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How Bad Are Things? (2015)
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#102In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd…
> but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. There's a downside to this logic, one of the enabling sort. I…
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#103> This is also why I am wary whenever people start boasting > about how much better we’re doing than back in the bad old > days. That precise statement seems to in fact be true. But > people have a bad tendency to follow it up with “And so > now most people have it pretty good”. I don’t think we > have any idea how many people do or don’t have it pretty good. We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today…
> We do have it good. Would you rather be middle class today or a king in 18th century?
>
> We have it amazingly good. The fact that we can't see this ("we" as in society) tells me that our appetites are impossible to satisfy.
I completely agree with your first point.
I think your second point may be wrong; rather, people have very little knowledge of how things used to be, so every stubbed toe feels cosmic. (Remember your history class that mentioned the Hundred Years War? WTF does the name of that war tell you???)
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#1043. Or maybe many of the people I know are in fact this unhappy, but they never tell anyone except their psychiatrist all of the pieces necessary to put their life story together.
When I moved back home during my divorce and lived with relatives, I got to see all kinds of stuff going on that I had no knowledge of when I used to visit, keep in touch by phone, etc. I moved out, to an apartment a mile or two away, and went back to getting the whitewashed view of their lives.
I don't think they were even trying to particularly hide things from me. It just didn't come up. It just wasn't possible to convey every bit of minutiae about their lives to me all the time when I wasn't there seeing it firsthand.
You typically have far more limited information about the lives of people around you than you imagine. You don't really know what your neighbors are doing. You don't really know what your coworkers and boss do all day. Etc.
Think of the endless news stories where the neighbors are simply shocked that their next door neighbor was a drug dealer for the Mafia, a serial killer, etc. We often know people a lot less well than we imagine we do.
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#105In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd…
> but really I've internalized the idea that everyone is living a life less than what they hoped their life would be to various extents and that there is also a near infinite combination of ways to achieve this effect such that no one can be dismissed for their misery in any respect without also dismissing the "legitimate" misery of a wide swath of people. There's a downside to this logic, one of the enabling sort. I…
> happiness is probably the wrong word...maybe contentedness is better, tho maybe not
Eudaimonia is the word you're looking for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
There are a lot of arguments against it. I think there are good points in these counter arguments, but come down on the side of Eudaimonia, personally.
Counter arguments:
https://bigthink.com/the-moral-sciences-club/eudaimonism-is-...
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/646/is-virtue...
https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004395794/BP000003.xm...
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#106In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd…
Once, when I was whining about what a "tragedy" my life was, someone told me "Everyone thinks their life is a tragedy." That stuck with me. I consider genuinely listening to merely be good manners . I have had to learn to be more stand-off-ish because this is apparently not some universal standard of good manners. In fact, it's apparently some bizarre aberration that signals "use me" or something. All manner of peopl…
Yes, I agree. People rarely intuitively understand obligation. We leave a lot of how social dynamics functions to the schoolyard and the act of socializing, which leaves many people undereducated on how to socialize. For some people this means being an awkward nerd. For others it means being an emotional leech.
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#107I have literally heard wealthy people complain at length about the difficulty of finding a reliable gardening service for their mansion. Should I listen to their concerns without judging? Or is it reasonable to dismiss their misery? (This is a rhetorical question.)
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#108I loved the 20 person simulation the author used. His point about universal suffering reminds me of another point by Sam Harris: "Everyone you know is practically drowning in suffering" SH brings up this point to contextualize our own suffering. It's hard for us to socialize with others and make connections, but if we consider other peoples' plights and struggles, it gives us more perspective and may aid us to talk,…
Driving, for me, is a massive exercise in being mindful. My goal, however, is not to mind the suffering of others but instead, to take those inputs, not associate with them, and let them go.
For instance, some driver doesn't want to get in the queue at the back, so they drive up and cut over in front of me or a car or two up. There are a lot of thoughts on that that could go through your mind. These range from "no fair" to "jerk" to other things.
But, I've come to realize the best way to deal with that is to detach. You can either not let the person in and then go down that range of thoughts/emotions (primarily negative) or just let them in and not dwell on it. Observe it (assuming it's not jeopardizing anyone's safety) and let it go.
This is a very simple exercise, but it has the potential to be carried on to larger experiences in life. I'm not here to judge if you don't think it is, I just know what makes sense to me. And this is not something I have come up with on my own. This and similar techniques have been highlighted in quite a few books I've read, people I've listened to at various events.
This for me is a much deeper discussion and I think completely personal to the experiencer. I tend to fall on the side of being mindful of yourself and the struggles/suffering of existence are of your own doing and choices (obviously, this is a simplistic statement, but to me true on a high level).
I've been listening/watching quite a bit of Naval Ravikant podcasts/videos. I think he has a lot of good wisdom to digest and he definitely covers this subject. I highly recommend anything of his you come across. https://nav.al
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#109Happiness is like the shadow that always evades.
"Le bonheur est la plus grandes des conquêtes, celle qu'on fait contre le destin qui nous est imposé" ~Albert Camus
(Happiness is the greatest of conquests, one which we achieve in spite of the fate which is imposed on us)
Re: How Bad Are Things? (2015)
#110In my experience this is very true upon simply becoming the kind of person who is open to listening to others. The vast majority of people you've run into have had huge difficulties in life, or are affected by people close to them who have huge difficulties in their lives. People tell me I'm a wonderful listener due to my lack of judgement on their problems (more than once, people, including my therapist, tell me I'd…
Once, when I was whining about what a "tragedy" my life was, someone told me "Everyone thinks their life is a tragedy." That stuck with me. I consider genuinely listening to merely be good manners . I have had to learn to be more stand-off-ish because this is apparently not some universal standard of good manners. In fact, it's apparently some bizarre aberration that signals "use me" or something. All manner of peopl…
The version I heard is "If you knew X's problems, you wouldn't trade your problems for theirs." Not universally true, but goes a long way .
Another aphorism is, "some people are givers, others are takers". It's a function of personality, not resources or circumstances.