"What can policymakers learn from happiness research?" http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/22/100322crbo_books_kolbert
the thing with winning the lottery is that the winner (almost always) experiences high levels of euphoria and excitement, this experience is so great that he or she wants to experience it again, but since the odds of experiencing the same level of rush again in life is zero, as time passes by the person sees life as boring and routine (this is because the events that now take place in his life are insignificant in comparison to the event of winning the lottery) and thus he starts to feel gloomy
a key to constant happiness in life is at worst a linear growth with small fluctuations and at best an exponential growth (in all areas of life) with zero fluctuations, the latter is obviously impossible in our world
It's kind of hard to decide if I am happy or not. Sometime I am, sometime I am not. What I found out about myself is that I am happy when I expect a good thing to happen. Once the good thing does happen, the happiness just fade away. Now this leave me with a (dumb) question. Why do living organism feel happy? What is the role of happiness in the evolutionary process? Maybe by figuring this out, we could find out what the underlying reason for our happiness and maybe help us achieve happiness easier.
how about, pain as a deterrent to doing things that decrease the chance of survival and put life at risk and happiness as reward to encourage the living being to do things that increase his chance of survival, some living beings evolved to have these characteristics because these traits increased their chance of survival and bla bla bla, but then fuck the evolution theory
Excellent answer! If happiness, from an evolutionary stand point, is a mechanism to increase our chance of survival, then happiness could be achieved by: 1) Maintaining good health 2) Spending more time with friends and family 3) Reducing stress by enjoying the things we like 4) Making more money so we could have more time and variety in doing the above
I'm at a stage where happiness is in constant flux. One day I'm happy the next I'm down about something or other... Oh boy, I'm bipolar :eek:
by observing other people's life I've also noticed that having a valuable constant in life is another key to happiness, for most people around the world; this is family, relatives and friends that are there, and not that they have to do anything, just the (almost) constant warm feeling among them is a key in keeping them happy through life, but in western countries, this is almost nonexistent, people around you come and go, friendship means shit, "social" friends found on retarded facebook and shit are your "friends", the government is your abuser, and mom and dad and friends will sell you to them if they find you doing something they have been brainwashed to not like, in my country parents will not sell their children to the fucking government no matter what, even if it puts their life at risk, in western countries the quality of life is shit, and the government owns your kids and already used wife which some future politician or lawyer fucked in every possible way when she was in college http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article7050522.ece "Poppy, their first child, was taken into care at the age of 11 weeks in October 2008 after a psychologist gave Carissa a diagnosis of Münchausenâs by proxy." fuck that shit, everyone is fucking sick in UK, and that motherfucker Gordon Brown, is probably the sickest of them all, why don't they take his fucking ass and that of people like him into care, so they don't continue raping the average UK citizen
Here a video I found on Youtube. I often watch it again and again, because the dog is so cute. The video, in a way, kind of relief some of my stresses. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mmsP6WnG0W0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mmsP6WnG0W0&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> I think happiness is really a four-legged creature! lol