What is happiness?

[TimeShaper]

I suppose that personal opinion is an alien term around here.

Technological evolution gets a 1000% boost during wartime. And war is, of course, caused by hatred/xenofobia between nations and/or races.
We would hardly evolve while everybody is happy and there are no needs. We would stagnate.

Why do I have to be considered as a troll/raging kid just for seeing things from a different angle?

Insane troll logic...

Trolls don't bother to think.

Actually, the only reason people do these things at all is to achieve happiness.

Exactly, it doesn't really matter whether happiness exists or not, as long as we don't have it we will advance. So we don't need it. Not yet.

[who_cares973]

happiness is the lack of depression

[who_cares973]

serious answer

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

What, in your opinion, defines a happy life? What are your goals? What is your mindset if you fail to achieve a goal and are forced to find happiness in unexpected ways? How do you deal with good fortune?

a happy life for me would be a worry free life. whether it be worry because one would make enough money to not have to have any stress caused by financial problems which lead to problems in other areas. or being worry free because you have no commitments that would leave you in a stressful position. aka living life day by day aka being a bum(which ive considered since ive talked to many a bums that say they're happier being a bum then when they werent. my goals in life are pretty basic. get into a position that would allow me to maintain the people i love in my life, make the best of what i have. if i were to fail to achieve these goals i wouldnt know what to do with myself. seeing as how one of my goals is to make the best of every situation and live life as best as i can i wouldnt be forced to find happiness in unexpected ways. i think i deal with good fortune like everyone else. i make sure i dont let it go to waste

[mhss1992]

Sad people piss me off.

Originally Posted by TimeShaper

Exactly, it doesn't really matter whether happiness exists or not, as long as we don't have it we will advance. So we don't need it. Not yet.

I think you're mistaking "happiness" for "absolute happiness". Though I don't feel a satisfaction of infinite intensity, I am happy most of the time.

[TimeShaper]

I think you're mistaking "happiness" for "absolute happiness".

You're right. This is the wrong thread to post on since I'm talking about utopia and not momentary satisfaction.
Oh and there's no need for Internet clichés such as Sad people piss me off. I though this was critical thinking or something.

[mhss1992]

It's hard to take you seriously and not believe you're a troll after you first post, but let's analyze this anyway:

The only lasting and powerful feelings are those of hatred.

Hatred only exists when something you love is confronted in some way, threatened or destroyed, be it a person, object or whatever.
E.g: I love ice cream. You decided to destroy every ice cream factory in the planet. Therefore, I hate you.
I love comfort. X causes me pain, which confronts my comfort. Therefore, I hate X.

You need to love something before you can hate another, but you don't need to hate something before you can love another (I didn't hate anything related to the lack of ice cream before I ate ice cream for the first time). Well, that proves that hatred is always equal or lesser than love.

Can you think of something you hate that doesn't go against something you love?

To me, happiness is just an illusion, silly daydreaming and a complete waste of time. Humanity would never evolve through happiness. The urge to kill, to dominate, to have revenge, these will make one achieve perfection.

If happiness is a waste of time, then every form of voluntary action is a waste of time. Effort is always motivated by satisfaction.
Conflict exists only because there are things that threaten satisfaction. If the satisfactory feeling didn't exist, THERE WOULD BE NO CONFLICT, and, therefore, no evolution.

Oh and there's no need for Internet clichés such as Sad people piss me off. I though this was critical thinking or something.

I didn't even know it was an Internet cliché... I just thought it by myself. Cliche or not, it's a fact.
Most people I know who consider themselves "sad" most of the time don't really have a good reason to feel that way, they're just either incompetent, weak willed or actually ill.

[TimeShaper]

Well, you surely have a point there.

Can you think of something you hate that doesn't go against something you love?

But what about xenofobia? (racism etc.)

Effort is always motivated by satisfaction.

What if effort is motivated by the urge to have revenge? In my opinion it's a lot more effective than plain 'satisfaction'.

This debate actually got us somewhere. Apparently it's all about whether satisfaction and happiness are the same thing or not.
Someone else's suffering might satisfy you but it won't make you happy.

Admit it or not, we ended up sharing roughly the same opinion. But still from somewhat opposing viewing angles.

I don't really know whether I'm incompetent, weak willed or just ill but this is my opinion and I'm happy to have had the opportunity to debate this matter alongside with you.

[Izzy]

Revenge can be satisfying. I would consider satisfaction the same or very similar to happiness. Someone else's suffering could easily make you happy and satisfied if you are that kind of person.

[mhss1992]

Originally Posted by TimeShaper

Well, you surely have a point there.

But what about xenofobia? (racism etc.)

Well... As far as I'm concerned, prejudice can make people see other cultures as "threatening" or "evil", so if someone actually hates a culture or race, it's because they think part of their behavior is an insult or confrontation to something you consider good in your culture.

Originally Posted by TimeShaper

What if effort is motivated by the urge to have revenge? In my opinion it's a lot more effective than plain 'satisfaction'.

Revenge is satisfactory.

Originally Posted by TimeShaper

This debate actually got us somewhere. Apparently it's all about whether satisfaction and happiness are the same thing or not.
Someone else's suffering might satisfy you but it won't make you happy.

Well, if what you call "happiness" is some sort of ultimate, infinite satisfaction, then I can't say for sure. It might be possible to actually understand the true nature of satisfaction and obtain this ultimate happiness. Some people believe that this is what spiritual evolution is for... But you probably don't believe in it, right?

But most of the time I just refer to "happiness" as an intense and durable satisfaction.

Originally Posted by TimeShaper

Admit it or not, we ended up sharing roughly the same opinion. But still from somewhat opposing viewing angles.

I don't really know whether I'm incompetent, weak willed or just ill but this is my opinion and I'm happy to have had the opportunity to debate this matter alongside with you.

I'm glad I made you think that way.
But you really are sad and don't see a reason for it? Did you lose something?
Did something affect your perspective of life?

[spring25960]

From where I standing now, happiness is a sense of satisfaction for me, such as satisfaction from family,friends or maybe your career.

[foxfire667]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Revenge can be satisfying. I would consider satisfaction the same or very similar to happiness. Someone else's suffering could easily make you happy and satisfied if you are that kind of person.

This is true. I can personally say that happiness is generally a situation where any form of self satisfaction or gratification occurs to a being.

As for satisfaction being generally equal to happiness, let's look at it in an a-b prospective.

If I am satisfied with a situation, then I am happy
If I am happy, then I am satisfied with a situation

When flipping these two variables, the statement still remains true. As I cannot personally think of any experience where I was not satisfied but happy, or happy but not satisfied. This does not mean that you must be absolutely satisfied to gain happiness, but the amount of happiness you will receive will be dependent on how satisfied with a situation you are. As you all know that happiness can come at a variety of different levels for an individual, and this is based off of the amount of satisfaction one has regarding the situation:

If, as an example, I were to take a test:
100: Fully satisfied with my results
97: Generally satisfied
94: still decently satisfied
85: not very satisfied
65: loathe the result (severe dissatisfaction)

You can again replace all of the words "satisfied" with the word "happy" and come to the same conclusion of how I am feeling. Now again how MUCH happiness is dependent on the amount of satisfaction you get, which also depends on how much this particular thing affects you in life. Like:

Rose in my yard is not stepped on: No satisfaction / dissatisfaction)
Rose in my yard is stepped on: No satisfaction / dissatisfaction)

To a Gardner, this may be very different...maybe they love Roses, and this could severely dissatisfy them to step on the Rose (making them, in turn, severely unhappy).

[Cavernio]

So many things to say...
"I believe that happiness is when you actually forget yourself because you enjoy something." Not for me. My utmost happiness has come from instances when I'm fully engrossed in myself. I guess I feel like I 'forget myself' while doing any number of menial tasks too, and I certainly don't find that to be happiness.

"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)

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."

I don't know how to tell you you're wrong, except from personal experience you are so wrong mhss. The perception that the happy times of your life have always been in the past is one that I've possessed before. No matter what your logic about emotions dictates, it runs counter to some people's perceptions, and if I perceive I have been unhappy for 10 years, then I really have been unhappy for 10 years at the moment that that thought happens. Whether or not that is possible is irrelevant, because its possible to feel that that's the case. You're also assuming that emotions are always controlled by the outside, which they aren't. People can be more or less chronically happy or chronically depressed. And then there's other, non-social things that change from day to day, like being tired and having PMS.

[Xx{Midnight}xX]

Happiness is nonexistent.

[Cavernio]

"Hatred only exists when something you love is confronted in some way, threatened or destroyed, be it a person, object or whatever."
So when I flip out in a hatred and rage and start to break **** over the world sucking because I have crumbs on the kitchen floor one morning, though I've never really cared about having crumbs on my kitchen floor before, certainly never enough to elicit such a reaction from myself, it is because I love my floor at that one point in time?

"You need to love something before you can hate another, but you don't need to hate something before you can love another (I didn't hate anything related to the lack of ice cream before I ate ice cream for the first time). Well, that proves that hatred is always equal or lesser than love."
Sentence 2 follows sentence 1, but sentence one is unfounded. For instance, I don't need to love not being in pain to hate someone who causes me physical pain. Not being in pain is specifically neutral. And don't give me some bull**** about that's just them hurting my love for myself. I'm talking about physical pain, not emotional pain.

[Cavernio]

Enough arguing, happiness for me would be I don't know what, because what makes me happy changes too often because my mind changes too often. I can think about going on a trip and loving the idea, and I can think about going on the exact same trip when I'm feeling tired, and it instead causes something close to anguish about having to do things and all the responsibility involved with it. Because of this, I've found the most success at 'happiness' in my life with a sort of middle ground. I'm doing something that's menial so that I can lose myself in it, but is something that won't petrify me those days when the thought of anything challenging is horrible. Which is, in fact, not what I consider happiness at all.
Happiness for me is would either be to have no responsibilities and yet to constantly be learning and sharing ideas and knowledge with people in novel ways.

[fido123]

Happiness is relative to how each individual perceives the world so there aren't really any things that make us all happy as happiness is just chemicals reacting with your brain. Most people these days in North America though are depressed cause they think they know what would make them happy (materialism etc etc) and end up being disappointed. I just live life doing what I want to do.

[mhss1992]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

So when I flip out in a hatred and rage and start to break **** over the world sucking because I have crumbs on the kitchen floor one morning, though I've never really cared about having crumbs on my kitchen floor before, certainly never enough to elicit such a reaction from myself, it is because I love my floor at that one point in time?

If you do it BECAUSE of the floor, like you've said, then you DO care.
If you DON'T care about the floor, it's obviously due to something else.
Has this happened before?

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Sentence 2 follows sentence 1, but sentence one is unfounded. For instance, I don't need to love not being in pain to hate someone who causes me physical pain. Not being in pain is specifically neutral. And don't give me some bull**** about that's just them hurting my love for myself. I'm talking about physical pain, not emotional pain.

It's not unfounded. It's based on everything I've ever seen in my life.

"Not being in pain is specifically neutral"
Untrue. Don't you feel comfort when you are in bed, for example?
You obviously don't need to love every moment of not being in pain, but pain deviates further from your idea of comfort, causing anger or hatred.

It's not about whether you love your current situation or not, it's about your perspective of the best situation and how distant things are from it.

[Cavernio]

Yes, I've flipped out over having crumbs on the floor when I've never really cared that much about them before. The point of that example was to show that I was not in a very sane state of mind at that time, such that the slightest thing I found annoying was blown way out of porportion. Its not that I had just cleaned it and it got dirty again in 2 seconds and I had cleaned it because people were coming over, or that I had just gotten into a fight with my bf or some other misplaced anger. I was having a typical day but I just snapped.

As to being in bed all cozy and warm, of course that's nice, and then that's not neutral either. But that's not the example; the example isn't 'I was feeling comfy and then I start getting hurt by someone'.

I can also very much enjoy not being in pain when it goes away. This happens to me every month when I have bad period cramps and then I take a pain killer. The relief of not being in pain anymore is so overwhelming it feels sooooo good. In that example, the happiness of not being in pain anymore was specifically caused by the unhappiness in the first place, which is another counter-example to needing happiness to cause unhappiness. I surely would not suddenly feel relief and happiness had I not been in pain a few minutes ago. And there are thousands of examples where the usual, everyday stuff becomes enjoyable only because you experience unenjoyment firstly. Going to bed when you're super tired is much more enjoyable than when you're tired, food tastes way better when you're super hungry than just a little peckish. Playing a video game is much more enjoyable when you've been itching to play it all week but didn't have the time or chance compared to if you've been playing it all week. (Well, that depends on the game I guess.) Enjoyment of debugging a program is like the enjoyment you get when you've been banging your head against a wall and then you stop.:-p

[Cavernio]

AND, to be more dumb and make more multiple posts, to bring up something I haven't seen mentioned, I think happiness is almost more of an anticipation of happiness. Like how striving for a goal is better than reaching it. I guess that depends a lot on the goal, but the anticipation of knowing you're reaching your goal, and what it will be like once your goal's reached, is often better for me than the actual act of reaching the goal. And there's things like the weekend. Friday is often a more enjoyable day than Sunday, even though I'd be working Friday (ok, well, I don't have a mon-fri 9-5 job, but you get the gist), and even though I'm doing things I want to do on Sunday. It's all in the thought of what's to come, not what's actually happening.

[TimeShaper]

Like how striving for a goal is better than reaching it.

Exactly. That's why never achieving supreme happiness is better. Once we do it, there won't be any motivation for us to reach perfection.

That's why supreme happiness is more like drugs. Sure, it makes you feel alright and have no worries but it won't get you anywhere. Once you start drugging, you stop existing.