This Could Hurt Your Brain
Underneath the cut is some of my deeper thoughts on happiness and relativity and is not for everybody. However I do believe it is enjoyable and worth reading otherwise why would I write it?
I decided to pick up Philip K. Dick's Do Androirds Dream of Electric Sheep the other day and within the first few pages I started laughing and, of course, thinking those deep thoughts I usually have while indulging in his fiction.
I'll get to the funnier pieces first.
"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said (Dick, 436).
In a world where people set their mood through a "mood organ" you need to now set a time to be depressed, sad, hopeless, etc. And, in this case, Iran wants to feel depressed. Furthermore she says:
"So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?" (Dick, 437)
Alright, so maybe this isn't funny (I did laugh) but it brings up a good point.
Is happiness an absolute or a relative? Do we need to feel sad to feel happy? Do we need to feel happy to be sad? If we could only feel sad when we desired it, would we want to?
I can see the many different sides of these arguments, and argue for each side with the same amount of passion, so I'll just pick one for right now and stick with it.
Happiness is a relative. To feel happy we must know what sad is and, if pressured, we would want to feel sad every now and then. It's the same principle as not knowing what you have until it's gone.
I can recall many occasions where I have just wanted to have a bad day. I want to have that excuse of being irritable, grumpy, downright miserable and eating that lovely chocolate ice cream later that day while I watch my favorite Star Trek episodes. Then, the next day, after a good night's rest, I'll feel so much better and notice things I never have before. It's like pressing the restart button on your computer, everything is fresh, new.
And what would happen if we didn't have anything to compare happiness to? It would no longer be a state of mind but a state of body. If we are always happy than we would just be stuck in the same emotion day-in and day-out.
The same could be said for not only other emotions but objects as well. If there was no black how could we understand white? If there was no tall than how could we define short? 'Tis all relative.
So, yes, happy is relative and, for many of us, I would guess that we would want to experience sadness every now and then.
ETA: But the kicker of this argument is how we would want to experience sadness to understand happiness. No one really wants to be sad, nor do they really look for it (exclusions apply), and to imagine it being something we would actively seeks sounds foreign.
What other applications to this idea would you think of? What about peace without war? Or Feeling safe without fear? Love without hate? If we were always happy/peaceful/safe/loving, would we seek out sadness/war/fear/hate? I think history, and society, has already proved this.
So we need all of the the evil things about society, things like war, murder, crime, hate, and (arguable) discrimination to feel the benefits of it, like comfort, peace of mind, acceptance, etc.
Gave you something to think about, huh?
And because I am a dork I'll add this (although I should have done this in APA style and not used blockquotes...):
K., Dick, Philip. Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik. New York: Library of America, 2007.
In other news I'm going to go see Avenue Q when it comes here in October. I am very, very, very excited for it. My mother's co-worker called us up and asked if we wanted to see them. I started jumping up and down saying, "Oh my gods! Avenue Q! MUST SEE!!!" Yes, I did do that, honestly. So my mother and I will be going with her co-worker and a bunch of other women to the show. I'm counting the days until we go, watching youtube vids of "If You Were Gay" and "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist". Ah, my favs.
The extended family is coming up Sunday for a get together and I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's now assumed (correctly) that I'm gay and no one seems to bother me about it. No more, "when you going to get a boyfriend?" questions that I need to grudgingly answer. I came out to my family without even telling them. Who would have thought?
In fact, my cousin asked me yesterday if I had a girlfriend. I was slightly shocked (talking about having girlfriends and my general gayness is not something I normally indulge in) but went with the flow of the conversation. It was...pleasant, almost liberating. I may have to do it more often.
No, it's not my family at large, who are mostly conservative, that bothers me, it's this one uncle that lives in George with his deep-south wife. Very religious and very...uptight. I'm afraid that if they caught wind of it (which they probably already have thanks to the devil that is Facebook, where no family should ever, ever, ever be!) they'd call in a priest to do some sort of exorcism. Seriously, they are deeply conservative and...I dunno. It scares me and I don't really want to see them at all. The other family members are manageable but them....Ugh. It's only one day. I can get through one day...right?
I decided to pick up Philip K. Dick's Do Androirds Dream of Electric Sheep the other day and within the first few pages I started laughing and, of course, thinking those deep thoughts I usually have while indulging in his fiction.
I'll get to the funnier pieces first.
"My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression," Iran said (Dick, 436).
In a world where people set their mood through a "mood organ" you need to now set a time to be depressed, sad, hopeless, etc. And, in this case, Iran wants to feel depressed. Furthermore she says:
"So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think?" (Dick, 437)
Alright, so maybe this isn't funny (I did laugh) but it brings up a good point.
Is happiness an absolute or a relative? Do we need to feel sad to feel happy? Do we need to feel happy to be sad? If we could only feel sad when we desired it, would we want to?
I can see the many different sides of these arguments, and argue for each side with the same amount of passion, so I'll just pick one for right now and stick with it.
Happiness is a relative. To feel happy we must know what sad is and, if pressured, we would want to feel sad every now and then. It's the same principle as not knowing what you have until it's gone.
I can recall many occasions where I have just wanted to have a bad day. I want to have that excuse of being irritable, grumpy, downright miserable and eating that lovely chocolate ice cream later that day while I watch my favorite Star Trek episodes. Then, the next day, after a good night's rest, I'll feel so much better and notice things I never have before. It's like pressing the restart button on your computer, everything is fresh, new.
And what would happen if we didn't have anything to compare happiness to? It would no longer be a state of mind but a state of body. If we are always happy than we would just be stuck in the same emotion day-in and day-out.
The same could be said for not only other emotions but objects as well. If there was no black how could we understand white? If there was no tall than how could we define short? 'Tis all relative.
So, yes, happy is relative and, for many of us, I would guess that we would want to experience sadness every now and then.
ETA: But the kicker of this argument is how we would want to experience sadness to understand happiness. No one really wants to be sad, nor do they really look for it (exclusions apply), and to imagine it being something we would actively seeks sounds foreign.
What other applications to this idea would you think of? What about peace without war? Or Feeling safe without fear? Love without hate? If we were always happy/peaceful/safe/loving, would we seek out sadness/war/fear/hate? I think history, and society, has already proved this.
So we need all of the the evil things about society, things like war, murder, crime, hate, and (arguable) discrimination to feel the benefits of it, like comfort, peace of mind, acceptance, etc.
Gave you something to think about, huh?
And because I am a dork I'll add this (although I should have done this in APA style and not used blockquotes...):
K., Dick, Philip. Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik. New York: Library of America, 2007.
In other news I'm going to go see Avenue Q when it comes here in October. I am very, very, very excited for it. My mother's co-worker called us up and asked if we wanted to see them. I started jumping up and down saying, "Oh my gods! Avenue Q! MUST SEE!!!" Yes, I did do that, honestly. So my mother and I will be going with her co-worker and a bunch of other women to the show. I'm counting the days until we go, watching youtube vids of "If You Were Gay" and "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist". Ah, my favs.
The extended family is coming up Sunday for a get together and I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's now assumed (correctly) that I'm gay and no one seems to bother me about it. No more, "when you going to get a boyfriend?" questions that I need to grudgingly answer. I came out to my family without even telling them. Who would have thought?
In fact, my cousin asked me yesterday if I had a girlfriend. I was slightly shocked (talking about having girlfriends and my general gayness is not something I normally indulge in) but went with the flow of the conversation. It was...pleasant, almost liberating. I may have to do it more often.
No, it's not my family at large, who are mostly conservative, that bothers me, it's this one uncle that lives in George with his deep-south wife. Very religious and very...uptight. I'm afraid that if they caught wind of it (which they probably already have thanks to the devil that is Facebook, where no family should ever, ever, ever be!) they'd call in a priest to do some sort of exorcism. Seriously, they are deeply conservative and...I dunno. It scares me and I don't really want to see them at all. The other family members are manageable but them....Ugh. It's only one day. I can get through one day...right?