What I've discerned by my study of philosophy.

[Betticus]

Happiness is a reality that exists only within your own mind.

Somehow I'll make that little statement much more flowery and smart sounding but that's what it boils down to.

ummm, kissing really cute girls helps a lot too.

 

[Netzach]

So's unhappiness and all that stuff too.

 

[Betticus]

So's unhappiness and all that stuff too.

Exactly. Within reason though. It's not going to be possible to be happy if you are being viciously raped by the IRS or other terrible events but when you aren't being stressed by bullshit ...

Even then how you react to and feel about that bullshit is a product of where you are mentally. Some people wonder at how others can be seemingly unfazed by bad or maddening events.

 

[DeservingBitch]

Happiness, like unhappiness and a lot of other things in life are merely collective hallucinations.

Which relates to what Marx was saying: human beings make their own history, although not under conditions of their own choosing.

I think it's important to remember that last part of Marx's insight less you want to put individual blame on unhappiness.

 

[HB1965]

If you want wisdom...ask Hommy's cock or DB's cunt.

 

[YourCaptor]

Happiness, like unhappiness and a lot of other things in life are merely collective hallucinations.

Which relates to what Marx was saying: human beings make their own history, although not under conditions of their own choosing.

I think it's important to remember that last part of Marx's insight less you want to put individual blame on unhappiness.

I don't believe that, happiness and unhappiness are things that are original in every human being. The only collective anything humans experience is reality. That is why conditions are not of our own choosing, because every persons individual self clashes with all others creating a world foreign to all.

 

[LilyBart]

I'm old. Well, sort of old.
Shit happens. (excuse my language, please)

The longer we live, the more opportunities for fate or nature or luck or bad-luck. It just is. As DB put it: "The only collective anything humans experience is reality."

I'm not a fatalist at all. I just know that time tells. The longer you live, the more you see...

However, time brings a lot of good stuff too. I just try to focus on the good and happy, as basic as it sounds. I'd rather rejoice in the births and the milestones towards adulthood (or equivalent) than sorrow in the deaths and downward steps of my friends and loved ones.

Thankfully, while there have been a few downward steps, I have had much more to celebrate with the people I love.


(Trying to make my own history..... )

 

[minx1]

Happiness, like unhappiness and a lot of other things in life are merely collective hallucinations.

Which relates to what Marx was saying: human beings make their own history, although not under conditions of their own choosing.

I think it's important to remember that last part of Marx's insight less you want to put individual blame on unhappiness.

DB, you will know this...doesn't he say that peoples economic reality stops them from experiencing true happiness?

But then that begs the question, what is the definition of true happiness? Does that mean its found in material things or from the opportunities that wealth can afford people?
The romantic in me likes to think that people whatever their (economic) circumstances experience happiness and that happiness is indeed what you make it.....it's relative.

I am torn, because then when I think about it in say the context of someone living in poverty who receives food or clothes...do they experience happiness, or is that more relief born out of desperation? I would probably opt for the latter.
But then on the other hand, I remember seeing tv footage of kids playing football in Kenya (I think) who were undoubtedly having a lot of fun. But presumably if you took that example, and applied it to Marxs theory, their economic circumstances would dictate that they weren't experiencing true happiness??
Perhaps fun is different to happiness. Perhaps they were happy or perhaps they weren't old enough to understand their reality and circumstances and that their happiness was an illusion.

Does that make any sense at all? lol

Damn I wish i hadn't started to think about this now!

 

[Betticus]

Perhaps happiness wasn't the best word to choose. Fulfillment and contentment might have been more accurate.

 

[LilyBart]

Perhaps happiness wasn't the best word to choose. Fulfillment and contentment might have been more accurate.

Fulfillment and contentment make a romance novel, love.

Just kidding.

It is what you want it to be. If the other person isn't on board, then it's not to be. That's all.

 

[DeservingBitch]

As DB put it: "The only collective anything humans experience is reality."

I didn't write this. YourCaptor did.

DB, you will know this...doesn't he say that peoples economic reality stops them from experiencing true happiness?

But then that begs the question, what is the definition of true happiness? Does that mean its found in material things or from the opportunities that wealth can afford people?
The romantic in me likes to think that people whatever their (economic) circumstances experience happiness and that happiness is indeed what you make it.....it's relative.

I am torn, because then when I think about it in say the context of someone living in poverty who receives food or clothes...do they experience happiness, or is that more relief born out of desperation? I would probably opt for the latter.
But then on the other hand, I remember seeing tv footage of kids playing football in Kenya (I think) who were undoubtedly having a lot of fun. But presumably if you took that example, and applied it to Marxs theory, their economic circumstances would dictate that they weren't experiencing true happiness??
Perhaps fun is different to happiness. Perhaps they were happy or perhaps they weren't old enough to understand their reality and circumstances and that their happiness was an illusion.

Does that make any sense at all? lol

Damn I wish i hadn't started to think about this now!

Yes, Marx claims that our reality under capitalism prevents our hapiness. But not so much because of lack of material things, but rather because of alienation.

Marx argues that the commodification of human labor-power under capitalism results in a profund personal alienation, a hollowing out of the meaning of life. For, instead of treating our creative energies as a unique source of personal identity, the owners of the conditions and means of production treat living labour-power as a thing. Being forced to relinquish control over her labor, the worker suffers an estrangement from an essential part of her humanity.

In Marx's word:

" But the exercise of labour power, labour, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of hiw own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus, his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has made over to another." (Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, Moscow, Progress Publisher, 1952, p.20)

So, for Marx, alienation does not come per se from the lack of material goods, but rather from the social relations of inequality and alienation that make capitalism possible. In other words, it's not poverty per se that is an obstacle to hapinness for Marx -- it is the social relations of power that create poverty that are obstacles to hapiness.

 

[Betticus]

I was watching a show on philosophy and they were looking at the life of the Roman philosopher Seneca, the tutor to Nero.

Apparently one of his beliefs was that if you are mentally prepared for the worst outcome of the events of the day then you will be able to avoid senseless anger and be able to control your emotions.

It was a thing that he had tried to instill in Nero as the boy was uncontrollable. He had said that even from a young age it was apparent that Nero was a heartless tyrant who lacked even the most rudimentary system of self control.

It was interesting. There isn't a whole lot known about Seneca's personal life but what was written about him and those accounts are politically slanted.

I still prefer the views of the cyrenaics.

 

[YourCaptor]

DB, you will know this...doesn't he say that peoples economic reality stops them from experiencing true happiness?

But then that begs the question, what is the definition of true happiness? Does that mean its found in material things or from the opportunities that wealth can afford people?
The romantic in me likes to think that people whatever their (economic) circumstances experience happiness and that happiness is indeed what you make it.....it's relative.

I am torn, because then when I think about it in say the context of someone living in poverty who receives food or clothes...do they experience happiness, or is that more relief born out of desperation? I would probably opt for the latter.
But then on the other hand, I remember seeing tv footage of kids playing football in Kenya (I think) who were undoubtedly having a lot of fun. But presumably if you took that example, and applied it to Marxs theory, their economic circumstances would dictate that they weren't experiencing true happiness??
Perhaps fun is different to happiness. Perhaps they were happy or perhaps they weren't old enough to understand their reality and circumstances and that their happiness was an illusion.

Does that make any sense at all? lol

Damn I wish i hadn't started to think about this now!

That makes lots of sense, and I think its happiness, I have spent much of my life without many luxuries and I still found happiness. You don’t miss what you never had.

Perhaps happiness wasn't the best word to choose. Fulfillment and contentment might have been more accurate.

When talking fulfillment and contentment that simply applies to what things in life you need to have done. While the little boy in Kenya may be fulfilled because he is having fun and has no other care at the moment, his mother might not be fulfilled because she doesn’t want her child growing up in such a violent world, and her husband might not be fulfilled because Kibaki again has power.

Marx argues that the commodification of human labor-power under capitalism results in a profund personal alienation, a hollowing out of the meaning of life. For, instead of treating our creative energies as a unique source of personal identity, the owners of the conditions and means of production treat living labour-power as a thing. Being forced to relinquish control over her labor, the worker suffers an estrangement from an essential part of her humanity.

In Marx's word:

" But the exercise of labour power, labour, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of hiw own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus, his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has made over to another." (Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, Moscow, Progress Publisher, 1952, p.20)

That is so damn true, number 2 reason to hate capitalisms right their. Carl was great at diagnosing.

 

[minx1]

I didn't write this. YourCaptor did.


Yes, Marx claims that our reality under capitalism prevents our hapiness. But not so much because of lack of material things, but rather because of alienation.

Marx argues that the commodification of human labor-power under capitalism results in a profund personal alienation, a hollowing out of the meaning of life. For, instead of treating our creative energies as a unique source of personal identity, the owners of the conditions and means of production treat living labour-power as a thing. Being forced to relinquish control over her labor, the worker suffers an estrangement from an essential part of her humanity.

In Marx's word:

" But the exercise of labour power, labour, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of hiw own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus, his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has made over to another." (Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, Moscow, Progress Publisher, 1952, p.20)

So, for Marx, alienation does not come per se from the lack of material goods, but rather from the social relations of inequality and alienation that make capitalism possible. In other words, it's not poverty per se that is an obstacle to hapinness for Marx -- it is the social relations of power that create poverty that are obstacles to hapiness.

so happiness comes from work or creativity and having control over your part in the process? Under capitalism, the control is taken away and a worker has no power...feels alienated and that prevents them from realising their worth and true happiness??

Lol...bear with me I'm trying to learn

 

[satindesire]

I've noted in my short years that if a person is truly determined to achieve something they put forth the effort EVERY DAY to go towards that goal.

If happiness is your goal, and you have the patience and willingness to overcome, then you will achieve it!

Positive thinking is the first step. Some of the bad things that happen to us happen because we inflict those consequences on ourselves. If we treat ourselves well, then I think we all have the opportunity to be happy.

Edited to Add:

Almost every single bad thing that has ever happened to me, has happened because in some way, I contributed to that action. Things that are totally out of my hands, such as losing my grandmother at 12 or being raped at 16 obviously I cannot blame myself for...but I really am starting to see how I need to act in accordance to my future goals in order to achieve them sooner.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Happiness is a reality that exists only within your own mind.

Somehow I'll make that little statement much more flowery and smart sounding but that's what it boils down to.

ummm, kissing really cute girls helps a lot too.

Sounds like you are defending some version of solipsism.

Dubious.

 

[Netzach]

Got sick and got zen. Not like, actually go to Japan, or sit sesshin 8 hours a day or anything, but crack a book and go "well shit that makes the only sense I've read in a long time " kind of zen.

Which is about as removed from Marxism as a system gets. I still get pissed off about injustice, but I also know that there's really only a sense of justice, like all things human it's a construct.

Even a shit job or a bunch of debt doesn't rob me from birds singing, sun on the snow and knowing that I have 50 more years of this if I'm lucky and knowing pretty much exactly the end result of it all. Additionally things change, this is the only reliable certainty. They change and I have no knowledge or ability to predict how, and this is what keeps life interesting even when the world seems a shithole and I don't like how things are going. They're still going.

Doesn't matter to the birds, snow, or the millions of people who'll never know me. Which actually comes as a relief when I ignore my ego. I remember crying my eyes out one day in the park about feeling romantically wronged by someone and then realizing the world does not give a shit. Squirrels dashed, an egret waded across this very urban pond, and this took a load off my mind indeed. They don't care, they aren't invested, my problems and my sorrows are really a tiny personal illusion that I'm picking. My sickness or poverty or debt are not any different than other peoples - not more acute, not more worth being wracked by. Stuff is how it is, and tomorrow it's not how it is now.

Happiness became about a decision. And I don't think it right to deny that other people can have agency and perspective in their own lives, however different those lives. Marx saw "the proles" "the masses" but when you actually talk to them you realize they have philosophy, desire, personality. Everyone makes thought out choices, however desperate and dead-end the options may be.

Had I decided to be unhappy that doesn't make the decision *wrong* or *blameworthy* - it's just that there ARE other options and there is the option to see it as an illusion or a manufacture or simply a fact of the world as it is. The thing that westerners tend to do it get evangelical - if *I've* found truth I have to make sure those I care about live in it too....so we come up with cults of hope and self-actualization which don't just recognize that positive thinking is powerful, we blame ourselves and others for not doing it exactly as we'd do it or "should" be doing it.

I also don't hate capitalism, because given creativity it can be an enormous force to empower people. The problem is the environment which has blinded people to the role of creativity and niche-seeking and differentiation and ethics and long-range planning as KEY to profit, not as some annoying interference with profit.

 

[Betticus]

Sounds like you are defending some version of solipsism.

Dubious.

Damnit Rosco, you take that back! I have never solipsed anyone! Get your mind out of the gutter man.

 

[Betticus]

I find myself agreeing with Netz's last post. No one system or thought school will fit all people. I'm sure that communism was just fine as a theory but if you were one of the laborers working for nothing and your wife spent hour upon hour in the bread lines, you lived in a generic block state run slum and had the secret police watching and listening to everything it sucked ass.

Of course, if you were in charge it was totally different. Seated in the lap of luxury, secret police bringing you drugged teenaged girls to rape and deciding the fate of millions.

The world does move right along without you as Nets said. Life isn't going to last forever and your happiness or misery really only matter to you. No one else cares a whole lot. Point in case, have you ever had a friend who is constantly depressed, suicidal, needy as can be? They somehow suck the life right out of you.

Oh, since this is getting long here's a cute rodent..

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/images/2008/02/10/img_6138.jpg

Just so you don't get bored.

As for trying to force your views on others or you own beliefs it's not going to work worth a darn. What works for one won't work for everyone or won't work for them at this point in time in their life.

But, at just about any time kissing that really cute girl helps a lot.

 

[HottieMama]

But, at just about any time kissing that really cute girl helps a lot.

AMEN!!!!

Like someone else said, for me it's about positive thinking. i know that sounds trite, but there is ALWAYS something to be miserable about, just like there is always something to be happy about. Why not focus on what is positive, what is going well, instead of dwelling on the shit?

 

[minx1]

/snip/
Doesn't matter to the birds, snow, or the millions of people who'll never know me. Which actually comes as a relief when I ignore my ego. I remember crying my eyes out one day in the park about feeling romantically wronged by someone and then realizing the world does not give a shit. Squirrels dashed, an egret waded across this very urban pond, and this took a load off my mind indeed. They don't care, they aren't invested, my problems and my sorrows are really a tiny personal illusion that I'm picking. My sickness or poverty or debt are not any different than other peoples - not more acute, not more worth being wracked by. Stuff is how it is, and tomorrow it's not how it is now.

Happiness became about a decision. And I don't think it right to deny that other people can have agency and perspective in their own lives, however different those lives. Marx saw "the proles" "the masses" but when you actually talk to them you realize they have philosophy, desire, personality. . Everyone makes thought out choices, however desperate and dead-end the options may be.

Had I decided to be unhappy that doesn't make the decision *wrong* or *blameworthy* - it's just that there ARE other options and there is the option to see it as an illusion or a manufacture or simply a fact of the world as it is.

I like trying to understand different perspectives such as Marx, but I agree with this.

To me happiness is a state of mind, whether thats achieved by choice, indifference, an acceptance of ones own situation of even perhaps an ignorance to it. Its all relative too; happiness is a very personal thing. What makes people happy differs from one person to the next and some I guess experience those feelings more often or more strongly than others.
But it is a state of mind and can be achieved by everyone. Everyone regardless of their circumstances has the potential at some stage to feel it.
But having said all that I do think that circumstances, whether its illness or poverty or something else can effect your propensity to it. Sure its a state of mind and can be a choice, but if you are dying of starvation I'm not sure even the most accepting, positive thinking person could feel a sense of happiness in those circumstances.

Crikey I'm not making sense again. I shouldn't post when I first wake up

 

[intothewoods]

Got sick and got zen. Not like, actually go to Japan, or sit sesshin 8 hours a day or anything, but crack a book and go "well shit that makes the only sense I've read in a long time " kind of zen.

Did we read the same book? Ha.

 

[professorquixote]

Happiness is a reality that exists only within your own mind.

Somehow I'll make that little statement much more flowery and smart sounding but that's what it boils down to.

ummm, kissing really cute girls helps a lot too.

but that doesn't account for everything we feel and how it rubs off on other people and what about sadness? does that also exist in our minds? love? lust" hate? Indifference?
To attempt to sum up everything about philosophy is undermining all those of who cherish, love and study. and attempt to make sense of it all but realise they never will.

 

[YourCaptor]

but that doesn't account for everything we feel and how it rubs off on other people and what about sadness? does that also exist in our minds? love? lust" hate? Indifference?
To attempt to sum up everything about philosophy is undermining all those of who cherish, love and study. and attempt to make sense of it all but realise they never will.

I don't think this underminds anything, you take in a snapshot of reality, and interpreted in your own mind. Their are underlying patterns to how we interpret things, but we all also do it in our own unique way.

 

[Betticus]

I stand by my initial posting.