5 ms·

Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia, happiness consisting in "activity of the rational soul, conducted in accordance with virtue or excellence"[1] helps here.

Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia, happiness consisting in "activity of the rational soul, conducted in accordance with virtue or excellence"[1] helps here. Lack of such activity perhaps leads to ennui. Not entirely in the individual's hands, as he goes on to say "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune"[2]. Surprised I didn't see this mentioned in the article. An adjacent, perhaps more controversial, formulation of this point: Meaninglessness can be countered by the voluntary adoption of responsibility. (e.g. having children) [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/ [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/

amelius 6y ago
> "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, ..." But nowadays you can always become a coder ...
- Chyzwar 6y ago
  you need mental power, intelligence to become a coder.
  - elldoubleyew 6y ago
    Clearly, you haven't met many coders
    - philipov 6y ago
      Those many coders you are referring to don't get existential satisfaction out of programming. Programming is just like any other creative medium in that respect. Anyone can learn to write, and some can even make a career writing professionally, but a lot fewer spend their free time writing for fun. The more lucrative a career in an art can be, the more people there will be who have no interest in it beyond a way of making money.
  - philipov 6y ago
    Programming doesn't require any peculiarly high intelligence; it requires proper education and dedication. Intelligence can substitute for formal education by allowing someone to teach themselves, but it's not a technical requirement. However, access to education is still a type of privilege not everyone has.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
Eudaimonia at work can be achieved by having trophies and places to focus, at college the professor tries to reach eudaimonia honestly my two cents is that Aristotle can't give us anything for us normal people
alexpetralia 6y ago
I would argue that meaning is whatever you find meaningful (people can find profound meaning in very arbitrary things), but it certainly helps to have some biological tailwinds on your side.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> > "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, ..." Go find the others who are friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly[1]. Among them, you'll find plenty of opportunity for virtuous activity. ----- [1] There's far more of such people than the, uh, non-friendless, non-childless, non-powerless, non-weak, and non-ugly think.
- cambalache 6y ago
  Speaking as an ugly person, the problem is the majority(all?) of ugly people dont want their peers.Solitude is preferable.
  - cik2e 6y ago
    Speaking as an above average looking person (or so I’m told), I’ve found that here in my 30s, physical attraction has taken a major back seat to the personality factor. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one, but I don’t really think of people as attractive or not any more based on facial features or anything else that we don’t have control over with regard to our bodies. What matters is physical fitness and whether we can have a mutually interesting conversation.
    - Loughla 6y ago
      As I get older, I still consider physical attractiveness of the people around me. But what I've noticed is that I 100% make fewer choices based on that physical attractiveness. In my 20's, I was very likely to make a decision to work with or for someone if they are attractive. In my late 30's now, I am much more likely to only base it on the other person's ability and/or intelligence in a subject area.
    - ooobit2 6y ago
      You're definitely not gay if you think that. I'm 33 and I can assure you that I've gone from feeling relatively average to below average, to now believing firmly for the last six years that I will not have another relationship in my lifetime. And if by chance I do, it will likely be a highly casual one. I can't keep up with everything as it is. You realize that "what matters" has changed so much just in the last few years, and once you start counting the big things, you only need to get a few in before you're out. No six pack? OK, but are you vegan? If not, then do you at least believe Sanders was robbed in 2016? Ugh... Well, if you can't say yes to any of those, you've at least never been diagnosed with a mental health issue, right? Seriously. I smoke. I was turned down for smoking by someone who I less than two weeks later ran into again, and he had a lit cigarette between his fingers. That's where we're at in the "what matters" pipeline these days.
SeekingMeaning 6y ago
> Meaninglessness can be countered by the voluntary adoption of responsibility. This reminded me of Jordan Peterson
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- m463 6y ago
  I listened to him on Joe Rogan and he seemed like a pretty down to earth guy. However on the show it seemed like he was treated as a controversial figure.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - imbnwa 6y ago
    That's because he says lots of down to earth things except his philosophical warrants for these things are insanely conservative
    - SeekingMeaning 6y ago
      > However on the show it seemed like he was treated as a controversial figure. Well, I guess this answers that (and maybe more). But to give my personal perspective, I’m not sure what Peterson’s motives are. He has stated that he used to have severe clinical depression, which might help contextualize some of his more “grim” lectures/videos. (He and his daughter are able to mitigate their depression by having a carnivore diet. Strange, but it seems to work for them.)
      - onemoresoop 6y ago
        It seems to me that there is a financial motivation, they're for getting attention and monetize that attention. Both JP and his daughter are selling snake oil. Having said that, it's a huge turn-off to try to understand what his ramblings really are about.
m463 6y ago
another path to responsibility could be a pet. Make a kid responsible for a pet might start things off early. I am also reminded of the old saying: The key to happiness is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to.
imbnwa 6y ago
Not sure why Aristotle is being cited here, where does he talk about boredom in Nichomachean Ethics? Refresh my memory. I dunno if you've read it, but The Nichomachean Ethics, which is where eudaimonia is treated, is basically a parenting book for a slave owning upper class. It is not a book about how you, a grown adult, experiencing mental paralysis in a hedonistic consumerist Capitalist society that has orders of magnitude more abundance, can get out of said paralysis. Not. At. All. Edit: I wanna be really clear. Aristotle has some very useful things to say, particularly in De Anima, which, IMO, is the sole philosophical definition of a soul that is capable of being set in alignment with the concept of evolution, but the Ethics is a really big hype job that has lots of important sounding phrases taken wholly out of context. Aristotle is at his best when he is just a scientist, like in De Anima, or any of his zoological works.

amelius 6y ago

> "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, ..." But nowadays you can always become a coder ...

Chyzwar 6y ago
you need mental power, intelligence to become a coder.
- elldoubleyew 6y ago
  Clearly, you haven't met many coders
  - philipov 6y ago
    Those many coders you are referring to don't get existential satisfaction out of programming. Programming is just like any other creative medium in that respect. Anyone can learn to write, and some can even make a career writing professionally, but a lot fewer spend their free time writing for fun. The more lucrative a career in an art can be, the more people there will be who have no interest in it beyond a way of making money.
- philipov 6y ago
  Programming doesn't require any peculiarly high intelligence; it requires proper education and dedication. Intelligence can substitute for formal education by allowing someone to teach themselves, but it's not a technical requirement. However, access to education is still a type of privilege not everyone has.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

Eudaimonia at work can be achieved by having trophies and places to focus, at college the professor tries to reach eudaimonia honestly my two cents is that Aristotle can't give us anything for us normal people

alexpetralia 6y ago

I would argue that meaning is whatever you find meaningful (people can find profound meaning in very arbitrary things), but it certainly helps to have some biological tailwinds on your side.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> > "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, ..." Go find the others who are friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly[1]. Among them, you'll find plenty of opportunity for virtuous activity. ----- [1] There's far more of such people than the, uh, non-friendless, non-childless, non-powerless, non-weak, and non-ugly think.

cambalache 6y ago
Speaking as an ugly person, the problem is the majority(all?) of ugly people dont want their peers.Solitude is preferable.
- cik2e 6y ago
  Speaking as an above average looking person (or so I’m told), I’ve found that here in my 30s, physical attraction has taken a major back seat to the personality factor. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one, but I don’t really think of people as attractive or not any more based on facial features or anything else that we don’t have control over with regard to our bodies. What matters is physical fitness and whether we can have a mutually interesting conversation.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    As I get older, I still consider physical attractiveness of the people around me. But what I've noticed is that I 100% make fewer choices based on that physical attractiveness. In my 20's, I was very likely to make a decision to work with or for someone if they are attractive. In my late 30's now, I am much more likely to only base it on the other person's ability and/or intelligence in a subject area.
  - ooobit2 6y ago
    You're definitely not gay if you think that. I'm 33 and I can assure you that I've gone from feeling relatively average to below average, to now believing firmly for the last six years that I will not have another relationship in my lifetime. And if by chance I do, it will likely be a highly casual one. I can't keep up with everything as it is. You realize that "what matters" has changed so much just in the last few years, and once you start counting the big things, you only need to get a few in before you're out. No six pack? OK, but are you vegan? If not, then do you at least believe Sanders was robbed in 2016? Ugh... Well, if you can't say yes to any of those, you've at least never been diagnosed with a mental health issue, right? Seriously. I smoke. I was turned down for smoking by someone who I less than two weeks later ran into again, and he had a lit cigarette between his fingers. That's where we're at in the "what matters" pipeline these days.

SeekingMeaning 6y ago

> Meaninglessness can be countered by the voluntary adoption of responsibility. This reminded me of Jordan Peterson

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
m463 6y ago
I listened to him on Joe Rogan and he seemed like a pretty down to earth guy. However on the show it seemed like he was treated as a controversial figure.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- imbnwa 6y ago
  That's because he says lots of down to earth things except his philosophical warrants for these things are insanely conservative
  - SeekingMeaning 6y ago
    > However on the show it seemed like he was treated as a controversial figure. Well, I guess this answers that (and maybe more). But to give my personal perspective, I’m not sure what Peterson’s motives are. He has stated that he used to have severe clinical depression, which might help contextualize some of his more “grim” lectures/videos. (He and his daughter are able to mitigate their depression by having a carnivore diet. Strange, but it seems to work for them.)
    - onemoresoop 6y ago
      It seems to me that there is a financial motivation, they're for getting attention and monetize that attention. Both JP and his daughter are selling snake oil. Having said that, it's a huge turn-off to try to understand what his ramblings really are about.

m463 6y ago

another path to responsibility could be a pet. Make a kid responsible for a pet might start things off early. I am also reminded of the old saying: The key to happiness is someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to.

imbnwa 6y ago

Not sure why Aristotle is being cited here, where does he talk about boredom in Nichomachean Ethics? Refresh my memory. I dunno if you've read it, but The Nichomachean Ethics, which is where eudaimonia is treated, is basically a parenting book for a slave owning upper class. It is not a book about how you, a grown adult, experiencing mental paralysis in a hedonistic consumerist Capitalist society that has orders of magnitude more abundance, can get out of said paralysis. Not. At. All. Edit: I wanna be really clear. Aristotle has some very useful things to say, particularly in De Anima, which, IMO, is the sole philosophical definition of a soul that is capable of being set in alignment with the concept of evolution, but the Ethics is a really big hype job that has lots of important sounding phrases taken wholly out of context. Aristotle is at his best when he is just a scientist, like in De Anima, or any of his zoological works.