Happiness, Perception, Emotion, The meaning of our life

Essentially, everything about our life, and the progression of mankind, is related to achieving happiness and satisfaction. The only reason we are still moving forward, advancing technology, improving living conditions, ending poverty, achieving world peace, is to satisfy that chemical reaction that leads to what we call happiness and satisfaction. The universe, our big questions on the meaning of life, existence....before we can answer these big philosophical questions, before we can understand the universe we live in, we must understand the mechanisms by which we percieve this universe. we are organisms with a brain that makes us feel emotions. We are living on a floating rock in space. We are the quarks and the atoms of the universe. Not everyone is capable of thinking in the big picture anymore. We pigeonhole our life into small frames, focusing only on small aspects of our daily lives, forgetting what they really mean in the long run and in the big scheme of things. A leader may bring a country into a golden age, but overall are they any happier than before? We adapt to things, we cannot experience the sweet without the bitter, are we happier now than we were in the middle ages? Have we truly progressed? Maybe, all this time, mankind has been moving in the wrong direction, because mankind hasn't understood what it is exactly that it is doing, and has only followed instinct?

How small is the smallest particle? If things can become infinitly small, that says the universe is indeed infinite right there, but that can't make sense, than the universe would be on the tip of your finger, in the space between a crack in the wall. Is the universe a fractal? Will we find the same patterns repeated over and over as we explore smaller and smaller atomic worlds?

Language, what I'm using to convey these thoughts right now. Simply symbols. How can things as immense as "everything" and "nothing" be understood through a set of symbols that human beings created.

Right now, these questions don't matter, because right now, I just want to experience happiness, and satisfaction, and by writing this, I have reached that state of mind. After I sleep and awake the next day, I will repeat this proccess, searching for new sources of happiness and satisfaction.

I was just thinking about the nature of happiness , as i was pondering this topic and a thought popped into my head . Every feeling we feel , we feel for a reason . Evolution has been the key player in this area . These feelings we feel are emotinal expressions of various situations of importance which occur in our lives . Feelings usually can be explained as teasers or sweeteners to increase a want to achieve a particular outcome . Like when you feel lust for a woman , you feel that wanting feeling becasue over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution it has been an advantage to the being with this such wanting for lust , and increases their chances of reproduction which allows their genes to be passed on .

And also happiness , i think is one of these feelings which has evolved from the advantage of something , material or not that you think will improve your situation . I think its this incentive feeling that wets our appetite for a particular thing that is an evolutionary advantage , and as long as we long for something in our life we will continually try new things to obtain whatever it is we think will make us happy . So this may have been an advantage for the evolving man/woman , he may have longed to have a bigger cave or hut .

Anyway , this is just what i just came up with .

Oh yes, the evolutionary explanation, that's definitly one I find very interesting and plausible, but to tell the truth, I wouldn't equate happiness with that. I think happiness is at the core of everything, since the begining, I can't imagine it being developed through the proccess of survival of the fittest, it's more like something that we were given with our large brains. It's the product of how we are built, like the other emotions we experience. Evolutionary psychology could probably be used to explain feelings such as fear, but we can't say that we humans desire happiness because way back in time our ancestors had to desire happiness to survive....surviving is what made them happy. This is really confusing to explain....haha, just forget about it lol.

Anyways, this thread was made last night at a really odd hour for me, when I was incredibly tired, and I had my mind racing with all sorts of sensations caused from earlier experiences, and the kind of music I was listening to at the moment. Certain music can turn you into a different person if you listen to it at the right time....so can other things...
so I had to get those thoughts out quickly somewhere, and I happened to be browsing the philosphy forums on Dreamviews, which I didn't know existed until that moment.

I think emotions are only almost to the highest level of experience. There is freedom beyond emotion, I've had my few peaks of it. In an emotional high, you are still bound to something, though it's a good experience, but that inevitibly wears off.

After plenty of analyzation and pondering, I've also conclude that all human action and thought has a core basis in an intent for happiness. It's the basic human want. Many people deny this, probably because it sounds too simplistic, but every action can be interpreted to that point. Conversely, the opposite can be said, that not everything, or even very few actions are intended toward happiness, such as sacrificing one's life for others. But if helping others at your expense didn't outweigh your happiness in self-survival in the plainest sense, why else would it be done?

airrick101, what do you mean by "emotions are only almost to the highest level of experience"? I didn't really understand, sry, seemed interesting.

As for happiness being the core of everything, I would of course have to agree considering that's what made me write the first post, haha.

And even sacrificing yourself for someone relates to happiness and satifsaction, because it's like giving a gift, we can never do it with total selflessness, we always expect a response in turn....a recognition that we did a good act. Of course I'm dumbing it down with that statement, but it relates to part of the buddhist philosphy...I think....I remember a friend explaining this to me some time ago.

If the only thing that drives us to do better is the need to be happy then this will ruin the cycle. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=229 if it becomes avalble.

What I meant was that many people misunderstand emotions to be the highest experience one can have. I believe that a better experience does not require emotions, they are all nearly hollow and impossible to sustain for a long time, anyway. People who disagree tend to believe without emotions, one is a lifeless robot; but that can't be known for sure. This is only my viewpoint, and I find it changes when I encounter arguments that are pretty solid against counters. Since philosophy is a subjective experience, it can't be taught one size fits all. It's a myriad of mental attitudes you can put on and off like a suit, they can all make sense if one wants it to.