The tricky thing about happiness is to avoid creating it for yourself at the expense of others: which puts most manufactured goods off limits. I can't tell you the pangs of conscience I get from going to Ikea - knowing their methods ;-)
Making music (or writing) is one example of a happy activity that seems to me to have a low negative for others. You can't be me, I'm taken
"Making music (or writing) is one example of a happy activity that seems to me to have a low negative for others."
A few days ago Miguel and I were talking about writing, and in specific about my writing about my life. I asked the question, "Who really cares?" I quit one world to indulge more directly my passion for another world. Now, I can tell people wonderful, true stories---about a world that is vanishing from their world of possibility. Will stories and images from my life, of the mountains of Jamaica before the tourist industry devoured them, or the vanishing greenland icecap make them happier? I don't know, but there's a bigger question. Mig knows more about my life than some, and he pointed out that much of the world that geezers like us lived in and through is fast disappearing or already gone, and is therefore uniquely precious. People need to know that it really happened, how it came to happen, that it really existed, and that the view of the airshaft out their kitchen window is not the only view that ever was, and that IS. Perhaps such stories will motivate them to treasure and to save what remains. And many, many treasures remain.
Gonna borrow a part of your comment for a signature, if you don't mind. Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
But we all have a responsibility to document the treasures for future generations ;-)
And we now have tools available for that purpose that have never existed before. Roll on the noosphere!
Borrow away. It gives me happiness. You can't be me, I'm taken
I don't think there is anything THAT special about the post-WWII period
You mean apart from the moon landings and the move into space, the Internet, complete revolutions in music, the arts and the media, drugs and psychedelic culture, pacifism, the threat of total nuclear annihilation, genetic engineering, pretty much the first truly populist and democratic governments in history (for a while, anyway), universal education, the transformation of public sexual morality - and Michael Jackson?
You could take someone from any period from around 1200 to 1700, park them anywhere else in the same half millennium, and while they might not feel completely at home they wouldn't be utterly perplexed.
Take someone from 1810 and park them in 2010 and they'll have no idea what's going on. They won't have any of the basic technical or social skills needed to function, they won't have any of the same references, and they likely won't even understand everyday human interactions.
Someone bright could certainly learn, eventually, but it would take them a long time - probably at least a few years from a cold start.
Our brains have not changed in 40.000+ year. We process the same amount of 'information' and we give it our own significance. As I've said before: 200 years ago the fluttering of the leaves in the trees, the ripples in the rivers, and the scudding of the clouds were equally resonant with significance as our fluttering of screens, rippling of memes or scudding of communications. You can't be me, I'm taken
When the habits by which one is raised to age 10 become significantly inapplicable by age 30
What a relief!
See e.g. the Flynn effect.
Rustling leaves don't change much from day to day. In 2010 we're supposed to follow global news, keep on top of the latest bands, fashions and cultural events, and master technology that changes every year - and those are just basic social skills needed to stay in touch with friends.
Rustling leaves don't change much from day to day.
look harder!
;)
differences in how leaves rustle aren't harbingers of life or death events, mostly any more. maybe that's the dig bifference. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I'm saying that never before in history have so many people spent so much time and energy communicating with each other globally - and that being able to do these things, which used to be a pastime for an incredibly small educated elite, is now a basic social skill.
In fact what I think will happen - barring total breakdown - it's that the next step will be aggregating and tracing tools that can extract and summarise idea clouds in an empirical way.
Philosophy so far has been largely untroubled by empiricism, except at the edges.
When you have such a wealth of behavioural records for real populations on such a huge scale, you can model how people really think and act, not how they say or believe they think and act.
There are potential good and bad sides to this, but the bad sides don't necessarily fall outside the analysis, which - ironically - makes it easier to identify, label and compensate for them.
Currently we have 21st century technology with 15th century politics and finance.
This may change soon. ;)
In fact what I think will happen - barring total breakdown - it's that the next step will be aggregating and tracing tools that can extract and summarise idea clouds in an empirical way. Philosophy so far has been largely untroubled by empiricism, except at the edges. When you have such a wealth of behavioural records for real populations on such a huge scale, you can model how people really think and act, not how they say or believe they think and act.
very interesting points. especially about philosophy and empiricism... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
I suspect it may have made them better soldiers, able to cope with the rigors of life in the field.
But as the books of that time go out of print, the collective memory dies off.
Making music... is one example of a happy activity that seems to me to have a low negative for others.
Well, except for the people in the vicinity, that is... "Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char
i suffered for my art.... now it's your turn! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
