Is the pursuit of Happiness bad for us?

[nanook12]

While I agree with most of what he says, the guy in the video calls quantum physics a pseudo science. One of the most successful scientific theories ever proposed.

[Theodarzna]

I would take that rather than have someone behead or rape me or throw into acid. So I'm not sure I agree on it being most cruel and inhumane.

Someone might do either of those things for purely cold hearted indifference or no reason at all. Psychopaths feel flatted emotions and are among the most sadistic of us all.

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While I agree with most of what he says, the guy in the video calls quantum physics a pseudo science. One of the most successful scientific theories ever proposed.

She is mostly referring to the misuse of Quantum Physics or do not understand it but use or misuse its most basic tenants to argue a point that is scientifically nonsense.

[Nihilist74]

What is the happiness index for people who live in European countries where a full work week is 32 hours? I have heard that people who work 32 hours instead of 40 or more are more productive. I would bet they are happier too. A lot of people in America have to work 2 or 3 jobs. They have got to be miserable. If I had one of my dream careers, I wouldn't mind working 12 hours a day at it but anything else I want more time for myself.

[xChurch]

What is the happiness index for people who live in European countries where a full work week is 32 hours? I have heard that people who work 32 hours instead of 40 or more are more productive. I would bet they are happier too. A lot of people in America have to work 2 or 3 jobs. They have got to be miserable. If I had one of my dream careers, I wouldn't mind working 12 hours a day at it but anything else I want more time for myself.

Some jobs you just can't make people happy to do. Who is really happy working in slaughter house? Or even better, who wants to be happy working in a slaughterhouse? Though that is an extreme example, you could ask that question for a lot of jobs out there.

[Theodarzna]

What is the happiness index for people who live in European countries where a full work week is 32 hours? I have heard that people who work 32 hours instead of 40 or more are more productive. I would bet they are happier too. A lot of people in America have to work 2 or 3 jobs. They have got to be miserable. If I had one of my dream careers, I wouldn't mind working 12 hours a day at it but anything else I want more time for myself.

The trouble for governments and business is that they want people to have Denmark level happiness, but still work that 40 hour work week or more, make about 9 bucks or less and hour and also find great comfort in buying things.

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The point of thought exercises such as this is to isolate particular ideas and discuss them abstractly, without need to consider the inevitable cascade of effects that necessarily results in the real world. Your assertion that World A could not exist without yadda yadda is immediately violating the rules of the thought exercise and defeating the purpose of it.

I am unfamiliar with that movie, but perhaps.

I would argue World A is a world I cannot imagine ever existing as a logical conclusion of a policy of using psychological manipulation, drugs and gas lighting to make people derive some form of happiness from X, Y, or Z task which is what I am talking about.

I would personally prefer my body not have its emotional responses manipulated by an outside actor such as another person or body of people.

If your World A and World B are exactly as they are described than sure, World A sounds interesting. I personally wouldn't wish to live there but I will say that it is I suppose not tyrannical if it just happens to be a place were people's happiness is increased up 10 fold for REASONS.

[TrumpIsPresident]

I truly love comics that make no sense from places with a vested interest on keeping the rich getting richer. God forbid a country that keeps everyone happy, everyone fed and everyone happy. Nope, gotta pursue the almighty dollar, because money is everything and compassion is for the poor.

Look closer. Those people pulling the cart aren't the uber wealthy. The welfare state is supported by the middle class specifically because the rich want to stay rich. And if you think that the people who push the welfare state agenda want that to play out any other way you're fooling yourself. You know what they see in that second picture? A permanent underclass of voters that are unlikely to bite the hand that feed them come Election Day. We just had eight years of a guy who pushed class warfare rhetoric to achieve that goal and we've now got two candidates who perpetuate it. Make my words the next four years will see the wealth gap widen and we'all have to swallow the same lines of bullshit in 2020. Establishment politics is for the establishment, not we the people. The middle class is the single greatest threat to the elite class and their government caretakers.

[spinner981]

Well, seeing as 'happiness' and 'bad' are both subjective words that can have totally different meanings depending on who you ask, I would say the answer isn't definitive.

[Grimbold21]

I would view that calls for moderation or emotional control are very cruel to those suffering immense hardship and tragedy. Telling someone who will never see their children grow up that they must have a stiff upper lip and not get emotional is somewhat hollow coming from say a healthy person.

I don't really perceive Happiness as a thing you attain but a thing that comes and goes. This is one area were it might help if more people were polyglots, since the idea of emotions as something you physically are or as a part of you. Or the meaning of Happiness is different. In my own native language the word for Happy is hapus which implies luck, chance, or randomness. Heck even Middle English and the etymology of the very term Happy implies luck or fortune as well.

I would simply accept that Happiness comes and goes as it pleases and in its own time and simply accept that. So in a sense I agree with the Stoics about a lack of control, I just disagree with their outward expression.

Im not arguing that we should be void of emotion, but that we exercise greater restraint over them.

Its precisely in dire situations that we should try to control ourselves. im not telling someone to not feel angry or sad, but id suggest not to have your life be dictated by those emotions.

Once we understand that there are things out of our reach, then life becomes more simple and bearable.

As for happiness i can agree that its not a constant, but something we continously strive for.

[Cæli]

As people get more educated and possibly smarter over time, it's logical that some individual are not caring about pointless work that they ended in (which is everything that does not involve creation, science, education, knowledge, helping other person, and numerous job of services (haircut, cook, plumber, computer scientist, ...)) because no one before talked to them about those kinds of things. Some people realize they don't need much money to be happy. This plus the improvement of health and automatization will kill capitalism in a few hundreds years. Governments should prepare now in giving incentives to persons who engage seriously into research, creation (which is what generate our happiness), or those who involve in making our society work (the numerous job of services). Basically what huge private businesses do should be taken care of by the countries in that time. Creating new business should always be possible if the governement missed an interesting job type, but only those who want extra money will get directed in those job offers.

So no being happy is not bad for us and in fact it's quite important. However our world is too dumb at the time and multiple generation will still live as we live today, so, just find a way to get money living doing what makes you happy, until society improves itself.

[Theodarzna]

Look closer. Those people pulling the dart aren't the uber wealthy. The welfare state is supported by the middle class specifically because the rich want to stay rich. And if you think that the people who push the welfare state agenda want that to play out any other way you're fooling yourself. You know what they see in that second picture? A permanent underclass of voters that are unlikely to bite the hand that feed them come Election Day. We just had eight years of a guy who pushed class warfare rhetoric to achieve that goal and we've now got two candidates who perpetuate it. Make my words the next four years will see the wealth gap widen and we'all have to swallow the same lines of bullshit in 2020. Establishment politics is for the establishment, not we the people.

To the best of our knowledge we do not know if people were "Happier," before the welfare state existed.

What I am discussing is a real question of "Should those people in the cart or pulling the cart be happy with their jobs or plausible jobs?" Ir not the attempt to make these activities "FUN," a form of manipulation and thus abuse? People are not encouraged, nor allowed to wonder if their misery isn't caused by say dis-empowerment over their own lives, but instead must engage in mindfulness meditation or silicon valley work places that have kegs of beer and ping pong tables even though you might work 10-12-14 or whatever hours a day, never sleep and do meaningless work to you, YOUR JOB IS FUN!

If the lack of happiness was purely about welfare, then it would make no sense, Welfare benefits are almost nothing, and the amount of tax taken for welfare is a pittance. More over it implies that peoples jobs are naturally fun but the source of misery isn't that people aren't compensated for their time spent at work which is statistically about 8.9 hours a day. Combined with the 8 ish hours we should be sleeping to maintain proper health and over half our day is spent JUST affording shelter and living and or preventing the ill effects of never sleeping. Indeed the lower ones income the lower ones over all sense of well being is, which is why nobody at Wal-Mart appears happy but Donald Trump is obviously a chipper dude.

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Im not arguing that we should be void of emotion, but that we exercise greater restraint over them.

Its precisely in dire situations that we should try to control ourselves. im not telling someone to not feel angry or sad, but id suggest not to have your life be dictated by those emotions.

Once we understand that there are things out of our reach, then life becomes more simple and bearable.

As for happiness i can agree that its not a constant, but something we continously strive for.

I respect your position, though it isn't one I hold.

I agree and disagree on stoicism, on a certain level I think the choice to control ones emotions should be THEIR choice, not a socially mandated choice.

[Nihilist74]

Some jobs you just can't make people happy to do. Who is really happy working in slaughter house? Or even better, who wants to be happy working in a slaughterhouse? Though that is an extreme example, you could ask that question for a lot of jobs out there.

Well you are right. Nobody wants to be a janitor or work in a slaughterhouse but working less hours at those kind of jobs would make people happier if they could afford to live.

[Theodarzna]

Well they do use psychological manipulation, in the form of a pill given to you at birth or something. The exact method is not really important. All you need to know is that it's 100% effective in making people genuinely happy with their lives the majority of the time when they otherwise wouldn't be. That's the whole point. If your only choice is to live your life and either be vaguely dissatisfied with it or take a pill that causes you to enjoy it as it is, but that life is identical in every other way, is it really such a problem to take the pill, let alone torture? What rational reason is there for not taking the pill in such a situation? You use words like "tyrannical" and "torture," but these are things generally opposed for the suffering they cause or the suffering people believe they will cause. If, however you wish to define them, they are not causing suffering, then why be opposed to them any more than you are to butter or the color red or the Pythagorean Theorem?

I don't think you fully grasp what that would entail. Full happy with their lives? With say domestic abuse? rape? eating that month old chipotle burrito?

Your scenario I guess makes sense but its one of those "Ignore every possible bad, why would you not chose X?"

[Theodarzna]

I fully grasp it, but I'm not sure you fully grasp the point of this abstraction, which in this case is to separate whether something is inherently a problem or simply likely to lead to problems if done in whatever ways you assume it will be done. For instance, in the case of the businesses, I would again say if they develop a program that makes employees truly enjoy whatever it is they're doing, I see no reason to be alarmed by it. The problem and reason for objecting are in the likelihood of at least partial failure, not the potential success. In accusing me of having a "cavalier attitude towards psychological torture" you're simply imposing your own assumptions about how it will play out on my conditionals, without proper regard for what they are actually expressing. I am OK with manipulation to cause happiness, not manipulation to cause "happiness."

I read it as "Wouldn't a world be better if it was somehow exactly as it is but everyone was happy about it." That sort of thought has some radical implications. The man or woman dying a miserable death from some incurable disease? Smiles! The woman soon to be married off to her rapist? Smiles!

I mean I guess there would be peace and happiness, but it would be to my mind a kind of insanity. Unhappiness and discontent are the only means of changing anything or striving for anything to become different, new, reformed, improved or changed. If all the world is content at the very least the world will become a completely stagnate place.

[Theodarzna]

I only ever said they were generally happy.

And that's precisely the point of how I designed it. There are obviously real world values to discontentment that rely on exactly when and why it occurs and how much of it occurs that are far too messy to outline to avoid discussions of sustainability. Obviously perfectly happy drones who are never not happy are bad for sustainability, but the problem there is the lack of sustainability, not the fact that they've been chemically induced to be happy, at least not that in and of itself. If free gym memberships and healthcare and a workplace environment that emphasizes individual importance make people happy, I have no intention of treating them as sinister or a problem, even if they aren't the product of genuine concern and are merely enlightened self-interest on the part of the business. If psychiatry is a necessary part of addressing people's unhappiness–and sometimes it is–I see no problem in using it. What we need to worry about is their ability to get what they want at the expense of the employee, not their ability to get what they want by enhancing the employee's quality of life.

But is that not the whole point of the thread? The discussion of the value of other emotions and the possible tyranny of mandatory happiness or optimism.

I think the problem of say Mindfulness meditation or what ever is purely that it robs people of the ability to narrate why they are unhappy or discontent and instead allows some other person to assume some other reason.

If I was your neighbor and I played loud ratchet ass music and threw house parties nightly, and you, frustrated and annoyed decided to come over and explain how my actions were inflicting misery upon you. That you were not happy with the state of affairs and I turned around and said "No, actually your just not getting enough exercise! Here have a gym membership and lift those weights and smile more!" You would be justified in assuming I either did not listen, did not understand or did not actually care about what you just said.

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How does that help if you get shot first? Why are police officers dying over there? They carry a gun.

I would take that rather than have someone behead or rape me or throw into acid. So I'm not sure I agree on it being most cruel and inhumane.

First, I find it best to just ignore hubcap, his posts a bad and he should feel bad.

Second, I understand that perspective but I wish to remain with humanity in one piece. I mean in theory if we lobotomized everyone there would likely be no more war, struggle or sadness in the world. You would lose yourself completely but I guess it would be a sort of piece.

[Azadina]

First, I find it best to just ignore hubcap, his posts a bad and he should feel bad.

Second, I understand that perspective but I wish to remain with humanity in one piece. I mean in theory if we lobotomized everyone there would likely be no more war, struggle or sadness in the world. You would lose yourself completely but I guess it would be a sort of piece.

Invent a pill that makes people with issues suppress their anger and hatred. We aren't lobotomizing prisoners over here either, they are being rehabilitated, as in told enough times what is right and what is wrong until they get the picture. Imagine if you could prevent them ending up in prison in the first place by just taking a pill, before they go harm and murder people.

I'm pretty sure the victims would love it, and being alive.

[Theodarzna]

And the whole point of my response is to introduce nuance, distinguishing between acceptable and unacceptable elements, rather than regard the whole thing as some sort of sinister plot.

That seems less like nuance and a bit more like defense, I did not actually say the word sinister in our back and fourth if I recall correctly.

I mean in theory if I stapled your mouth shut and kept you in a cage I could feed you through a tube and use the right injections of chemicals and psychological techniques to both make you happy to be in your condition and even relish in it and love me for putting you in it. It would however be an utter atrocious abuse of another person but as long as you are rendered in a stupor of unending chemically induced joy does it matter? I guess not.

Perhaps this is an extension of my earlier thread that was about Utilitarianism, is it right to liquidate an aspect of people for a plausible greater good. William Davies and Barbara Ehreinriech argue that it isn't humane and its actually cruel in generally to demand or expect happiness or optimism from people. Ehreinriech even points out that mandatory optimism are often symptomatic of totalitarian regimes. Your so-called nuance seems to be little more than "Well, but isn't it alright to be delusional if it ups GDP and plus they are clinically happy?" In a very Benthomite Utilitarian way you are correct. But your core argument has a contradiction,

You imply that philosophically Happiness Matters. It has an ethical, almost transcendent value. It is this magical status all humans just naturally want and must achieve. This is manifest in your insistence that seems to amount to "If they are happy, how is it tyrannical?" This is a kind of teleological view that happiness has a transcendental good status. You also have the contradictory view (It seems) that it is something which is measurable, behavioral, physiological, empirical, ect. On the one hand you seem to be positioning happiness as metaphysical and just inherently worth having, it is a state which needs no real justification, it is just simply the ideal state of human existence. On the other hand its just a mundane chemical reaction that can be measured by pulse rate and what not.

Your world A is good simply because people are Happy, and Happiness is in it of itself good, whatever else exists in your theoretical world is of no consequence, people are given a pill and rendered happy. But Happiness is also just a chemically induced frenzy, a state brought on by some core change in how the human body works to produce enhanced happiness, even when theoretically the situations might call for sadness. Your argument for why empirically World A is good seems to rest on the benefits of a happy people, but that same happiness could be attained through lobotomizing the population completely, removing any personality or feeling entirely.

Basically if Happiness causes people to just endure injustice for example with a smile, than of what value is happiness? If its just a chemical function to make people enjoy X, Y, or Z then why are you giving it a special status as something worth having? What makes World A good? Well everyone is Happy? Why is being Happy good in the first place? If it's just a chemical reaction and merely a delusion to get us to like things that otherwise make us miserable then its just that, a chemical reaction of no intrinsic or transcendental value, thus World A is just a world were people are more delusional than World B.

So I stand corrected, World A isn't tyrannical, its just delusional.

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Invent a pill that makes people with issues suppress their anger and hatred. We aren't lobotomizing prisoners over here either, they are being rehabilitated, as in told enough times what is right and what is wrong until they get the picture. Imagine if you could prevent them ending up in prison in the first place by just taking a pill, before they go harm and murder people.

I'm pretty sure the victims would love it, and being alive.

The victims would also be alive if you lobotomized the whole earth, removing all emotion and all personality. In that they might still be alive but also not be capable of any emotion.

Also we never tell people not to feel emotions.

I don't dislike the man or woman who beats a lesbian to death because they had hatred, I dislike them for murder. I mean you could also blame Fear, but fear is also critical to our survival, so is disgust.

Imagine the talented song writer who never felt a moment of depression, or the actor whose only emotion was joy and contentment?

[Azadina]

The victims would also be alive if you lobotomized the whole earth, removing all emotion and all personality. In that they might still be alive but also not be capable of any emotion.

Also we never tell people not to feel emotions.

I don't dislike the man or woman who beats a lesbian to death because they had hatred, I dislike them for murder. I mean you could also blame Fear, but fear is also critical to our survival, so is disgust.

Imagine the talented song writer who never felt a moment of depression, or the actor whose only emotion was joy and contentment?

But why do that, if lesser means achieve the same? You don't see all of middle-east nuked to solve the problems there, because there's no reason to use all means possible, just because you technically could.

[Theodarzna]

But why do that, if lesser means achieve the same? You don't see all of middle-east nuked to solve the problems there, because there's no reason to use all means possible, just because you technically could.

Because its unclear lesser means do achieve that, as murder can happen for all sorts of reasons. Carelessness, indifference, convenience, desire, betrayal ect.

Human emotion is complex, it is hard to even define what is hatred? And is it completely distinct and modular from say desire? passion? disgust? fear?

If hatred has no intrinsic right to exist and humans have no intrinsic right to feel hatred? What intrinsic right do we have to feel any other emotion? Any emotion can cause someone to take a human life.

You seem to be misappropriating your displeasure at for example the idea that say "Homosexuality is bad and I hate it!" With a desire to remove the emotional capacity for hatred. Which to me is akin to saying "I don't like Islam as a set of ideas, look at the evil it can do! Best nuke the middle east. You are discussing effective lobotomization already, as I can think of no other way to remove the capacity for people to feel something. If there is no intrinsic value in hatred and its capacity to cause harm or cruelty justifies its removal than you could remove Love, Lust, Compassion, Empathy ect from the human psyche too as all can and do cause harm. You hurt those you love out of love, you hurt those around you with lust. ect.

[Gamdwelf]

(source)

Very little of people's day to day existence is statistically free to even pursue much of a hobby or interest. However, what the article is discussing is that corporate America and indeed governments are concerned about worker engagement, I.E. A Happy worker is a productive worker and the economy loses over half a trillion in GDP simply because people are checked out at work.

Thus the attempt to find somewhat to "Make people happy." But the article raises the question, isn't this attempt to make Happiness an entirely medical and personal responsibility issue more or less a form of social control? Is obligatory optimism tyrannical? And does it cause us to ignore injustices or problems?

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Cynicism is healthy, I agree with Friedrich Nietzsche "Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that." I am by the grace of Slaanesh neither English nor a native English first language speaker so perhaps I am immune from the idea to instinctively want to be happy.

I don't believe chasing perpetual happiness like a drug to keep oneself in a euphoric state is a wise way to live ones life.

This pie chart is so fucked. When I realized what this looks like for me it was awful.

10Hours sleep, 9 hours work 5 hours me time cool.

[Azadina]

Because its unclear lesser means do achieve that, as murder can happen for all sorts of reasons. Carelessness, indifference, convenience, desire, betrayal ect.

Human emotion is complex, it is hard to even define what is hatred? And is it completely distinct and modular from say desire? passion? disgust? fear?

If hatred has no intrinsic right to exist and humans have no intrinsic right to feel hatred? What intrinsic right do we have to feel any other emotion? Any emotion can cause someone to take a human life.

You seem to be misappropriating your displeasure at for example the idea that say "Homosexuality is bad and I hate it!" With a desire to remove the emotional capacity for hatred. Which to me is akin to saying "I don't like Islam as a set of ideas, look at the evil it can do! Best nuke the middle east. You are discussing effective lobotomization already, as I can think of no other way to remove the capacity for people to feel something. If there is no intrinsic value in hatred and its capacity to cause harm or cruelty justifies its removal than you could remove Love, Lust, Compassion, Empathy ect from the human psyche too as all can and do cause harm. You hurt those you love out of love, you hurt those around you with lust. ect.

Those other emotions actually do have positive values to them. Hatred has literally none. There's no positive spin to it.

Also, are you really suggesting that people who already take pills for something like ADHD, Bi-polar or any other personality issues are being lobotomized?