Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: otis01 on 29/10/2006 23:16:30
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Are you happy? How can a person be happy in this world of chaos, violence, and injustice? Is a person happy in this world fooling him or herself?
Everything we do can be boiled down to a want of happiness. even communicating with others on this board is a pursuit to understand and be understood- to be happy.
Is there any purpose which you do anything other than to be happy yourself and make happy those around you?
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What a great question.
In My humble opinion...Happiness is that fulffilling positve joyous state in which a person may find themselves content, despite of, or in spite of their own personal circumstances and that of the circumstances of the world around them.
Because there is sorrow and pain and hurt in the world does not mean that one can not be happy...one can be happy on many different levels and still show sorrow and woe for the those far worse off !
I would not want to live by the rule that because there is suffering in the world that I must therefore not be happy.
It is possible that being happy may well be used as a defence mechanism against the sorrow in the world...but it still does not mean that one ignores those sorrows.
I would be able to act more to aid assistance if I was happy than unhappy !
I recently came to the conclusion that happiness is what you make of it...because I have asked of myself the very same question you have asked here.
I came to what may seem deemed a selfish answer in that, is there any point in my also being unhappy ?..just because you are or someone else is ? ..I may do good when i am happy...I certainly feel better to help when I am positive.
Hmmm...perhaps one might exchange the word ' happy' for 'positive ' in some of the cases above. One things for sure, there are varying degrees of happiness but do not think that happiness means ignorance of suffering.
Great question...THANK YOU Otis01
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I think all humans are looking for happiness by finding the person that makes them happy and in turn for whatever they are able to make happy also..People need love and not every person can give the love another person feel the same way they do.. It is a very nice thing to find someone who makes you smile and feel good about yourself and all the world around you.. being loved and in love changes the way your heart see's the world and when the world looks back at you and sees the love refecting back at it, people can't help pass that reflection on.. Even in the caos of life and horriffic pain I have found love can make my whole world bearable right in the midst of caos!! It can bring a smile when my smile is lost and it can bring tears and joy..even when I am down so low, I think I will never rise again... that love can be from a friend or lover or child or right there from your own heart for others and for yourself! Happiness is what you make of it.. We cannot depend on others to give it to us as there will be times we have to carry ourselves through tough times so the happiness must come from within the heart the spirit the soul.. Not saying others can't bring us happinesss, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! Just saying that we are lucky when fate smiles down on us and gives us someone who can make us feel as if we are special and helps us to let out the beautiful people we all are... sometimes we don't even know we are inside there hiding from everyone because we are scared or shy or just synical about showing ourselves..our feelings.. I think there is true happiness but without some pain or sorrow how could we ever know the difference?
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I would go further - happiness is not despite sorrow or hurt, but as much because of it. You cannot have white without their existing black - so you cannot have happiness in a world unless its opposite can also exist.
Interestingly, it often seems that people in some of the most deprived areas of the world can display the greatest happiness, and it is often we in the world who seem to have most that seem to find the least happiness.
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I would go further - happiness is not despite sorrow or hurt, but as much because of it. You cannot have white without their existing black - so you cannot have happiness in a world unless its opposite can also exist.
Interestingly, it often seems that people in some of the most deprived areas of the world can display the greatest happiness, and it is often we in the world who seem to have most that seem to find the least happiness.
That's probably because we're all spoilt complacent riff-raff who forget to realise how lucky we really are !
I was going to say bourgeois but chose not to ! [::)]
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We are all very Lucky each and every day!! I agree.. George you and Neil are both right on the money and I agree that this Otis was a great question!
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Why worry about things which don't concern you or events which you cant alter.
I'm happy most of the time, i find if I'm happy and smiling then i can make everyone else around me happy which then makes me Happy so we all end up being happy.Its good to be happy.
I wasn't happy earlier though because someone forgot to deliver my takeaway ,i was sooooooooooo looking forward to my burger.[:)]
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That's probably because we're all spoilt complacent riff-raff who forget to realise how lucky we really are !
Maybe so, but the point is that having all that we have, we do forget its value - the only way one learns the value of things is to learn what it is like to be without it.
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i find if I'm happy and smiling then i can make everyone else around me happy which then makes me Happy so we all end up being happy.Its good to be happy.
This too, I find is true; that happiness, like sadness, is infectious.
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I agree it is.. So it is important to be as happy as possible... Even when our hearts are breaking... It really helps to try and dwell on happy thoughts else one might go mad!
Hey Michael, make sure you don't tip the boy when your burger arrives... You may be waiting awhile!LOL..
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good to be happy.
I wasn't happy earlier though because someone forgot to deliver my takeaway ,i was sooooooooooo looking forward to my burger.[:)]
AHH !!..that must have been your neighbour I delivered the burger too !!..They did seem quite happy !!... [;)]
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That's probably because we're all spoilt complacent riff-raff who forget to realise how lucky we really are !
Maybe so, but the point is that having all that we have, we do forget its value - the only way one learns the value of things is to learn what it is like to be without it.
YEP....That WAS my point exactly ,...hence the word 'complacent 'was used to indicate how unaware of the value of the things we have.
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HEE HEE HEE!! FLOGG HIM FLOGG HIM!! You are funny... I am fixing to have a spring salad with oranges and mesquite smoked chicken and some killer red rasberry vinegarette!!! Yummmmmmmm!
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"I would go further - happiness is not despite sorrow or hurt, but as much because of it. You cannot have white without their existing black - so you cannot have happiness in a world unless its opposite can also exist."
Excellent point.
Personally, sometimes I find it very difficult to be happy when I see so many people suffering and unhappy. I see that does no good, but its difficult to control.
Is it necessary for humans to have personal, loving relationships to be happy? Is it necessary for YOU to have loving relationships with freinds and/or family to feel happy?
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Personally, sometimes I find it very difficult to be happy when I see so many people suffering and unhappy. I see that does no good, but its difficult to control.
Yes, but the point I was making is that if someone whom you knew was going through a difficult situation, and they finally make it through and things get better for them, do you not feel happy for them? Ofcourse, you could just feel sorry that they had such a difficult time to go through, but most people would rather be happy that the difficult times are over. Would you feel as happy for them if they had not had that difficult situation to try them, and things were always just good times and no trials and tribulations?
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In Life we need both in order to be able to appreciate what we have.. We as humans can sometimes forget how good we have things and dwell on bad things untill something really bad or tragic puts us in our place so to speak, then suddenly our eyes are open and we are able to see and appreciate what we have , most of the time...
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It is not about forgetting how good things are, but that we only ever understand things in relation to something else.
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Yes and sometimes having that comparison is pretty eyeopening......
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I totally disagree.
One does not need sorrow to know happiness !...absolutely not !!..therefore, by your reckoning then, one needs happiness to have sorrow yes ?
I am sure there is suffering in this world on such a scale that the people receiving it have never experienced joy
!!...and I am sure there are people who have never experienced true sorrow and live in eternal joy !
I think ,to say that you can't have one without the other is in MY opinion wholly naive ! (no offence)
The question was about individual happiness !.....
You are applying a yin/yang philosophy to human emotion and it just does not work like that.
If you were to expand it to the rest of the animal kingdom there are clear cases of one being without the other...unfortunately mostly suffering !...but keeping it within out own species does not dictate that we have to know suffering to know joy..no no no !!
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I am sure there is suffering in this world on such a scale that the people receiving it have never experienced joy
!!...and I am sure there are people who have never experienced true sorrow and live in eternal joy !
While I agree there are some people who have the propensity to see good in everything, and to be happy with little; and others who tend to see the worst in all they experience, and so have only the rarest of joys; I don;t believe that it is actually suffering that causes sadness, or the absence of it that creates joy, but simply how one's experience of life relates to one's expectations, and those expectations are governed by one's past experience, both direct and indirect.
Ofcourse, it is extremely difficult to really make objective experiments to demonstrate one or other reality.
Much of what we see as suffering in the world today would have been a normality for our forefathers, but the modern world has taught us not to be satisfied with that which our forefathers had, and so we feel that to have no more than that which was met out to our forefathers amounts to sufferring.
Then again, there are those who have argued that religion, being the opiate of the masses, was designed so that the masses did not emotional;y suffer despite their physical deprivations.
Whether we consider giving the masses this opiate as a means of tollerating their deprivations is ethically justifiable is ofcourse the subject of much debate, and those who believe the masses should not be satisfied with their lot would then consider such an opiate to be unethical. On the other hand, one could just as well argue that if the deprivations cannot be alleviated, then the withdrawal of the opiate that relieves them of the pain of their situation may be unethical. Personally, I do not like opiates, as I do not like any drug, be it chemical or psychological, but nonetheless I accept that we do sometimes administer opiates, and as a society we consider it ethical to do so.
In any event, you have to define what is meant by suffering. In the modern world (i.e. in the post industrial world) we tend to measure people's wellbeing by material standards, but is that really the appropriate way of measuring someone's satisfaction with their life?
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I can be happy with a drink
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcanadiankoiandpond.ca%2Fcoppermine%2Falbums%2Fuserpics%2F10005%2Ffamily%2520guy%2520brian.jpg&hash=d5bb07d0ec771ba5829979118e157694)
What can I say, I like the sauce [;)]
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LOL I am Happy to visit the forum every day.. If I am not happy it soon makes me happy! Then I feel better and That is so very nice!! YAYYYY!! Well I have to go to work now, you all be well and I love you guys NEIL< GEORGE< DANIEL< GAIA< LORETTA< HELENA< CAROLYN<ALBERTO< SCIENCE GUY< MICHAEL< DAVE< CHRIS< ROSE<THE WHOLE ZETA FORUM ANYBODY ELSE OUT THERE TOO!! IF YOU CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN< HAPPY HALLOWEEN!< IF NOT "HAPPY DAY!"