What is happiness?

[UltraWright]

I have been raised to think that happiness is achieved through wearing the best clothes, driving the most "prestigious" cars and being amongst the most competitive! However, it did not make me happy! I feel more happiness riding my bicycle around and doing research on my own rather than driving a car and competing in the academia, but I still feel unhappy because I am not pursuing the happiness that my society is pursuing. I hope you understand what I mean by that last sentence :(.

So, what is happiness for you and how do you manage to protect yourself from the world telling you what happiness should be?

[Meridian]

So you ask what makes us happy?

I am with you; what I enjoy I think most would find boring, and in some cases goes counter to what is both expected and necessary when living in a capitalist society. Besides that 'necessary' part, I try my best not to give a fuck.

[Тачанка]

A hug... a smile, friendship...

Food. I love food, but it's so expensive... If I could I would ALWAYS be munching on a hugeee piece of bread!

[Zukunftsmusik]

Happiness is what er... makes you happy. What makes you feel good inside. I'm happy when reading books, when listening to music, when walking in the woods or the mountains, when being with friends. I'm not happy when shopping, for example. I don't buy capitalisms fake promises of 'happiness' (as most people on this forum, I guess). Some people don't understand this. They think happiness can be bought with money.

Can capitalism offer true happiness? Well, I can feel happiness living in a capitalist society. But I think a society where money, income and class doesn't matter, is a society where happiness more easily can be achieved.

[bezdomni]

A warm gun.

[a rebel]

being so drunk I can't stand up. I know that's terrible, but I'm always thinking of how fucked everything is when I'm sober

[punisa]

Talking to strangers in bars

[CommieTroll]

For me, happiness comes in small doses, e.g A joint, a cig, a cookie etc. Small things throughout my day which are very far and few between but mainly being with the people that make me a better person and dive me to get through the day, right now I don't know what true happiness is, I guess I'm just at an awkward point in my life

[Kuppo Shakur]

Happiness is an unattainable dream.

[punisa]

mainly being with the people that make me a better person and dive me to get through the day

Where do all of you guys get this straight-out-of-Oprah-advice thing going on in real life? :lol:
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you do have such people and I believe you, but it makes me wonder. Whenever I talk to someone about these topics, they always point out similar stuff. And when I eventually meet these people he/she spoke of, they are usually bunch of half-fools one would not seriously tend to rely on.

[Philosopher Jay]

This is an easy question. Happiness is the world communist revolution.

[Ocean Seal]

Based on the answers above, I have concluded that happiness is whatever you define it as. For me happiness is being inside when it is cold, making someone else feel good about themselves, listening to music and above all for some reason: walking very long distances and just thinking.

[La Comédie Noire]

Happiness is the by product of other things like purposeful activity and meaningful relationships.

[Red_Devotchka]

I don't know what happines is. No one really does. I think it's very often depends just on your point of view and on being able to appreciate things we have.
What corporations want us to believe is tht they have all the necessary to make us happy, and they'll be most pleased to give it to us, as long as we pay.
Advertisment's main purpose is to create desire, is to create new needs, so we can run to the shop and satisfy them as soon as possible. Who really does need a tv, another pair of shoes, tht "sweet skirt seen in the shop-window". The answer is no one. Then what makes us actually buy it? In classic maslow's pyramide we gain happiness step by step, starting with physiological needs (such as food, sleep, clothing etc.) and then we have safety and security --> love and belonging --> esteem needs --> know and understand --> aesthetic needs -->self actualization.
So, of course, it's not immediate. What industries promise us is that their goods will make us skip all the maslow's pyramide and will get us immediately to self-actualization. Nothing more false and shallow of course. It brings to a values' crisis and merch fetishism. We are what we own.
Well, of course, not everyone is victim of such mindless behaviour, and know where is the line between buying what i need and buying cause it makes me feel "cool".

And back to the main question... what is happiness?? For me happiness has a name and a face :O
And just after him, there is painting, reading and travelling :p
It's gonna be something different for everyone i guess then...

[MarxSchmarx]

Crudely put, I think happiness is a particular psychological condition, however fleeting, that basically exists at the confluence of pleasure (good food, e.g.), ubiquity/abundance/security in its continuity, and a sense of contentment with these conditions.To which some counter that it could then very well be that someone who is on a multi-day drinking binge could be happy. I wouldn't wish it for myself, perhaps because I won't be content and recognize that such a binge will be transitory (and thus lack security that it will be continued). But I think if it were in fact possible to, as a rebel points out, be in a perpetual state of inebriation, why, I do think that calling that happy is probably OK.

[Octavian]

Crudely put, I think happiness is a particular psychological condition, however fleeting, that basically exists at the confluence of pleasure (good food, e.g.), ubiquity/abundance/security in its continuity, and a sense of contentment with these conditions.To which some counter that it could then very well be that someone who is on a multi-day drinking binge could be happy. I wouldn't wish it for myself, perhaps because I won't be content and recognize that such a binge will be transitory (and thus lack security that it will be continued). But I think if it were in fact possible to, as a rebel points out, be in a perpetual state of inebriation, why, I do think that calling that happy is probably OK.
To add on onto this: Happiness is the reaction to stimuli based on instinctual or psychological views of what is beneficial to ones own survival.

There for it is mostly subjective save for things like food and sex. So as you said materialistic things might be what modern culture and people have told you is what brings happiness but it doesn't have to be so.

[MarxSchmarx]

To add on onto this: Happiness is the reaction to stimuli based on instinctual or psychological views of what is beneficial to ones own survival.

There for it is mostly subjective save for things like food and sex. So as you said materialistic things might be what modern culture and people have told you is what brings happiness but it doesn't have to be so.

What's interesting to me is how modern society build upon, rather than replaces, these primal necessities. Thus for example a fastfood tv advertisment, a uniquely late 20th century invention, promises "happiness", but basically what they are doing is just elaborating on a primal urge to secure food.

To some extent materialist culture fails to go beyond these basic instincts. Thus even an add as seemingly removed from the jungle as for example something for a smartphone really is just a glorified gossip machine, something which our earliest ancestors would have found a good use for.

Thus for me the question becomes: why under modern late capitalist societies is there apparently so little room to expand into these subjective constituents of happiness?

[Heathen Communist]

In my philosophy, which is largely dependent on Anglo-Saxon heathen spirituality, I find happiness to be directly linked to (but not identical with) the concept of "frith."

Frith can be approximately translated as "peace" and "security," but it implies strongly a sense of belonging and comfort. It is essentially the concept of being safe and free from harm and exploitation, arising from being in a place and situation in which you fit well and can live freely.

In other words, it is freedom, safety, and peace together. Without frith, happiness is impossible.

[JustMovement]

I dont know. I dont buy this safety and continuity thing. I think the greatest hapiness is when something is beautiful, but transitory, as in "I know this is going to end, but fuck it its awesome", its a peak, the rest is being content (which isnt bad at all either mind you).

Also I think all that evolutionary psychology is bullshit.

[Rusty Shackleford]

i would imagine its when there is a lot of seratonin goin wild in your brain.

also this:


tTjr_oCo6uU

[CommieTroll]

Where do all of you guys get this straight-out-of-Oprah-advice thing going on in real life? :lol:
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you do have such people and I believe you, but it makes me wonder. Whenever I talk to someone about these topics, they always point out similar stuff. And when I eventually meet these people he/she spoke of, they are usually bunch of half-fools one would not seriously tend to rely on.

Thats your impression of those people though, people that I rely on are to few and far between and its those special fools that make an impression on you that you stick it out with

[Johnny Kerosene]

Happiness is whatever makes you happy.

[∞]

Masturbating.

[VirgJans12]

The amount in which you feel satisfaction on all aspects of your life.

[Mr. Natural]

Happiness arises from successful self-integration into your life systems--nature, family, community, work, state, etc. And your self.

But all of our life systems have now been captured and shaped by capitalism, which feeds upon and degrades life.

So if you're feeling out of step with society and its values, consider this to be an uncomfortable but good thing. If you aren't feeling alienated, you have been enveloped by The System and are out of touch with life.

I've endured 69 years of capitalist degredation and alienation. Happiness for me will be participating in a living revolutionary process.

[Rafiq]

The absence of Suffering.

[JustMovement]

what a bleak lot.

[ar734]

History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy; religion itself teaches us that the ideal being whom all strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare to set at nought such judgments?

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

Marx

[Summerspeaker]

So, what is happiness for you and how do you manage to protect yourself from the world telling you what happiness should be?

I don't. Social expectations always hang over my hand. I feel my lack of respectability and status acutely. In my experience, not having fashionable clothes, not being sufficiently pretty, not knowing the right people, and going without nice/expensive things in general make forming meaningful relationships basically impossible. Folks conform for a reason, and it's damn important to be rich and powerful under capitalism. But your mileage may vary.

[Dunk]

Happiness, for me, is fulfillment. It's not having to worry about paying rent or putting food on the table, and pursuing mastery over whatever you find fulfills you - becoming an expert at your job, making yourself smarter, fitter, a better friend and lover.