Therefore, how does one promote individualization as early an age as possible, to have happy and grateful people populate our society, rather than unhappy workers? — Posty McPostface

Just don't have people that need to be socialized. What's the point? It is self-refuting to try to devise a mechanism/scheme for happiness for more new people, just because that's somehow desirable for the people making the mechanism/scheme.

Just don't have people that need to be socialized. What's the point? It is self-refuting to try to devise a mechanism/scheme for happiness for more new people, just because that's somehow desirable for the people making the mechanism/scheme. — schopenhauer1

So, according to what you're saying we should promote individualization and not socialization at all? I tend to agree with this due to the fact that individualization is an activity rather than the passive aspect of socialization that one just picks up as they go by living.

So, according to what you're saying we should promote individualization and not socialization at all? I tend to agree with this due to the fact that individualization is an activity rather than the passive aspect of socialization that one just picks up as they go by living. — Posty McPostface

Well, I am saying there is no need to procreate more people. Any scheme is bad for the person who is born in the first place.

This is a question I have pondered from a personal POV for decades. What the hell DO I want?

At certain times it was clear enough. I wanted to be in college, and I was. I wanted to learn and find new friends, and I did. 1968. Then I wanted to succeed in a job. Unfortunately, what I thought I wanted (to be an English teacher) was clearly something I was probably not going to succeed at. I spent a couple of years in a volunteer service program, which was great. When I got done with that, I still thought I wanted to work in schools, so I got a masters degree in counseling -- except that the faculty didn't think I'd make a good counselor in schools.

I immediately got a job counseling in college and for several years that was what I wanted to do. Then there was a whole series of other things I thought I wanted to do but most of them turned out to be unsatisfactory. This pattern continued on till about 2007 and what I then knew what I wanted to do (and it turned out to be 100% spot on) was not work any more. 40 years was enough. Since leaving the workforce I have been doing what I want to do: reading, writing, researching topics of interest, chatting with friends, making such contributions to the world as I can. This is what I always wanted to do, plus have lots of sex, which I finally did. Sex isn't important any more (as age snowed white hair on me).

I'd have been happier had I found a way to to loaf around for 40 years; read, write, do research, chat with friends, play in the sun, and so forth, and not end up an impoverished old man. Alas...

Only the very rich or those willing to tolerate poverty can get away with such a plan.

Well, I am saying there is no need to procreate more people. Any scheme is bad for the person who is born in the first place. — schopenhauer1

But, people will procreate anyway. So, the question is still pertinent about what aims should we cultivate.

What the hell DO I want? — Bitter Crank

It seems to me that the question is self-defeating. One never really knows what they want because there's always more that one can ask for. Hence, I'm inclined to believe that limiting one's passions or desires is a useful idea to instill in youth. This is antithetical to our current society (at least here in the US), of believing the sky is the limit. Perhaps, instilling a sense of satisfaction or contentment would be pertinent. But, nothing gets done in society by such people, I suppose can be the main counterargument.

Again, individualization vs socialization comes to mind.

So, we monotheists think that our God wants us to be happy, and if we are clever, or very, very good we will figure out what the formulae is. Polytheists think their Gods want them to be happy too, but they have another layer in their universe, the Indifferent Overlord. The Indifferent Overlord might be called fate, and is utterly indifferent to our happiness. Fate crushes the brave. The Indifferent Overlord oversees infinity and we just don't figure into that picture. We aren't even splattered gnats on the windshield of the infinite.

So, one useful lesson we could teach children is that "The Universe does not care if you are happy, and isn't going to do anything to help you be happy." A second useful lesson to teach children is "If you are going to be happy in life (no guarantees) you can only try to engineer a reasonably happy life. Keep your expectations fairly low. EDIT: Insert quote here: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Sooooo fucking true, Thoreau.

The expectation of great achievement is a major cause of unhappiness.

The less you value material goods (materiel) the better your chances of being happy. The struggle to get cargo is one of the major causes of unhappiness. The greater load of cargo you want, the more unadulterated bullshit you will probably have to put up with.

Never never never compare your life to the lives of the rich and famous.

But that's my point, what is the aim of life in general? We survive in a cultural setting, get bored, and find ways to entertain ourselves. You can criticize it all you want, but de facto that's what we do.

Whatever floats your boat as they say.

But, what are your thoughts about our current education system?

Surely even you wouldn't tell a kid that life is pointless and futile...

Surely even you wouldn't tell a kid that life is pointless and futile... — Posty McPostface

Learn to be content meditating 12 hour a day since the goods of life represent what we have not now.

Since Plato, we talk about the aim of education.

Have we come along in answering that question? Should happiness be the aim of education? And, if so, how do we achieve it?

But, what are your thoughts about our current education system? — Posty McPostface

Oh... the current education system... what a god damned fucking dreary topic.

Around the time I was in teachers training, back in the mid-1960s, books were coming off the presses damning the education system. The gist of the criticisms was that, "The educational system does not, and is not intended to provide excellent, or solid, or very useful education to most students." There were questions raised about the competence of both teacher training programs, teachers, and schools. Some suggested that the education system served as a regulator of the labor pool -- keeping people in school (HS, college, graduate school) and off the crowded labor market for as long as possible. It was at the time quite possible to graduate from high school and be functionally illiterate and innumerate.

20 years later, a classics professor who was also an old school marxist pointed out that in the heyday of immigration and national expansion, schools had the critical job of preparing students for work, and citizenship, and to be responsible consumers--in that order. The little red school house did that.

In the late 20th century, and on into the 21st, the school was no longer suited for this task. Because of jobs were increasingly de-skilled, automated, or lost to robots and low-wage assembly lines elsewhere on the planet, job preparation was no longer important. Citizenship wasn't either, really. What was really important was that people be taught to consume -- and the best tools for teaching that curriculum were 24/7 mass media.

Education is irrelevant to most people now. Those who will run America (upper middle class functionaries, and the like) will get properly educated. Ambitious reasonably affluent parents will see that their children get a reasonably good education. Even some outright hoi polloi will end up with some education. BUT MOST WON'T.

Most won't because they really don't have much future in society, and the last thing they need is unusable education, and the last thing society needs is 10 or 20 million bitter and resentful young people who are educated but can't get a job and start analyzing their situation and coming to revolutionary conclusions.

Society is falling apart, and the seams are ripping open among young people who do not have great expectations. They aren't alone in misfortune, of course, but they are going to be surprised how low the ceiling on their aspirations will be.

As I indicated, I don't believe in education as it is now practiced in the US (and maybe elsewhere too), but "happiness" is a worthwhile goal IF happiness means a fairly high order of learning, accomplishment, commitment to the common good, and pursuit of good and worthwhile goals during one's life. This is not elitism.

Good schools would have to be properly functioning academies, and not detention camps in disguise. What schools have traditionally taught (literature, language, history, science, math, etc.) can still be taught, is still useful, and is part of a good "happy" life. Outside of class, students need to learn about contributing to the common good and how to live a worthwhile life (religious institutions exist for teaching this if they care to fulfill the function).

Demanding and getting this kind of school and in the end, happy productive good people, assumes that the community actually believes in, and can deliver, a worthwhile future. That part is in doubt, it seems to me.

Knowing what we want: paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/09/04/the-fisherman-and-the-businessman/