[Basil Ransom]

Tuthmosis recently wrote:

(07-05-2014 10:14 AM)Tuthmosis Wrote:  

Yet another example of some dude's get-rich-quick scheme not giving a fuck about the net effect on people's quality of life. If I were dictator that would be taken into account when permitting or not permitting certain things to exist.

In my brutally regulated world, Facebook, iPhones, and online dating wouldn't exist. Their deleterious effect on the dating market and people's social skills would be checked off on the form my office would send back.

And, this dude would be executed and chopped into little pieces in the streets for even trying this.

This got me thinking - that out in the West, life is full of things that people cannot imagine living without. But once you remove those things, not only do people cope with their removal, but they actually prosper and thrive when that thing is removed from their life. They become happier.

What are those things?

Naturally, this list will differ from one person to another. But I think it's worth sharing your personal experiences, about areas where you've felt better about deleting things from your life.

Sweets - by any historical standard, Westerners eat a lot of added sugar. Yet anyone who removes it from their diet, and replaces it with healthy fare like quality meats, produce and starches, reports feeling better, and even enjoying food more.

Watching Television

Binge drinking

Drug abuse - this is a pretty obvious one, one that hopefully you never thought otherwise to begin with.

Excessive concern over hygiene - this might seem off the wall, but with a lot of hygiene products, once you stop using them, you look, feel and smell better off afterwards. Going back to those fake nice smelling scents is repulsive to your nostrils.

Buying things new, especially cars - after the initial high of buying something new, you realize you don't actually appreciate the given item any more than you would if it was used. Unless it's something you're making yourself (and getting custom floor mats for your BMW doesn't count), you probably won't care.

Typically, these things involve a high expenditure of time, money or both.

[Lizard King]

Pleasing women?

[MikeCF]

I don't personally experience "happiness." Not a sad person, but my emotions are just not high or low...never really that happy or sad. I am probably one of those people who has to experience extreme adrenaline highs in order to "feel" anything.

That said, I enjoy the fuck out of my car. I was never a car guy until I got it. It's loud, fast, fun, and gives me a rush.

A fast car is an ongoing experience every time you drive it.

[samsamsam]

There was a time in the world when people didn't have cell phones and everything seemed alright.

[Dr.Edd]

In my experiences, everything that can be bought makes you temporarily happy. Actions such as going to new places, learning new things, having new experiences gives me more happiness than material possessions. For example, a friend of mine was going through a hard time so his thinking was that buying a rolex would make him happy. So he saved up for a while and bought that watch. For a week or so he was extremely happy but after that his happiness wore off and he was in the same position.

[From Vegas to Tokyo]

for everyone different things will make them happy. You mention television as something that people think makes them happy and really doesn't. As someone who is a natural introvert, I love netflix and use TV to relax and decompress after particularly exhausting social situations. I can't party all the time, and so when I do go out 4 or 5 nights a week I usually take sunday to decompress and love my netflix. MikeCF, I love cars too. While I would love a white 335i convertable like you have, I simply can't afford it and the idea of "low payments of only $450 a month for 36 months" doesn't really excite me. I have a beater car that works fine for me right now, thats easy to fix and do maintinence and I love to beat on it. Those things give me happiness too.

Things that people think gives them a lot of happiness that generally doesnt: shopping, going to nightclubs indiscriminately and waiting in hella long lines (see MikeCF's instagram account @dangerandplay for a nice little line outside Hakksan this weekend. Hakksan might be great, but waiting in like for 3 hours? not my cup of tea), and watching football.

[Patriarch]

For me, it has to be excessive drinking and becoming overly attached to a sports team. The mark of every person I know who is going nowhere in life is a combination of bitching about the O's/Ravens and getting plastered 5 days per week, then wondering why they can't find their wallet when they want to spend a couple hundred dollars to wear another man's name on their back.

[AnonymousBosch]

(07-05-2014 02:09 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

I don't personally experience "happiness." Not a sad person, but my emotions are just not high or low...never really that happy or sad. I am probably one of those people who has to experience extreme adrenaline highs in order to "feel" anything.

You could be describing my game mentor. I'm in awe of his control over his emotional state. Without highs and lows, he feels neither bored, nor lonely. Must be good.

[Coldfire]

Family- a constant pain in my ass

[MikeCF]

(07-05-2014 02:38 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(07-05-2014 02:09 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

I don't personally experience "happiness." Not a sad person, but my emotions are just not high or low...never really that happy or sad. I am probably one of those people who has to experience extreme adrenaline highs in order to "feel" anything.

You could be describing my game mentor. I'm in awe of his control over his emotional state. Without highs and lows, he feels neither bored, nor lonely. Must be good.

It gives you great fortitude and the ability to remain calm when others panic.

It also keeps you in control of any situation, since nearly everyone you encounter is emotionally weak relative to you.

The downside is that only danger excites you, so sometimes you get into situations that prudence would caution against.

[Veloce]

Well you got a philosophical one going here...

You're basically saying, "What External things are supposed to make us happy, but actually don't?". My answer to that is "Everything".

There is happiness derived from having "something". Some people might call this happiness but I don't.

Then there is happiness derived from having "nothing". I would call this true happiness. Happiness that you experience while meditating. Happiness that comes from disassociation, unattachment, but it's not an emotional happiness. It's a stillness, a calmness, a deep peace. That state makes me happy.

Everything else is fleeting happiness. Petting an animal, eating a good meal, fucking a new vagina, getting a new toy. Getting a rush, as Mike says. Getting an adrenalin rush, or a dose of endorphins.

If you enjoy rock climbing, skydiving, or scuba diving, is it the gear that brings you happiness or the activity? Having toys like that are just tools. They don't bring you happiness in their existence, but they allow you to do things that will make you happy.

[Sp5]

The time spent on meeting and otherwise hanging around women makes me wonder if the occasional moments of amusement and ecstasy are worth it.

[Cobra]

Surprised no one dropped this one yet.

Obvious one for me personally.

Marriage .. (in and of itself does not result in happiness even though a significant portion of the world, even men would disagree with me).

I have other things in life I supplement it with nowadays to feel good regardless ( Primarily fitness, kids, RVF, gaming, writing).

[Vaun]

Partying. If its with good friends no, but the random/common partying in clubs/bars/house parties wherever. Grew up around it, been seeing it my whole life, and it just bores the hell out of me. When I see adults who do it, like its all they anticipate while they work all week, just makes me think people are lame. Not that they are, but its not what I am into, even though it seems like most people are.

[Lizard King]

(07-05-2014 04:40 PM)Cobra Wrote:  

Surprised no one dropped this one yet.

Obvious one for me personally.

Marriage .. (in and of itself does not result in happiness even though a significant portion of the world, even men would disagree with me).

I have other things in life I supplement it with nowadays to feel good regardless ( Primarily fitness, kids, RVF, gaming, writing).

Perhaps my post was too vague/general, but I would say it is covered in 'pleasing women'.

Not trying to be argumentative, still familiarising myself with the posting style of this forum. eg: I could have provided a list of acts/activities that 'please women' and don't necessarily provide happiness for the man involved. Marriage would certainly be on that list.

Coldfire touched on it also, with 'family'. Something many women wish for, and expect men to provide as a husband. A familiar trope in these sections of the internet is the idea of an unhappy man labouring away for an ungrateful family/wife, while society expects him to be fulfilled.

[clever alias]

Technically there's not much you can do to be happy. people have a baseline level of happiness, and it can spike or drop depending on stimulus, but by and large, everybody is equally happy. there was a survey of quadriplegics and non-disabled people t report how many days a week were "good days" vs "bad days" and the number was nearly identical. same thing with income, once someone is over a minimum non-poverty threshhold, increases in income have rapidly diminishing marginal returns.

[el mechanico]

Well you know what makes you happy Basil.

I've been buying up all the things that DID make me happy and still do because I connect with them. My father had an Norton Commando when I was probably about 6 years old.. I used go into the garage and jump up on it. I as an enthusiast do NOT LIKE the bike so much but remember the way the handlebar grips felt. The grips make me happy so I buy NOS ( new old stock) stuff like that on eBay all the time and have been living a continuos state of Christmas morning at my mailbox and ups - fed ex acting as Santa.

More to come

[Cobra]

I would still argue that marriage is very unique in that it single handedly has the potential to take away a man's freedom and provide him a low ROI. It's a cultural construct whereas pleasing a woman and having a family is more biological. If you haven't had the experience and taken the red pill, it can be a difficult thing to fully comprehend without some effort.

You can still have a family and/or please a woman without putting yourself out there with the expectation driven cultural phenomenon that's marriage.

[Steve9]

Take a look at meditation and you will experience the delusion that objects - people, places, things - are the source of happiness. With training you can see your internal mental chain of events leading to the arising of craving and clinging and aversion. When exposed like this, craving and aversion evaporate.

This is what the "happiest man in the world" recommends :

Quote:

As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow in the fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever tested.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the brain and improve people's happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts on muscle.

"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows that meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are," the Frenchman told AFP.

Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy if they only train their brain.

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory -- "never reported before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson said.

The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity, researchers believe.

Research into the phenomenon, known as "neuroplasticity", is in its infancy and Ricard has been at the forefront of ground-breaking experiments along with other leading scientists across the world.

"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of short and long-term mind-training through meditation on attention, on compassion, on emotional balance," he said.

"We've found remarkable results with long-term practitioners who did 50,000 rounds of meditation, but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day, which of course is more applicable to our modern times."

The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior Tibetan monks at a festival in the remote Nepalese Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a globally respected Buddhist and is one of the religion's leading western scholars

But he has not always been on the path to enlightenment.

Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as the son of celebrated French libertarian philosopher Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolor painter Yahne Le Toumelin.

"All these people used to come around, most of Paris intellectual life. We had all the French painters and I was myself interested in classical music so I met a lot of musicians," he said.

"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners eating with us. It was fantastic... Some of them were wonderful but some could be difficult."

By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 1972 he had become disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India during his holidays.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-scien...2-11?IR=T&

[Veloce]

(07-05-2014 07:25 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

Well you know what makes you happy Basil.

I've been buying up all the things that DID make me happy and still do because I connect with them. My father had an Norton Commando when I was probably about 6 years old.. I used go into the garage and jump up on it. I as an enthusiast do NOT LIKE the bike so much but remember the way the handlebar grips felt. The grips make me happy so I buy NOS ( new old stock) stuff like that on eBay all the time and have been living a continuos state of Christmas morning at my mailbox and ups - fed ex acting as Santa.

More to come

I'd say the best toys are not about the toys, but what you do with them. They all have little qualities like your grips you're talking about.

There's something about sitting down to an instrument that can't be replicated. While my neighborhood was blowing up from fireworks last night (it's a Mexican neighborhood) I cranked my amp up, turned it so it was facing outside my screen door, and did my best rendition of Jimi Hendrix's star spangled banner. It was cheesy but I had a few beers in me and it sounded pretty good.

That made me happy.

Also back when I was a serious musician I played cello for about 3 years. That instrument made me happy. The way the sound reverberates through your body is pretty awesome, on top of playing music that's hundreds of years old, sort of connecting with an ancient era. Good stuff.

[The_CEO]

The Stoic philosophers, Buddha, and Thoreau contemplated this question -
how to achieve tranquility.

Of course, Thoreau famously went to live in isolation in the woods for two years in search of enlightenment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

[el mechanico]

(07-05-2014 09:11 PM)thedude3737 Wrote:  

(07-05-2014 07:25 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

Well you know what makes you happy Basil.

I've been buying up all the things that DID make me happy and still do because I connect with them. My father had an Norton Commando when I was probably about 6 years old.. I used go into the garage and jump up on it. I as an enthusiast do NOT LIKE the bike so much but remember the way the handlebar grips felt. The grips make me happy so I buy NOS ( new old stock) stuff like that on eBay all the time and have been living a continuos state of Christmas morning at my mailbox and ups - fed ex acting as Santa.

More to come

I'd say the best toys are not about the toys, but what you do with them. They all have little qualities like your grips you're talking about.

There's something about sitting down to an instrument that can't be replicated. While my neighborhood was blowing up from fireworks last night (it's a Mexican neighborhood) I cranked my amp up, turned it so it was facing outside my screen door, and did my best rendition of Jimi Hendrix's star spangled banner. It was cheesy but I had a few beers in me and it sounded pretty good.

That made me happy.

Also back when I was a serious musician I played cello for about 3 years. That instrument made me happy. The way the sound reverberates through your body is pretty awesome, on top of playing music that's hundreds of years old, sort of connecting with an ancient era. Good stuff.

I think people in this age need to get off the computer and experience real life.

[Veloce]

(07-05-2014 09:23 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

I think people in this age need to get off the computer and experience real life.

Yeah too late to turn back. People are gonna get more tied up with their computers and smart devices until the singularity event and a superhuman is created. By most accounts it'll happen in our lifetime.

At this rate the first cyborg will be the IRT who uses his powers to create a harem of white blonde chicks.

[RawGod]

Lots of dietary things. Caffeine, alcohol, sugar, wheat, some would say meat.

[The Lizard of Oz]

(07-05-2014 07:25 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

I've been buying up all the things that DID make me happy and still do because I connect with them. My father had an Norton Commando when I was probably about 6 years old.. I used go into the garage and jump up on it. I as an enthusiast do NOT LIKE the bike so much but remember the way the handlebar grips felt. The grips make me happy so I buy NOS ( new old stock) stuff like that on eBay all the time and have been living a continuos state of Christmas morning at my mailbox and ups - fed ex acting as Santa.

Just reading this made me happy...