Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_10pzgbi in philosophy
Yeah this article fails where a lot of writers of philosophy fail: no clear definition of terms.
It feels like some terms are interchangeable with others, most notably the terms 'nihilism', and 'happiness' don't feel like they're actually referring to my understanding of these words.
This is written by someone who's clearly never actually suffered. Their highest suffering being the equivalent of a hang-nail, it's easy to come to these moronic conclusions about life.
Let me tell you, most of my suffering hasn't been great for character growth. And I've suffered way more than most. Chronic pain now for two years straight, five major surgeries with a total of over 30 hours under anesthesia (and countless months/years recovering), five major mental health diagnoses including bipolar disorder..
I currently live my life trying to maximize pleasure, comfort, and happiness because those are the only things that put a dent in all of my afflictions. This derision towards a pursuit of happiness as the cornerstone of a good life is absolutely borne of ignorance of what a bad life or what real suffering is.
Author is idiot.
As someone who has suffered greatly physically, your higher aim could be seeking hedonistic pleasure to offset your pain. Hedonistic pleasure is a tool for your higher aim, which is to overcome the unfortunate hand you were dealt.
It absolutely is. I tell everyone I meet that I'm interested in pursuits that lead to good feelings and that I do very little in the ways of pushing my body to extremes of discomfort (except maybe in a sexual capacity, where I'll eventually be rewarded with euphoria/bliss in the right environment) since I'm already constantly in a state of extreme discomfort (especially since the US refuses to administer opiates to chronic pain patients now, fuck all of the abuse surrounding the only drug that actually makes a dent in my pain).
Able bodied people look at me like I'm crazy because they simply do not understand how traumatic an experience like mine is. People don't want to look at their own privilege critically, just like the author. And it seems like a case of a severe lack of empathy, but that's nothing unusual for today's accepted discourse.
When talking about Frankl, the author says this:
Some prisoners regressed into a more animalistic state — losing touch with their humanity and becoming brutal survivalists. This is an understandable and perhaps the expected reaction to such an extreme situation.
I don't think the author would be critical of you for using pleasure to take the edge off incredible pain. I think what he is insinuating is that the harder the trial, sometimes, the harder it is to find higher meaning. Since I don't know you, I can't speak to your motivations, but I would assume that if you're willing to write about your pain on reddit, some part of your higher purpose involves sharing your experiences.
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I wish more people were aware of how impossible it is to discuss philosophy without first agreeing upon the definitions of the terms you’re using. Philosophy of consciousness is one of my favorite niches to read about, but sooo many well educated thinkers on the subject neglect to parameterize what they mean by consciousness and end up going in circles defending their preconceived notions of the word instead of engaging with it in the way the speaker intended. Nothing more frustrating to me than two intelligent thinkers debating completely different topics using the same word.
Debate coach here. Often engage in philosophical resolutions. First part of any debate case is definitions. If you don't have them it's impossible to argue properly.
Is happiness really the antonym of suffering? I would think the antonym of suffering would be more like, “enjoyment” and/or “contentment”, or something like one of those.
The opposite of “happiness” would be, I think, “unhappiness”.
I forget which greek philosopher it was specifically, but their conception of Happiness was closer to that. The greek word “Eudonia” has been loosely translated to mean “happiness,” however it more closely translates to “fulfillment,” “contentment,” etc. So often when some of those greek philosophers were discussing Happiness, they really meant fulfillment, which is very different from what we understand happiness to mean.
It can kind of make sense because so many people interpret it that way. But the article is too vague, I much prefer the writings of people he quotes, like Frankl
"This Epicurean ideal of maximal pleasure/minimal pain has become thedefault ideal of the good life in our modern world. But the hedonistideal is not the only game in town, and in antiquity, it wasn’t even themain game."
Has this guy even _read_ any Epicurus?
Epicurus was NOT a pleasure maximizer. Ataraxia is NOT a state of constant, maximal pleasure. It is a state more akin to tranquility, to be achieved by moderating the appetites and practicing something not very different from Stoic virtue.
Epicurus would be absolutely horrified by what counts as "happiness" in modern popular culture. Unlimited consumerism with no restraint. Wasteful capitalism and unrbidled hedonistic sex was not his idea of a good time. He wanted to stay in his garden, cook simple foods, maintain intimate friendships, and practice the love of wisdom.
People get Epicurus wrong nearly 100% of the time.
>Epicurus was NOT a pleasure maximizer. Ataraxia is NOT a state of constant, maximal pleasure. It is a state more akin to tranquility, to be achieved by moderating the appetites and practicing something not very different from Stoic virtue.
There are different interpretations of Epicurus on this point, and with good reason. Part of the issue is the paucity of surviving primary sources; we only have three letters which were (ostensibly) authored by Epicurus himself, and everything else is second-hand accounts of his philosophy, often from a hostile perspective, written centuries after Epicurus' own death. ETA: I forgot to mention, we also have one collection of maxims, knowns as The Principle Doctrines, which I think most agree is a genuinely Epicurean text, but it was probably produced by later disciples of the school. Additionally, there is another collection, known as The Vatican Sayings, however, the provenance of its points is less certain.
That being said, the interpretation which you have forwarded is what I like to refer to as the 'tranquilist' interpretation. Ironically, while it is a correction to the view the Epicurus was a mindless, debauched reveler, it is still inaccurate. A bit of an overcorrection, if you will.
Epicurus was a hedonist, in the truest sense of the term. His goal was to maximize pleasure, and to minimize pain. However, he thought that 'ataraxia' was itself the absolute maximization of pleasure. In contrast to the Stoics, virtue was only ever instrumental to Epicurus, never the goal.
"And this is why we say that pleasure is the starting point of living blessedly. For we recognize this as our first innate good, and this is our starting point for every choice and avoidance...." -Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
"No pleasure is a bad thing in itself. But the things which produce certain pleasures bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures." - Principle Doctrines, VIII
The key here is understanding that, for Epicurus, there was no neutral state between pleasure and pain. At any given moment, you could only experience pleasure or pain, but not both at the same time, and you must be experiencing one of them. Ataraxia was not an empty tranquility, it was a state without troubles of the mind or body, in which all desires had been fulfilled or vanquished, a sort of contentment. Think of how you feel after a really great meal, when you are just sitting there not wanting more of anything really, just enjoying your satisfaction. I think of it less as 'tranquility' and more like 'contentment'.
"The removal of all feeling of pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures. Wherever a pleasurable feeling is present, for as long as it is present, there is neither a feeling of pain nor a feeling of distress, nor both together." - Principle Doctrines, III
Furthermore, Epicurus' simplicity of living was not because he valued that mode as some sort of ideal, like the Cynics, but because of practical concerns. Maintaining a lavish lifestyle carries its own burdens, and it is not a sure-thing. One can always lose their wealth and station, and if you have grown too-accustomed to high-living, then you are at even greater risk; you risk losing not only your wealth, but also your joy. Likewise, if a simpler man happens into more extravagant fair, he is better situated to actually appreciate and enjoy it.
"And we believe that self-sufficiency is a great good, not in order that we might make do with few things under all circumstances, but so that if we do not have a lot we can make do with few, being genuinely convinced that those who least need extravagance enjoy it most...." - Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
You see, then, Epicurus was indeed a "pleasure maximizer," he just approached the issue more shrewdly than others. I hope you'll forgive my little rant, but Epicurus and Epicureanism are of special interest to me.
I myself had a strawmanned idea of what Epicurus was, then quickly realised that he is pretty much a moderate Stoic. Not completely ascetic, but still recognising that pleasure must be disciplined not only for objective well-being, but for the very ability to experience pleasure itself.
Right. Epicurus makes a distinction between the different kinds of pleasures to be sought after that serves a similar function as the distinction the Stoics make between things which are in our power to control, and things that are outside of our control. Both schools of thought recognize that human beings become vulnerable to the experience of harm when we focus ourselves on matters that are not natural to us. And so, a Stoic and an Epicurean would both be quite disciplined in how they approached life.
They would definitely give very different accounts of what made their lives "good," but I bet unless you asked them to give you their reasons, you probably wouldn't be able to easily tell one apart from the other.
The Epicurean would likely be a little more of a recluse, whereas a Stoic might be more inclined to be "in the world" and interacting with the community at large, which she believed she had a duty to participate in. I don't think the Epicurean would feel the same way, and might be more likely to live "off the grid" as it were. The Stoic's "Off the Grid" would be her Inner Citadel.
Elon Musk as the example of a meaningful life. Uh-huh.
If we include narcissism as a meaningful pursuit, we might as well include happiness. Being an oligarch of a deeply unequal society is not meaningful. If the meaning of your life is to build a better society, then we actually have to ask: What kind of a society?
I am deeply skeptical of this doe-eyed “multi-planet, beyond-the-stars society” poetic waxing. These billionaires are adopting the language of democracy (“We” are going to the stars, “we” are gonna live in the future) but you aren’t invited on the arc. And even if you were, you would be the janitor. Because “more stuff” solves nothing when you replicate the same social problems that got us in this crisis in the first place.
In my painful life experience, narcissists are rarely ever happy, and seem fairly sociopathic
Musk is a dumpster fire, but I can sympathize with this bit of poetic waxing (relevant XKCD). Trying to fix the world in the conventional way is a monstrously difficult, counterintuitive, dirty and depressing task. Trying to do this without having half of humanity hating your guts is downright impossible. Meanwhile, making space travel more accessible is a low-hanging fruit, fun and relatively uncontroversial (other than the argument from the aforementioned XKCD).
The "we" here refers to humanity in general. Not that every human will get the opportunity to go to other planets, but that some will. I don't know what goes own in Musk's head, but I think that most of his fans accept that they will not go to Mars, and are simply glad that some humans will eventually do. It takes a certain kind of egolessness to look at these promises and not ask "but what about my share?"
I’m not asking “What about my share?” so much as “Is this actually a good future for humanity?”
No, the answer is so obviously no. This is the society we get when we let great-men tech-fetishist hypercapitalists define our future.
You wanna get to space? Me too. But what will space be when we get there? A “progress” that treats exploitation as the cost of doing business may get us to space… but it brings the dystopia with us.
It is subjective whether a life devoted to wealth and power is meaningful or not, as meaning can vary from person to person. Some may find meaning in using their resources and influence to create positive change and better society, while others may view it as shallow and lacking deeper purpose. Ultimately, what defines a meaningful life is a personal and individual choice.
If this is true, it contradicts OP’s thesis that we can rule out happiness as meaningful.
Also, do we really believe this about meaning being entirely subjective? I forget the name of the philosopher, but I remember from intro to philosophy the counter-example of a man who finds meaning in eating his own shit and watching paint dry and torturing babies. There is a big difference between “I can’t prove an objective, universal meaning” and “baby torture is literally identically meaningful as striving to cure cancer.”
Questions of whether a given person's chosen meaning is wrong or if it can be objectively judged are independent of whether it is meaning.
Regardless as I agree that meaning is subjectively applied and made, I’m not going to lie to myself and think Elon is some Renaissance Man out to uplift the species.
The Great Man hypothesis has been bankrupt for a long time, and he’s just a mediocre computer programmer that is good at hyping investors with a start from daddy’s money. If he wants to be altruistic, he can start with better compensation for his employees.
> deeply unequal society
What is an equal society? Everyone is a robot and equal in every way?
I’m talking about access to political power. I think Musk’s project is inherently illegitimate if it inherits the human rights abuses and disenfranchisement from an extremely hierarchical system. That’s not to say that all hierarchy necessarily creates human rights abuses. The key words are “deeply” and “extreme.”
Musk may be a complete schmuck, but it's a massive stretch to say that he hasn't done a whole lot of meaningful things... He did a decent bit to revolutionize usage of the internet in his early days, he's been at the absolute forefront of both the push to EVs and the push for green energy production and storage, and he has revolution travel and access to space and provided strong internet to a whole lot of places where it wasn't previously an option, which wad a game changer for a lot of people?
Massive tool? Definitely. Massive meaningful impact? Also definitely.
I think this “thing good = meaning” argument misses the value of the mission.
Imagine a feudalist lord who owns a castle. He orders his serf to build this new invention called “the hoe.” It’s amazing. It revolutionizes farming, feeds a bunch of people, yadda yadda.
Should I use that feudal lord as an examplar for the meaningful life? No, he did good stuff to perpetuate a system that is awful. Also, he didn’t do jack shit. He’s not a hoe engineer. He just owned stuff and gave orders and raked in the profit.
For crying out loud, we might as well use Trump as the example of the reflective philosopher out there carefully crafting a meaningful life like a work of art just because he instinctively grabbed at power like an especially selfish toddler.
Commissioning a guy to make a hoe is drastically different than taking your entire fortune (that you made from a company that you started and did the majority of the work on yourself) and putting it towards a goal that betters the world.
I honestly do not believe he’s making the world a better place. I don’t share the assumption that the feudal lord’s investment into the hoe project can be plausibly interpreted as some kind of charitable sacrifice. Any account as to whether he’s doing a good thing for the world must ask “Why is he giving orders at all?” “Why did he get to decide what kind of society would be good for the rest of us?” “Is he building a world that replicates our current abuses?” That kind of arbitrary exercise of power isn’t some deeply reflective sacrifice. It’s just narcissism.
>I don’t share the assumption that the feudal lord’s investment into the hoe project can be plausibly interpreted as some kind of charitable sacrifice.
Whether the feudal lord's investment was altruistic or selfish, the outcome is still a better hoe. That better hoe results in higher crop yields compared to work done. That's good. If those higher crop yields go entirely towards banquets for the lord, then the "good" is very limited compared to if it was distributed to the peasants. But it's very hard to see how those higher yields, on their own, could be "bad".
I don’t think the results are bad. I think good results are necessary but not sufficient for a meaningful project.
Yeah there is just no chance of us agreeing on this one
> A meaningful life on the other hand can embrace more of life including struggles and suffering because it is oriented towards a higher ideal
An arbitrary and randomly chosen higher ideal?
That was my reaction to. A higher ideal is extremely subjective, and striving towards some lofty or extremely difficult to achieve outcome isn't some sort of guaranteed path towards finding meaning. You decide what has meaning
Probably more like hedonistic. The original concept of happiness as the penultimate goal of life comes from Aristotle's 'Eudaimonia,' which more accurately is translated as "flourishing" and connotes harmony. Happiness is not the goal... but it's a pretty good thermometer.
In the scenario where happiness is the penultimate goal, what is the ultimate goal? 🤔
How about both? Happy and meaningful life.
As other have pointed out, this article attacks “happiness” in the title, then proceeds to argue against what should have been called from the beginning “mere pleasure”. “Happiness” is usually understood as a satisfied or serene pleasure, not necessarily a passionate or appetital one. “Happiness” is not the opposite of “pain”; it is the opposite of misery. I don’t think the authors are arguing that we must be miserable simply to pursue some ideal, so their argument ends up being simply “We should orient our lives around a higher ideal rather than mere pleasure”. And the obvious answer is that doing so will make us more “happy” according to its usual definition.
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“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." Antonio Gramsci in a Letter from Prison (December 1929)
While I think the point you make overall is nice, you fall into the same trap I see a lot of jungians fall into, as looking at Myths as just psychics phenomenons. You for example cite a hindu myth, which you understand right, in the sense that it points out the importance of devotion to GOD. But later you say that we have to find our own Krishna as religious belief, is not possible in a secular world, not understanding that God in this story is not meant as an "Archetype" or something interchangeable, but simply as the highest transcendence. Ironically trying to defeat nihilism, you presuppose that the world ("as it is") is meaningless, as we are the ones to give it meaning.
Was this written by Jordan Peterson or something ? How is happiness not meaningful ? Don't we pursue meaning because it makes us happier ? Why the fetishisation of suffering ?
Even hedonism is not meaningless. It recognizes that pleasure is sometimes attained through some suffering via making efforts to achieve goals for example. Hedonism isn't even meaningless or a bad philosophy.
I suspect that the Peterson-like people aren't actually pursuing meaning itself, they're pursuing a grandiose idea of themselves (or more plainly, status), that's why they express so much contempt. Same thing could be said about Nietzsche.
But Nietzsche and Peterson, I suspect, were and are deep down miserable, unhappy, lonely people
This is literally what Jordan Peterson teaches.
My only critique is that I don't know what you're saying at all because you haven't really defined what you mean when you say the word 'happiness'.
And since your central thesis is based around the claim that "happiness is a nihilistic ideal," we have no idea what point you're trying to make, and cannot refute anything you say.
A constant state of ‘happy’ has a range of zero. One feeling, all the time. Imagine one meal all the time. The mind-numbing soul destroying temperature of sameness. A meaningful life has range. Highs and lows, giving us comparative power, ability to measure, creating data for analysis. Range of feeling and emotion is more interesting and valuable. And paradoxically, I’m happy most of the time because I seek daily life beyond sameness. I indulge risk that creates struggle with uncertain outcomes. Sometimes I’m freaked out, others elated, some morbidly depressed. I love my capacity to feel and live intensely. That makes me happy. Pop culture ref: Repo Man (1984) Harry Dean Stanton as Bud “the life of a repo man is always intense”.
The article spoke to me until it tried to rehabilitate musk.
His goals are for max profit that is all. If the Twitter debacle doesn't make it clear then nothing will.
> His goals are for max profit that is all.
That's false and if you read his twitter posts occasionally, you'd see why. Musk regularly puts ego/pride above profits. He wouldn't be losing as much if he wasn't regularly banning or insulting people who disagree with him on twitter or call him out, and he's regularly trying to paint himself as being some sort of saviour.
If his goals were really just for maximizing profits, he'd keep his mouth shut and play in the background.
Well said. Haha
Eh, conscious existence is whatever you want it to be, happiness can mean A LOT of things, its never gonna be the same for everyone, a meaningful life is to first avoid the extreme suffering if you can, because that ruins whatever meaning you want to pursue, then if you luck out, just pursue whatever makes you wanna stay till the end.
Simple aint it?
Not when people complicate it with some insane goal of a perfect life, lol.
You can struggle, you can suffer, but the journey must be worth your stay, the reason will be personal and up to you.
Hedonism often ends very miserable and unhappy. Happiness should be cultivated not farmed.
To attest that happiness is not meaningful is the thinking of someone that has never truly suffered.
That's an utter shit. You are the cumulative functions of your emotions and senses, and you must yearn for the happiness in the miserable and shitty 80 years you will live. It's essentially a game of strategy where you will want to have as much happiness without suffering. That's where idiotic and worthless arguments like this arose; when people make foolish choices to be happy and end up worse, they accuse the ambition of happiness for their own blindness. The ultimate focus of one's life shouldn't be a higher meaning; instead, one must be smart enough understand what makes them happy, and move towards that happiness while avoiding suffering if it doesn't serve happiness. Then one will see that the so-called "higher meaning" isn't something one should strive and work towards for, but something that they reach when they start to think and live for what makes them happy. It's not about the damn destination, it's about the journey.
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Happiness is a temporary emotion. We know for a fact that no matter what happens to humans, our emotions will regress to the mean. You could win the lottery and have all your dreams come true, and after 6 months it'll start getting boring.
So chasing happiness is a fools game and ironically will stop you being content.
Who determines what is and isn't a higher ideal? And who says higher ideals can't also make you happy?
So to be happy all the time would imo imply that they are hedonistic. Which isn't sustainable.
Except you can be both happy all the time, and not be hedonistic at all, because hedonism is not a requirement of happiness. One can be happy with their state in the world, without making any attempt to change it. Hedonism, on the other hand, requires the pursuit of a specific set of ends.
As an "ideal" I would imagine it's unattainable and thus the pursuit necessarily entails suffering.
The best way a human can express their live to someone " is to respect them"
I thought this was an Elden Ring meme
Rather than Nihilistic I think this thought process more approaches a sort of selfish dogmatism, doesn't it?
Both immediate satisfaction and marginal lifelong satisfaction based decision making for individuals seems very much uncharacteristic of a civilised individual displaying empathy in any broad sense.
What?
Surely you wouldn't be truly happy unless you ahd a meaningful life
I know I wouldn't be happy if I didn't have meaning to my life
….isn’t this what religion does?
SteveCake t1_j6n2iro wrote
You can advocate the pursuit of a meaningful life without having to reframe the concept of happiness as a strawman. Happiness is low-hanging fruit for derision because it can be so silly and trivial but it is the antonym of suffering and the goal of much early philosophy, all of which is as compatible with the pursuit of higher ideals as much as it with the reduction of psychological despair. Imho this article uses "happiness" when it is really just talking about "hedonism."