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I wouldn't know what happiness is anymore, since I work for a living. I wasn't happy in school because attendance was compulsory, but I do remember summers bein

I wouldn't know what happiness is anymore, since I work for a living. I wasn't happy in school because attendance was compulsory, but I do remember summers being okay. It's been decades since I've enjoyed a "summer time" but once, when I lost my job for about 6 weeks, I was almost happy during week 5 until I landed a job offer, and spent week 6 stressing about returning to work. It took me a month to feel like a human being again, and just as I started to relax, it was taken away from me. So I disagree. A mind compelled to focus for unnatural reasons, onto details personally irrelevant to one's continued existence, under threat of being ostracized from civilized society (can't pay rent; out on the street) is an unhappy mind.

saiya-jin 9y ago
Meditate, exercise, travel to remote exotic places for as long as you can (this can be done actually pretty cheaply if you are a bit smart about it). Try changing your food (no sugary or simple carbs is a good start, plenty of fiber). Good 8 hours of sleep, enjoy a bit of sun every day. No drugs, legal or illegal (maybe a bit of pot if it makes you relax, but from your description it probably won't). If everybody would do most of this, we would live in paradise.
neuronic 9y ago
In return, I disagree with your perspective. While you are certainly right about stressful experiences related to employment and status in modern society, how exactly would this not have been a variation on the same problem for forms of life and society that we have observed so far? Today we might rush after digital clocks and adapt our waking lives to the never extinguished electric lights that encircle us, all while the power of science has still failed to reduce our working times which have been rising ever since the agricultural revolution. In earlier society people felt the need to please the Gods - whatever their job situation was. Even as lone hunter-gatherer your mind would be stressed because life itself continuously coerces you into doing inconvenient things in order to survive. You need things and they aren't just popping into your hands. Society made it massively easier to simply survive and not die. But the factor we are REALLY after and which stresses us out without end is status. For you, for your children, for the rest of your family. Until status doesn't matter, stress will exist. No matter how much we secure and automate in the rest of our lives, be it health or hunger.
Infernal 9y ago
I imagine part and parcel of this unhappiness is that it is taboo - you have to create a throwaway account or otherwise find an anonymous forum in which to express it.
Mikhail_Edoshin 9y ago
You work for a living because you chose to. There's an option not to pay rent and live on the street. You, obviously, have freely chosen another one for certain reasons even if you're not fully aware what these reasons were.

saiya-jin 9y ago

Meditate, exercise, travel to remote exotic places for as long as you can (this can be done actually pretty cheaply if you are a bit smart about it). Try changing your food (no sugary or simple carbs is a good start, plenty of fiber). Good 8 hours of sleep, enjoy a bit of sun every day. No drugs, legal or illegal (maybe a bit of pot if it makes you relax, but from your description it probably won't). If everybody would do most of this, we would live in paradise.

neuronic 9y ago

In return, I disagree with your perspective. While you are certainly right about stressful experiences related to employment and status in modern society, how exactly would this not have been a variation on the same problem for forms of life and society that we have observed so far? Today we might rush after digital clocks and adapt our waking lives to the never extinguished electric lights that encircle us, all while the power of science has still failed to reduce our working times which have been rising ever since the agricultural revolution. In earlier society people felt the need to please the Gods - whatever their job situation was. Even as lone hunter-gatherer your mind would be stressed because life itself continuously coerces you into doing inconvenient things in order to survive. You need things and they aren't just popping into your hands. Society made it massively easier to simply survive and not die. But the factor we are REALLY after and which stresses us out without end is status. For you, for your children, for the rest of your family. Until status doesn't matter, stress will exist. No matter how much we secure and automate in the rest of our lives, be it health or hunger.

Infernal 9y ago

I imagine part and parcel of this unhappiness is that it is taboo - you have to create a throwaway account or otherwise find an anonymous forum in which to express it.

Mikhail_Edoshin 9y ago

You work for a living because you chose to. There's an option not to pay rent and live on the street. You, obviously, have freely chosen another one for certain reasons even if you're not fully aware what these reasons were.