The following was written GetBig.com forum user Uberman during a conversation on Happiness
Post 1:
Happiness is linked to knowing because knowing is dominating controlling the environment, other life forms, whether they are vegetal or animal, which proves dominating underlies the feeling of happiness. Knowing, controlling, dominating, means better odds of survival, means being happy. Being happy is linked to knowing that you have better odds of survival than others.
Many people are happy believing in systems of beliefs that "work" (ie insure their survival and the survival of the loved ones who reinforce by their alliance with them their own survival) simply because..it works. It produces and cover their daily need for gratifications, chemical recipes of happiness in their brains that allow them to last one more day. Most people are happy because they follow daily routines that produce "well being" in their lives; they could’t tell why or how they got there, the conditions were just ideal for them, as simple as that.
Everything is just fine in their minds, everything has a meaning, an explanation, even what is unexplainable, which is reassuring. These beliefs also make them the good guys while giving a meaning to the enemies, the bad ones. It justifies everything geographically, temporally and emotionally. Look at how nihilist end -Vincent van Gogh, Nietzsche, Darwin etc, they all experiment with everything in life, atheism, nihilism, homosexuality, bisexuality etc; they all end crazy because the clear understanding of what is really "going on" actually drives anyone looking for a positive, pure, meaning of life to madness. Religions actually keep people away from madness and the will to destroy the absurd world, because if you re not part of the world, if you don’t participate, build, insure its survival, you re actually fighting to destroy it, life is binary, you either build or destroy, if you re not building, you re destroying. And good luck finding out for sure if someone is actually trying to create, help, or destroy.
Anyone interested in understanding nihilism / atheism and generally how we give a meaning to our lives should read Eugene Rose's work.
Post 2:
I'm still not finished reading the Bible so obviously I'd have a hard time saying i have "faith", and nowhere do i find humans or phenomenon that would allow me to find and hold it once and for all. Actually it's a work in progress. Sometimes I feel like I start to understand what faith is, just to find I lost it the second after. It is indeed, quite an effort that is required, just like when you want to build muscles -naturally-. I'm currently exploring the opposite side of faith, the dark side of the coin. Most self proclaimed atheists (atheism being "in" nowadays it's pretty smart to tell everyone you’re "in") claim religion and Christian-ism are a bunch of bulshits created to control them , failing to realize it is the anchor for a stable and productive life that keeps regenerating itself while atheism lead most people to stop breeding after several generations of believing in it. The funny is that they're also scared by sheer, unadulterated nihilism, which means they still hold Christian values deep inside their minds. They pretend to be atheist yet "believe" in the seven days of the week, have Christian names and so on. Be honest and push your reasoning to its most perfect nature; nihilist, then. Oh wait, nihilism causes one to want to end his life after a while. It means no more hamburgers, no more sex -or porn for most- no more TV, no more video games...no more hope for joy and happiness.
Post 3:
You don’t get it. smart, intelligent people, are unhappy because they realize how vain and bestial life is at its core. Only dumb people can "love" and "feel", aren’t drowning in their cynicism, this is why they procreate while "intelligent" people don’t, as simple as that. Again, intelligence has nothing to do with happiness; dumb people are often a lot more happier than smart people.
All our behaviors and thoughts processes are animalistic in the first place, we want kids for the same reasons other animal species "want offsprings". Fact is we don’t "want" shit, all of this is pre programmed behaviors, it's genetical. Those who "choose" not to have kids simply despise life and other living beings, they are sociopath and they want mankind to disappear. They all probably disappear, those who will stay will evolve to adapt to whatever happen on earth. As simple as that.
Oh BTW, mankind is divided into two main categories; poor dumb people who want to be rich, and smart rich people who want to stay rich and manipulate, dominate the poor and keep them below themselves.
Post 4:
Again, nobody is "happy", everyone is only pretending to be happy. Everyone knows there are too many people, not enough jobs. Everyone says he hates his job, yet does his best daily to prevent any newbie from being recruited, anyone from taking his place, even if it's a shity place. Everyone criticizes the boss in front of his colleagues, and criticizes his colleagues in front of his boss. And the boss knows it well.
Life is war. Everything is an instrument to wage war, words, feelings, happiness happen when you successfully dominate , kill, when you see others fail. Anger, frustration, sadness happen when you fail to dominate, are dominated. Hope is when you envision yourself or you offsprings dominating others.
There is no way mankind can last forever, our so called intelligence, consciousness -of being animals- are only other weapons to wage war against others.
Post 5:
"maturing/aging" = realizing you're an animal struggling for its survival against all the human competition. If you have money , if you re surrounded by "loved ones" -people who want you to succeed, dominate, where they weren't able to dominate so basically who live vicariously thru you- who give you advice on how to fuck people in the ass instead of being fucked in the ass by them, it's easier to cope... Others simply become violent, angry, jealous, or kill themselves realizing there is no justice or fairness in life, it's simply about adapting better than others and winning when they lose.
Having kids they can get money for your retirement, it's easier to defend yourself, survive in the specie if you create your own loyal group.
The funny is that ultimately our whole specie will get extinct anyway. So most people simply come to the conclusion, while i'm here, why not simply dominate blindly without caring about all these bullshit like religion, philosophy etc, -how useful are they for a poor man? it won't help him much, all of this is just a hobble for rich people who don’t have to survive daily killing others for a job and food- life is pain for everyone so lets be happy making others having a painful day. Now multiply this belief/behavior by 7, 8 9 billions of individuals.
Post 6:
Well I’ve written extensively on this subject months (years) ago, browse my post history, but I’d add this.
Beauty, strength, money, all fade away, none of these strategies of survival last forever. It s what you do with what you have at the moment you have it that matters, it's how long you maintain your strengths, it's how you reverse your weaknesses, that matters. There are people who are good looking, rich, powerful, yet are unhappy. I think our society makes it a religion to "find happiness", not understanding how it works, in fact most people get sick of looking for something that simply doesn’t exist; constant happiness. People were a lot happier on a more consistent basis in the past it is a fact. People in the past were not looking for happiness, but to please God. And they were happier.
Constant happiness? This is not what we have been designed for; happiness is just an emotion among many others. Life is a roller-coaster of feelings. There are people who have been, felt, miserable all their lives but raised kids who dominate, are happier than others by a wide margin. The me generation has no clue about history, nor can envision the future; they’ll never reach the maturity to raise kids properly enough for them to survive.
Fact is happiness is more easily found for everyone following basic principles more than buying into the last trend that in order to steal money from your pocket will "reveal" you a shortcut to reach it.
There is a bigger picture, experience, at work, and you have to see beyond individuals.
Just consider the fact that once economies collapse, not matter how good looking or rich you are, if you are at the wrong place at the wrong moment, you're good looking body and its pockets full of money dont mean shit.
The Bible says only the humble, down to earth, who finds his happiness in the simplest things will be saved, will live long...will be part of tomorrow. Only he will have hopes. We are blades of grass, and some of them are greener than others. We are just toys in the hands of something bigger than us. Our "feelings" are not even ours per se, they're just strategies of survival genetically embedded in ourselves and we didn’t choose just like we didn't choose most of our physical attributes. Our only choice is to decide what to do with them.
Life is a challenge, an experience, full of traps and one needs a strong spiritual, mental discipline to go thru it without "failing". Many good looking, strong, rich people have died since the birth of mankind. Many of their genes have been saved and cross mixed generation after generation. Many dumb, ugly people have survived the same way; they were "inferior", still they still exist. The real question is, what is the point of all of this ? Are we just a bunch of randomly mixed, generated, strategies of survival, is the only purpose of our existences to struggle for survival against others individuals , against the weather, other animal species, who are as vain and lost as ourselves and who just want to dominate without having to be someone else slave?
I don’t believe that we re designed to be constantly happy or unhappy. Life as a human being is about more than that; it's about surviving whatever the way you survive. Now, a lot of people think that all strategies of survival are equivalent, that being a whore, a murderer, a robber, is justified and just as good as studying, working, etc if it allows you to survive, others aiming at the betterment of mankind until a perfect being is obtained believe that you have to constantly improve your thoughts and/or body it gives a meaning to their existences and to the process of reproduction in humans. When they choose not to fall for a sin, they see the difficulty of that choice as a step in the good direction.
It is also funny how some ugly people give birth to good looking kids and how good looking parents give birth to ugly kids. There are so many things we don’t understand.
Ultimately I think preppers have better odds of survival than yuppies from the cities.
On a side note I think that male beauty isn’t as fun as it seems to be. I'm quite handsome myself and the more I age the more I attract young girls teens and women of all ages, pretty surprising considering i was a very insecure pimple face when a teen. As a result, I have more and more occasions to seduce and be seduced by women of all ages who want the best partner to breed with. It actually makes my life harder, more painful, because most of these women when they figure I am married have a daughters, suddenly realizing they cant "have" me start to hate on me, because I won't be their lover. How many of them also hate on me because I am the one they would have loved to start a family with but "unfortunately" they ended with the skinny fat/ fat insecure asshole. So at first glance they all fall in love then quickly turn into w(b)itches as soon as you don’t answer to their attempts to flirt with you.
Because they’re little girls who aren’t used to not get what they want.
Anyway in most cases it only results in more troubles for me than anything. So, beauty definitely has its pros and...cons.
I am afraid it's all a lot more complicated than that; if only good looking, powerful, rich people were allowed to reign, be happy, most ugly , poor people would just kill themselves right? But life is a gigantic (infinite?) experience where anything can happen, and the result of this struggle for survival is "feelings", emotions that make us feel alive. It is fascinating how we create, fabricate, give, a meaning to things with our brains, when simply put, most of what exists, is "happening", is only struggle for survival by various life forms of all kinds.
There will be major events that will see the world population decrease massively, just like it happened countless times in the past.
The real question is... who is saved, and who isn’t, who adapts, who doesn’t. Where does all of this go. What do we want for our kids and grandkids.
Post 7:
Any over exaggerated, extreme activity , hobble, behavior, at some point destroys you more than it makes you healthier or fitter. Especially when it requires you to use drugs. I said it countless times, it's all fun and games until you reach your 40s/50s and you re lonely with a bad back, bad knees, bad elbows, ruined internal organs and so on. Life is a marathon not a sprint race.
I can understand fit, mostly ectomorph/mesomorph genetically gifted people of rich upbringing who spent their life working out -because they had the free time to do so- might come to the conclusion that they are some kind of ubermen whose shit doesn’t stink, still they often come across as complete douche-bags with nothing else in life but their fucking "competitions" "challenges" "records". I wouldn't be surprised if most of them came from dysfunctional families and were raised by either single mothers or fathers who lived vicariously thru them and got them into sports at an early age. Most of them are cynical, hypocritical and somewhat unable to feel anything for someone else but themselves. They come off as cold , scornful and hateful. It must be hard to constantly pretend being perfect, hard to never be satisfied with anything. Clearly childhood related issues.
Post 8:
Why would I? I have time to enjoy family and focus on my daughter, Wife also works part time, we save enough and have something to give our daughter... Sorry I don’t see the point -exhausted stressed colleagues who work 40 hours a week and can only say "good evening" to their dysfunctional families, then go watch TV and rush to bed, i know how it works- especially considering there are too many people, not enough jobs, that the phenomenon is increasing and will end with wars as it always does; is there a need to mention the millions of over-diplomed people i work with whose pieces of paper are worth trash ? Not only there are too many under qualified people, but at the same time there are more and more over qualified people, and we are actually DESTROYING jobs with technological "progress". Sorry i don’t believe in your paradigm anymore. Also, to be honest, I hate the city and the fools who live there more and more. The less time i spend there the better i feel. I see all of this thru the eyes of the Bible, sooner or later it s going to explode and everything will somewhat be reset. Once it happens, it's not diplomas you're going to need. Oh, and working on improving your house and farming are actually the only kind of skills that are truly useful.
Societies based at 80% on services jobs are going nowhere when economies collapse. 80% of people will lose their jobs. You have to see long term. Also having kids just modifies everything in the way you see time, space and life in general.
Post 9:
The 1 % need the 99% to be the 1%. The point of life is not to be "enlightened", but to survive, adapt, dominate. The "enlightened" dalai lama wouldn't be shit if he didn’t have tons of people to serve him.
Post 10:
People marry to survive. To play the game, because they’ve been conditioned to do so. All behaviors are animal behaviors. Some survive better alone. Fact is, there is no point , purpose, to all of this. All life forms only follow blind predeterminate paths, behaviors, they don’t choose and simply reproduce subconsciously. All life forms have for only point in life to survive until they can reproduce, and every single human behavior just like any animal or vegetal behavior is a strategy of survival. There s no good or evil, there is what survives, and what doesn’t. Nobody cares about what doesn’t survives. Life is a free for all and you only feel good when you win. Most people goal in life is to win as much as possible instead of losing, because losing makes you feel bad. Most people lose, fail, constantly as there are more and more people on earth, and only 1% of them are winners. It means 99.9% of mankind is made of losers who hope to become winners. Their only goal in life is to win. At all cost. Some people haven’t been conditioned to marry in order to survive, some people have been conditioned to survive alone. Some people hate mankind, life, but stay alive just to destroy it and to benefit from all the good feelings it can provide them. Their motto is i didn’t choose to be here so at least let's enjoy it at all costs. None of this, makes sense; sense is just something we create but ultimately everything in life is all about killing or getting killed.
BTW the point of marrying someone and making alliance with others, families etc is to dominate in society. We're always dominating, or being dominated by someone else; most people when they leave an influence, are only doing it to submit themselves to another influence.
The more people there are on earth, the less people can stand each others. It s easier to appreciate others when they are few, when you need them because they are rare. When you live in cities full of people, you know you can replace anyone with anyone else, basically you realize nobody is unique, important, as you slowly realize we're just all copies, clones, of each others, all trying to make up bullshit unique personalities, characters, all influenced by the very same models, books, movies, characters. The more people there are, the more people start to hate on each others, it is probably a subconscious , purely animalistic process which randomly leads the human race to purify itself from within with wars. In these wars it's not the good guys who win, it's the biggest assholes, the strongest ones, the smartest, fastest ones. Then they write history and make themselves the good guys. The more people you see everyday, the less you care about them this is the irony of living in cities, everyone wants its share of happiness , domination, all pretending to enjoy being with each others, when in fact deep inside themselves they want to jump at each others throats and are just calculating their next plays to fuck each others.
Life is a struggle, life is about survival, and everything that exists is strategy of survival. Happiness only and solely happen when you're winning. But even if you win, in the end, you lose. Your only solace is either to think at least my kids, grandkids, will dominate more than i did, or, for a growing number of people, especially nihilistic atheists, they think ; they , we, life, this ironical, cruel joke, will end one day anyway, so lets abuse everything as consequences don’t matter anyways.
All life-forms, animal, vegetal, species, die, disappear, are unable to adapt anymore at some point. Between the birth of life and its doom, it's all about constant war, constant struggle, constant pain for 99% of life-forms, especially humans who are conscious while vegetal and other animal species aren’t. They're born, they die, they simply don’t care. Again, humans are animals who are conscious of being animals. That makes them somewhat different from all other life forms on earth. Still their lives, existences, purposes, are conditioned by mostly all the same principles, rules than other life-forms. Our only difference is our ability to give a meaning, sense, to what we see, understand, but this ability is still in intrinsically in itself, just another strategy of survival among countless others.
