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All that while producing a significantly higher happiness index than the US. Amazing.

by orf 8y ago

quotemstr 8y ago
You know what else produces "happiness"? Morphine. Happiness never built a bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle. Productivity matters more, since it leads to satisfaction with a life well-lived, and ultimately more fulfilment than "happiness". Your happiness dies with you. What you accomplish lives forever.
- genericid 8y ago
  I don't think Germans are happier than Americans because we take more opiates. Your claim that productivity (or, for that matter anything else) is more important than happiness is plain absurd. I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built.
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    You know very well that I didn't mean that Germans literally medicated themselves into happiness. (AIUI, that's more an American thing.) My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire, and that humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves. As I've said previously, European social policy is basically rest-and-vest at civilization scale.
    - genericid 8y ago
      A life of comfort is very much an ideal we should aspire to. There will always be people who have the intrinsic motivation to accomplish grander things. People don't accomplish great things because they are forced to.
    - danans 8y ago
      > My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire You are equating a life of comfort with happiness. A lot of people have a more nuanced ways of evaluating their lives, where they value facing challenging and meaningful problems while also seeking stability and comfort. It's why we have better adjectives to describe a good life than "happiness", i.e "fulfillment". > humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves. Many of humanity's greatest breakthroughs came from people who were specifically insulated from the uncertainties of daily survival. From aristocrats experimenting with physics, to lifetime tenured monks (and later academics) who were given the day to day security to pursue lines of thought that otherwise wouldn't be considered. Despite the oft-repeated cliche, necessity is more often the enemy of invention. Necessity serves as a pruning mechanism to select the best hypothesis of the many that were created when resources were plentiful.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    > I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built. That's a fantastic way to put it. If we aren't being productive to improve happiness (directly or indirectly), then why are we doing it?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- orf 8y ago
  That's not a great argument because happiness leads to productivity. Productivity and happiness are not mutually exclusive at all. And at the end of the day what's the point if you're not happy. Some grand, hand wavy idea of great fulfilment somewhere down the line doesn't cut it, because you know what never built a great bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle? Living with crushing debt, stagnant wages whilst working paycheck to paycheck.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > Happiness never built a bridge... Back in my day, every Philosophy 101 curriculum included John Stuart Mill, who had this to say. "Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification." You're using a very narrow definition of happiness. A uselessly narrow definition IMO, and apparently for no reason but to spread bigotry. Most people wouldn't be happy knowing they hadn't achieved anything (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Even the otherwise rather short-sighted "Objectivists" tacitly accept this view, with "enlightened self interest" being their phrase of choice to avoid acknowledging the origin of that thought. Modern Germans do not lack in accomplishment. They just choose to balance goal-directed work with enjoyment of its fruits, instead of staying on the treadmill past the point of diminishing returns. Here in the US, there's a bit of a fetish about claiming to work super-long hours to satisfy a Calvinist "work is virtue" image, while actually goofing off for (at least) half of that whenever nobody's looking. That's really stupid. The European approach of actually enjoying that time with family and friends guilt-free seems smart, compared to spending it in the office neither being productive nor having fun.

All that while producing a significantly higher happiness index than the US. Amazing.

by orf 8y ago

All that while producing a significantly higher happiness index than the US. Amazing.

You know what else produces "happiness"? Morphine. Happiness never built a bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle. Productivity matters more, since it leads to satisfaction with a life well-lived, and ultimately more fulfilment than "happiness". Your happiness dies with you. What you accomplish lives forever.

genericid 8y ago
I don't think Germans are happier than Americans because we take more opiates. Your claim that productivity (or, for that matter anything else) is more important than happiness is plain absurd. I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  You know very well that I didn't mean that Germans literally medicated themselves into happiness. (AIUI, that's more an American thing.) My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire, and that humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves. As I've said previously, European social policy is basically rest-and-vest at civilization scale.
  - genericid 8y ago
    A life of comfort is very much an ideal we should aspire to. There will always be people who have the intrinsic motivation to accomplish grander things. People don't accomplish great things because they are forced to.
  - danans 8y ago
    > My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire You are equating a life of comfort with happiness. A lot of people have a more nuanced ways of evaluating their lives, where they value facing challenging and meaningful problems while also seeking stability and comfort. It's why we have better adjectives to describe a good life than "happiness", i.e "fulfillment". > humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves. Many of humanity's greatest breakthroughs came from people who were specifically insulated from the uncertainties of daily survival. From aristocrats experimenting with physics, to lifetime tenured monks (and later academics) who were given the day to day security to pursue lines of thought that otherwise wouldn't be considered. Despite the oft-repeated cliche, necessity is more often the enemy of invention. Necessity serves as a pruning mechanism to select the best hypothesis of the many that were created when resources were plentiful.
- ergothus 8y ago
  > I prefer a good life over one that ends with me jumping off a bridge I built. That's a fantastic way to put it. If we aren't being productive to improve happiness (directly or indirectly), then why are we doing it?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
orf 8y ago
That's not a great argument because happiness leads to productivity. Productivity and happiness are not mutually exclusive at all. And at the end of the day what's the point if you're not happy. Some grand, hand wavy idea of great fulfilment somewhere down the line doesn't cut it, because you know what never built a great bridge, cured a disease, or discovered a new particle? Living with crushing debt, stagnant wages whilst working paycheck to paycheck.
notacoward 8y ago
> Happiness never built a bridge... Back in my day, every Philosophy 101 curriculum included John Stuart Mill, who had this to say. "Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification." You're using a very narrow definition of happiness. A uselessly narrow definition IMO, and apparently for no reason but to spread bigotry. Most people wouldn't be happy knowing they hadn't achieved anything (see: Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Even the otherwise rather short-sighted "Objectivists" tacitly accept this view, with "enlightened self interest" being their phrase of choice to avoid acknowledging the origin of that thought. Modern Germans do not lack in accomplishment. They just choose to balance goal-directed work with enjoyment of its fruits, instead of staying on the treadmill past the point of diminishing returns. Here in the US, there's a bit of a fetish about claiming to work super-long hours to satisfy a Calvinist "work is virtue" image, while actually goofing off for (at least) half of that whenever nobody's looking. That's really stupid. The European approach of actually enjoying that time with family and friends guilt-free seems smart, compared to spending it in the office neither being productive nor having fun.