Jason Resch-2 wrote: > > An interesting video related to the discussion: > > http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html > > Interesting point: Lottery winners and those who become paraplegic have > the > same level of happiness after a year. >
A very interesting talk. We tend to totally missestimate what makes us happy. Having money will not make you happy if you don't know what to do with this money to make you happy (buying a house and a car probably won't) or if you are fearful to lose it again or if alienate your friends. Being paraplegic is not the end of the world, as we imagine. It is a major hinderance, but most things we do really care about don't get lost (you can use your mind, have friends, even do sports,...), so why shouldn't we be able to still be happy? What really makes us happy is doing what we really find important, being satisified with what we have and not being in situations that directly cause unpleasant feelings (chronic pain, depression, imprisonment). And most of all, our neurochemistry. All feelings supervene on our neurochemistry. This is both really bad and really good news. If you have a really screwed up neurochemistry, you might be depressed and you really can't do much against it, no matter whether you try hard. But it also means that we don't have to walk a long and hard road to become happy (like many religious and spiritual teachings want us to believe, like reincarnation), we just have to know the trick to make us happy. We don't know very good tricks yet, but we might discover them relatively soon. There might be something like ectasy without neurotoxic properties and without disturbance of the balance of our neurochemistry. Or brain implants might do the trick. Unfortunately it is not widely believed that it is okay to manipulate you neurochemistry to be happy. Many ways to do it are illegal. It is really a joke to write the right to pursue happiness into the constitution and throw people in a cage for doing it. -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Progress-and-Happiness-tp31876522p31887011.html Sent from the Everything List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
