What does it mean to be happy? Once one achieves happiness, do they pursue a happier-ness? In our readings for this week, it states that happiness is the "Highest Good", but is that the truth? Can you reach complete and total happiness (if that total happiness is possible)? And if you can, what from there, do you strive for more happiness? When does greed and selfishness get in the way? Aristotle states, "Happiness depends on ourselves" and he says that Happiness depends on the cultivation of virtue, and to gain virtue, in Aristotle's eyes, one must obtain the mean of the two excesses. In Nicomachean Ethics, happiness is portrayed as the "...end of the things we pursue in all our actions and which we wish for because of itself, and because of which we wish for the other things." But if we did, happiness would go on without limit, making desires a black hole: "empty and futile" (Aristotle 23). My question to you commenters is, what is happiness to you? If you take psychology into matter, psychologists such as Henry Maslow thinks that the purpose of life is for everyone to achieve self-actualization before death. Self-actualization is the point in life when you've done everything possible that completely fulfills your life, duties and skillset, this being the highest of priorities. At this point are you happy?
Does happiness acquire when you get that dream job or job promotion? In that case is it the money that will be the factor that determines your happiness level? Does money create happiness, because in my opinion money doesn't create happiness, it leads to it. Having money makes people's living situations comfortable which once achieved can help support the road to happiness.
Happiness is touchy because we are told that everything we strive for is so we can be happy (money, nice job, nice living environment, etc), but what if having those things is our happiness? Is happiness cyclical? Because if it is, then pursuing happiness for the sake of pursuing happiness is the only result, thus making it seem as if that happiness if what drives us to strive for the happiness that drives us etc.True happiness is based on the individual and because of both of these thoughts, no answer can be given unless we truly believe that these are the two boundaries: being happy is what drives us to be happy, and it's based completely on who you are as an individual, and these sound conflicting since one is stating exactly what happiness is and the other claims it's based on who you are as a person, but it's more like a formula with blanks that we as unique humans fill in with our own answers.
ReplyDeleteHappiness is hard to achieve because of envy, jealously, and a false sense that " if I can just get/ achieve this then I will be happy."
ReplyDeleteOnce you get that big promotion or your dream job, what's next? You reached your goal, so what do you do know? You still are not completely happy because you're not achieving self-actualization. Religion says that if you live the way god wants you to, then you shall be happy. By giving what you have to another, living purely, or helping someone who can not help themselves, then you will be happy. But how can this give you complete and total happiness? Yes, giving to and helping others feels great, but if you're not also doing things that make you happy, that give you a sense of fulfillment, then that happiness will soon fad. To achieve true happiness a person must strive to be the best person they can be. This doesn't mean being a saint or always doing what's right, but to achieve things you personally know will make you a better person in your eyes and not anyone else's. An example of this could be learning a new skill that you always wished you had, doing activities that make you feel whole and one with the world and so on. This means that happiness is relevant to each individual and will never look the same as to someone else.