from responsibility.
Boeing, Tanaka, Monsanto, Exxon, Facebook, ...
The system as it exists is far more destructive than constructive. Only a fool or a liar says otherwise.
ETA: So, "Civilization Accelerating Extinction at Unprecedented Pace" is not caused by technology, corporations and unfettered capitalism?
ETA2: And every civilization was created by the most ruthless? You only see yourself in everything you perceive, which is fundamental to ignorance.
I'll take Boeing and Facebook over plague, constant war and lack of rule of law any day of the week.
I'm not sure which period in time you're glamorizing to be much better than today, but the vast majority of humans alive in 2019 have a better life than the humans that came before them.
We need to work in societies to prosper and survive, and cooperation is the best way to achieve that. Our failure is that, at larger scales, we have not applied the proper systems thinking to ensure that the ruthless and amoral cannot game the system for their own personal gain at the expense of the society and the Earth itself.
Those with power will always promote competition because they have all the advantages; as well, they will denigrate cooperation because their excesses will be seen for the unnecessary drain on resources they are. Thus, we have the corporate lawyers and lobbyists making the laws and regulations that are supposed to rein them in.
I can’t think of any.
Animals ... not so lucky.
The vast majority of living non-human mammals are livestock. They have never had it worse than they do today.
Wild mammals are now a minority and they have certainly never had it worse. They are in the midst of the Sixth Extinction.
> It will get gorier and nastier, but we will stay alive at all costs.
By nearly every metric, humans are better off today than they ever have been in the past. Why do you think this trend will not only stop but reverse itself? Technology is a great boon to humanity and it keeps getting better.
I think the welfare of non-domesticated mammals is an entirely different conversation to this one. I will say that evolution is always going to happen and there have been numerous mass extinction events in the past. Whether through astrological, geological or biological means, there will be black swans that greatly impact life on earth. Human culture is certainly among those.
A quote I like says, paraphrasing, "as soon as you realise you and I are different people, then we will start to get along much better".