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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=81390

What exactly is Pleasure? -why can some people directly relate pain
to pleasure, is it a form of happiness? --is Happiness the true goal
in life?

Pain and pleasure start out (early in evolution) as survival
mechanisms, pain to warn/preserve individual as well as species,...
pleasure to encourage/force things like reproduction (which is also
necessary to preservation of species, though sometimes it results in
death or suffering for individual)

What is the goal of knowledge

Sometimes the goal of knowledge is MORE knowledge (does it not seem
that way)

and, i might add, from an individual human perspective, we are most
fond of OUR OWN discoveries, rather than knowledge simply handed to
us from others/elsewhere

i was once fascinated to notice that there seems to be a difference
in speaking of the "summum bonum" or highest good, verses
the "supremum bonum" or complete totality of good

so, we ought to try to relate happiness and the good, i suppose

happiness is a self pronounced verdict (we declare ourselves to be
happy or unhappy), so awareness is necessary, but not sufficient

though, i suppose one can be "good" (a verdict pronounced by others)
without being AWARE of our goodness

perhaps a form of knowledge is becoming aware of the good, and such
awareness is happiness if we come to see that good as the highest

happiness must be beyond pleasure and pain, since patriots and
martyrs may experience a form of happiness considering their
accomplishment (or the happiness of an athlete or soldier who
struggle towards victory, or the happiness of a scholar who labors
and suffers towards some goal)

the goal of achieving happiness often involves postponement of
pleasures and immediate gratification, and the endurance of
pain/suffering/discomfort

"It is not enough to win. Others must fail." -- Gore Vidal

an interesting question about the soldier,... addressed in the
beginning of a movie "zentropa", about germany just after WWII, a
young man asks a german priest regarding the good/evil of the cause
of each side, and the priest answers with the famous quote "you are
neither hot nor cold, so I spew you out"

an interesting question about the soldier,... addressed in the
beginning of a movie "zentropa", about germany just after WWII, a
young man asks a german priest regarding the good/evil of the cause
of each side, and the priest answers with the famous quote "you are
neither hot nor cold, so I spew you out"

The point the german priest was trying to make was that the
goodness/nobility of the individual soldier was in how he played out
the cards/hand delt to him APART from the legality of the casino

perhaps it was Sartre who give the following example: Kant says that
we must always make others an end, and not a means to an end. Yet, as
example, in occupied France, an only son cares for his aged mother.
He is torn between remaining with her, and ignoring the underground
resistance movement, or joining his comrads and ignoring his mother.
either way, he makes some person or persons a means, while making
others an end.

the life and choices of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a fascinating study of
how someone plays out "their hand", apart from any theology/religion
involved

i'm sure that Plutarch's Lives gives many examples of people making
choices, sacrifices, mistakes in the drama of good and happiness, as
seen from the vantage point of a pre-christian world

we learn from defeats: a smooth see never made a skilled captain

Is happiness "senior to goal", interesting, sort of
an "epiphenomenon", a byproduct of choice and action, which arises in
our judgement, but is not necessarily causally related to the events
in question

stop and think of two scenarios which quantatively are identical, but
qualitatively are quite different: one person begins their career
earning 10,000 the first year, 20000 the second, and so-on throughout
their career, til the final year of retirement, they earn a million
dollars... a clear example of continued success in the eyes of the
world

now, consider a second person who earns a million dollars the first
year of their career, but each successive year, they earn less, until
their final year they earn a mere 10000... the world sees this as a
patter of failure... yet both individuals earned the same total
amount in their lifetimes, and the second had the opportunity to
invest the million in the first year

it is possible to see, in to lives, quantitatively the same "amount",
and yet it is the quality which dictates public opinion about
success/failure/happiness/fortune

now, consider an analogous, curiously similar scenario of two
different philosopher-theologians: the first states that god exists
before the world is created. The second states that the world exist
and that "god" comes into being as a byproduct of the
world/consciousness. QUANtitatively, both hypotheses result in the
coexistence of the same, world and god, but it is the QUALITY of the
development which makes the difference, and makes the first a theist,
and the second an atheist of sorts

some of you might find the short story of Jorge Borges , "The Library
of Babel", quite interesting and philosophical, it is a very short
read, and it is on the net

borges suggest to us, through the medium of that story, how knowledge
and reality might actually be, as a sort of "dependent co-arising"
which is very different from the one way streets of causality though
which we view the rags to riches/riches to rags scenario above

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sitaram/message/1395

Ideas seem to arise and take shape from the ever-changing and
fleeting patterns of thoughts and feelings and moods in the
kaleidoscope of consciousness, caught by the snapshot photographer,
language, posing for us only once in prose, and never to reappear
again if we do not pause to write them down.

The cube was a prison and a puzzle of thousands of rooms constantly
changing in position. We do not know how we got there, in a room in
that cube. We do not know why we are there. The cube has no purpose,
but our decisions and choices weave the fabric of meaning and purpose
which becomes the tapestry of our character

here is the url (and it has an interesting photo showing how that
library might appear)

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html

if there is any truth to what borges describes, then
perhaps "happiness" is simply having a library card to that peculiar
library

perhaps the "good" for all is always, of necessity a compromise

but, by religion, we have really come to mean ethics/morality apart
from anything dogmatic or denominational, which comes back to what i
said yesterday about some super high tech aliens who MUST of
necessity be benign and not malevolent or their own power/technology
would have destroyed them long ago

we may become as scientific and as logical and as open-minded as we
please, and have utter contempt and scorn for organized religions
(and perhaps we are justified), but we can NEVER escape the necessity
of answering for our actions, or paying a price for "wrong action"
especially when the power and technology becomes awesome and the
stakes become as high as the creation or destruction of worlds and
lifeforms. technology becomes its own religion and last judgement

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