This ‘old chestnut’ was new to me: I never heard it before. It made me laugh!! Thank you, Maia, for that good laugh!I appreciate it.
Aside from “Neither”: or “'Do I have to choose?” or; “Are you threatening me?” what are the most usual responses to that old chestnut??
Your answer to the question, Maia, is a fine contribution to the underlying issues. Some experimental studies in the field of Happiness Research revealed that happiness is more-intense when a person feels that s/he is getting close to arriving at the goal, after a long process of working on the project of reaching that goal.
[I, for one, would feel quite happy if I thought that more people knew their Ethics - as it is explained and elucidated in the References below - and were practicing it. …thus setting a good example of ethical conduct.]
These are not mutually exclusive, quite the contrary,
To get the success you want means wanting what you get. To be content and happy with what you get means that you have successfully achieved your happiness.
Thus you are happily successful and successfully happy.
The reality for us all is to exist in an ever changing situation between both states.
[/quote]
Most people pick deaf. Obviously I wouldn’t, but then, I have an advantage.
Yes, the prospect of achieving success in something, especially after putting a lot of work into it over a long period of time, is definitely a source of happiness. The very effort itself also gives a sense of purpose, which is probably even more important than the success itself, at least in terms of providing happiness.
Of course you and I have explored the “for all practical purposes” implications of this before on other exchanges. And, from my frame of mind, your Ethics is still just another general description assessment.
In my view, it’s far more an argument about ethics than an argument about ethics that is examined given a context that is awash in actual conflicting goods.
Same with success and happiness.
Suppose you achieved your success – and through it your happiness – and managed to convince others to think about Ethics as you and your References do.
How might that all play out in regard to a set of circumstances in which, given the world as we know it today, there are many conflicting ethical positions taken by men and women – all up and down the political spectrum – in which one person’s success results in another person’s unhappiness.
From my own vantage point, the real danger here revolves around the beliefs of those who, given a very real moral conflagration like abortion or animal rights or gun control or the role of government, some insist that what they would rather have, others ought to want to have as well. Why? Because their Ethical conclusions reflect the most rational manner in which think about such things.
“From my own vantage point, the real danger here revolves around the beliefs of those who, given a very real moral conflagration like abortion or animal rights or gun control or the role of government, some insist that what they would rather have, others ought to want to have as well. Why? Because their Ethical conclusions reflect the most rational manner in which think about such things.”
me no says:
The key phrase is embedded in the phrase ‘most rational’ Rationality is a variable sign , which corresponds to the conflicting values inscribed by them.
Very emotionally loaded ethical issues like the list above concerns, finds a level of reasoning within an accepted level of credibility.
For instance, gun control within a certain contextual-regional assessment , may raise the bar of needed qualifiers that could minimize the questionable use of fire-arms , other then self protection.
In the abortion issue, risk factors, such as the health of the mother, may lower the overall standard that would rule out absolute use of abortion.
In some social circles in the United Dtates, there exists an absolute standard that prohibits any medical interference in even life threatening situations.
The net result to ethical standards, given the presence of regional relativism becomes a current medium for discussion, with effects of occasional court tests, civil discontent, and usually Supreme Court holdings of deferring to local venues for adjudication.
Both issues have been discussed to the hilt, without any real progress achieved the last decades.
From my own frame of mind, thinkdr on this thread is the equivalent of peacegirl on the determinism thread. If you read the stuff written by Marvin C. Katz, you’ll have all you need to know above Ethics. Just as if you read the author’s book that peacegirl swears by, you’ll have all you need to know about Free Will and Evil.
Okay, let’s explore that, I say. Let’s examine it given a particular situation in which individuals have conflicting understandings of ethics and free will. Why one and not the others? I merely introduce two additional components to consider: identity/dasein and political economy…who has the actual power in any community to enforce a particular blend of rewards and punishments, prescriptions and proscriptions in the form of laws.
I might think that in this day and age with the pandemic, people might opt for happiness since there would seem to be very little of it, which also includes peace of mind, as you said . I probably would myself but there is no guarantee that that happiness would flourish and stay, unless you meant it to in your scenario. Happiness is something which needs to be worked on - even contentment - it comes and it goes, I think.
Doesn’t there have to be something though which would allow the decision to be made either way - success or happiness - in a more thoughtful way?
What if someone was told that by giving up happiness and going for Success, they might very well lead a kind of miserable existence but by so doing, creating one action or one on-going action or one discovery, they would be able to save thousands upon thousands of human lives in the present and in the future.
What would it be worth to the person who knowingly and unconditionally gives up happiness for that kind of success? Happiness vs. Unhappiness … but a better, safer world?
It is obvious why your contentment goes away: you need to be more fussy about what you think and then proceed to dwell upon. You seem to be twisting yourself into a contortion of negative “what ifs.” If you can offer a concrete example, fine. If you are telling yourself - or gullibly believing what ‘someone told you’ - that this discovery you will make is really so, as described - then be aware of what the new proposed UNIFIED THEORY OF ETHICS indicates. It says that one loses value if one elects to “lead a kind of miserable existence” for any rationalization that may be offered.
Instead aim for well-being, for a Quality Life, for enjoying the present moment …letting go of the past and the future of your individual life, and squeezing every drop of joy out of this moment. How?
One way is to appreciate how rich you are (relative to those less-well-off, yet seek to be alert to opportunities: ways to better yourself and/or to better the world. Be a futurist who wants to learn about new developments, and who wants to find ways and means to spread them around so society can benefit from these. Or, invent the new technologies yourself. They may be physical designs or innovative social designs.
Be determined not to lose your contentment! Nothing is worth it! Remember the motto: Build Not Burn. Be a Cosmic Optimist.
Focus your mind on the positive while recognizing the damage the human predators - people like Trump - are doing. Avoid being rude or selfish or corrupting yourself. Don’t cheat or exploit others to gain a little money: that’s corruption. Avoid it.
You become ethical when you regard those with whom you are interacting as though they are infinitely-valuable. And you want to add value to the interaction …you want to create value in that situation. Those are the basics of the new Ethics. Intrinsically value the other individual, and you can’t go wrong. For that is right to do. And that is how you tell right from wrong.
If you focus on the Right and the Good you won’t “what if” yourself into a knot. You will be happy, and you will know how to hold on to it. Study the references listed below, and then read the documents which they cite in their Bibliographies. In that way you will gain wisdom; then you will know true peace of mind.
Are you speaking in general or is the “your” about A.D.? It may be obvious to me at times but how can you see what drives my contentment away? What drives contentment away?
Yes, this is true - I’m working on it but I don’t understand what you’re getting at here. I gave a scenario where someone might just opt for a miserable life in order to save many. As Spock says: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. Can you go along with that possibility at all?
I may be wrong here - you may be generalizing - with your quote below but I have the impression that you think my scenario is about me.
No one told me anything and I could not even begin to imagine what discovery I could possibly make which could save thousands and thousands of human lives. If you yourself were faced with that dilemma, how would you choose?
I’m digging for examples.
"
There was only one “what if” within my response.
I totally agree with this. Rationalizations are not truths/facts - they are just based on what people want or need to believe - tricks of the mind. Like a dog chasing its tail - they go on and on…
There was no “rationalization” within my scenario. It was just a scenario. It was based on someone, let’s say a seer (no belief there lol), coming to a person and giving them the choice to save thousands and thousands but at the same time, they would lead a miserable existence. Do you think that there could be people in this world who would be capable of doing that, making that choice? Don’t forget, those thousands of thousands which they save could also result in the betterment of future humanity. Everything is inter-connected. Or do you believe that that person or those people would have to be masochists and sadists (masochists can be sadists because they can cause harm to others) to opt for a miserable life under those circumstances?
You did say this:
So, that was me just thinking about it.
That is very good advice. You could probably be a life coach/mentor.
More good advice but in this day and age not always an easy thing to do with all the chaos surrounding but if we look hard enough, we are trying to make sense of it all and clear away the mud slide.
That is really not such an easy thing to do these day, in all honesty to you. But we do the things which we do that help give us some balance. I used to look at life with rose-colored glasses but that is just a color and does not make what we see any more real. As for an optimist, perhaps I am too much of a skeptic for that.
That is very good advice. It is part of the good kind of selfishness.
The only part of the above that I do not get is the last sentence - how that tells you right from wrong.
If you had only glanced at the contents of the References in the signature, you would find answers to your question. You would get increased clarity about Ethics …the new paradigm for an improved approach to Ethical Theory. Studying those booklets would eddify that ethical conduct is good and unethical conduct is bad.
It is right to be good and to do good. It is wrong to be bad, and to do bad things, or even to intend evil in any form. As to what “good” means, and what “bad” means, that is explained in the early works - in dialog form - by Dr. M. C. Katz, and in the book by Dr. Robert S. Hartman entitled THE STRUCTURE OF VALUE (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957).
The quickest way to learn the details is to click on the link to Ethical Adventures, then look in its Bibliography for other related papers. See the remarks attributed to one of the dialog characters named Mark. He exactly-defines [gives a measurement for] such terms as good, fair, pretty–good, so-so, mediocre, bad, lousy, and terrible.
If one has happiness without contentment, is it truly happiness at all? I prefer to say “serenity” or “peace of mind” rather than “contentment” - to be more exact - since it is okay to be discontent, in a sense, about some social or governmental policy while still feeling a large degree of happiness.
The mathematics (of the poorly-named field) Fuzzy Logic is most-appropriate for measuring one’s degree of happiness. That field of research could be a branch of Scientific Ethics, although today it likely falls under Moral Psychology as a sub-branch of Psychology. The Psychologists claim that Psych is a science, namely Behavioral Science.
I hold the view that Moral Psychology is also a branch of Ethics. It is the experimental division of Ethics, the science.
Since this thread was posted a while back in time you philosophers have had a chance to reflect upon it, and you may have a comment to make about it that you did not have then, when the discussion first came up.
So, what are your latest views, or analyses, on the topics: ‘happiness’ and ‘success’?
If there’s one lesson I learned from BoJack horseman, it’s that if you were a dissatisfied person before success… you’re still the same person after it, there’s no guarantee of satisfaction after success. You still have to go on living life being the same person you were, success isn’t a magic pill that changes who you are and how you experience life.
Obviously there’s a big difference between being in poverty Vs being successful, but there’s not necessarily a big difference for everyone between having a little success and having a lot of success.
Thank you, all participants, for a stimulating discussion you are all right and correct in the points you made.
Acturus was right that I was generalizing – isn’t that what philosophers do when they analyze concepts? – rather than getting personal.
Ambiguous was right in wanting to see how a theory would apply to a case; he seems to favor Applied Ethics over the Theory of Ethics, which is a framework designed for solving actual problems that may arise. My theory has indeed something to say about abortion rights, gun safety, the role of government, etc. I have initiated threads, and made comments, on all of these issues. See for example the popular thread titled Conventional Ethics versus the New Paradigm for Ethics …which gave the new paradigm’s stance on guns and munitions. I wrote here at this forum on Women’s Rights which includes the abortion question.
Acturus D is to be commended for recognizing good advice when he sees it.
And Flannel is right about the items he calls to our attention.
As obwerr24 noted, it remains true that if we aim to be happy, and attain that goal, we are in a sense “a success” for we got what we wanted.
And MagsJ is right. Thank you for bringing this up. Recent research chows that if we aim for a long-range goal, and are getting close to achieving it, we do then feel happy. So coming close to success after working on a goal does often result in happiness.
And it is easier for most of us to aim to be happy than to put in all the effort to reach a distant goal. Keep cool when all about and around us is chaotic and confused. Serenity is great to have!
Soon I will initiate a discussion on goal-attainment, and how a vision can be made into a practicality. …Watch for it. And do chip in your views on that thread.
