It seems so many questions focus on happiness. Are we just looking for a feeling that we can get from a pill?
2007-10-24 22:40:29 · 11 answers · asked by Matthew T 7 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Makerz. What then is the essence of happiness?
2007-10-24 23:24:10 · update #1
No.
As one person said... 'happiness is made up of minute fractions'.
So what's the point of being happy with only a drug?
The true essence of happiness will be gone if the pill is used.
And the longing would still be there.
2007-10-24 22:48:59 · answer #1 · answered by makerzZz........** 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Wow... what a great question!!
Happiness is no feeling, since any feeling has limited life..... happiness that we seek as the greatest goal in life must obviously be something that is stable and longstanding.... it is not an exciting state of mind... it is just a satisfied and peaceful state of mind. Even if there is a pill that can lull our senses and dull our mind, it would be only upto a degree and for a finite period of time. In order to attain the Happy state of mind, we need positive steps...... in my view there are two important steps...... the first one is to be able to accept with equanimity anything and everything that occurs or happens, obviously to ensure against any excitement whether positive or negative...... this I believe is possible only if we can rein in our ego, because it is our ego that forces us to judge everything either as favorable or unfavorable.
The second important positive step is to have a long term purpose... the purpose should not be self-oriented because it would then feed ego and negate the first step mentioned above. A selfless purpose is essential in order to give that little positive tinge of satisfaction to the stable and unexcited state of mind attained through the first step of total acceptance. Without such a purpose in life, the peace of mind can never be stable for very long, because our mind is naturally roguish and it needs to be kept bound by a purpose.
To summarize, we need to free up our mind through total acceptance, and at the same time keep it in one piece and well directed through a long-term selfless purpose.
Well, that is what appears to me as the right way to be Happy (with a capital H) on a stable and sustainable basis.
2007-10-25 07:30:51 · answer #2 · answered by small 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
No, it wouldn't. People have been looking for this sort of "euphoric elixir" since ancient Egypt invented *beer*. And the deal with it is...there's *always* complications. There's always addictions, side effects, and on and on.
But not only that. There's also the whole notion that we *long* to be happy. Meaning, there's a difference between the desire and *what* we desire, and most of us are smart enough to discern the difference. Not to mention, we can pick apart degrees and kinds of "happy" like nobody's business--we know the difference between being euphoric/sedated/intoxicated, and actually having a feeling that is invoked by an experience, of something positive and reasonably *real* happening.
Compare this to a pet dog or cat. Most of them don't really care *how* they feel good, so long as they do. They live their happiness on a level that is more immediate and sensory. They could (in the short term) be happy living on a pill.
People, on the other hand, remember and compare their lives and experiences....it's how we learn things and pass on what we've learned. One consequence of this is that happiness (or any other sustained feeling or emotion or mood) is no longer the simple sensory stimulus --> response system that exists in other animals. With us it's more like: Longing (desire) --> motivation (processing) --> Experience (doing) --> Results (feelings/happiness).
This is what's wrong with getting your "fix" from a pill.
It sedates the longing, or the desire, but only at the animal, sensory level. It remains "all in your head". In and of itself it doesn't really provide an experience (out there, real-world) and long term it can *damage* the motivation and processing and planning it *takes* to get from Longing to Experience (or *doing it*).
This is why the *failed* social experiment in South Africa, of the "dop" system, or of socialized sedation of the lower-class, working farmers with massive plying of cheap alcohol, became such an *utter* horrorshow. It wasn't just that multiple *generations* of people impaired by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome did serious and mainly *irreversible* damage to the people's intelligence....
It was that, in creating a society where *addiction* was the standard, the societal powers also ended up *destroying* the capacity of the people they oppressed to *hope for better* and to actually have the *free will* to act upon what little, tattered ruin of a hope they had in life. It wrecked their capacity to live lives (and have Experiences) outside of the system they depended on.
And, one could submit that much the same sort of thing happened with the Candy Ravers. That the parties, the drug they used, and the music in combination sated their euphoric desires and longings to *such* excess that there was no longer any real *motivation* to plan or work for the Utopian ideals they talked about. Yes, even when they weren't hung over or "e-tarded" and in withdrawal.
The sensory, in-your-head, animal longing for "feeling good" was sated to such a degree of overkill that it also damaged their capacity to *let* that longing *move them* to do more, experience more, and *live more*.
So yeah, you can't just drug people into being perfect utopians, sorry. It doesn't work. ^_^ If it did, nobody would have gotten the point behind the first _Matrix_ film, which was about the *ultimate* form of Internet Addiction As Feel-Good Happy Pill, really. (and even so, in the follow ups it had to be explained that you couldn't make the simulated experiences *too good* or people would just stop breathing and not have any desire to live)
However....on the other hand, you cannot just *starve* people utterly of their desire, on the animal level, to feel good either. That breeds the kind of violence, hatred, and widespread social misery that starts *revolutions*. So some form of "happy pill" does have a place in society, if only to maintain social order and prevent mass suicides.
Trouble is, much of the Developed World here and the U.S. in particular has really uptight, Puritan attitudes towards the notion of Feeling Good, by any means, and so our Legal Happy Pills these days rather suck at their job.
But that's a whole other subject. ^_^ Point is, real happiness comes from reality, *out there* and outside of your head. It comes from the kinds of experiences you can't get from having a pill that is "all in your head". If that makes sense.
Hope this helps. ^_^
2007-10-25 12:52:07 · answer #3 · answered by Bradley P 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If we had a happy pill?!?
Happiness is a form of pleasure or joy caused by the sense we are fulfilling our purpose.
It is a neurochemical 'attaboy' to reward our animal natures for having pulled off something helpful to survival.
There are many drugs that mimic the chemistry of happiness, but the net effect is to 'trick' the human control system. The inborn pursuit of happiness becomes a pursuit of a drug, rather than the pursuit of success.
JFTR Sports & Virtual Reality games are similar phenomena, except they mimic the happiness inducing sense of achievement rather that its biochemistry.
2007-10-25 16:22:46 · answer #4 · answered by Phoenix Quill 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I think happiness is a matter of opinion. for example: playing chess gives happiness to me but it may be a boring thing to some other person. So no drug can satisfy all.
Moreover people will be addicted to such drugs and the world will be driven mad.
2007-10-25 06:00:10 · answer #5 · answered by poornima_durairaj 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
you have to figure what will constitute you being "happy". Good grades? Happy marriage? good job? money? and so on.
the meaning of happiness varies from one to another, so a pill would not work, and if it did, then we would find something else in our lives that we would seek after this "happiness"
It is better to seek after joy. Joy is longerlasting, and stays with you in the mist of a storm
2007-10-25 06:59:54 · answer #6 · answered by Fugitive Peices 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
not really.... we crave the sense of having done something good, or having something good happen to us... happiness is just a feeling we have to encourage those things... if we got the feeling from doing nothing but popping a pill everyday, it would lose the meaning.
Also, its the unexpectedness of being happy that holds the charm... the pill cant really help with that.
2007-10-25 09:05:48 · answer #7 · answered by sherin 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
yah, they've made it e.g. something like ecstacy pills, opium, etc but of course for short term happiness only just like for few hours happy only.
so according to confucius saying, one should choose the long term happiness, not the short term one, coz we know that short term thing just don't last long.
2007-10-26 10:30:13 · answer #8 · answered by negimagi 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No. I think it isn't really happiness unless we do something for ourselves to get it. Are lottery winners truly happy?
2007-10-25 09:24:03 · answer #9 · answered by Susas 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Depends on how good the drug is, yeah?
2007-10-25 07:06:08 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋