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3 rules to happiness

TimCallahan said:
I recently met a psychologist who had developed three rules for living a value-oriented life, though he didn't promise they would make you happy. His three rules are as follows:

1) No "dead man" rules: In other words, don't make your moral imperitives something a dead man can do better than you. Example: A dead man can refrain from lying better than you can. A dead man cannot hug his kid. You can.

2) Do the right thing without expectation of pay-back.

3) Do the right thing even if nobody ever knows you did it.
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2) and 3) occupy my day, many times.
 
Tricky said:
My three rules:
  1. Care about others.
  2. Accept that there are people who believe differently than you.
  3. Don't take anything too seriously.
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[3]...especially anything on an Internet forum. Read for entertainment only.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
1; Crush your enemies.

2; See them driven before you.

3; Hear the lamentations of their women.

Your milage may vary, depending on how furry your boots are...
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Or as that other Barbarian said:

Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
 
1. Don't get caught.

If you follow that one, there really aren't any other rules.
 
1. The Lord loves a workin' man.

2. Don't trust whitey.

3. See a doctor and get rid of it.
 
Spouse:

Being married is hard work. It might have been easier back in the day when one partner’s life was subjected to the other’s; when one could do as much or as little as they liked, and the other had no difficult choices to make at all. With today’s more symmetrical arrangements, it is far more enjoyable and rewarding, and also much more difficult; every time you want to do something, there is another person with a claim to your time, money, and affection. Too often, the emphasis on “finding the right one” is understood to mean “finding the one with the least points of difficulty”. If I were to choose a life of blissful happiness, I am quite sure I would die consumed with emptiness and regret.

While I would not characterize my marriage, as you have your former ones, as “hell on earth”, I can perhaps understand through my experience with having three children, two of them twins. I spent a year of tedious feeding, cleaning, poop wiping, and sleeplessness to the point of hallucination. The criticisms of bachelor friends, with respect to marriage and children were absolutely correct in every way. Yet—I now regard my unmarried, childless life as a sort of naïve childhood in which I could never have achieved the heights of happiness that I now enjoy.

I think that if I had chosen “hell on earth” in marriage, then I would make it my hell on earth, and the best hell on earth that I could make it. And then I could say: see what I’ve done; see what work of art I have made of a life that might have been intolerable!


Veganism:

I would advocate the following rule as regards special diets: don’t eat anything that you’re not comfortable eating. Some people have the mistaken belief that eating gluten, or MSG or high-fructose corn syrup is unhealthy. I think that is silly. But I do not think that it is silly for someone who is uncomfortable eating them (for any reason) to avoid those things. So please don’t tell me about your latest stylish food aversion, and I won’t disparage your limited repertoire of food enjoyment.

I once tried, as an experiment, to eat vegan for as long as I could. I broke down after a week, and I can report that the meanest McDonald’s cheeseburger was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted.

Selflessness:

Unselfishness, as is normally understood is paradoxical. Consider two lovers, A and B. It is A’s birthday, and, as a gift, B offers whatever pleasures A desires. But to A, the greatest pleasure is found in the happiness of B. Yet, B would deny themselves, and thus deny A’s desire. A would be left with guilt at taking advantage, and a sense of debt. A fine birthday present!

Consider the following thought-experiment. Suppose God appeared before you and informed you that due to your piety, kindness, and (most importantly) selflessness, you were guaranteed eternal heaven. Considering your unselfish character, God offers you a deal: Give up your place in heaven, and He will grant five other undeserving souls entrance in your place. There are no other hidden conditions; this is not some crafty test. Would you take the deal?

I would not, as I believe that selflessness is ultimately self-interested. When we teach our children to be kind and generous, we emphasize the good feeling it brings, or invent other rewards aimed at the self-interested: heaven, the respect of others, toys from Santa Claus.

We live in two worlds; the physical and the psychological—the animal and the personal. “Happiness”, is something that seems to be restricted to the personal, while “pleasure” is associated with the animal. Philosophers have often noted the irony that seeking pleasure is seems to prevent finding happiness. In fact, often we find that happiness is associated with a denial of everything animal. Religious ascetics find happiness in literally starving their organism. Rock climbers enjoy their sport precisely because they are doing what is terrifying to the animal. People avoid boredom by wasting precious physical energy and other resources. And so on. There is a point to unselfish-appearing behavior. By giving your time, your money, your life away, you are asserting that it is “you”, the personal in charge of your behavior rather than the animal instincts.


Happiness:

I am a Sudoku junkie. I complete one just about every day, taking between ten minutes and several hours, depending on the difficulty. Inevitably, I asked myself what exactly I was accomplishing with this activity. I have filled a ream of paper with little numbers. This will impress absolutely nobody; in fact, it might invite the scorn of anyone who regards such frivolity as a moral defect. Those wasted hours could have been spent doing something more productive. Like what? Collecting money for the animal’s security? What would I spend it on? Some other waste of time, most likely. Or, I could leave it to my heirs, so that they could do something useless.

If I am happy doing a Sudoku, then I am doing something greater and more lively than any supposedly productive enterprise. It is the greatest purpose that can be imagined. If I am happy, don’t tell me who to marry, what to eat, or what I should be doing with what is mine. And if I am not happy, don’t tell me either, as it is very unlikely that I will find happiness through fulfilling someone else’s purpose.

So here is the key to happiness. It is not per se, any particular thing that I can do. I would be ridiculed for suggesting that the key to happiness is fighting with a spouse, doing Sudoku, eating McDonald’s, and avoiding pleasure. But if a $0.99 McDonald’s cheeseburger is the most delicious thing; if a Sudoku puzzle gives my life purpose; if a relationship becomes my personal art project; if I can deny myself without needing any reason, then this world is a paradise beyond the imaginings of those who search for happiness in ritual and platitudes and formulas.
 
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phildonnia said:
Being married is hard work. It might have been easier back in the day when one partner’s life was subjected to the other’s; when one could do as much or as little as they liked, and the other had no difficult choices to make at all. With today’s more symmetrical arrangements, it is far more enjoyable and rewarding, and also much more difficult; every time you want to do something, there is another person with a claim to your time, money, and affection.
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:confused:

This seems to be a euphemism for something unpleasant, like nostalgia for the days when, supposedly, a man could do whatever he wanted while his wife was supposed to follow his orders without objecting, unlike today when he's expected to treat her as an equal, but I'm not able to figure out what you're really saying.
 
Pup said:
:confused:

This seems to be a euphemism for something unpleasant, like nostalgia for the days when, supposedly, a man could do whatever he wanted while his wife was supposed to follow his orders without objecting, unlike today when he's expected to treat her as an equal, but I'm not able to figure out what you're really saying.
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Life is easier if you know what your role in it is. Many men and women were (and still are) content (or at least no more miserable) filling the roles breadwinner and housewife, respectively.
 
Pup said:
:confused:

This seems to be a euphemism for something unpleasant, like nostalgia for the days when, supposedly, a man could do whatever he wanted while his wife was supposed to follow his orders without objecting, unlike today when he's expected to treat her as an equal, but I'm not able to figure out what you're really saying.
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Sorry, it was quite beside my point anyway, and I have a problem knowing when to stop typing.

I am certainly not pining for the old ways as concerning marriage. I was saying here that I believe modern marriage is misunderstood as an institution in which one person's life is subjected to the other, as was once the case. This leads to disappointment when suddenly one is surprised to find another person always there, demanding respect (I am speaking from the traditional male perspective here). This disappointment can lead the partners to believe that the marriage is bad, or their spouse is bad, and detract from the enjoyment that the modern marriage, with all its contention and sacrifice, is capable of providing.
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
Life is easier if you know what your role in it is. Many men and women were (and still are) content (or at least no more miserable) filling the roles breadwinner and housewife, respectively.
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Sucked for the rest of them, I guess.

For what it's worth, I've always been the breadwinner and my wife has always been the housewife in our marriage, so nothing is stopping couples from doing that today. I wouldn't want a world where people were socially, or worse yet, legally, discouraged from doing anything else they wanted, though.
 
To derail even further, I recently read about how the whole breadwinner/housewife thing is something that really only got a good going for a fairly small window of time, and that it was really only truly possible for a fair amount of average people to reach this "goal" in the 1950s. And then it got thrown back out again.

What was it like before then? Well, marriage was more like a business contract. Both spouses did their fair amount of paid work, and as often as not, would easily rely as much or more on the wife as the husband. A merchant would for example want a wife that would be conducting the business from his home office when he traveled. A sailor's wife would definitely need to have paid work during the months he was at sea. And so a merchant would seek for a spouse that was good at sums and not tearing his business apart, and a sailor would want someone who could do something that was in demand, like seamstress.

Sure, it probably still wasn't a fully equal partnership (what with the women mostly being limited to what sort of jobs they could hold), but it's funny to think that the breadwinner/housewife role as an ideal that everyone should follow was basically a step backwards in terms of equality. And between that and the fact that our society simply cannot function without women doing paid jobs, it's no wonder this ideal was only popular for less than a century.
 
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Hawk one said:
To derail even further, I recently read about how the whole breadwinner/housewife thing is something that really only got a good going for a fairly small window of time, and that it was really only truly possible for a fair amount of average people to reach this "goal" in the 1950s. And then it got thrown back out again.
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There's also the idea that women used to provide just as much value, except now it's more efficient for everyone to specialize, be paid in cash, then use the cash to buy mass-produced items.

For example, rather than having each farm-wife growing vegetables in her kitchen garden, preserving food for the winter and cooking meals from scratch, it's more efficient for some people to get paid for working eight hours at large-scale vegetable production, others to work in the canning/freezing industry, others to work in the trucking industry, others to build microwave ovens and refrigerators, then all come home to store-bought ready-to-microwave meals they can prepare in five minutes, which each had a small part in producing. Repeat for the making of clothing, mending, knitting, laundry, etc.

Everything was gradually incorporated over generations, of course, not a sudden change.

To bring this back on topic, it's funny how a lot of happiness is relative. Take a woman (or man) from 200 or 300 years ago and suddenly give her all the conveniences of the 21st century, and she would be astounded at the luxury and convenience.

But we don't spend every day in amazed joy that we don't have to keep the fire going, haul water, and hitch up the horses for an all-day trip of 20 miles, because we consider ease and luxury only in comparison to what we're used to.
 
Maybe there's something inherently oxymoronic about rules for happiness, but they always seem so dreary. Maybe we should forget about happiness and simply cut straight to the rules for not totally *********** up your life as you trudge toward your inevitable death.

1. Run what you brung.

2. Love what you can.

3. Try to get the joke.
 
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