Larian Studios Forums General Chat Chat (Anything) The Argumentative Git thread

IMO, an individual state - fleeting and not stable. This state depends on your inner contentness. Happiness has many faces => sometimes triggered by your senses (eyes, ears, mouth, skin etc.) - a smell you like very much, reminding you of something, e.g. even the scent of your favourite cake, a flower, perfume. The blooming flowers, the sprouting green in spring, certain music - loving, being loved - the soft fur of your pet. Solving a difficult problem or a tedious task. For some it is embedded in friendships/relationships - or having certain possessions (involves money) - for some it's the self-made wooden table where the family gathers around in the evening. For some (after having survived a great disease) it's regaining their former strength. Actually, it's the small things that make happy. The ones you appreciate, the ones your are aware of, the stuff you might have missed without knowing and have regained - getting a PC game finally you have waited so long for and enjoying to play - reading the book you have waited for.

For people like me => it's coming home to myself, being together with my cat, feeling her satisfaction when I stroke her and she purrs. For me, it's the sincere smile of a library member, who is happy with the stuff I found for her/him. The sun rays outside, the snow flakes, changing nature in general. Mutual laughter with my best friend, when I can enjoy her eyes lighting up. Hearing her voice and feeling the love and trust between us - bonds I feel to people in general, when they are mutual. The newborn fish in my tank (so, I know I did everything right about their environment). The way my garden plants respond to my care and bloom. Writing long posts and knowing a certain Übereil will wince at them <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

Becoming happy? => listening to yourself and asking yourself what you'd like to feel happy. It does not always require consumer goods - sometimes, it's even the compassionate ear of a friend listening to your sorrow.

Criterion => hm, I feel happiness like a golden globe in my chest area. I feel bubbly and light, have an inner amile, could bounce or squeak (yeah, I do that sometimes <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> )
Kiya

Kiya, I think you answered the wrong thing... Basicly because those stupid Englishspeaking idionts have one word for two things...

Anyway, you speak about happiness as a fleeing and not sable thing. You're right more or less, but this makes me feel as if you're talking about being happy (glad, froh) and I didn't mean that, I meant being happy (lycklig, glücklig). The first thing (being froh)is not very stable, and it's not very long lasting either. Being glücklig is pretty lasting though... It comes and goes, but it's pretty stable. How do you reach that? And what are the criterias? Being happy (as I meant it) is pretty feeilng happiness more or less all the time. And even though it IS pretty individuall we're supposed to put up some general map (since pepole, no matter how different they are allmost allways have SOME thing in common. You would rather be healthy and rich that ill and poor, wouldn't you?)

Übereil

@ Ube =>

Kiya did just that Ube.

She wrote it in a way that you needed to dig deeper into what she was saying to capture the meaning you sought.

Kyra_Ny <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I know, but describeing a lasting feeling (more or less) as a not lasting feeling (more or less) doesn't give many points. And the rest of it was very personal, which doesn't help that much when seeking the general thing either...



And I don't know if that's a really good description on what's required for beeing happy either... It's more describeing what happiness IS without going in on what's causing it...

This was a VERY critical post, but it had it's points too. I still hold on the fact that she missed the general idea though (or she just wrote it to annoy me...)

Übereil

PS Kyra, you should be HAPPY your compettitors screws up, since it gives you a bigger chance of winning. Haven't you learnt that? An American not knowing that??? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> DS

Nope,I meant glücklich, Übereil. It's a very personal and individual feeling. And I don't think that glücklich is stable and lasts long. A healthy person, never having survived a severe disease will not be able to cherish and enjoy regained strength. A person never having lost eyesight can't appreciate its coming back.

I do think that your and my definition of Glück is not the same though. As for richness => don't care a fig for that. As long as I can support myself and have enough for my daily needs, I don't need riches (depends on how you determine riches though). If this involves a high consumer rate => nope, not my gain in being glücklich. I come from a family who was quite wealthy and I didn't see my parents being happy BECAUSE of the money, even though they had a lot of luxury.

Healthy? Sure, I'd like my paralysis rest go away, but it doesn't, so I live with it. And I can remember the time where I suffered under that severly - I'm happy I regained 90%. It was a struggle, and I reset my life priorities due to that incident. If I never had that paralysis, I would have never been able to appreciate my regain.

My criterias => feeling myself, being aware of my needs and being able to fulfill them. And these are small things. The way I feel my criterias fulfilled I already described in my former post. And criteria, the most important for me are ... solitude, independence and time for myself. Not riches, not lovelife, not making a career, not the stuff that seems to make you happy. So, I say again => happiness is an individual and fleeting feeling, wonderful to feel and to know, I'm home within myself. Your inner home is not mine - but maybe this book can help you:

Bernard Benson: The path to happiness

it describes in a very simple way that you can only find happiness within yourself, if you are curious, openminded and have the willingness to take everything as unique (even flowers <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> ) He was a pilot, worked for the weapons industry, left all that and turned to Buddhism
Kiya

okay i re-enter the field...

happiness as a stable state has died with the Ancient Greeks (hmm i didn't mean they were more happy than modern humans but at least they could theorize happiness as a stable state more easily) and more marginally with the Romans. Why?
=>happiness was always defined as another face of wisdom and wisdom was the understanding of the World as a global unit ("cosmos"). So it was more easy to give recipes for being happy (epicurian recipes, stoician recipes... for the best known). These recipes were never "be healthy" or "having a lot of friends"... the wise so the happy man was a lone one... and both epicurians and sttoicians (and others) teached to deprease wealth goods (and health is one of them in a way).

but this view was related to a world's understanding as a global unit. and this understanding we have no more. The 'moderns' (i mean since XVI° Century at least) understanding of the world is very fragmented, complex, and actually unreachable). Wisdom is no more the understanding of the world that will make a human happy as everybody ignore what wisdom is. So we have to define happiness as subjective, unstable, ephemeric, maybe as something like the sum of the moments where we're happy, anyway there is no more recipes. the only one who gave recipes for being happy are sects (in the pejorative meaning not in the original's) because for the sects the world is still simple...
But is it possible to be happy in a sect? well that's another questions...
the distance with the complex thing that is real world is probably not a good way to be happy.

GLÜCK

= LUCK - is a coincidental, random outside occurence;

= HAPPINESS - is an individual state of mind.

Emphasis is on individual. It definitely comes from inside. Whether it is lasting or passing, whatever it triggers it - is as individual as we are ourselves.

Therefore I do not believe it to be possible to find a "recepy" or "guideline" on "how to be happy".

Yes, listening to yourself, finding out your wishes beyond satisfaction of basic neeeds is a way in the "pursuit of happiness". Note that the wise people devising the phrase said "pursuit", not "achieving". They were very aware of the fact that it is not a stable state of mind, but an eternally on-going process, in which values and goals are re-defined permanently, as we change.

many people make the idea of happiness too complicated and then try and chase after it. but happiness is like a rainbow - run after it too hard and it disappears.

try for contentment instead. contentment is based on appreciating what you have, not chasing what you think you want.

the lucky people who know how to be content with life, and appreciate the moments are the usually the ones who are the happiest. it's a 'free bonus' rather than something you buy direct! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shhh.gif" alt="" />

happiness = contentment + a smile

(Hope that wasn't too long Ubes... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> )

hmm... i'm not so sure i agree with that...
this idea sounds too stoician... a relevant representation in the Greek/Roman and Medieval (medieval christianism as moral heir of stoicism) Worlds but is still based on an uncomplex world's understanding where each being has its own place for the eternity. In modern world contentment may be the fastest way for being in this state of mind "i have a poor life but i'm content with that" and not trying to make it better.

transposed in the political ground: i will be very cautious (least i can say) towards a political leader who promises happiness... as it would be an open door to totalitarism.
but i will be probably very unhappy with a political leader who asks for contentment as it is the definition for ultra conservatism (and it may become a totalitarism too).

hmm don't remembered who said that we don't know what is to be happy but that generally we know what is to be less unhappy... always liked that.

ok happiness is a feeling... an object of theory? not any more.

guroth ol' boy, i agree with u when u said happiness is a feeling. but first, let me re-state the topic.

[color:"yellow"] What is happiness? And how do you become happy? What are the main criterion for happiness? Is it owning a lot of money, having a lot of friends, being healthy, haveing a flourishing lovelife etc?
[/color]

happiness, as what kiya said, is a multi-faceted thing. thing means concept, state of mind/being, feeling, etc.

first let's go to the part of feeling. happiness is a feeling. & feeling is an indication of your emotional state. & emotional state is part of your being, meaning what/how u feel is an indication of your emotional health. there are people who are so stressed out, they get sick & there's nothing wrong with the body. mind over matter. in terms of influence, our minds are much greater & significant than our bodies. when we feel down, the body goes with it. however, if the mind is formidable though the body is sick, there will always be a good chance that the mind will not be as easily affected & even conquer the bodily ailments. kiya's best friend is the proof. her emotional health is overpowering her physical state that whatever happens, she's always positive & happy.

how do i become happy? first i must know sadness to discern the difference. in my past personal experience, i was too close to the point of no return in my unhealthy emotional state & having a healthy body did not make it any better. in fact, the mind drags the body down. coming to terms, realising the extent of my own self & limitation, i see who i am in terms of influence, relationship, all that point to value of self with emphasis on consequence. i learn & became more aware of who i am. strength, weakness, qualities, quirks, habits, tendencies, tastes, etc. this is exactly as what Kyra has said; know thyself. that i feel is the best answer to this topic. otherwise, how can u be what u don't know? unless u're being led to it unwarily, of course.

for me happiness is fulfilling your purpose. your purpose is according to your own definition.

Please, define "poor life"? Not sure, how you mean it.
Kiya

I've seen a lot of poverty, people living in it (Sri Lanka) - it impressed me a lot as a child how many happy smiles and shining eyes I saw in some of these people living under poverty. Or do you mean "poor life" => a life lacking bright moments? Functioning instead of living?

ah, but are you happy? koz i am. i'm the happiest person i know. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

i don't think being content rules out making an effort to improve a situation - not at all! contentment is not the same as inactivity or inertia. perhaps i left a word out, and should have said "restlessly chasing what you think you want"?

for me, contentment is about enjoying the journey whatever the lessons learned along the way, and accepting what happens and where you get to. mostly i win, sometimes i lose, but there's always something learned, something enjoyed and something gained...

signed

his serene zen-ness, koz. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />

i meant just that and of course poverty as lack of health has no real part in that... i also meant that "happiness=contentment+smile" is something (or at least may be something) like the definition of slavery. i don't mean slavery in the physical/social meaning but in a much more generic way (being passive before life).

ok i don't mean either that contentment is only that but it is more neutral and more ambiguous than happiness. As jang was saying (much better than me) happiness is adequation to the personnal and subjective ends that one has determined for himshelf/hershelf. Contentment is something less in appearance and much more in reality. Contentment is the feeling that you are in adequation with the world (and the social world) and not with your own ends.

so contentment with or without the smile may be the same thing than happiness if you have an exact place determined in the world, if things and beings have an exact place and that place is reachable by way of mind.

"Not only God does play with dices but he doesn't know where they have fallen" (Stephen Hawking, i retranlante from french in english so the correct quoting is probably not exactly that)... how will i know where my place is after that?

Sorry, but now I'm more confused, MG. Why this distinction that contentment is at peace with the "outer world" and happiness at peace with the "inner world" (own ends)? Or did I misunderstand you totally? I do see a difference between contentness/happiness, but I can't understand your definition. In orc-easy words, please?
Being content with myself/my needs/wishes etc. is a way of feeling I'm at home within myself (resting in myself). So, I see contentness and happiness being located within me, not a reaction/result due "adequation with the outer world". <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
Kiya <getting a headache, thinking is a dangerous habit>

happiness isn't the same as contentment - it's a by-product. it can also be a by-product of other things too. but if you do want to achieve it, then contentment is a good starting point. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

the point about "happiness" is that you can't chase it directly - because if you do it tends to burst the bubble, or move out of your grasp, or whatever other image you like.

some of the world's saddest people are those chasing "happiness" through wealth, status, drink, fame, marriage or whatever.

happiness just sneaks up on you when you've got the other stuff right. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/party.gif" alt="" />

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems more like hidden between MG’s lines he’s really asking a personal question over and over again.

Okay, let’s assume an individual has everything they ever desired.
They have what is considered great physical and mental health.
They have a loving family and they don’t desire anything else.

The problem is they are BORED.
Everything they do bores them.
And they are not one of those who just sit around doing nothing.
They are active and they force themselves to be active.
They try new and exciting things.

Let’s just say they DO everything that our world, as we now know it, has taught us to do to eventually gain happiness.

But, everything and I mean everything is totally BORING to them.
They are like Spock on Star Trek.
They have no feeling inside of them.
They are unemotional not because they are unhappy, they just are never truly happy.
And the only happiness they ever have is through other people’s happiness.
The happiness is never their own and no one has noticed that they feel this way; because, they have learned to pantomime happiness so well.

How does one like that ever see happiness when their emotions are like Spock?
They feel totally devoid of emotion making happiness an impossibility AND they have seen doctors and mental drugs do nothing for them.

What then?

That is the hidden question I see in MG’s comments.

Again, What then if all of the above holds true?

Kyra_Ny

Thoughts from Kyra_Ny

now that would be the scariest thing, kyra. *shudders*

Koz hit the note right when he said happiness is a result. an end product, or rather in his words; by-product. by product sounds like a side effect so i think end product is a more appropriate term. i hope.

with Koz's last post, he re-iterated that happiness is some kind of indication. perhaps indication of fulfillment and/or contentment?

the term contentment to me means something u're settled for. let's say u didn't achieve your lifetime ambition & life's not getting much better. but then u admit to yourself that life isn't that all bad as u fear it will be & despite all that screw-ups, u're ok & contented. may not be much but that's what u settle for. is there another meaning to it? guroth?

I think there's more to happiness than just that.
Some people are very HAPPY during the journey to...
But when they get there they are no longer happy; because, their joy came from the journey.

End result yes, but not completely true, because happiness can be during.

For example: I’ve bought PC games with high expectations and I was super happy buying it, installing it, and booting it up, but when it came for me to play it, I was very Unhappy with the game.

Kyra_Ny

People behave quite differently from one another, but if you peer beneath the cultural overlay, you find minds that are basically the same, featuring, for example, the same basic set of emotions, deployed in generally predictable fashion. And various features of human nature would seem to make "lasting fulfillment" elusive. To take a pretty fundamental example: Natural selection didn't "design" us to be lastingly fulfilled. An eternally happy animal would presumably sit around and bask in bliss, rather than do those useful things that anxiety and restlessness provoke us to do—find food and mates, cement alliances, stay vigilant against threats, etc. In other words, lasting contentment would seem to be a prescription for genetic oblivion, in which case genes highly conducive to it presumably wouldn't have survived natural selection; happiness, it seems, is "designed" to evaporate shortly after we attain it by reaching some goal. (Hence addictive behavior—the repeated pursuit of repeatedly vanishing gratification.) And various other features of human nature—rage, jealousy, etc.—would also seem to complicate the quest for bliss.

We are prone, to varying degrees and in various circumstances, to ethnocentrism, violence, adultery, ambition, superstition, and self-deception, among other vices. As one reviewer put it, we are not stardust, we are not golden, there is no way we're getting back to the garden, we need to get used to this.

Should we rue the fact that we belong to such a sorry species—like Woody Allen when he said, "My one regret in life is that I am not someone else"? In fact our flaws are double-edged, and we might not accept the offer of a demon to trade them in for something else.

Take the kin-selected limits on altruism, which tempt us to form dynasties, hire our relatives, spend money on luxuries for our children (orthodontics, summer camp, expensive educations) that we could have used to save the lives of unrelated children in the developing world, and bequeath our estates to our heirs—one of the biggest impediments to economic equality. Unjust, perhaps. But our close relatives have a special place in our hearts because the place for everyone else is, by definition, less special. Would we really be better off if our relationships with our parents, siblings, and children were not uniquely precious?

Or take romantic love, with all its perfidy and heartbreak. If people belonged to a species in which each couple was marooned on an island for life, the absence of romantic rivals would not select for lifelong bliss; it would select for no consciousness at all. There would be no falling in love because there would be no alternative mates to select from, and falling in love would be a huge waste. Nor would there be pleasure in sex, which would be done for reproduction and would provide no more feeling than the release of hormones or the production of gametes. The richness and intensity of the emotions in our minds are evolutionary testimony to the preciousness and fragility of our relationships in life.

Practical social improvement and hopes for moral progress. Here, too, human nature should not be cause for lamentation. The human mind is a complex system of many parts. It may have temptations toward greed or violence, but it has much else besides. It has cognitive faculties that can learn the lessons of history and take a long view of the future. It has faculties of combinatorial reasoning that can come up with new solutions, just as our combinatorial language faculties come up with new sentences. It has a moral sense and a capacity for sympathy which, granted, might be applied by default only to our clan, but which can also be expanded to include the tribe or species. This expansion can be driven by our capacity to enjoy gains in trade, making other people more valuable alive than dead; it can also be expanded by cosmopolitan forces (history, journalism, realistic fiction) that make it easier to project ourselves into other peoples' lives.

Individual decisions on how we live our lives. We all know that identical twins reared apart are highly similar in their intelligence, personality, and temperament. That is one of many discoveries suggesting that some of the differences among us come from differences in our genes. But here is a sobering fact. Identical twins, even when they are reared together, are nowhere near being perfectly correlated. Up to half of the variation in psychological traits is not explained by genes, families, or any of the other usual suspects.
Our negative emotions, dysphoria, are firefighters, urgent, merciless engines that eliminate irritants. In contrast, happiness broadens our psychological repertoire and builds the psychological capital that we draw on much later in life.

Because happiness is about positive-sum games, about creating what was never there before, obtaining happiness is less genetically constrained than is relieving misery. Let’s distinguish three very different kinds of happy lives: the Pleasant Life, the Good Life, and the Meaningful Life.
The Pleasant Life is a life of smiles, ebullience, and good cheer. It consists in getting as many of the felt pleasures as possible and using three sets of skills to amplify them: savoring, mindfulness, and variation. Such "positive affectivity" is highly constrained genetically. It is roughly 50 percent heritable, with identical twins much more similar for it than fraternal twins. Like any heritable characteristic (e.g., body weight), the best we can achieve by dint of will and of tuition is to live in the best part of our set range of smiley good cheer. Negative emotionality is also about 50 percent heritable, however, so the 50 percent left over is not what differentiates the plasticity of happiness from rigidity of dysphoria. Rather, Debbie Reynolds notwithstanding, happiness is not just about the Pleasant Life. In fact, Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson would have trouble recognizing American hedonism as the pursuit of happiness.

Half of humankind, genetically in the lower half of positive affectivity, is not smiley and cheerful. They do not look or act like Goldie Hawn, and pleasure-centered ideas of happiness consign these 3 billion people to the hell of unhappiness. But many of these people are enormously capable of the Good Life, what Aristotle called Eudaimonia. The Good Life is a life filled with absorption, immersion, and flow. When we engage in inspiring conversation or listen to great music, for example, time stops for us. We are one with the music. In such a state there is no consciousness, no thought, and no feeling. Afterward we may say, "That was fun," but what we mean is not that there were felt ecstasies, but that we were swept away.

Having the Good Life consists in my view of two steps. The first is simple, the second is difficult. First you need to know what your signature strengths are. Do you "own" social intelligence, or kindness, or fairness, or spirituality, or love of beauty, or integrity? Next, and this is the hard part, you need to recraft your work, your love, your friendships, your leisure, and your parenting to use these signature strengths more frequently than you do now. This produces more flow in the activities of daily life. Importantly, while there are shortcuts to the pleasures (e.g., drugs, self sexual gratification, TV shopping), there are no shortcuts to the Good Life. It can be had only through the knowledge and deployment of your signature strengths.
No one has yet discovered genetic constraints on the Good Life. Everyone has signature strengths and everyone is capable of recrafting their lives to use them more. There may turn out to be some heritability of intensity of flow and immersion, but no one has yet found it. So, happiness in the sense of the Good Life likely does not have much in the way of the genetic chains to drag it down, as does the Pleasant Life.

The third happy life, the Meaningful Life, is likely without any genetic constraints at all. The Meaningful Life consists in knowing what your signature strengths are and using them in the service of something much larger than you are. It is hard to imagine how "unfortunate" and double-edged genes could compromise that.

Patients who fight dysphoria, have an uphill battle. The success of therapy is measured by how long change lasts before it melts. This Sisyphean struggle likely results from fighting genetic dispositions to sadness or anxiety or anger. People need to increase the Good Life or the Meaningful Life this creates spontaneous accretion and growth. When an individual learns that she or he is very kind and uses their kindness more and more at work, kindness simply increases on its own.

Evolution selected for negative motivation to reliably eliminate threats; so urgent and so stereotyped are threats to survival that there is little leeway for ornamentation. Evolution also selected for positive emotions; these are what broadens and builds, and our best hope lies in their legacy: the peacock's tail, the periodic table, and the cathedral.

Kyra_Ny

(sorry for the long post) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" />

Taken from: Robert Wright, Steven Pinker, and Martin Seligman

It's all quite true...and in a strange coincidence I was reading Steven Pinker & Martin Seligman while I went into this topic!