happiness?

[bartock]

what is happiness?
does it come from being satisfied?
how does one feel fulfilled or satisfied?
is it by being rewarded?

[automatic existence]

Its me again.

a) Personally I believe happiness is a state of mind induced by a combination of hormones or\and brain chemicals. I´m sure its much more complex, but think you get the idea. So basically its “false” seen from the common point of view.

b) In a way, yes. It comes from satisfying your internal\biological needs. But the point is, its not "your" needs, its the needs that are implemented in you beyond your control. Therefore, you do not serve yourself, you please pre-programmed goals, which your body uses all its effort to achieve, even without your conscious consent.

c) With my limited understanding I would say that every person has universal needs and wishes but also specific needs and wishes. What all these needs and wishes amend to is two objectives which are the main goal for any human being. Those are survival and reproduction. Everything else is, easily explainable, tools\methods to serve those "master" goals. When these smaller needs\wishes are satisfied you can get a varying amount of pleasure. If they are not satified your “master” gets mad and gives you a punishment in the form of pain or lack of pleasure.

d) Don t know what you mean by that, but I don´t think its to far off the mark to say that you are the dog which does tricks (satisfy your smaller needs\wishes) for it´s master (the "master” goals) and thereby gets rewarded with some treats (pleasure\happiness).

We are merely puppets in a biological game. We do what we are supposed to, otherwise we are disposed of (suicide, natural selection). Its really a perfect system, partly because no one wants to acknowledge it, and therefor don´t have the option to fight it. Its like a despot who no one even knows is in control.

All in all we are fairly helpless. It might actually be the best thing, as most do, to just continue living normal, uneventful lives and thinking of ourselves as great moral, civilized beings who has gotten so far with technology, science and culture. In addition we have been given the great blessing of life, love and friendship. What more can you ask for? What do you need truth for, when you got this. I share at least one weakness with Kant, a need to be consistent in thought and action. That is, when I know what is true and what is false I act accordingly. Which is really a bitch. But I guess everything i RIGHT WHERE IT BELONGS, since mother nature has set up everything as she wants it. There is really something deeper in the thought that God=Nature.

I must have forgotten something or left something out, so its up to you to find out.

[bartock]

[QUOTE=automatic existence]Its me again.

a) Personally I believe happiness is a state of mind induced by a combination of hormones or\and brain chemicals. I´m sure its much more complex, but think you get the idea. So basically its “false” seen from the common point of view.

i agree happiness is a state of mind.
can one think himself to happy hormones?
i know that people can make themselves sick by thinking( i.e.mostly think that they are depressed and fall into depression)

[bartock]

b) In a way, yes. It comes from satisfying your internal\biological needs. But the point is, its not "your" needs, its the needs that are implemented in you beyond your control. Therefore, you do not serve yourself, you please pre-programmed goals, which your body uses all its effort to achieve, even without your conscious consent.

why is there satisfaction in altruism?
a person practices altruism because it somehow satisfies him. satisfaction is reward.
any thing that is rewarded happens more.
if he is not getting external reward then it must be internal(reward).so he is thinking rewarding thaughts to himself and producing the happy hormones?
so if a person has control over his thoughts then he can control his hormones as well.

[bartock]

c) With my limited understanding I would say that every person has universal needs and wishes but also specific needs and wishes. What all these needs and wishes amend to is two objectives which are the main goal for any human being. Those are survival and reproduction. Everything else is, easily explainable, tools\methods to serve those "master" goals. When these smaller needs\wishes are satisfied you can get a varying amount of pleasure. If they are not satified your “master” gets mad and gives you a punishment in the form of pain or lack of pleasure

dont really get it
the two objectives?survival and reproduction? i dont know.......there should be more to life than just surviving it and reproducing.
what do u mean by surviving?are u only talking about the physical body?

[Boerseun]

I agree, survival and procreation are the two 'masters'.

But, in my opinion, even survival is subservient to reproduction. And the reason for this is that the longer you live, the better your chances of reproducing. And with the human species, parents need to live long in order to ensure the survival of their offspring who are helpless for a very long time relative to other animals. So the 'self-preservation' instinct is only there to serve the reproduction instinct.

So it all boils down to procreation, and manners in which to achieve it, I guess.

So, Viagra can be said to be the ultimate 'happy pill'! To hell with Prozac!

(It's been said that if you take half a Viagra and half a Prozac, and you don't get some, you wouldn't care... )

[orbsycli]

doesn't saratonin come into play, as well? i don't know much about it though. *sigh

[automatic existence]

Originally Posted by bartock

can one think himself to happy hormones?
i know that people can make themselves sick by thinking( i.e.mostly think that they are depressed and fall into depression)

I base the following on my reading of Antonio Damasio´s Looking for Spinoza where he introduces the separation between emotion and feeling. The reason is this: Emotions came long, long before feelings in the evolutionary ladder. Lets see how Damasio explains the basic functioning of a human being (how it reaches homeostasis; (adaption->survival->reproduction):

Baisc
------
Metabolic regulation; Regulating all chemical functions within the body (i.e. blood pressure and heart rate)
Basic Reflexes; (i.e. touching something hot, high noises)
The immune system; Removing "intruders" (i.e. virus and bacteria)

Mid-level
-----------
Pain or pleasure behavior; Reactions to p. or p. (i.e. protecting a wound, making a grimace reflecting alarm and suffering. Note that experiencing pain or pleasure is not the cause of p. and p. behaviors. Since it can be seen in animals without emotions or feeling.)
Drives and motivations; (i.e. hunger, sex and curiosity)

Advanced
-------------
Emotions;
The crown jewel of automated life regulation. These are "plug and play" already from birth but will be perfected as you learn when to use each. The act of crying is read at birth; what e cry for change trough a lifetime. All of these reactions are automatic and largely stereotyped. (I.e. pride, fear, sorrow and sympathy)

Feelings;
Very shortly put, this is the mental theater of the body. If all of the blow is going well, no disturbances in either section, you will probably have the feeling of a general happiness. Feelings is a state of mind that lasts longer than i.e. the joy of getting a hug. It represents the genrell state of the rest of the functions mentioned below.

This is a simplification of the tools or methods used for survival, or reproduction if you like. This is all automatic, you don´t have to contribute at all. You might feel that you do, but that is just the kind gift from the gods who wouldn´t want us to be aware of our little Sisyphus adventure. But note that there is some serious simplification going on here. But i think it represents the idea anyway.

To sum up; Think of happy things, then you will create happy emotions (smile, laughter, chemical reactions) which again might be enough to produce an overall feeling of happiness.

Originally Posted by bartock

why is there satisfaction in altruism?
a person practices altruism because it somehow satisfies him. satisfaction is reward.
any thing that is rewarded happens more.
if he is not getting external reward then it must be internal(reward).so he is thinking rewarding thoughts to himself and producing the happy hormones?
so if a person has control over his thoughts then he can control his hormones as well.

I love the egoism\altruism debate, even though that is settled beyond all doubt for me. I will try to share my view with you in as few words as possible, though I feel it loses its complexity and sound rather “cheap”.

a) If you go about your day without considering other people i.e. stealing and raping other people they will take measures against you. Therefore you must please them to please yourself. That is being a rational egoist. If you give a gift to someone, or help someone, it can seem to be of altruistic reason. But in reality it gives you a lot of advantages. You might feel good about yourself (satisfying your conscience) it can make that person give you even larger favors etc.

b) Take Mother Theresa. It is difficult telling the motivation for one specific individual without knowing them, except for a glorified picture from media. If I would guess, i would say that she probably did it because partly she felt identifications whit those she helped. Many people need to be caring to be able to like themselves. Maybe she liked the thought of sacrificing herself for something higher and more great, which again gives her life meaning and purpose. A strange need we people have. This might seem like wild guessing but this is really simple. Every time you see something that you think is a altruistic or un-egoistic action and look\examine it a bit closer. The result is always the same.

To sum up: You get satisfaction from altruistic actions or thoughts because its serves your goal (reproduction). What girl wants a self-centered megalomaniac instead of a caring and thoughtful gentleman? It might also give you lots of other gains.

You can control your feeling (happiness, sadness) to some degree, but I would say its of minor importance. This has ruined the whole concept of emotions for me. Were like the dog who is willing to do anything to get the cookies or whatever dogs eat.

Originally Posted by bartock

dont really get it
the two objectives?survival and reproduction? i don´t know.......there should be more to life than just surviving it and reproducing.
what do u mean by surviving?are u only talking about the physical body?

Now its even more absurd. Its only reproduction that matters. That is the reason you live\is alive. Tough luck. Nature is cruel, a psychopath by our definitions actually.

Originally Posted by Boerseun

But, in my opinion, even survival is subservient to reproduction.

This is beautiful, thank you so much for sharing that thought. Its obvious. It reduces the prominent goals to one instead of two. Its that simple. We have one goal, reproduction. EVERYthing else is only means to that end. Even survival. We are only vessels. The world seems weirder and weirder to me. You can easily fit in everything you do into a scheme that has reproduction at its goal. But what about the ones who chooses not to reproduce?

Btw. The only things I can come up with that separates humans from other animals is feelings (other animals also have emotions) and our self-consciousness which is "kind" enough to let us realize our own position under the stars..

Hope it got short enough this time then. I must get an editor and a crash course in writing.

[Tarantism]

well, i found an interesting point of view on this subject, however it is just opinion and not scientific fact...

The key to finding happiness may be learning to shift personal priorities from the boardroom to the bedroom.
New research provides evidence to support the old adage, "You can't buy happiness." It suggests that people will find happiness by focusing more on family life and health issues and less on career and financial pursuits.
Researchers say people spend too much time worrying about achieving professional and monetary goals that may never bring them true happiness. But by devoting more time to personal health and family life, people will find lasting happiness.
Happiness Explained
Researcher Richard Easterlin, an economist at the University of California, argues that a new approach to finding happiness is needed that combines the two prevailing theories of happiness in psychology and economics.
According to the psychological view of happiness, each individual is born with their own setpoint for happiness that's determined by personality and genetics. Life events, such as marriage, loss of a job, and serious injury or disease, can temporarily raise or lower a person's level of happiness above or below this predetermined level, but they will eventually return to the original level.
In contrast, the economic "more is better" view of happiness argues that life circumstances and the growth of income have lasting effects on happiness.
But Easterlin argues that life events like marriage, divorce, and serious disability, have a lasting rather than temporary effect on happiness. And an increase in income doesn't necessarily bring lasting happiness because a person's expectations are also raised by through adaptation and social comparison as they achieve greater wealth.
A better theory of happiness, Easterlin says, should take into account the fact that happiness found through family life and personal health is affected much less by heightened expectations and social comparison than happiness sought through financial gains.

Make More Time for Health and Family
Easterlin says people make decisions assuming that more income, comfort, and positional goods will make them happier, but they fail to recognize that adaptation and social comparison will come into play and raise their aspirations to about the same extent as their actual gains, which leaves them feeling no happier than before.
"As a result, most individuals spend a disproportionate amount of their lives working to make money, and sacrifice family life and health, domains in which aspirations remain fairly constant as actual circumstances change, and where the attainment of one's goals has a more lasting impact on happiness," writes Easterlin.
"Hence, a reallocation of time in favor of family life and health would, on average, increase individual happiness," Easterlin concludes.

SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Aug. 25, 2003.

i also think that ceritonan(sp?) levels have something to do with it, but im not really sure. hope the source helps!

[automatic existence]

(First, Maslow’s theory was not developed to formulate the needs of employees! He meant to show the order and contents of human motivation and needs. Business has just applied it for its own purposes later.)

This stood on the page you referred to and I think it sums it up well:

Even though Maslow's hierarchy lacks scientific support, it is very well-known and is the first theory of motivation to which many people are exposed.

Its an easy to grip, close to our intuition and acceptable formulation of our needs. That usually doesn’t make them true. It makes a good starting point however, and in business, where it matters less whether its true, than if its correct it does the job. His theory is basically based on guessing and selective gathering of data, which gives it the intuitivity which I believe has made it so popular among the general public.

What else is self-actualization than doing what you are good at? Esteem needs on the other hand is also important when it comes to peoples social context. Do I need to explain to you why it is important\positive to have achieved those things in relation to both survival and reproduction? Think of the animal kingdom or parts of it at least. If you don’t have acceptance among the group you have nothing and becomes divided from the group and your chance of survival and reproduction drops drastically.

Now, I’m no fan of explain everything this way. For one, it’s to easy and secondly because I don’t have sufficient evidence or knowledge to do so. But I use it as a stepping-stone, a temporary theory because it makes more sense than all the others right now. That is the way it should be with Maslow too. One should be aware that it’s just a simplification, and dump it as soon as one has something more sound.

Emotional needs change according to where you are in life, not where you are on the scale on the scale. Don’t mix the map with the terrain, especially not when the map is wrong. The "scale" is illusionary and is not meant to provide a ladder of which humans take one step at the time. It’s easy to see that most people are satisfying some needs here and some needs there. Not in a particular order (except for some of course, i.e. food, air etc.) I find myself satisfying some needs at the top of the hierarchy while skipping some of those in the middle.

And to (((tartanism))) I can only say that the more time I spend away from my family, the happier I get. Go figure.