[Salyssa] musings and ramblings
No; you can't make everybody happy. There's two problems with that.
The first, and obvious one, is the nature of reality and of people: namely, that a lot of things that make people happy are mutually exclusive. Reminds me of an argument I had with a draenei shaman ages ago... there are some people who wouldn't be "happy" with anything less than, say, the death of everything living, or an entire species of sentients to be annihilated, both of which are guaranteed to make quite a few people very unhappy. Of course, you can then say that what those people want to be happy is a bad thing, which makes them bad people, and they don't deserve to be happy... which puts you in the position of judging the morality of other people's desires, and which ends up, no matter how you slice it, with some portion of the set of "people" being made very unhappy.
The second is that what makes a person "happy" isn't always something that will be good for them in the long term. When I was addicted to bloodthistle and booze, what made me "happy" was a very strong batch of bloodthistle, or a very strong proof of booze. There might have been other things that could have made me happy at that point, but I couldn't think of them, and if I'd been offered, I wouldn't have wanted them. What a person wants and what a person needs are often two completely different things. Do you focus on what makes a person happy in the short term, and give them something that will harm them later; or on what will probably make them happy in the long term, and put up with them being desperately unhappy in the interim? And what if you turn out to be wrong about which is which? Or if they change, so that what should have made them happy eventually turns out to make them unhappy anyway, and they spent all that time being unhappy with no happy payoff?
Which leads to the philosophical objection: if you give a person something they think they want without any effort on their part, just dump it in their lap, there's the argument that they'll be dissatisfied with it, they might even resent it; that for a thing to have value, a person must work for it. I've heard that line of philosophy many times. It might even be true, for all I know. I've had precious few opportunities to try the easy way... and I have to say, when I have had something I thought I wanted dumped in my lap... it usually turned out to not be what I wanted after all. It's a philosophical objection, and like most such, it's open to endless debate and interpretation. So fel with that.
I have now written the word "happy" so many times that it's started to lose meaning for me. And it's... it's good to be happy, I suppose, but one can't be happy all the time; if one is, one is probably brain damaged or addicted some kind of mind-altering chemical. If a person is happy all the time, they never have any drive to do anything. Again, I've heard parables of people who are so amazingly evolved or wise or whatever that they really are happy all the time and yet they manage to go out into the world and do amazingly wise and evolved things, usually involving fixing other people's problems while smiling beautifically and radiating an aura of holy goodness. Usually they're also draenei, or paladins, or somesuch. I've never actually seen such a person. If they do exist, they're quite rare. The rest of us have to muddle along somehow. Sometimes, one can be happy; but one can't be happy all the time, or one might as well be dead. The final, inanimate, lying around rotting in a box for eternity kind of dead.
((inkblots and faint scratches, as of a pen tapping aimlessly))
Life isn't fair. I emphatically agree that it should be; but it isn't. And the fact that it isn't doesn't mean we shouldn't do our fel-damndest to make it so - rather the opposite. On the other hand, when there simply isn't any way to make it so... well. Hah, I'm the wrong person to be giving lectures on the uselessness of self-flagellation. We try; we do our best; sometimes, in spite of everything, we fail. That's just... life part of being sentient and animate.
The first, and obvious one, is the nature of reality and of people: namely, that a lot of things that make people happy are mutually exclusive. Reminds me of an argument I had with a draenei shaman ages ago... there are some people who wouldn't be "happy" with anything less than, say, the death of everything living, or an entire species of sentients to be annihilated, both of which are guaranteed to make quite a few people very unhappy. Of course, you can then say that what those people want to be happy is a bad thing, which makes them bad people, and they don't deserve to be happy... which puts you in the position of judging the morality of other people's desires, and which ends up, no matter how you slice it, with some portion of the set of "people" being made very unhappy.
The second is that what makes a person "happy" isn't always something that will be good for them in the long term. When I was addicted to bloodthistle and booze, what made me "happy" was a very strong batch of bloodthistle, or a very strong proof of booze. There might have been other things that could have made me happy at that point, but I couldn't think of them, and if I'd been offered, I wouldn't have wanted them. What a person wants and what a person needs are often two completely different things. Do you focus on what makes a person happy in the short term, and give them something that will harm them later; or on what will probably make them happy in the long term, and put up with them being desperately unhappy in the interim? And what if you turn out to be wrong about which is which? Or if they change, so that what should have made them happy eventually turns out to make them unhappy anyway, and they spent all that time being unhappy with no happy payoff?
Which leads to the philosophical objection: if you give a person something they think they want without any effort on their part, just dump it in their lap, there's the argument that they'll be dissatisfied with it, they might even resent it; that for a thing to have value, a person must work for it. I've heard that line of philosophy many times. It might even be true, for all I know. I've had precious few opportunities to try the easy way... and I have to say, when I have had something I thought I wanted dumped in my lap... it usually turned out to not be what I wanted after all. It's a philosophical objection, and like most such, it's open to endless debate and interpretation. So fel with that.
I have now written the word "happy" so many times that it's started to lose meaning for me. And it's... it's good to be happy, I suppose, but one can't be happy all the time; if one is, one is probably brain damaged or addicted some kind of mind-altering chemical. If a person is happy all the time, they never have any drive to do anything. Again, I've heard parables of people who are so amazingly evolved or wise or whatever that they really are happy all the time and yet they manage to go out into the world and do amazingly wise and evolved things, usually involving fixing other people's problems while smiling beautifically and radiating an aura of holy goodness. Usually they're also draenei, or paladins, or somesuch. I've never actually seen such a person. If they do exist, they're quite rare. The rest of us have to muddle along somehow. Sometimes, one can be happy; but one can't be happy all the time, or one might as well be dead. The final, inanimate, lying around rotting in a box for eternity kind of dead.
((inkblots and faint scratches, as of a pen tapping aimlessly))
Life isn't fair. I emphatically agree that it should be; but it isn't. And the fact that it isn't doesn't mean we shouldn't do our fel-damndest to make it so - rather the opposite. On the other hand, when there simply isn't any way to make it so... well. Hah, I'm the wrong person to be giving lectures on the uselessness of self-flagellation. We try; we do our best; sometimes, in spite of everything, we fail. That's just... life part of being sentient and animate.