Could happiness exist without suffering? — MonfortS26
No, but I think Utopias are goals worth striving towards. I'm not sure if happiness and suffering necessarily imply each other as light/dark or raw/cooked. Suffering has a biologic component that can be independent of our conscious control, happiness seems to be somewhat more amenable to our control, but it too has its biologic component.Can a world exist where everyone is happy?
When you try to measure the immeasurable, or compare the incomparable, confusion results.
Modern political theory places national self interest (national happiness) above the moral intent which rules suggest — Cavacava
Can a world exist where everyone is happy? — MonfortS26
Could happiness exist without suffering?
Would a life without either be worth living?
Happiness is an emotion (an instance of a person's core affect continuum); a subjective condition which doesn't persist over time. As such, it is an unattainable intersubjective (social) goal.Can a world exist where everyone is happy? — MonfortS26
It makes sense to me that happiness is the evolved chemical reward for doing things beneficial to survival and suffering is the punishment. — MonfortS26
I suppose if everybody thought that happiness was a purely interior state that could exist without respect to material factors, then everybody could be happy.
However, most people (I am guessing -- no evidence, sorry) connect happiness to both material and purely interior states. That's a problem, because unless everybody is satisfied with respect to their material wants and needs, some people will be unhappy.
Worse, there can't be very much change in peoples' material wants and needs because there is only so much material to go around, and if one group develops greater wants and needs and can not meet them, they will be unhappy. If they take material away from somebody else, that group will be unhappy.
Universal happiness requires that the world be a rather static place, and that just seems extraordinarily unlikely. — Bitter Crank
Can a world exist where everyone is happy? Could happiness exist without suffering? — MonfortS26
Would a life without either be worth living? — MonfortS26
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.