Here is an analogy. You can simply talk about a disease in terms of all the chemistry and mechanics involved (dynamic or mechanical or other), and you can talk about disease in terms of the individual experience of the disease. — schopenhauer1
Hence positive psychology. Once you realise that it is all about contextual framing, then the obvious next step is to take charge of your own psychosocial framing. You stop belly aching about the life that has mechanically been forced upon you and take charge of creating a life as you want it. — apokrisis
Of course then if you think you can have a life of untroubled bliss, you don't understand the point of life at all. So there is no point making romantic transcendence your goal. The nature of nature is pragmatic. Suck it up. It ain't so bad once you do achieve that kind of harmonious flow. — apokrisis
You stop belly aching about the life that has mechanically been forced upon you and take charge of creating a life as you want it. — apokrisis
Of course then if you think you can have a life of untroubled bliss, you don't understand the point of life at all. So there is no point making romantic transcendence your goal. The nature of nature is pragmatic. Suck it up. It ain't so bad once you do achieve that kind of harmonious flow. — apokrisis
Positive psychology is not a panacea, if it was, everyone would literally be promoting it all the time. It's like the 19th century cure-all — schopenhauer1
Should we gloss over the fact that there is no justification to keep institutions going? — schopenhauer1
It's severely lacking in compassion and understanding. — darthbarracuda
That's all you had to say. We are "thrown" into it (living, Dasein). So, how is that good? Or rather, why is this good "for" somebody in the FIRST PLACE? Does this thrown need to take place? Why is this necessary? To continue what? — schopenhauer1
You wrote early in the thread of 'an ideal society'. But your criticism of what I put forward seems to be a criticism of anyone who attempts any kind of social change. Are there any social changes you admire? What is your ideal society, since you say you have one, and what would it take for it to be achieved? I take that sort of question as my starting-point. I don't know if you saw Mongrel's thread on 'slave morality', or have read any Nietzsche: it seems to me that to focus one's philosophical attention on irremediable injustice is a pointless circular exercise. — mcdoodle
Any activity X only gets you so far before you question why any activity really matters other than your mind craves SOMETHING to care about at a particular time. — schopenhauer1
ing Kierkegaard and Heidegger - I don't think of a sense of absurdity as a barrier to action, but a leap to made over a chasm. That's just how I am. One commits. Then, plonk, here one is. — mcdoodle
But when one is forced into a negative situation due to social challenges of the existing structure, and then when one realizes that at the end of these challenges there are only vague notions of entertainment experiences- this is not very consoling. — schopenhauer1
Only if you don't have anything you care about. For many, the mind craving something to care about amounts to the destruction existential emptiness. More specifically, it quite literally the only reason to do anything. If one wasn't driven to care, it they were caused to not care, they would not act as they do. "Reasonless" they would be, for the mere fact of their existence would mean an absence of motivation or any worthwhile outcome in their mind. — TheWillowOfDarkness
It's not about obstacles either or the "ideal society." Frequently, obstacles are what the mind cares about. People love them, so they can care about overcoming them. A lot of the time people even care about them more than what's given to them without conflict. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Of course pessimism thrives on the claim that misery (for us, in this era of history, due to the way we live) is inescapable.
But that is what makes it superficial as philosophy. — apokrisis
Of course pessimism thrives on the claim that misery (for us, in this era of history, due to the way we live) is inescapable.
But that is what makes it superficial as philosophy. — apokrisis
So misery exists (in nature) as a signal to get changing. It says you are in the wrong place and need to head to a better place. — apokrisis
But of course this better place has to be existence, right? — darthbarracuda
And that existence is what you make it. — apokrisis
Of course Pollyannaism is as superficial as Pessimism. There are limits to what any individual can change. So Pragmatism accepts the necessity of working within limits. — apokrisis
Yet in accepting responsibility for playing a part in the making of a better world, at least we start acting like a grown-up. And that responsibility starts at home with ourselves - hence positive psychology. — apokrisis
You might as well just tell pessimists like me and Schop1 to go hit up the bong. — darthbarracuda
The point is you are discounting the very thing, and only thing that, from a person's point of view, makes anything worthwhile. To be pressured or moved is how we care. When one project finishes (be it competed or not), we need our minds to drive us in another (even if it is only basking in the glory of what we have already done), else we are caught in a world where nothing matters. — TheWillowOfDarkness
What they need is a new project, with its pressure to "be" something, its obstacles to overcome and (in some cases) pain and suffering which have to be endured to achieve the goal. For their misery to end, they must will and be content that such willing itself is the point. — TheWillowOfDarkness
What? — darthbarracuda
Smoked some weed for the first time last night at a concert. — darthbarracuda
I'm legitimately curious as to why you think it's alright to blatantly ignore everything I just wrote by pretending it's the words of a seasoned stoner. Is it the impersonal culture of the internet, cognitive dissonance, or do you have some wisdom from above that isn't just scienced-up "suck it up"? — darthbarracuda
Smoked some weed for the first time last night at a concert. — darthbarracuda
and the superficiality of pot as a solution to life's problems — apokrisis
I don't see how this is relevant. — darthbarracuda
It is relevant that in one breath you tout the mood enhancing benefits of pot, the next you imagine it as the very worst advice I might give you and Schop (when it is as far away from sensible as any advice from positive psychology would get. — apokrisis
Thus the relevance is illustrating what awful arguments you make. — apokrisis
There's nothing incoherent in having a generally euthymic equilibrium while simultaneously having negative beliefs about life and existence. — darthbarracuda
If you see the world is generically grey, you can't coherently claim it to be black on the grounds it is not white. Just as the pollyannaish reverse is also an incoherent claim. — apokrisis
But I don't see the world as generically grey, I see it as structurally black. — darthbarracuda
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