31–40 of 89 posts
Not to say that that's laughable per se, cos who knows what people take from reading the ramblings of unhappy people, some probably vibe with it, others may pity it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t speak for GP but I laughed out loud when I read about how the author of this article knows how to “cure depression”. Aside from the ignorance of brain chemistry, situational factors that can contribute to depression, and the glaringly obvious fact of the subjectivity of how depression is experienced, the hubris to assert that this blogger ~knows the cure ~ inspires very little confidence in their credibility.…
He didn't say he knows _the_ cure he says he cured himself. It's like someone loses weight and sticks to it, they don't know _the_ cure for obesity, but they managed to go from being obese to not being obese and staying there for some time and then wrote a blog wherre they say "wow, i found i was over eating due to eating shitty lunches at my desk and not doing exercise so then i switched to salads and cycling to the…
I appreciate your concern for my reading ability!
As you’ve pointed out:
>It's easy to make knee-jerk emotional reactions.
Sometimes the urge to insert meaning into a text can be so strong that one can be compelled to ignore the entire premise of a blog post. Heck, a person might even resort to cheap condescension to defend what some might reasonably call empty self-congratulatory drivel!
The kind of "confidence" that is important to happiness is very specific. Overall, I'm less confident and more anxious than the average person. What I can do is convince myself that I'm making the best decisions for myself under the circumstances I find myself in. As long as I can make optimal decisions without feeling strong negative emotions, I simply don't have to feel those emotions. For me, happiness is not "lack of a persistent itch to do things differently" — what is important is that, if I have a persistent itch to do things differently, I actually follow it.
> In Swedish... someone happy in the moment is called glad... Someone happy in the longer-term is called lycklig. And we are not just some millions of weirdos in the northernmost of Europe. The Germans are froh when they are happy in the short term and glücklich when they are happy in the long term... Just because you don't have a dedicated word for something, doesn't mean that it is a foreign concept. In Arabic and…
Yet other times the lack of that word denotes a different perspective on that subject. Short term or long term happiness isn’t differentiated in the untied states. I don’t think of happiness in terms of long or short term. Just as a temporary state that hopefully last a long time. Think of all the words we use to express love in English. In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people m…
> In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love.
This sounds like a cultural norm around language use. There's examples of this in English. You might say, "I love lamp." That's weird, it's a non-standard use for the word "love," but people would give you the benefit of the doubt and note that you "like" the lamp.
Speaking of ancestors, I think it is unfortunate that so many are unaware of what they found to be true about happiness, and what happiness is, and what it isn't. I am not impressed by evolutionary psychology and its superficial and half-baked just-so stories. Biology and psychology can give us hints and signs about things which are then folded into any sound account of the human person, but it is just that: informat…
Aristotle seems to have been insidiously wrong on just about every topic. Why should his views on happiness be any different?
Roger Scruton in "On Beauty" made a related point about erotic art and porn. What distinguishes the latter from the former is that porn is really about the experience the viewer gets out of it, the object is interchangeable and even degraded (literally humans reduced to body parts). Whereas erotic art requires 'disinterested interest'. that is judgement without reference to one's desires. It elevates, which is why there is beauty in erotic art but not pornography.
Almost always when people talk about how to 'feel happy' they're really after the same kind of thing that Scruton says pornography satisfies. The much more meaningful thing is to look for beauty, which like truth or goodness is pursued for its own sake. That's arguably more meaningful, and it has little to do with whether you feel happy or sad about it.
Speaking of ancestors, I think it is unfortunate that so many are unaware of what they found to be true about happiness, and what happiness is, and what it isn't. I am not impressed by evolutionary psychology and its superficial and half-baked just-so stories. Biology and psychology can give us hints and signs about things which are then folded into any sound account of the human person, but it is just that: informat…
Why does what any of these people have to say about happiness matter today?
Speaking of ancestors, I think it is unfortunate that so many are unaware of what they found to be true about happiness, and what happiness is, and what it isn't. I am not impressed by evolutionary psychology and its superficial and half-baked just-so stories. Biology and psychology can give us hints and signs about things which are then folded into any sound account of the human person, but it is just that: informat…
Aristotle seems to have been insidiously wrong on just about every topic. Why should his views on happiness be any different?