Cynical view of happiness.

[Edwardo Piet]

I think happiness is about not suffering so much you can't experience joy, and other than that it's about experiencing joy.

When it comes to experiencing joy it's just about how much pleasure your brain will allow you to take from your activities. If you brain chemicals are being a dick there's nothing you can do besides medication, therapy, trying harder to enjoy things or find new things to do and socializing, especially with your best friends. I was depressed for years because I couldn't enjoy anything... you can't force yourself to enjoy something that's the problem.

I'd say my happiness at the moment is basically equal to how much I enjoy talking to my best friends and how much I enjoy posting on AF. Other than that it's about solving problems that cause me stress... and so far it seems my anxiety about not being able to solve them causes me more unhappiness than the actual problems. So far I have been fine. And as long as I never lose my home and have good friends I think I will always be happy.

[Edwardo Piet]

But seriously, I could give a speech on how people are more important than things and happiness in the conventional sense is way overrated (I'd rather be satisfied and content than happy) but you'll find that out in your own time.

This paragraph is perfect.

[Edwardo Piet]

Daniel Gilbert knows what it's all about when it comes to happiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeDwc_zy2s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnsimet3X_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1dgn_C0AU

[Edwardo Piet]

2nd video starts 20 secs in for some reason,

[robvalue]

As I've grown older, my happiness has been more and more about people (and animals), and less about other things.

[RozKek]

I doubt money buys happiness. I fare well academically and I've told myself I'd rather have a job I like and get paid less rather than a job I don't really like and get paid more. Of course if the happy job pays way too low I'll pass because then my freetime won't be fun But not everyone has the same philosophy.

However IIRC according to studies, at the middle class and above money has no significant effect on happiness but it has between the poor and the middle class.

Here's my two cents. I haven't lived for long, I'm not a wise man but I picked up a lot from my father, I asked him about happiness once when I wasn't at my best. I wasn't depressed but my symptoms were similiar I was just feeling down probably because I was still a teenager and we're a bit prone to depression and mood swings. When I asked my dad I didn't really say I felt down, I asked about happiness and his response was simple. 

He didn't mention money, pride, education or religon, he mentioned just doing stuff you like, that simple. He told me he'd wake up, eat, maybe write poems (He was quite popular among Kurds in Gothenburg and Kurdistan, talking about religion, writing stuff etc), sometimes he'd go out with friends then he'd read a book. Everything at its own pace, no stress, no hurry. And he was a happy man.

[ignoramus]

Roz, your old man was a smart man.

---

Classic Brazilian Story

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

---

[Whateverist]

Hopefully everyone has a reference point for what happiness is, leastwise I suspect we can all remember two times when the degree of our happiness/satisfaction was not equal. If you could theoretically play all those memories off, one against the next, you'd eventually arrive at the memory of the time at which you felt most happy. If you then analyzed the circumstances surrounding your happier times and those surrounding your unhappier times, I don't think you find anything capable of guaranteeing a new happy moment. It seems to be something beyond our direct control, though you may well make it some number of years without realizing that.

Of course things like where you live, who you love, activities you engage in, what you eat, whether you are physically comfortable and mentally at ease can directly influence your happiness. Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes to mind. If you're having trouble breathing or swallowing, you're not going to be very happy. Some minimal level of needs satisfaction seems necessary for happiness. But I doubt if there is any degree of needs satisfaction which will guarantee happiness. Ticking off needful tasks can be satisfying but you can also work to achieve something only to discover it brings you no satisfaction.

So is novelty an essential element of happiness? Perhaps we burn through the happiness which comes from novelty and then what counts as happiness transforms. Boy, I don't know. That book "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Robbins was one long meditation on what happiness is and the question of how one makes happiness stay. But he admits you can't distill it down to any formula.

Maybe its part of a feedback loop hardwired into our chemistry to move us toward our evolutionary ends, but I don't think so. I think happiness is a mystery that shows up as a very welcome guest but comes and goes on its own whim. It does no good to whore yourself for happiness because its just going to keep coming and going for its own reasons anyhow. Maybe you can find a way to make your life a place happiness will want to visit.

Can one make happiness happy so it will want to stay with you? I don't know but you can be grateful when it comes. You can humble yourself to your actual helplessness in this, disavow a sense of entitlement to happiness and accept your role as the caretaker of your life. Get those needs attended to and now and then you may come home to find happiness is there. Who knows?

[ignoramus]

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't think happiness is a mystery. I think it's about doing things we like and spending time with people we like, and not suffering so much that we struggle to enjoy that. I think the problem is often things we need to be happy are beyond our control and when we can't get what we need to be happy we end up concluding it's a mystery.

One thing is for sure: Money can't buy happiness but it can buy less unhappiness.