Philosophy

[hitiredimj]

I have a Civilization class with Lars Jones, who is infamous for being a hard professor. From what I've seen, the "difficulty" is not really how in depth his teaching is, but how he requires certain exact answers that are worded as his are. His expectations lead to dull lectures reminicent of Ben Stein in Ferris Beuller's Day Off: "And the answer

Comments

[ghostallight]

i think this applies to a lot of people- we are discontent, but if you cover up the part of us that wishes for the future, and see us sitting around with friends or walking across campus, when we are in the world and not in our heads- then we are Happy. the Happiest among us live in the world all the time, and they're in no way worse off than the rest of us.

I'd dispute your folks who are "Happy" now will end up worse off. Maslow has a big thing about people who are Deficit Oriented instead of Growth Oriented. If a person always thinks, "I need this grade, i need sex, i need lunch, i need friends, i'm so lonely"- he is deficit oriented and thus, the most he can reach is a zero of happiness unless he changes his orientation. If you (miss/mr. reader) find yourself envying others and believing your happiness comes at their expense, you are very likely deficit oriented. Growth oriented people are happy every moment of the day, yet they still produce as a by-product of their improving themselves. This Donald Trump, but could be any other top executive who creates wealth: "I don't work to make money. I've got tons of it, more than I ever need. I do it because it's a thrill; because it's my art form. Money is my way of keeping score." The second kind of person is what Maslow called self-actualized.

this is related: I'm conservative in the true sense of the word- takin' morality back to the BC's (and economics back to 1776); more accurately, before Zarathustra. No one believed in heaven or hell those days, or in only one God and one Standard of value- hence existentialism (you choose your values, and try to realize them in the time you have here) was the natural province of man back then.

[hitiredimj]

My point of saying "better off" was to tell the teacher that smokign pot all day (a wise crack at him) was not as good as getting a job that pays lots of money and getting a big house. He was trying to tell us that living for the moment is the only way to be Happy, and I was saying I am happy doing the pro tempore accomplishments, and when the happiness wore off and you went for something more, your lowercase happy was better, quite likely, than your uppercase Happy of an ignorant buffoon.