I think about this all the time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rushyrulz
I remember being happy only in comparison to not being happy which is what I am now.
(this is more than a song reference for a lot of people)
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This is horrible, and can't possibly be true. Your life can't be a constant lowering of your happiness level. You'd eventually stop feeling bad at all if you never felt any sort of happiness (this is not a paradox. You'd just feel neutral). I've heard of this happening many times when people are held in captivity for too long, for example.
As far as I have observed in my whole life, dissatisfaction is only possible when you already have the perspective of something satisfactory. But the contrary is not true.
E.G: If you have never felt the actual satisfaction of being rich and never saw anyone rich, then you have very little perspective of this happiness. It's entirely possible that you are happy even though you are not rich.
However, if you become rich and feel the satisfaction it proportionates, your standards will rise, and with it your expectations and desires, so you'll also become harder to satisfy. If you ever become poor again, you will feel really bad.
I also believe that pain itself is only bad because we have a notion of physical comfort and because of it's meaning (your life could be in danger).
And also a local example: once you get used to get perfects all the time, a single "good" is actually a pretty bad thing. But you don't really care about it before you actually feel the satisfaction of AAAing songs.
To sum up: everything that's bad is really a lack of something good, but it cannot be said that good is a lack of bad. Happiness is an actual thing, and unhappiness exists due to contrast (much like light and the concept of darkness, there is no actual "dark force", just lack of light)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oni-Paranoia
Also, the happier we are, the easier it is to make us unhappy. Just stating.
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Fact.