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Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

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Re: Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

#6
"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. ... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthy pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. ... I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others to do the same."

- CS Lewis

Re: Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

#7
post #4

we can learn to be though.

That would be a waste and a shame. We should be satisfied with certain things like stable and equitable sharing of limited resources. Other things define being human in that we need to have pursuits, learn, build. A society without those is losing to machines by becoming them.

Re: Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

#8
The most successful life form on a planet will probably always ask themselves this.

Because if we'd been happy remaining primitive then we wouldn't have become advanced.

We were not happy after inventing technology (not with technology either, but we thought we would be).

Evolutionarily: The people who were happy without children, or another child, or a second wife to make more children, were not as successful in propagating their genes.

Why were peacocks not satisfied with a small slightly less colorful tail?

Re: Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

#9
post #6

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. ... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthy pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that…

The entire argument follows from a single incredible, unsubstantiated assumption, that “creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.”

Re: Why are humans never satisfied? [video]

#10
post #8

The most successful life form on a planet will probably always ask themselves this. Because if we'd been happy remaining primitive then we wouldn't have become advanced. We were not happy after inventing technology (not with technology either, but we thought we would be). Evolutionarily: The people who were happy without children, or another child, or a second wife to make more children, were not as successful in pro…

> The most successful life form on a planet will probably always ask themselves this.

I wonder what answer the dinosaurs had? Perhaps they were happy becoming the fuel of our technology millions of years later.

_Most successful_ begs the question on what scale that would be?

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