What are the consequences of happiness?

Question

In doing what we want to actualize happiness, there is a cost to be incurred at a later date. Happiness now carries a cost in the future.

Agree/Disagree?

Answer 1

Oh, there are so many possibilities.

The negatives: anti-climax, regret, sadness, guilt, boredom, and so on.

The positives: reinforcement, positivity, generosity, good-will, and so on.

Answer 2

Some ideas have a seductive element of easy fun but eventually cost too much. However, some behaviors are both pleasant and useful. Sometimes, happiness now carries a benefit in the future.

For example, a man might gain the same sense of pleasure from working in the fire department as his cousin derives from joining a gang of robbers-- the same sense of excitement and camaraderie makes their lives worth living. Yet the fireman also gets many other benefits, not the least of which is a pension, merely because he carefully selected which thrills he pursued.

For another example, a wise man might romance his wife rather than harass the secretary. In either case he will may gain the same sexual benefit, but in the former he will be rewarded financially--avoiding divorce and workplace lawsuits-- and emotionally as well.

For a third example, a man that enjoys challenge could choose to learn a programming language rather than just tackling the crossword. The motive is exactly the same, but by thinking ahead, his hobby may reward him in many other ways.

In sum, it seems that we can design activities that immediately gratify and finally reward us. So, we need to forget the idea that quick pleasure must sacrifice future gains. Instead, we should demand that nearly all our activities reward us now and continue to pay off in the future.

Answer 3

Happiness is in fact a state of mind which is a consequence of other actions, events, perceptions. The consequences that follow are mostly not due to happiness, but instead are consequences of the events that caused happiness. Happiness itself being a state of mind might alter your response to other events. That is the limit of consequences directly implicated by happiness itself and not its preceding causes!

So no...! I must disagree! The cost of happiness itself lays in the past and not in the future! The cost of its causes may lay in the future... which is different!

A case for the inverse may be made, but only upon extending happiness's causing factors as part of happiness itself.

Answer 4

The consequences of happiness shall be contentment, or bliss. There is no cost that shall cost happiness; since happiness in the real sense shall not be motivated from without, and on the contrary, it has to be evolving from within. Since there is no external agent present in the being as well as becoming of happiness, how can that 'cost' anything in later life, certainly, happiness is no sin!

Answer 5

It can be so - and quite often is - but it's certainly not a requirement. There are easily ways to please one's self now that have no negative consequences or down sides in the future. For instance, hugging your granddaughter on her graduation day - that's a happy feeling and while life may go any direction from thereon out, it need not go badly in any sense just because of that one moment of happiness. Or even less honorable pleasures, such as sex for pleasure rather than for love. While sometimes, it -can- lead to negative consequences, it usually doesn't for either party involved.

Answer 6

This may sound simple however in doing what we want or need to do to actualize happiness the cost is paid now in the present not in the future when we have achieved happiness the cost (paid) is forgotten we have reached our goal.

Answer 7

Happiness is related to the accomplishment of the purpose of one's nature in accord with virtue. The accomplishment of this purpose brings with it a sense of meaning. As far as a cost for that purpose, in a finite world, all goods are contigent and predicated by the possibility that one good will be diminished and refused in favor or another.

Answer 8

Disagree. The question presupposes that one has let lapse the planning and sacrifice neccessary for future happinesss.
It is possible to be happy now, and to keep in place the insurance for future happiness.

Answer 9

Happiness can make other people envy us or be jealous and they may want to rob from us, the cause of our happiness, instead of working for their own.
It can make us arrogant, selfish and indifferent to others,
But it can also make better people out of us, wanting to share it or wishing others to have it too.
Working for our happiness can sometimes hurt others, if we attain it at the expense of others. But working for it through honest means and with the help of others in a spirit of love and sharing gives us self-satisfaction and self-fulfillment and the good things we did will continuously rebound to us.

Answer 10

Happiness should be the end result. It is the consequence, not the means.