yr initial premise is sound, as evinced and confirmed by it's popularization in the opening verse of the Love and Rockets song "No New tale to Tell", with which i'm sure you're familiar. by general definition of nature, yeah, it includes us and all we do in a material context. however, i'm not sure i understand how this relates to or supports your conclusion that "The distance between what we want and what we should is the measure of our unhappiness." though it sounds good, neither did you convince me (as a thoughtful reader) that this is true, or how it might apply to my assumed unhappiness as an individual or as an atom in the human molecule of life on earth.
i feel like you are expressing two separate rants here and trying to glue them together with the idea that our idea of personal happiness correlates to the apparent (but unproven) conflict of our ecological role in the biosphere vs. our continued survival as a species. you don't mention anything relevant to the individual scale of want vs. should, and your "infection of organism Earth" metaphor betrays the anthrocentrism (yeah, i might've just made up that word) of the assumption that what's good for humans is good for the rest of the planet. primarily what's missing is any idea of what happiness is, and some measuring stick for determining what distinguishes "should" from anything else.
what do you think happiness is, bq? what is it for us as individuals? what is it for us collectively as emotional creatures? how does happiness relate to our role in the ecosystem? do we need to be conscientious and see ourselves as ecological custodians to be happy as a species? how important is it really to guarantee our continued presence? in terms of biomass, we are far, far from dominant. if we were, it'd be damn hard to breathe.
how is "should-ness" determined, so that it can be contrasted with "want"? is survival of humanity as a whole the basic goal of "should"? do i measure "should" in terms of my personal life the same as i ought for society as a whole? do think that if a person reaches a point where what they "want" can be proven to be exactly the same as what they "should", then would that make this hypothetical person "happy" by definition?
i love your aggressively rational thinking. it makes me want to argue with you though (or more likely, *because*) i'm sure there's a basic agreement waiting to be reached when the verbal fallout settles. thanks for posting publicly so i can feel free to respond and not worry about being a jerk!
i feel like you are expressing two separate rants here and trying to glue them together with the idea that our idea of personal happiness correlates to the apparent (but unproven) conflict of our ecological role in the biosphere vs. our continued survival as a species. you don't mention anything relevant to the individual scale of want vs. should, and your "infection of organism Earth" metaphor betrays the anthrocentrism (yeah, i might've just made up that word) of the assumption that what's good for humans is good for the rest of the planet. primarily what's missing is any idea of what happiness is, and some measuring stick for determining what distinguishes "should" from anything else.
what do you think happiness is, bq? what is it for us as individuals? what is it for us collectively as emotional creatures? how does happiness relate to our role in the ecosystem? do we need to be conscientious and see ourselves as ecological custodians to be happy as a species? how important is it really to guarantee our continued presence? in terms of biomass, we are far, far from dominant. if we were, it'd be damn hard to breathe.
how is "should-ness" determined, so that it can be contrasted with "want"? is survival of humanity as a whole the basic goal of "should"? do i measure "should" in terms of my personal life the same as i ought for society as a whole? do think that if a person reaches a point where what they "want" can be proven to be exactly the same as what they "should", then would that make this hypothetical person "happy" by definition?
i love your aggressively rational thinking. it makes me want to argue with you though (or more likely, *because*) i'm sure there's a basic agreement waiting to be reached when the verbal fallout settles. thanks for posting publicly so i can feel free to respond and not worry about being a jerk!
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