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Stop Chasing Happiness, Look for Meaning Instead

#1
C C Offline
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ng-instead

EXCERPT: . . . More and more people are recognizing the need to shift from pursuing happiness to pursuing meaning. They are recognizing that the search for happiness will not help them solve the challenges they face or the emptiness they feel. A growing “Meaning Revolution” is taking place around the world as people are beginning to revolt or rebel against this never-ending chase for so-called happiness.

MORE: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ng-instead
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
― Jim Morrison

“Happiness must happen, … : you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”— Viktor E. Frankl, M.D., Ph.D., Man’s Search for Meaning

That's essentially it. You have to stop chasing the goal of happiness and just learn to be your real spontaneous self. You have to stop fighting against the world and learn to flow with the current of all happening. And you have to learn to embrace fully and then totally let go. That is the natural rhythm of life itself.
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#3
Syne Offline
The inevitable result of secularization. People who decry the meaning found in tradition and religion finally realizing that meaning is crucial for a life worth living.

And hypocrites who only seek subjective validation pretending that they are at peace with the world, all evidence to the contrary.
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
I don't get it. What happens when I find meaning? Should I feel happy about it?
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#5
C C Offline
(May 12, 2018 12:39 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: I don't get it. What happens when I find meaning? Should I feel happy about it?

". . . happiness can not be pursued, it must ensue by committing authentically to meaningful values and goals."

I guess it's supposed to be some drawn-out, generalized happiness as opposed to the immediate sensations and gratification of abiding purely in the empirical "given-ness" of situations without any abstract constructs messing with that. (Even basic "devotion to family" might be more of a formalized tradition than we realize, rather than an intuition or inherited disposition. Without prior intent, learned example, or genetics it would still be falling out of practicality, too, though.)

The supposed kind of satisfaction / happiness delivered by the governing or discipline of a concept, system, or cultural orientation which either delivers epiphany / revelation or socially integrates the many. As opposed to the individualistic "doing your own thing" one-person church or just arbitrary acts (following unguided impulses).

"And it can only do so by extending beyond yourself, either in service to others or to a cause greater than yourself. In other words, when we put meaning at the heart of our lives, only then will we discover true happiness."

Even nihilists / denialists of _X_, anarchists, and rebels garner a "greater than themselves" identity by their declaration of "I'm not that" and opposing it. There arises a kind of inverted / negative (or alternate) version of the set of ideas which are being rejected or countered, just via the latter effort.

"Meaning" as in commitment to a role in some regulating social template, lifestyle, school of thought, or "game" that brings either scattered people or a local community together and gives them a shared identity and common interests / goals to be dedicated to. As we proceed further into the generations of the 21st-century, the "playgrounds" of the past (esoteric fellowships, religions, political experiments, etc) may be retrospectively construed as the original way of engaging in augmented reality games. Without the computer technology to implement either the conceived entities / wonders or the "public good" success advertised by the propaganda as fact.[*]

Amish communities that allow limited electricity and automated vehicles like tractors still introduce caveats that protect their oddball identity from being gobbled-up by the surrounding mainstream. Electricity must be propane and solar generated so that they are not sharing a power-grid with sinners. Tractors are okay because they are utilitarian vehicles instead of recreational transport. Ultimately it's all about the meaning and togetherness their lifestyle provides, with the Bible (and its interpretation) just being the original seed / tool / excuse for demanding the introduction of such a "game" to play... and continued maintenance of it into the future.

- - - footnote - - -

[*] Example of such propaganda in terms of the darker side of the pre-computer era implementation of a hybrid-reality game:

George Orwell: . . . O'Brien silenced him by a movement of the hand. "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature."

[...] "We are the priests of power," he said. "God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: 'Freedom is Slavery.' Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body—but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter—external reality, as you would call it—is not important. Already our control over matter is absolute."

[...] "I told you, Winston," he said, "that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing; in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression," he added in a different tone. "The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men." He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: "How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?"

Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

"Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. [..] Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. [...] Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. [...] There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. [...]


[...Fully getting into gameplay mode here...] The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. [...] Goldstein and his heresies will live forever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon—and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible—and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. [...] A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it."

~
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#6
Syne Offline
Happiness is a byproduct of striving toward achievable goals.
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#7
confused2 Offline
Let's look at one recipe (A) for happiness:-

1/ Believe in God
2/ Go to a church (preferably not an overtly insane one)
3/ Don't forget to clean your teeth.

Now another recipe (B) for happiness:-

?

Reasons for choosing recipe B over recipe A are?
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#8
Zinjanthropos Offline
(May 13, 2018 12:05 PM)confused2 Wrote: Let's look at one recipe (A) for happiness:-

1/ Believe in God
2/ Go to a church (preferably not an overtly insane one)
3/ Don't forget to clean your teeth.

Now another recipe (B) for happiness:-

?

Reasons for choosing recipe B over recipe A are?
Choose plan B because I....

1. Live in an area where being an atheist  probably won't get me killed.
2. Same as above plus have no chance of following a Jim Jones to my grave.  Although church is  great place to meet ladies.
3. Have  good dental insurance 

Plan B is mysterious and more fun, tending to my inquisitive nature. I can be happier  Big Grin
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#9
confused2 Offline
Z Wrote:Plan B is mysterious and more fun, tending to my inquisitive nature. I can be happier.
That ^^^ is one hell of a good answer.
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#10
C C Offline
"The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” --George Washington Burnap

Given the title of the book that the quote was originally extracted from, it's easy to see why it's often misattributed to someone else (like William Blake).

~
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