Padriag
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Joined: 3/30/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Faramir
Patrick,
Its Padriag, not Patrick.
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If, as you say, "happy" means "fulfilled" - if "fulfilled, content, satisfied, happy are synonyms in this context." You've really said nothing. You've merely said:
"Happiness means a state of well-being, happiness, a pleasurable happiness.
The point of that post wasn't to define happiness. My first post to this thread answered the original question. Do we seek happiness within or through this lifestyle. The answer is yes, almost certainly anyone who comes to this lifestyle is doing that in some form. My second post, to which you responded, was merely to point out that the words happiness, contentment, fulfillment are essentially synonyms in this context, they all refer to the same thing. I posted that in response to the assertion by some that they were not the same thing. However, you are correct I did not define what the thing is they refer to.
BTW, here is a thought you might find useful. Happiness is a response to the state of being fulfilled. In a general sense they can be synonyms becauce in the genral sense they are all connected, they are all parts of the process. However, when we take a careful look at the process we see that happiness is a response, a feeling, to a state. That state is being fulfilled, filled, satiated, etc. But both are the result of something else... being filled with something. You come directly to this question below.
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You, Aristotle, myself - have taken as a premise that happiness is good. The meat of the conversation then is what does it mean to be happy? What does it consist of? How can it be achieved?
Aristotle had one answer. Buber has another - I see a way the two answers fit in my own synthesis. I went back and read both your responses and don't hear your answer Not that you are alone in this - most of the responses were along the lines of "Happiness is a process." Well no shit - what is the process though?
You're correct, I didn't define it. What happiness is was not what was asked by the OP, merely whether or not we seek it.
You already have your definition of happines and I suspect are quite content with it. And as you suspect, I have mine and am equally content with it. That is, in each of our cases our concept of happines, our solution, our process fulfills and satiates our appetite for a concept of happiness.
Perhaps then happiness is merely finding a concept of happiness that satiates one's appetite for it... each according to their appetites.
We may say that gluttony is wrong, for it is an over filling of an appetite rather than a filling of it. But if we ask why does one pursue gluttony and we find it is because the glutton is mistaken in their concept, their process of how to fulfill their appetite. They seek happiness, the fulfillment of an appetite, just as you or I. Their mistake is their perception of what is needed to fulfill that appetite.
What are our appetites... Adler gives us only five of them and calls them life tasks - Work, Friendship, Love, Sprituality and Self. Maslow gave us a heirarchy of needs, literally a heirarchy of appetites. Whether those appetites are as fundamental and basic as a literal hunger for food, or an appetite for something as intangible as love or intellectual discourse... we all have our appetites and each according to our own seek to fulfill them.
Individuals will naturally seek to fulfill those appetites, even if they don't have names or labels for what they are. Literally, when we are hungry, we seek to eat. If we desire love, we seek to be loved (and that too according to our concept of both love and how we may be loved). Through self awareness we become better aware of what these appetites are, and we can then become better able to seek their fulfillment. But equally we can be misled in our belief about what is needed to fulfill our appetites and thus... gluttony.
I think in that last thought rests the real reason for the statements, the feelings, of some that the pursuit of happiness is wrong... they have mistaken the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake with the pursuit of happiness... pleasure and happiness are not synonyms. Eating itself can be pleasurable (we may enjoy the way the food tastes, we may enjoy the act of eating itself, we may be mistakenly subtituing the act of eating as a means to satiating another kind of appetite), but that pleasure does not satiate our appetite... our literal hunger for food. Thus when seek pleasure instead of happiness, we get gluttony and an appetite or a need (to return to Maslow) unfulfilled (an thus the gluttony repeats).
In that we have the root of the the misconception that the rich must be unhappy... unfulfilled. Money itself cannot bring happiness because it does not satiate an appetite. The mistake is believing that all who are rich only pursue money. One can be rich and be happy so long as one seeks to fulfill ones appetites (needs), not merely one's desire for pleasure. That is, one may have all the food in the world, but if one does not seek to eat for its own sake, one still will not become a glutton. Thus we can also say there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure, so long as it does not take the place of ones pursuit of happiness... or literally, satiating one's needs.
Does that satiate your question as to what is the process?
_____________________________
Padriag
A stern discipline pervades all nature, which is a little cruel so that it may be very kind - Edmund Spencer
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RE: Is it all about "being happy" - 
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