Which would you rather have - if you couldn't have both?

This morning I indulged in some philosophical reflections, as follows.

ThWould you rather be a success, yet unhappy, or would you rather be happy, yet not a success? …Think about it.

Let’s define our key terms here:

Success is getting what you want.

Happiness is wanting what you get.

Successes have a reputation for achievement or they shine in some profession. They can acquire aall the material thin gs they want, for they have the money to buy them, or they can hire someone else to buy the stuff for them. Often, though, they are unhappy.They work relentlessly to make all this money while neglecting health; then they spend so much of that money in an attempt to salvage some health. They buy medicines and surgeries or other operations. Sickness and intense discomfort is not happiness.

Happiness includes peace of mind and heart. It entails being content with a simple life, with adequate conditions and surroundings rather than affluence with conspicuous consumprion such as property, mansions, yachts, vacation sites; hospital-wings named after you; etc.

Happiness implies well-being and full, vital health. Glowing health. This in turn implies an awareness of the ingredients of healthful living; the importance of a correct diet; the getting of some exercise every day; providing the nutrition that the body really needs. This means: pure water, lots of salads. For vitality and longevity the right food is fresh, raw, and whole (unprocessed.)

In the past, drawing upon the insights of Epicurus and Epictetus, as well as Albert Ellis, Dr. M. C. Katz has written concisely about how to achieve Peace of Mind. He devoted a section to it in one of the References listed below. This he did when he wrote about the new paradigm for systematic moral theory: a Unified Theory of Ethics. The articles linked to below go into details as to what is meant by that.

So which – on the assumption that you couldn’t manage to have both – would you rather have: Happiness or Success?

And tell us, in a few words, why your made that choice? Thank you, in advance, for your contribution.

I would choose happiness and by obtaining that my entire life would have culminated into a success. Happiness is a more elusive goal, than working a dream job or creating a masterpiece. I’m not even sure that most dreams need to be made realities to enjoy the benefits when you already are immersed in the joy and wonder of simply envisioning a dream. There’s something trivializing done to dreams that are made realistic, like air escaping a balloon’s splendor shriveling it over time. The dream is over once it’s actually made and somehow the reality always pales to the perfection in our mind’s eye. Ah, I’m just rambling.

I would find it hard to be happy without suceedimg at something, because I would consider myself a failure.

I don’t meen succeeding , generally with leaving some yet unfounded thing to fill in later to sucred at, but then the thought that-yes I am not yet a success at anything I tried yet; I could always hold some success down the road to sooth my feelings of failure.

But specifically, i’d need some measure of success in some specified area of my life, let it be the least notable thing, to achieve a commensurate degree of contenment, hapiness.

So even of i hapiness before syccess, i’d reserve that as an object of some future attainment.

Just that thought, should add hapiness to my contended state, even if I have to forestall success indefinitely.

To me this sounds like asking -
If you certainly could not have both would you prefer to -
[list]Have your hands or
Be able to use your hands?[/list:u]

I do not think they are even in the same ballpark. Out in the world, people obtain success all the time and cannot sustain any happiness from it. Most people have no inkling what sustainable happiness is, most simply exist in either a neutral state or a dissatisfied state.

I think you are assuming a different definition than what he has provided - perhaps yours is “social success” vs “happiness” - but that isn’t what he proposed -

In my case - and I’m sure in very many others - happiness IS what I want. So in having happiness I am successful (by the definition he provided). So if I am successful, I gain happiness and if I gain happiness - I want what I got - which is being successful at becoming happy. So in these cases - you can’t have one without the other. That is why the analogy fits - what is the point in either if the other is not allowed?

So who he is addressing is only those who do not want for happiness otherwise there can be no distinction between success and happiness - success would be getting the happiness - both.

So the issue is really - “what do you want more than happiness?” And no matter what that is - by successfully obtaining it - you are either happy with it (not allowed) or unhappy with it (required by the proposition of the question). But what that means is that you didn’t really want that - or at least not only that because if you got it and it was what you wanted - then you would have happiness (by his definition - “wanting what you got”). So you must have succeeded at obtaining something that you didn’t want.

Would you rather -

• Succeed at obtaining what you unhappily do not want, or
• Or have what you happily want?

It is a silly question isn’t it?

So for those who want for happiness - the question is nonsense because either leads to the other (not allowed). And for those who want for anything but happiness - the question is still nonsense for the reason stated above.

But I’m sure what he is really trying to get at is -
"Wouldn’t you rather be a happy communist than succeed at anything?

Or perhaps like they used to say, and still do maybe as an inverted paradigm :

“It’s better to be red than dead”…

What makes you think there is a difference?

“Better to be an impoverished/hopeless communist than a successful/hopeful capitalist” - ?

Perhaps ask all those who escaped Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and fled to America. Weren’t they “happy with what they got”? - Shame on them.

Why work all your life to gain $millions when we will let you work all of your life for pennies?

obsrvr524 says:

“Why work all your life to gain $millions when we will let you work all of your life for pennies?”

Yes , but diminishing returns is no mere idle chatter, and hapiness appears to mitigate with more and more success, and capital acquisition, as more capital is concentrated in fewer numbers.

The sense of this coincides with the imminent need for widkd wide capitak, because literally and figuratively interest is difficult to sustain otherwise.

The need to regionalize and conserve states if mind reactive to identifiable national and regional differences, coincides with the reversed paradigm
between political fabrication and reality…

A reversal , is really a conundrum , to actually, change the directions of left and right. Try the truck, stand in Your head, if im looking at You straight on, Your left hand will be in the right. Even looking at yourself in the mirror, this deception is fairly easy to see.

The difference is illusive, but the effects quite convincing. Most political decisions are sleight if hand .

That is the only part of your post I could decipher - and I certainly agree with that part.

coming back to it >>>>>

Um, basically you agreed with me, but you want to be bougie so you are trying to make both the same thing. Whatevs.

Wrote a thousand words lost it on my lousy phone.

Argue backwards. The paradigm n shift turns the inquiry into a logical necessity.

Back when red was preferable to death, real variables post Hiroshima possessed men’s minds, and now only maybe people 2 generations ago may remember that IT REALLY could have happened. What was about it that people were willing to die for, whereas now it is a dilution into the weak power of metaphor?

quote=“Meno_”]

Wrote a thousand words lost it on my lousy phone.

Argue backwards. The paradigm n shift turns the inquiry into a logical necessity.

Back when red was preferable to death, real variables post Hiroshima possesses men’s minds, and now only maybe people 2 generations ago may remember that IT REALLY could have happened. What was about it that people were willing to die for, whereas now it is a dilution into the weak power of metaphor?
[/quote]
How could have so much social fear be reduced to manageable angst that people cam function in spite of sweeping all that stuff under the rug as if the excitement of very the death of the salesman could parallel periodic similar occurring previews if all ideals of the ‘self made man’ would suddenly come to a screeching halt?

Could the Golden antique ages immortalize an eternal model, now that the gods retired ?

Or,could everyday folk forget their preoccupation for their stability and economic assurance?

Before we go one step toward keeping up with the Jones’s , these questions are pre-requisite.

Or put in a less than free-flowing summary:

Primary forum wants us to reply to posed question of choosing between- or in-between success or hapiness.
I think we derived from that the political choices between, or in-between socialism and communism.

The entailed relevance here is connecting success and hapiness with communism and socialism, as though the above were correlate.

So let’s assume they are, or, could be.

Could be one person be more happy or succeed in one form of government and not the other?

Could Communism offer happiness but not success, and Capitalism offer one or the other, as well?

My spin revolves around the question of how people function under either systems of governance, and how such function determines what the eventually reduce to their meaning of how they opine about such functions.

And thirdly, what objective criteria , based on both types of derived meaning: can cast a unified structural cohesion that can serve as a model for cyclic re-presentation , or fine , ‘harmonic’ fed back system , that can induce the basis for the workeable model.

Or how the entailed choices that we are able to make in every day life reflect the underlying political processes that may pre-determine every day life choices between hapiness and success.

I called it a paradigm illusion, because, it goes to the very essence of democratic principles, specifically voting rights .

How real in that case is the view that individual votes mirror the democratic objectives of the plurality ?

There are grave doubts of representative government’s validity, or at raising the question of insinuation of such validity corresponding to the phenomenally reduced function and capacity of that idea.

The issues raised are cyclic, harmonic and based on a reversed paradigm, that are dynamic and nit static, so if the philosophical underbelly is as such, how can it’s mirroring linked to humanly assumed rights of hapiness and success be measured simply rhetorically?

And has this ever really occured in the process of political evolution, that require built in procedures that can mirror each others’ tenacity, a reified firm of eidectic limit-so that the simulation of such will not rise tell far or below expectation?

In days when political holes induced paranoia, the need to realize social psych danger was minimal because red baiting, hirishima, and Hitler were recent history.

GIs coming back from thresholds of death were toughened and saw things as they were, not like today’s brave new world order tries so hard to candy-wrap a world, whets everyone can have 3 cars in the garage, and push buttons to find out how to keep up with the jones’.

The paradigm illusion is perfect and both have prices to pay, wether it is ‘happiness’ or’success’

The Hitler example and the eugenics experiments prove beyond doubt that the illusion’s maintenance at the expense of exposing the truth, was met by severe repercussions.Stalin and any other ideogologue exposes their own underlying fear. Those who fear betrayal will betray their kin, at the tip apex, without a flinch.

How does this work out and pushes political philosophy to it’s very limits. The collapse of the USSR left the political arena with a huge hole, that which was becoming credible to the plurality.

The minority elite, had to shift the paradigm so as not to confuse, but to save the world from The Coming Catastrophy that no one could afford.

So the process of inversion became the norm, and no one except those possessing death wish could argue with it.

The thing transcended the death of objectless transcendence, and it validated everything that far.

There can not be a reestablishment to epithats like politics not based on identity, but not one self madd, but one rather, mass produced in manufactured think thanks producing uniformity.

The loss of the material dialectic was a severe blow not to have reprecussions, and the NWO had to somehow the messages behind the brave new world of 1985, and what is more comforting that AI will become responsible for it.

After a who but hystorians of the middle of the last century, in the old millennium can remember the structure that eventually fell victim to the passage of time.

Oh but yes, we are living beyond the end of hystory now, somewhere far away and long ago.

Happiness.” I want that. But there’s always a price to pay for anything.

Happiness is not the same as Success. They are distinct concepts. Success in life refers to the fulfillment of our potential. Happiness, however, does not require or imply Success.

“The problem with the term happiness, then, is that it sounds as if success is a necessary prerequisite for it. But happiness is by no means contingent upon success. When you ask, “How happy are you?”, your answer should be that your inner experience of happiness does not depend on the way your life is going. As the Buddhists say, you can’t change how things happened, but you can change your mind. The idea that your life, your mind, your body, your soul, your whole being – that you have to become a slave to your own mind in order to be happy – is just a ridiculous old idea that doesn’t make any sense. You are the master of your own life, of your mind, of your body, of your soul, of your entire being – and you are the captain of your ship, at the helm, steering it by your own free will.

And that is why you are truly happy: You are happy because you have created yourself – and because you created yourself, and are creating yourself – from the inside out, every moment of every day.

The difference between happiness and success is often found in what you get away with and what you don’t: as time passes, our spirit wanes, our happiness is muddied, but our successes in life become clearer to us. We may lose the joy of the moment but the clarity that our accomplishments bring us keeps that joy alive. In the end, in order to be happy and keep that joy alive, we have to have, if not succeeded, then tried, and this keeps us moving along the line we have marked out for ourselves. But in order to have these accomplishments, you must know what is on your life’s map, and as a traveler you must know where you are, the people who might help you on your way and where you need to go next. The problem is that, if we’re to succeed and stay happy, we must find the time, take the time, to know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

Aristotle said that the aim of life is to live a good life, and for the most part we don’t ask ourselves whether or not this life we’re living is really good or not. This life is, for the most part, a matter of habit, routine and habit, without any sense of reflection. We get up every day, go to work, come home and eat, and maybe we do a little something on the side but mostly we just take the everyday for granted. That is why we can’t ask ourselves if life is good or not because we haven’t seen its value.

This value doesn’t happen by chance. And if this life, this routine, doesn’t have a clear and positive purpose, then we are going through it not to be happy but simply to be satisfied with ourselves, with what we do, and with what we’ve done. If you try and fail with purpose, you can maintain the joy of life in the straight line of your goal, and keep moving; if you succeed without purpose, happiness wanes with time, and your own good accomplishments become alienating and meaningless. Purpose.

Purpose is the key to both.

What motivated my inquiry was a conversation I had with a relative – a distant cousin – who is a CEO of a major company listed on the stock exchanges; and who is a billionaire since he owns a majority of his firm’s stock, and it is currently priced in the $70 range. I learned from him that his wife is suffering from cancer. I infer that he is unhappy over this. By the conventional meaure of success, he is a definite success! Yet because he and his wife are ignorant/unaware of the ingredients of Health he is not happy.

[size=50]The ingredients of health include a knowledge of how to put these factors into practice: how to shop for organically-grown, fresh plant-food that looks good, smells good, and tastes good (without any need for processing the food. …other than steaming some of it for additional calories if one wants to gain more weight.) Then how to simplify by giving up white sugar, salt, seasonings, and anything that comes in a can, a cardboard container, or bottle (other than distilled water.) [/size] For details about true health, see
healthscience.org/about/about-nha

[[size=50]I speak from experience: I am 91 and so far do not have any aches or chronic pains, sicknesses, or diseases. I did get vaccinated twice to prevent Covid 19, and I do wear a mask (except when home with my wife. ) She is 94, and takes nutritional supplements.) She persuaded me to do so also. It seems our livers are strong enough to tolerate it.][/size]

Having a few achievements [having published a few books and having earned a doctorate in Philosophy; having gained inner peace along with self-confidence], I can be said to be a success. And I am happy.
Observr524, in this respect, is right: we can be both, happy and a success.

I am though ambitious: I have an ideal. That ideal is for an ethical world. Lately I have narrowed that aim down. Now my goal is to have an ethical United States. That means a country full of ethical individuals. They would know their ethics. In that sense they would be educated. They would have a sense of unity. They would be aware that “what helps you, if it really does, helps me, and that what helps me, if it really does, helps you.” We are all one human family… We would be free of racism, and the feeling that we are superior.

We need humility in the USA, and we need to become practitioners of nonviolence. We need to protect and preserve our voting rights and our democracy. We need a strong social safety-net with opportunities for people to rise, as they have in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. For details, see papers below.

So Your forum title in at least indicative of it’s negation via it’s conclusion, that you have to have both, where the premise states “if you couldn’t have both”.

Don’t take this badly, but I used to be dicintendrd by my high expectations of giving up my primary objective, which at the time appeared credible of getting my Phil.Dr. but it wasn’t meant to be.

And the the second best thing getting my law degree petered out cause had to support my growing family, and finally had to be happy with going 8-5 to a regular job and learn to love it

And i did make myself to love it against all odds.

Now I have had moments where I was happy with the effects of the challenges endured, but it was to be a cyclical process, where investments din’t necessarilybear out the desired objectives.

So if I had to choose between my ideal expectations for achievement and the course taken to achieve them, i’d still have it for reasons Peacegirl’s wise discovery points out, that my role was chosen for me and not the other way around.

Meno wrote:

Hi, Meno

I don’t take that badly at all!

It seems you made other choices: sex, companionship, to be a parent, to bring new human individuals into this world, etc. In this you may have been guided or inspired by a higher power …or by unseen forces in the universe which we mere fallible humans haven’t discovered yet - or, as some would say - the god within you ought to get the credit.
{We can allow for all this and still believe in science.]

Congratulations on so adapting to your work-life that you were eventually able to say you love it. Sounds to me like a good attitude to have. {I hope that they had - or have - a good profit-sharing plan, or that it was (or will become) a workers’ co-op.}

It’s insulting to say that in a reality where everyone has their consent violated in one way or another is divine providence.

Sounds like that hoary old chestnut, would you rather be blind or deaf?

But to answer the question, success without happiness sounds pretty hollow and pointless to me, whereas happiness without success sounds just as good as happiness with success (or almost, anyway).

For me, therefore, the answer is clear: happiness. Happiness also has the advantage that it’s not at all difficult to achieve, and with it, one is more likely to be successful. Which admittedly violates the terms of the original question.