I can fear also the death of my loved ones, not just my own. My own fears are merely reflections of the others - as that's how our subjectivity is constituted. My argument here is that only life can potentially provide happiness, but a concept of a "happy ending" is beyond our reach and only a fantasy, because the structure that offered us that potential no longer exists (for there is no longer a suitable time frame for something to take place). However my own ending, death, cannot be happy for myself either for the one simple reason that I am not here to experience it anymore. Suffering is dealt within the solution to a conflict, yet death only finally erases our existence. There is no potential for happiness either, anymore.

we define our own unhappiness, and sometimes unhappiness is a necessary boot camp for coming out the other side stronger and with more resolve in one's happiness.

What if there is no God, and you only go around once and that's it? Well, you know, don't you want to be part of the experience? You know, what the hell, it's not all a drag. And I keep thinking to myself . . . I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never going to get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after, who knows? I mean . . maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know, I know, "maybe" is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have. And then, I started to sit back and I actually began to enjoy myself.

Novabreaker said:

I think happiness is a bit overrated. Our society today is so focused on it; self-fulfillment, thrills, endorphine-kicks... People are obsessed with them and only measure their success in those terms. I think an ending can be "happy" even though you're not there to celebrate it with joy and laughter. It can be a point where your whole existence has served its purpose (yes, that's one more topic right there ) and reached its honourable and logical conclusion, if you will. There's definitely an intrinsic value in that.

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

onenitealone said:

No it doesn't require that at all, you have slightly misunderstood me here. I am not talking about the "process" in any Hegelian light that would assume some sort of spirit, or even anything that needs to believed in. The process here I am referring to is first and foremost an analogy to our cognitive powers transferred to the sphere of experience (for that's how these concepts were defined in the first place). A "process" simply is an event taking place in some kind of time frame. A "phenomenon" is another description for any kind of event taking place in space and time. More to the point, phenomenons are how objects of the real world appear in our experience.

We have to make the distinction here between "joy" and what we find "pleasuring" first, for these are two different things. You have to understand that it's not actually the "joyousness" of the event itself that results in pleasuring sentiments (for it would be very naive to think so), but the awareness of the substantiality (the fact that some sort of process is taking place and allowing us to experience joy) build inside it. The fact that we can keep on performing our joyous activity as such. "Joy" or "happiness" are simply concepts for the outcome of any activity that we find pleasuring, and whatever pleases us is a process, as so to speak, because it takes place in time (you experience everything within a time frame). Once a process of any kind is finished and cannot be continued under any possible conditions, this is what we call an "ending".

Of course one could reverse the scenario here by saying that there are indeed "happy endings" if that would mean an end to an event we found unpleasant in the first place. However, there are two kinds processes that result in some type of sentiments: a reflective process, which requires time for its own functionality, and also something that could be described as an antithesis for the process itself, a conflict (or an "anti-process"). A conflict halts the process from taking place (it halts its processual time in that essence), and it will hinder any real pleasuring emotions from surfacing until we arrive at a solution. However, this solution is not an ending as such, because a solution is yet another successfully defined concept, and therefore only a potential beginning for something to happen. After a conflict life indeed goes on, but a conflict itself is what we call "suffering". This is something we so ardently try to overcome.

retina said:

I can fear also the death of my loved ones, not just my own. My own fears are merely reflections of the others - as that's how our subjectivity is constituted. My argument here is that only life can potentially provide happiness, but a concept of a "happy ending" is beyond our reach and only a fantasy, because the structure that offered us that potential no longer exists (for there is no longer a suitable time frame for something to take place). However my own ending, death, cannot be happy for myself either for the one simple reason that I am not here to experience it anymore. Suffering is dealt within the solution to a conflict, yet death only finally erases our existence. There is no potential for happiness either, anymore.

retina said:

You say "tomato", I say "tomato". We are all talking about the same thing on this thread, just by different approaches and manners to name the phenomenons we are referring to.

Here you are describing in different terms what I presented a bit above through the concept of "conflict" and finding a solution to it.

Whoosh! That went right over my head.

So I guess there's no 'good' or 'bad' ending. There's just an ending. But the bit in the middle is the bit we get to play with, manipulate, make sense of. To try and enjoy. Despite the problems Life throws at us.

but the here and now is NOW.

onenitealone said:

Mission accomplished then.




Very well said.




I absolutely agree.

That's my whole point seen in its positive application. There are no "happy endings" because happiness can only be experienced if you are willing to experience it "now". An ending is only an abstraction and in the end somewhat irrelevant to our experience of the "now". "Now" is thankfully never an "end".

So we're talking about the same thing, then?

onenitealone said:

Of course. I am only a pessimist in the choice of my words, not how I am in the world. If you were to be a pessimist towards your own existence, you could just as well give up and die now. (btw - kids, don't do that at home)

in massage parlors there are

onenitealone said:

Mission accomplished then.

shausler said:

TheCatWoman said:

we're not talking about your career in massage.

Novabreaker said:

we're not talking about your career in massage.