from
Don't Save Up Sex For Old Age- Pursue Happiness Now
" We are never living, but only hoping to live; and looking forward to always being happy- it is inevitable that we are never so" Pascal
One of the commonest causes of unhappiness is that people are attempting to live their lives in the future. They are waiting… for something to happen first, like when they get married, or get a better job, when they see their debts paid, or when they see their children through college.
Life is after all never going to be perfect. Problems will exists, whatever stage.
Nelson Mandela once said:
" After climbing a great hill, one finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds, to look back on the distance I have come…..But I can only rest a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk has not yet ended"
Take time to enjoy, the journey and the view.
Enjoy the view savor how far you have come be grateful for where you are along the journey that is your life
Live in the moment . Do not wait to be happy in the future. Like saving sex for old age.
Learn to appreciate the view as it comes.
" The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, form the domination of outward conditions" Robert Louis Stevenson
By learning the happiness habit, you become a master instead of a slave.
How can you be happy now is by reframing your view of circumstances and not adding your opinion to things that occur.
For example, you may be in a job that you do not like now, but that does not mean you are down and out nor that better days can not lie ahead. You can change your future by accepting circumstances and taking action now.
You may say that you will be happy if only you were rich and successful.
Maxwel Maltz, author of Psychocybnetics, countered that happiness is not something earned or deserved. It is necessary for health and well being. So to reverse the statement , you should say to yourself. "Be happy and you will be good, more successful, healthier, fell and act more charitably toward others."
He mentioned that Harvard psychologists studied the correlation between happiness nadn criminality and found that a majority of criminals came from unhappy homes, had a history of unhappy human relationships. And a 10 year study of frustration at Yale University brought out that much of what we call immorality and hostility to others is brought about by our unhappiness. And that unhappiness is the sole cause of all psychosomatic ills and happiness is the only cure.
"Men are disturbed, bot by things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen." Epitectus
Reframe your mind and thinking.
Don't defer happiness till later.
The pursuit of happiness is not selfish.
It is not a reward or a milestone to be reached when you have obtained something in life.
It is a your birthright to be claimed.
And your responsibility is to be happy.
Whatever state of your journey in life.
It is a necessity.
Life is to be savored and enjoyed.
The view is beautiful both at the bottom and at the top.
Pursue inner happiness.
It will smooth the bumps, and oil the way to future happiness and success.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
SOMA - ecstasy or oblivian
WCU - Spring 2006 The Problem of Stability in BRAVE NEW WORLD
SOMA: ecstasy or oblivion?
How do Brave New Worlders use soma?
* To find relief from any kind of physical or emotional pain or any mental strain; to switch off any kind of difficult feeling or painful event.
* To recreate; to take a pleasant “holiday.”
* To lose consciousness of individuality, to meld into a communal whole.
* To enhance ecstatic orgies.
* To switch on a feelings of well being, comfort, pleasure, hallucinatory pleasant sensation.
How does soma compare to our legal and/or illegal recreational, or medicinal psychotropic drugs? How does it compare to your own conception of a utopian “wonder drug”?
In what ways is SOMA a “wonder drug” and in what ways does it underwhelm?
Soma seems great…
* It’s great how soma provides instant relief, escape, well being—instant comfort and numbness—no pain. If we can take aspirin to relieve our headaches without feeling guilty, why not have a bottle of soma around to relieve our heartaches?
* It’s simple and safe. It has no side effects or consequences unless you consciously, repeatedly overdose.
* It provides protection against any trauma by raising an “impenetrable wall” between your mind and the “actual universe.”
The “wonder drug” tag hangs very loosely and is liable to fall off if you pull it just a little. The “impenetrable wall,” seems at first like “protection,” but on second glance it might seem like something else. Who does that wall benefit, the individual or the ruling powers who are interested in keeping the individual from feeling anything? Would it hurt people to feel pain? Isn’t pain an important source of growth? (No pain, no gain?) Isn’t pain what makes us empathize with the world around us, what makes us sensitive to other people? Furthermore, if you are walling everything out, you are equally walling everything in. The impenetrable wall may as well be a chemical prison. Maybe the prisons of the future will be in the form of a pill instead of a jail cell.
…but what is not so wonderful about Soma?
* It controls rather than enriches people. (The riot scene in chapter 14.)
* It disconnects people from one another rather than connects them. Can you think of any scenes in the novel that illustrate this? (Linda escapes all of her problems with soma. She abandons John completely.)
* It makes all personal growth impossible. (Because soma is such an easy solution to her problems, Lenina will need to invest any effort to understand Bernard or John.)
* It makes people “amoral”—it’s taken “hedonistically,” for the pure pleasure it provides, and for no other reason. Because it blinds us to tragedy, we end up incapable of empathy. We are amoral because we just don’t care. Why should we? Why would we?
* It is one of the instant gratifications that contribute to keeping people in a “childlike” or “infantile” state.
SOMA: ecstasy or oblivion?
How do Brave New Worlders use soma?
* To find relief from any kind of physical or emotional pain or any mental strain; to switch off any kind of difficult feeling or painful event.
* To recreate; to take a pleasant “holiday.”
* To lose consciousness of individuality, to meld into a communal whole.
* To enhance ecstatic orgies.
* To switch on a feelings of well being, comfort, pleasure, hallucinatory pleasant sensation.
How does soma compare to our legal and/or illegal recreational, or medicinal psychotropic drugs? How does it compare to your own conception of a utopian “wonder drug”?
In what ways is SOMA a “wonder drug” and in what ways does it underwhelm?
Soma seems great…
* It’s great how soma provides instant relief, escape, well being—instant comfort and numbness—no pain. If we can take aspirin to relieve our headaches without feeling guilty, why not have a bottle of soma around to relieve our heartaches?
* It’s simple and safe. It has no side effects or consequences unless you consciously, repeatedly overdose.
* It provides protection against any trauma by raising an “impenetrable wall” between your mind and the “actual universe.”
The “wonder drug” tag hangs very loosely and is liable to fall off if you pull it just a little. The “impenetrable wall,” seems at first like “protection,” but on second glance it might seem like something else. Who does that wall benefit, the individual or the ruling powers who are interested in keeping the individual from feeling anything? Would it hurt people to feel pain? Isn’t pain an important source of growth? (No pain, no gain?) Isn’t pain what makes us empathize with the world around us, what makes us sensitive to other people? Furthermore, if you are walling everything out, you are equally walling everything in. The impenetrable wall may as well be a chemical prison. Maybe the prisons of the future will be in the form of a pill instead of a jail cell.
…but what is not so wonderful about Soma?
* It controls rather than enriches people. (The riot scene in chapter 14.)
* It disconnects people from one another rather than connects them. Can you think of any scenes in the novel that illustrate this? (Linda escapes all of her problems with soma. She abandons John completely.)
* It makes all personal growth impossible. (Because soma is such an easy solution to her problems, Lenina will need to invest any effort to understand Bernard or John.)
* It makes people “amoral”—it’s taken “hedonistically,” for the pure pleasure it provides, and for no other reason. Because it blinds us to tragedy, we end up incapable of empathy. We are amoral because we just don’t care. Why should we? Why would we?
* It is one of the instant gratifications that contribute to keeping people in a “childlike” or “infantile” state.
Don't worry be happy
from
The lyrics of Bobby McFerrin's song include:
Don't worry. It will soon pass, whatever it is
In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Psychiatrist Judith Orloff, M.D. [author of "Positive Energy.."] warns, "Fear is the biggest energy thief there is. A master seducer and gigantic source of negative energy, fear shamelessly robs of us of everything good and powerful, preys on our vulnerabilities.
"Many people become mesmerized for a lifetime, letting negative attitudes seize control. Enough! Though some fears are intuitively protective but we can't let the irrational ones bamboozle us." [From her article Breaking the Trance of Fear]
In contrast to all that, actor Jim Carrey recently commented in an interview, "I wanted to find out what makes people happy. I thought it was just making them laugh. And that's a fantastic thing, because that does give them temporary freedom from themselves.
"But it's not the answer. The cure is people realizing who they are and that there's nothing they can do on the earth or nothing that can happen here that will add to them or take away from them at all. You need to just relax."
Seemingly endowed with endless effervescent glee, Drew Barrymore has been quoted, "You have to fight unhappiness... As much light as I have inside me, there's just as much darkness, I'm afraid. There's a polarity, and I still have demons to work out."
The lyrics of Bobby McFerrin's song include:
Don't worry. It will soon pass, whatever it is
In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Psychiatrist Judith Orloff, M.D. [author of "Positive Energy.."] warns, "Fear is the biggest energy thief there is. A master seducer and gigantic source of negative energy, fear shamelessly robs of us of everything good and powerful, preys on our vulnerabilities.
"Many people become mesmerized for a lifetime, letting negative attitudes seize control. Enough! Though some fears are intuitively protective but we can't let the irrational ones bamboozle us." [From her article Breaking the Trance of Fear]
In contrast to all that, actor Jim Carrey recently commented in an interview, "I wanted to find out what makes people happy. I thought it was just making them laugh. And that's a fantastic thing, because that does give them temporary freedom from themselves.
"But it's not the answer. The cure is people realizing who they are and that there's nothing they can do on the earth or nothing that can happen here that will add to them or take away from them at all. You need to just relax."
Seemingly endowed with endless effervescent glee, Drew Barrymore has been quoted, "You have to fight unhappiness... As much light as I have inside me, there's just as much darkness, I'm afraid. There's a polarity, and I still have demons to work out."
Dancing is a way to happiness
from FREEMAN: HAPPINESS DOESN'T COME IN BOTTLES
Where we humans find joy is in surmounting this solipsistic barrier between us and sharing our feelings and comforts. We cannot ever really cross it, but, a bit like neighbors chatting over a fence, we can be together. However, there is more to this communion than mere talking. There is trust, which underlies true friendships and partnerships. What is the chemistry of trust?
Answers are found when we look back on our mammalian ancestors. Raising a helpless infant to childhood requires intensive parental care, which comes with bonding between the parents and the infant. Now, how does a carefree child, when it has grown up, become a parent? This change in role requires a catastrophic change in beliefs, attitudes and values to make new parents. We humans would say that they fall in love, first with each other, and then with their offspring.
Scientists have learned that, when animals mate and give birth, specialized chemicals are released into their brains that enable their behavior to change. Maternal and paternal patterns of nursing and caring appear. The most important is a chemical called 'oxytocin'. It doesn't cause joy. On the contrary, it may cause anxiety, because it melts down the patterns of connections among neurons that hold experience, so that new experience can form. We become aware of this meltdown most dramatically as a frightening loss of identity and self control, when we fall in love for the first time.
Bonding comes not with the meltdown, but with the shared activity afterward, in which people learn about each other through cooperation. Knowing another person doesn't come with foreplay and orgasm. It comes in cooperative activities during and afterward. Trust emerges not just with sex, but also with vigorous shared activity in sports and combat, through which people bond into teams by learning to trust each other.
So oxytocin is not a happiness chemical, but a brain tool for building trust. Perhaps a million years ago our ancestors learned how to use this mammalian mechanism to promote social bonding beyond sexual union, in order to form groups and tribes. They did it, and still do it, with dancing, rhythmic clapping and chanting, singing and making music together all day and night, into exhaustion and collapse. When they awaken, they are reborn.
Nietsche realized this. Emil Durkheim and other anthropologists have shown how people engage in Dionysian orgies and religious ceremonies, as the most effective way in which to create group identities. The joy they experience comes in dancing and singing with each other, thereby forming the bonds of trust. Trust comes when we are able to predict what other people will do, and we achieve that by repeated cooperative actions.
Aristotle wrote: "Happiness is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue." That is rather abstract. We can see virtue as a set of shared goals for the good of ourselves and our children. Joy comes with activities that we share with people we have learned to trust, and that enable us to share meaning across the solipsistic barrier that separates each of us from all others.
So happiness is not made by a chemical. That would be the same as treating a violin sonata as nothing but rubbing horse hair on strings of cat gut in order to make a wooden box resonate. Violin makers have to know their materials to make one, and physicians have to know about the brain chemicals in order to treat patients, when the chemistry of brains has gone wrong, but they can't give us a pill to make us happy. We create our own joys, and we feel happiest in learning to trust each other.
Where we humans find joy is in surmounting this solipsistic barrier between us and sharing our feelings and comforts. We cannot ever really cross it, but, a bit like neighbors chatting over a fence, we can be together. However, there is more to this communion than mere talking. There is trust, which underlies true friendships and partnerships. What is the chemistry of trust?
Answers are found when we look back on our mammalian ancestors. Raising a helpless infant to childhood requires intensive parental care, which comes with bonding between the parents and the infant. Now, how does a carefree child, when it has grown up, become a parent? This change in role requires a catastrophic change in beliefs, attitudes and values to make new parents. We humans would say that they fall in love, first with each other, and then with their offspring.
Scientists have learned that, when animals mate and give birth, specialized chemicals are released into their brains that enable their behavior to change. Maternal and paternal patterns of nursing and caring appear. The most important is a chemical called 'oxytocin'. It doesn't cause joy. On the contrary, it may cause anxiety, because it melts down the patterns of connections among neurons that hold experience, so that new experience can form. We become aware of this meltdown most dramatically as a frightening loss of identity and self control, when we fall in love for the first time.
Bonding comes not with the meltdown, but with the shared activity afterward, in which people learn about each other through cooperation. Knowing another person doesn't come with foreplay and orgasm. It comes in cooperative activities during and afterward. Trust emerges not just with sex, but also with vigorous shared activity in sports and combat, through which people bond into teams by learning to trust each other.
So oxytocin is not a happiness chemical, but a brain tool for building trust. Perhaps a million years ago our ancestors learned how to use this mammalian mechanism to promote social bonding beyond sexual union, in order to form groups and tribes. They did it, and still do it, with dancing, rhythmic clapping and chanting, singing and making music together all day and night, into exhaustion and collapse. When they awaken, they are reborn.
Nietsche realized this. Emil Durkheim and other anthropologists have shown how people engage in Dionysian orgies and religious ceremonies, as the most effective way in which to create group identities. The joy they experience comes in dancing and singing with each other, thereby forming the bonds of trust. Trust comes when we are able to predict what other people will do, and we achieve that by repeated cooperative actions.
Aristotle wrote: "Happiness is activity of the soul in accordance with virtue." That is rather abstract. We can see virtue as a set of shared goals for the good of ourselves and our children. Joy comes with activities that we share with people we have learned to trust, and that enable us to share meaning across the solipsistic barrier that separates each of us from all others.
So happiness is not made by a chemical. That would be the same as treating a violin sonata as nothing but rubbing horse hair on strings of cat gut in order to make a wooden box resonate. Violin makers have to know their materials to make one, and physicians have to know about the brain chemicals in order to treat patients, when the chemistry of brains has gone wrong, but they can't give us a pill to make us happy. We create our own joys, and we feel happiest in learning to trust each other.
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