Hello, new here. I’m interested to see what this forum will be like. Anyways enough of that; being new I decide I will “unleash” my major philosophical belief.
I’ve always felt that the ideas and ideals we have a children are what we should all fall back on in a time of need. Lets face it, as we get older we start to get cynical and pessimistic due to various bad life experiences.
(ex: children usually have a strong sense of hope and faith which is something adults often lose)
When we have a really bad or life-changing experience we tend to re-evaluate our ideas and ideals of our life to better cope or to better make since of what our life has become. When this happens we grow more distant from our ideals we had as a child thus we begin to feel distant from ourselves. What we should be doing is trying to re-enforce our child hood beliefs instead of changing them.
As a child we have the ideals but not the life experience as in we don’t know how to act. As we grow older we gain that life experience but we lose our ideals. (We start as an obnoxious optimist and change into a sensible pessimist). So my theory to live a happy life is to hold on to your childhood ideals so you can become a sensible optimist without losing yourself.
Now I know this goes agents a lot of psychologists who say that we have to find ourselves like Erik Erickson and his eight stages and that whole ego thing but all that aside I’ve had this notion for a good long time now and it seems to hold some truth. Any thoughts?
i totally agree with your theory of innocence being the key to happiness but on my opinion its more along the lines of being simple minded if you look at mentally handicapped people its not saying that they are innocent but they are happy constantly
for example: the mentally handicapped man who was sentenced to death in texas (when it happened i am not sure) but even after he got his sentence he could be seen in his jail cell as happy as can be planly for the fact that he doesn’t understand because in life people who understand a lot (me for example) seem to suffer from depresssion and many other forms of negative emotions
I highly doubt that we have ideals as children. At least relativily young children. Ideals and beliefs are formed from conditioning, and the illusion of passing. Innocence, Is the negation of time. As society conditions the individual, and the individual accepts the conditioning, then we become malcontent. The stresses of modern life, money, job, status. These have no meaning to a child, and I would say that they have no meaning whatsoever. A man who is concerned only with money is trapped in a world of illusion. Also it seems to me that a child is born without ego. Over time one begins to develop an ego, and the older one gets the more static the ego becomes. We become hardened individuals with hardened beliefs, ideas, and perspectives. I agree with you that we should look at this world through new eyes, a childs eyes. Untouched by the stupidity of our soceity, untouched by the materialistic views of society, and of any type of belief. The ability to do so stems from negating our conditioning, and the ego/self, and looking at each moment as new. I remember a qoute from Einstein saying something to the affect that the intelligent man is one who looks upon the world through a childs eyes.
I have to disagree with your simple mindedness assumption. My mother has been a counsellor for the mentally challenged for over 20 years, and as a result I’ve met many of her clients, and been privy to their problems. One of the biggest problems my mom faces with the majority of her clients is depression. Suicide among the mentally handicapped is not a rare thing at all. They don’t understand our world, they become frustrated with it, and they just don’t want to live anymore. I’ve seen many cases where a mentally handicapped person is happy, but I’ve seen far more where they are discontent.
To a child (at least my child) I think everything they encounter is so amazingly wonderful that they cannot help but be optomistic about each new day - to them everything is magic, because they’ve never seen it before. They’d clap if I suddenly teleported myself across the room, whereas my wife would probably drop dead from shock. They lack predictors, and as they gain them, lose their sense of the magical, and become the jaded thrill seekers we are now.
Innocence is just ignorance I’m afraid - and cynisism the price of learning.
I think these days the only way to cope is to be a completely silly optimist in the face of all opposition. (Works for me )
Whilst the common expression “Ignorance is bliss” can be true for many and “what you don’t know about doesn’t bother you” is equally valid. Many people who become more aware may lean towards a depressive tendency, however it also leads to a marvellous and useful form of liberation. It enables you to become less embarrassed in any situation and more positive to do things because you can regard failure as simply another avenue explored, rather than a critical setback?
But as children we have ideals because they haven’t been blemished by too much criticism, lost hope, lost faith, adversity, bad luck, treachery, pessimism, etcetera. If we didn’t see these adverse circumstances, our childhood ideals would remain as such. But in the face of adverse circumstances to suggest that we should hold on to our childhood ideals, would be false optimism my dear. Don’t you think it’s better to be real and accept reality, rather than living in some dreamworld? Which is what everyone does and it’s for the best because then they are not being too optimistic, pessimistic, negative or positive.
Well, what is happiness? It is a level at which your wants come closer to the facts of life, making both sides equal. When this equilibrium is attained then your temporary phase of happiness arrives. Happiness arrives at a personnel level therefore there is no precise definition of happiness. It is basically a personnel feeling and it can be triggered at different situations. Some of these situations are like; happiness is where there is no fear in your heart. Happiness is where you are on top of the world. Happiness could be where confidence flows. Happiness is peace of mind. Happiness is opposite to you; therefore it is a temporary stage of not being yourself. No man has yet acquired happiness to its fullest. There is always a stage beyond the current one. Of course there has to be this stage where innocence gives a shelter. If you fall into this category then happy equals sad hence everything is fine and you have nothing to attain on this road. It is all upon personnel choice and level of thinking. To conclude I would say that the key to this lock depends on what category you fall into and hope that everyone finds his or her own key.
To me, it seems that children are happy because everything is so new and novel. As we age, we learn that things follow certain patterns and rules and when these rules begin to encroach on what we do, we get unhappy. Children don’t want to do much since they don’t know much about what there is to do. Some of this is also due to their immaturity, too.
As adults, we still enjoy new stuff. However, most have realized that they have to make due with artificially created situations and try to understand them, rather than the world which is expensive to see and try to understand. Thankfully, such forms of entertainment are fairly inexpensive and can immerse you in an artificial world that you can figure out and will be new for a while.
)