Always look at the briiiight side of life…
more posts = better life
luckily i dont do anything with my life except sit inside and post on internet websites all day so obviously im pretty happy with my life and a very well adjusted and normal human being
Being comfortable in your skin and having good relationships.
Find what you want and begin doing it. Abstract philosophy doesn’t have much to do with fulfillment, applied philosophy is more important. And when you find what works for you, file it under eclecticism and move on.
p.s. Adolescence sucks.
p.s.2 Nulani is right.
Hedonism is ultimately self-destructive, because if you always do what is best for you at the moment, it won’t pay off in the long run. For example, if you’re running a business, you can increase your stock price by firing a lot of workers and cutting the wages/hours of your hourly workers. This means lots of money in the short term. In the long term, you won’t be able to provide as much service as you used to, thus causing people to go elsewhere for whatever product you’re selling. In a more personal sense, it might benefit you in the short term to have sex with your best friend’s girlfriend. A hedonist would do it simply because it would cause them great pleasure. In the long run, the problems of either attachment to this girl, the loss of the friend, or other miscellaneous factors (STDs, whatever) would cause you much more misery than a night of consequences-free sex could have given you in the first place.
That being said, altruism isn’t the answer either. If you always live for others, the only happiness you can gain is the dregs of someone else’s experiences. Ultimately, the altruist ATTEMPTS to be symbiotic, but is in actuality parisitic.
The “secret” to happiness is to strike a balance between these two extremes. Of course, as the cliché goes, “easier said than done.”
Allow me to digress.
There are different schools of hedonism, and there are those who claim you should not seek immediate pleasures, but rather, long lasting ones. This is held by the quantitative school, which says you should not seek maximum pleasure in a given moment, but rather, a “positive balance” (that is, having more pleasure than suffering) at any moment. Thus you should plan ahead and arrange things in a way that will maximize your gains in the long run. The view you described is the one held by the qualitative school, which claims you should seek a bang of apleasure.
Always look on the briiight side of death…doo doo, doo doo, doo doo, dee doo.
Just before you draw your terminal breath…doo doo, doo doo, doo doo, dee doo.
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS TO END!
Don’t deny hedonists the chance to pass an imminent pleasure for long run greater pleasures. It is still a rational philosophy.
[quote=]
That being said, altruism isn’t the answer either. If you always live for others, the only happiness you can gain is the dregs of someone else’s experiences. Ultimately, the altruist ATTEMPTS to be symbiotic, but is in actuality parisitic.[/QUOTE]
Well, in Albert Camus’ The Fall the protagonist is altruistic for entirely selfish reasons, so a hedonism-altruism axis wouldn’t necessarily work.
I think it’s silly to say that there’s a goal.
I guess I’m somewhat postmodernistic on it all.
We don’t choose when we come into the world… and we normally don’t choose when we leave.
The “meaning” that we find in life is often just that - discovered.
There might be an overarching scheme or meta-narrative that we all fit into, but there’s no way to truly know. Sorta like the whole thing about no matter how refined the argument… science could never disprove God… and no theologian could ever prove God.
Now, I personally believe God exists, so I’ll find my own evidences and they’ll suit me just fine, but you get what I’m saying.
Naturally, this leads me to think that the best way to approach life is in looking for ways to love people. Especially since I think of the whole “thrownness” approach to existence is somewhat pervasive, (I like Kierkegaard and Hiedegger - can you tell?) I’m pretty big on the idea that we shouldn’t focus on doing “big” things with our lives, but just small things with a lot of integrity and sincerity. (Genuineness for the win!)
Besides… everything creative has already been done, everything good to say has already been said… we shouldn’t strive to be original… (in a sense) but just add our voices to those who’ve already said the good things. y’know?
soo yeah… that’s about it imho… I think the way I’ve presented it is a little emphasis-heavy on the experiential side of things, which isn’t what I’m going for, but I think I got the general gist of it across.
Perhaps I should clarify. I believe that everybody is inherently selfish, and so when I say “hedonism,” I mean someone who is always out for their immediate need. I didn’t really study hedonism (can you tell :-P) as much as other philosophies in class, and so I apoligize for my error.
That being said, Rigamorale, I believe that every altruist out there is subconsciously out there for their personal gain. They act the martyr for recognition, no matter how humble they seem about it. In fact, if you take something seen as altruistic by some, such as vegitarianism, it clearly isn’t altruism. What motivates people to be vegitarians? Barring allergies, the reason given is generally a desire not to kill or cause animals undue suffering. Now, a lot of these people have either heard about or seen videos of animals getting slaughtered or the conditions in which they live in. At one point, my mother found maggots in a Mr. Goodbar (I have a point, don’t worry). She can’t eat a Mr. Goodbar anymore because she associates it with maggots. Similarly, these vegitarians can’t eat meat because they associate it with the suffering of these animals. It isn’t so much altruism as an aversion to the methods. The extreme vegitarians, such as those affiliated with the ALF (or any extremist group, for that matter) are even less altruistic than they claim. If the ALF had it their way, nobody would eat meet, and all the animals would be completely free. This sounds just ducky, but there is a slight problem with this (besides their uses of violent methods): Let’s assume they free all the domestic animals. After centuries of being bred specifically for the purposes of being meat/dairy/companion animals, what will they do in the wild for food? Not to mention, if they got out and survived, they wouldn’t be in a controlled environment anymore. If these extremists were so altruistic, they would realize that eating the meat of these animals is actually going to keep them alive, as perverse as it sounds. Not only that, but it keeps us alive.
I hope that my slight digression there helped explain my position on the matter. I don’t quite believe that there is such thing as altruism.
As cynical as it sounds, I see your point. I myself believe in multiple motives. Just as there are multiple causes for any event, there can be multiple motives for any action. So one motive might be altruistic, while the other hedonistic.
Just to be clear, though, GAP, your definition of hedonism is not parasitism (benefit of one party at the expense of the other) but really <i>is</i> a symbiotic relationship, or, in the worst-case scenario, commensalism.
Point taken; I used the incorrect word. The point is, that they’re getting pleasure out of being altruistic, which isn’t very altruistic. Sorry about the flim-flam there.
Yeah, I get your point, GAP.
I suppose you’re talking about ideas/philosophy and there are people better suited to argue recent developments in that field. Regarding the arts though, things are fine. People can’t stop being creative.
Right, and I agree with you in that most altruistic acts or things we call altruistic is a form of mutualism, and not self-sacrificial reverse-parasitism with no benefit to oneself that we imagine it to be. You can see this in animal behaviour too.
Only the Englishman lives for pleasure. And what have they got? Only breakfast really.
What makes people feel fulfilled varies from person to person. The factor that is the problem is that people are all so different, we are chaos incarnate. Analysts (for example) get paid to predict people, but to me, always seem to get it wrong.
I can offer a few suggestions:
Do some traveling. Get things done you haven’t before. Beat all those RPGs you have been putting off (yes, yes, you immature folks among those here, I realize I started the sentence with Beat and ended with off). Write a novel. Write a blog. Try some extreme sports. Get a D&D group going. Try a collectable card game (like Magic). Diversify your experiences. Only you can determine what makes your life golden.
“Six by nine. Forty two.”
“That’s it. That’s all there is.”
“I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe”
Also I can’t find the original Conan quote. When you don’t want it it’s all over the internet; when you want it you only find the movie one. mumble mumble
Pursuit and fulfillment of it.
Rinse and repeat.
Oh you evil, evil, evil killjoy. :bowser: