My empirical study of happy people comes down to these three points: * Have low expectations * Enjoy simple things * Don't care too much
Almost; you're missing gratitude. It's the "one weird trick" to happiness.
Aristotle – How to live a good life
131–140 of 183 posts
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#132Aristotle lives in the old versions of the Earth. The outdated concepts may not stand up to modern thinking, but are sufficient for dealing with a simple life. Unfortunately, most people's lives are not simple.
>>> The outdated concepts may not stand up to modern thinking Can you elaborate ? From a quick read, the concept of good ("A good thing fulfils its unique function") and how to be a good human ("to have an excellent soul. And this excellence reveals itself in a clear intellect and a noble character.") seems timeless to me
[deleted]
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#133My empirical study of happy people comes down to these three points: * Have low expectations * Enjoy simple things * Don't care too much
I think it's fundamentally important to care deeply about some things e.g. your craft. As you tend to find joy when you're deep in flow state.I'd also add: * Don't argue with people on the internet You'd be inherently happier, also: * Enjoy irony when you can
I've found that caring deeply about one's craft leads to being unhappy when the craft isn't perfect, unhappy with teammates who don't care as much as they do, unhappy with an industry that doesn't focus on the craft, unhappy with the customer who doesn't respect the end result, etc. That leads to conflict, and then nobody is happy. You can still care without caring deeply.
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#134It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of happiness or assumes that happiness will be an inevitable byproduct of virtue; even if we define happiness very broadly to include things like "satisfaction" or a "sense of purpose". Part of me suspects that may be because Aristotle was likely upper class and therefore already had success and/or wealth. I'm not sure that I think his arguments work for…
> It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of happiness or assumes that happiness
Isn't it understood that focusing on trying to make yourself happy will actually make you miserable, and in any case "happiness" tends to revert to the mean fairly quickly?
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#135Aristotle lives in the old versions of the Earth. The outdated concepts may not stand up to modern thinking, but are sufficient for dealing with a simple life. Unfortunately, most people's lives are not simple.
>>> The outdated concepts may not stand up to modern thinking Can you elaborate ? From a quick read, the concept of good ("A good thing fulfils its unique function") and how to be a good human ("to have an excellent soul. And this excellence reveals itself in a clear intellect and a noble character.") seems timeless to me
> "A good thing fulfils its unique function" [...] seems timeless to me
On the contrary, I think we've learned something since about the importance of distinguishing "good" from "effective".
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#136Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#137One thing you have to notice is the centrality of the nature of a thing, which is to say its telos , or end. Fulfillment is, after all, defined by our nature; it is a matter of proceeding from potential to actuality, as determined by our nature. What is good advances a person according to one's nature (in our case, human nature), what is bad acts against it. Telos, or finality, also gives morality its proper and obje…
One of my core criticisms to Plato and later Aristotle is not a criticism of Aristotle qua Aristotle, but in the way people give this almost religious reverence to the particular words they use. As if by saying that
>Telos, or finality, also gives morality its proper and objective ground: what is morally right or wrong follows, ultimately, from one's nature.
I have some intuitive understanding of what telos is and why it matters. If I'm understanding you correctly, morality is defined by outcome, but the "tragedy of the crudeness of materialism" is that we can't know the final outcome of anything. Then what good is knowing about telos anyway?
I'd argue that Scholasticism, that is, the marriage of Middle-Ages Christianity to the truthy-sounding gobbledygook of Aristotle, set the case for the moral authority of the church back a thousand years.
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#138It seems to me that this either underemphasizes the importance of happiness or assumes that happiness will be an inevitable byproduct of virtue; even if we define happiness very broadly to include things like "satisfaction" or a "sense of purpose". Part of me suspects that may be because Aristotle was likely upper class and therefore already had success and/or wealth. I'm not sure that I think his arguments work for…
The article says directly: “One might even suffer greatly and still live a virtuous—that is: a good—life. When Aristotle speaks of a “happy” life, he means a fulfilled or flourishing life rather than a pleasurable one.” Suffering certainly does make it harder to be virtuous, but you can interpret that not as disregarding the poor but as giving even more justification for orienting society toward satisfying everyone’s…
Idea: Web page of every phrase in (Koine) greek that meant different thing to the ancient great philosophers than in English language today. This'd help to get a good picture of the Greeks at once for one usually stumbles upon the "different interpretations" slowly.
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But what does it mean to cut well? Just the sharpness of the blade? What about grip comfort? And balancing? And stickiness? And weight? And what about the thing being cut? Can a knife cut everything well? But what does it mean to cut? What is sharpness? How does one define it? What is a blade? What does it mean for something to be "comfortable"? How does one define weight: how does one define if something is "heavy…
So if I don't have to take it literally I have to go with my own interpretation, which might be different from Aristotle's and voids the entire purpose of writing down his teachings.
> So if I don't have to take it literally I have to go with my own interpretation […]
Re: Aristotle – How to live a good life
#140Just looking at the page and all the animation is fun. It looks nice, but trying to read it with all the distraction is very difficult for me.