Philosophy

[hitiredimj]

I have a Civilization class with Lars Jones, who is infamous for being a hard professor. From what I've seen, the "difficulty" is not really how in depth his teaching is, but how he requires certain exact answers that are worded as his are. His expectations lead to dull lectures reminicent of Ben Stein in Ferris Beuller's Day Off: "And the answer

Comments

[slywalker13]

I think your point is actually quite a good one, assuming i read it correctly, i kinda skimmed. I believe i am happy with a big H, but I am also unmotivated, I kind of always live life for the moment and don't think in the future that much, about how much happier i could be.

[hitiredimj]

which is what I told my professor... if you're always big H, you are subjugated easily (which was the point of Gilgamesh, to make people like kings and keep them in power). My professor went on to say that you could be both Happy with a Big H and also want more. I told him he's an idiot, only I said it in a kind of clever way. I also made a pot smoking joke about being Happy that I think he didn't get but judging from the stares and snickers, a lot of the class did.

[ghostallight]

i think this applies to a lot of people- we are discontent, but if you cover up the part of us that wishes for the future, and see us sitting around with friends or walking across campus, when we are in the world and not in our heads- then we are Happy. the Happiest among us live in the world all the time, and they're in no way worse off than the rest of us

[hitiredimj]

My point of saying "better off" was to tell the teacher that smokign pot all day (a wise crack at him) was not as good as getting a job that pays lots of money and getting a big house. He was trying to tell us that living for the moment is the only way to be Happy, and I was saying I am happy doing the pro tempore accomplishments, and when the happiness wore off and you went for something more, your lowercase happy was better, quite likely, than your uppercase Happy of an ignorant buffoon.

Happy

[dacrazyone]

Yes I am HAPPY with a capital H because I have to enjoy my life to the fullest extent or else i will never be happy with it.

[hitiredimj]

So I am looking at this from the perspective of Desire on one end of a spectrum, contentment on the other. A zero sum line. If you were forced to pick a place, where would you be?

Pat got mad at me for this. What about people who are truly Happy and also still have things they wish to or will achieve? A positive sum. That is possible, he assures me and cites a friend of his as an example. In the same way, there are negative sums, the truly despondant who have no wants and aren't happy.

Thanks Pat, that ruins this question like saying the glass is half full of liquid and half empty of it. You skirt the question of how much you desire versus how much you accept your position. A valid point, but it destroys what I am trying to gauge.

[formofanangel]

In my life i have never been happy or fulfilled or whatever...Most of my life has been a fake smile and a glance at someone. So here is my dilema...how can you be happy with a H....you really can't......you can be content but their is always something in the back of your mind screaming out i hate something about myself.....sooo just being content. that is all.