Happiness and pain come from within.
Our inner body generates things like happiness and pain due
to how it is hard wired. It is one of the things that makes humans human.
Imagine a very sensitive person.
You call them an ass-hat.
Oh you hurt my feelings so much.
But if they were not sensitive like that,
it would be ignorable nonsense.
The process of getting hurt is internal.
If you could control your system,
you could greatly decrease your pain.
All psychological responses come from within because every emotion - postive and negative - is an internal brain state
I would however make a distinction between happiness and contentment because I think the latter is more sustainable
Happiness does not allow for any negativity at all whereas contentment allows for some negativity and so there is more flexibility
True happiness is therefore rather elusive and so is undesirable but true contentment is more practical and so is more attainable
Agreed.
Contentment is more peaceful than happiness.
Very true. Let me give You a bit from personal experience. I was extremely angry at a very mean and deceitful person that recently did grave damage to me and my family.I will not spell it out, the details are so shocking that they are beyond belief.
At any rate, I switched something off in my mind, and am convinced now more then ever, that somehow, I was able to overcome the horrible hate and sense of vengeance that kept me up at night.
I think it was a grace sent from beyond, not in the sense of a self induced state, but the ability not merely to let go of the negative feelings singularly, but a way like some thing or some ONE helping me from out of myself.
Then, a lightness surrounded my thinking, and thus formed an ability to forgive.
I hope it’s lasting.
Anger is the most destructive of all emotions and is why I try to avoid it as much as possible
So well done Meno for not letting it get the better of you which it could so easily have done
Wouldn’t ‘how you control your system’ be hardwired? and/or dependent on what parenting, for example, you experienced? The Rumanian orphan never held and missing nutrients getting hardwired problems controlling their system, the controlling the system being a part of the system? Our neuroplastic brains having been affected on many levels from what is outside us, also.
Which is not to say that one should not try to improve one’s way of reacting if you don’t like how it feels.
r
On the other hand…
You might have channeled that anger into an action that evened the score. If only because mean and deceitful people will continue to make life hell for others until and unless they are stopped.
Imagine Karl Marx ripping up the Communist Manifesto and, instead, advising the workers of the world to relinquish their anger against the ruling class.
Or those today who are outraged by the policies of Donald Trump. Or those who are outraged by that outrage.
Like most things “human all too human” anger is a genetic/memetic construct that is situated existentially out in a particular context understood in a particular way.
What worked for you may or may not work for others. My contribution here is only to suggest that you communicate what works for you to others. But don’t [as some do] then get up on the soapbox and insist that others are obligated to respond in the same way.
Anger? Acting on it? In my view, one more example of “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine”.
Only [for me] right and wrong are profoundly problematic.
So too comes discontent. Go figure.
The control is hardwired, which is to control the hardwired.
It’s cause on cause.
Also thanks for replies everyone.
In order to understand that which we designate as “hard-wired” we have to give the feelings therefrom a name. Happiness may be a name for homeostasis well done, when complaints of the body, attended to, affect the mind with a sense of well-being.
When we can journey in to the child within, and without, or simply with, even if all our promises have been extinguished, (for some a disappointment can turn their drives, hard to defeatism)-and keep on playing.
That is the only thing that keeps my little grandson and me at play, even if I am allowed only an hour per month to see him.
That comes from the inside , where god lives , the inside that goes out and then back .
Our brains/minds are hardwired to seek happiness from without.
Without what?
I think it’s a bit of both… looking from within, then without… and keep repeating, ad infinitum.
Again removed and revised, and again reading into it to such a monumental degree that it is laughable.
No acceptable criteria can explain inner bursts of hapinness, except by occasional bursts , stemming from inside, that is really, simultaneously outside.
But now proven,( at least to me) a source of unbelievable, mind boggling origin!
Out of or beyond the head/mind?
Yes, happiness comes from out of the mind , or without mindfullness, but, who in the world can do that? Maybe only children and God?
But what gives me pause is the duplitious meaning of ‘out of the mind’
It appears that only God can put his mind to thinking as children would.(in addition to all the different cognitive aspects that He possesses.
Besides, if that is not enough, phonetic similarity leads one to the inconclusive idea that out of mind can simultaneously mean
1 out of mind as in coming from out-there
2 out of mind meaning
enamating from mind
3 out of mind meaning. a transformating process: like out of mind come enlightenment
4 out of mind meaning insane to being out of sorts.
This poses a major challenge to the idea of intrinsic happiness because of the peculiar position that a categorical disposition of 'out of the mind may induce.
The cynic might say that the proposition entails contradictory meanings.
It seems that a man will blame the outside world for his problems.
but he blames himself for his success.
What ever idea is more convenient to serve the ego.
This is why the truth is only of secondary importance.
Because fun and a freedom from pain takes center stage.
There are certainly people who do this. There are people who do the opposite. There are people who are very complicated mixtures blaming/thanking others/the world and blaming taking pride in themselves.
Or the opposite in serving guilt or shame or self-hatred.
Sitting in blame rather than trying to solve the problem…anyway. That’s terrible. But noticing and responding to what is being done to one, both positively and negatively, is simply mammalian realism.
Sadness also comes from within.
You supply a good example.
Mammalian realism?
Most people defend themselves by claiming that they serve the truth / real situations.
Realism is a funny word.
Reallytruthyism should be a word, too.
In the world of ideas, truth is power.
In the world of action, power is truth.