What is happiness?

Every time somebody asks me "what's wrong?" as a result of me not wearing a plastic perma-smile, it leads me to analyze how society defines happiness. (Related: Hey, baby! Smile!).  Is it exultation, joy, and a wide smile, or does it have many various expressions? The truth is, happiness comes in various forms that are often hard to measure by the size of a smile, which is so commonly and easily faked.

I believe there are two types of happiness– fleeting moments of excitement that incite wide smiles and feelings of ecstasy, and a general feeling of content and satisfaction with life which may not be so brazenly displayed. A person can be happy in general, but have a terrible day (or going through a terrible period), or vice versa– be generally unhappy, but have a good day. The show of happiness may also be cultural. In the United States people place too much emphasis on the show, but in Russia, for example, people are more quiet, reserved, not smiling all the time, but have deeper connections with those they do show their smiles to. (This is an awesome article I always remember, probably because even though I am American through and through, I relate to the Russian psyche, lol: Global Psyche: National Poker Face).

Overall life is a rollercoaster, a series of highs or lows, a glass that is perenially half-empty or half-full. Some people have the remarkable ability to turn the seemingly mundane into something wonderful, while others let such magical moments go by unperceived as they stress over the minutiae of life.

I believe that people who take the time to study and know themselves are happier, because they find their answers within, not from a friend or an online magazine. If you are wise and know yourself, you can always trust your inner compass regardless of what everyone else is doing or telling you that you should do.

Happiness is about doing what is natural to yourself. It is wrong to try to be anything. Personality and its development should take its natural course. Human beings are at their most beautiful when allowed creative and emotional freedom.

Slave Morality, Stones of Law, Political Correctness and Euphemisms

One of the most amusing things people do on the Internet is block a person right after they send a message. These types of people would crumble if the debate was taking place in person, because though they have much to spill out through email, they have not the capacity to withstand rebuttal. Perhaps they fear that their argument could not survive such scrutiny.

Following the distribution of my last blog, Prudish Shocks & Internet Chastity, one of the respondents wrote to me: 

It's just a matter of respecting people online. It's an agreement that YOU make when you sign up for a FB account. If YOU choose to not follow the rules then YOU are subject to the repercussions. It's not other people being prudish its you not having enough concern and respect for everyone else to respect the rules that are put in place for EVERYONE. That says a lot about who you are. You have no respect for not only yourself but for others and if you can't be an adult and respect everyone in a public setting then you sincerely need to leave a public medium. What you want to post on YOUR OWN facebook is your business but what you say in a public group, page, or forum is subject to the rules. So before you attempt to call people prudish consider what you exactly brought to the whole issue. Consider where YOU went wrong.

I couldn't reply to this because I got blocked, so I logged on from my cat's Facebook account and replied as follows: 

Hhhm. Are you sure that's what it was, cherie? Since when are you gatekeeper and protector of the sanctity of man-made rules on Facebook? Lol. No, my sweet. It wasn't that. For some reason known only to you, the comment stung you at a personal level. Then you used the stones of law to aid your wound-- you sought refuge under the tent of regulation to protect your ego. I would apologize, but I will not accept blame for an innocent blunder. If we were to hold our thoughts on account that someone, somewhere, will get offended, we might as well give up critical thought and speech.

She then creates another profile JUST to be able to reply to my original Facebook page, which she had blocked, to tell me this: 

Under Safety #6 and #7. I have no more to say. I don't have to keep trying to prove a point. The user agreement proves it for me. As of now you are harassing me. I will ask you to stop now. If you don't then whatever happens to your Facebook account or whatever legal repercussions happen then they are your own fault. If you're an adult like you're claiming to be then you'll know to knock it off.

LOL! First of all, this does not address my reply-- it only reinforces what I said originally, that she is using the stones of law and seeks refuge under the tent of regulation to protect her ego. It is a very common type of morality amongst people of inferior ability and understanding. As Nietzsche said, "I laughed many a time over weaklings who thought themselves good because they have lame paws."  The problem is that anything a person says online that borders on topics of human nature can be interpreted sexually. Where does one draw the line of censorship? Should we truly limit all of our comments to baby talk, cat photos, and Neandarthal grunts of approval? The fact that she replies and blocks shows that she wishes to have the last word without listening to the other side, typical of those who assume the position of thought-police.

The truth is, Facebook receives MILLIONS of such similar reports on a daily basis, most which get discarded or ignored. I have a friend who works there, and who has told me all about the madness and lunacy of many of those reports. You just can't police what people do or say in a place as wide and diverse as Facebook, which is one of the most visited websites in the world. That's why they have such buttons as "Delete" or "Block." In this case, we were not friends, but rather coincidentally met on a page we both liked. You can't soil your pants and cry every time you find a comment on a random page that offends your delicate sensibilities. That shows mental immaturity, a provincial nature, and limited exposure to the diversity of the world-- an unjustifiable trait even in the smallest provinces of the south, considering how the Internet has exposed us to the different habits, customs and characteristics observable in the homo sapiens species worldwide.

"People Who Complain About Annoying FB Status Updates Are More Annoying"

We are obsessed with replacing impolite terms with commonly agreed polite terms, as if a euphemism could really make the difference between our utopian rhetoric and our straightforward reality. Euphemisms and "proper" language are without a doubt aesthetically delightful, and the keystone of a pleasant and civilized society. Such grandiosity of language certainly helps narrow the gap between the loftiness of our ideals and the relative deficiencies of the state of nature. Furthermore, I admit that as a lover of fanciful poetry and beauty myself, I often prefer reading Wordsworthian literature than listening to the latest Papa Roach album. However, there is also something extremely appealing about the bluntness in the songs by Papa Roach, the callous reflections in Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the amusingly straightforward definitions in Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Can we allow a happy medium of both idealistic romanticism and fatalistic realism to co-exist in our speech as much as it exists in our reality?

It would be a more unpleasant world without euphemisms, but I do also believe that the mania of political correctness with which society is currently afflicted has made many otherwise agreeable people become hypersensitive and reactive to the words and opinions of others, and has henceforth created a society that has difficulty in honestly discussing issues and opinions because one never knows who might get offended and become one's enemy. What may be an innocent comment, a silly joke, or an honest opinion to the speaker, may be the tragic shoe that fits your next adversary. Better to learn the scripts of the world, the great stage, and act them well in society! Maybe the phonies had it right all along.

Aesthetics, Freedom of Taste, & University Programming

 I was looking back through old MySpace blogs for a blog that I am currently writing, and came across this blog that I thought deserved its own space. I write about university indoctrination, but after years of experience I must say that this indoctrination and brainwashing is happening at all levels of society, including corporate and the media. Everything is interconnected and controlled by the oligarchs.

 It was written on June 7th, 2008:

Beauty is a subject of aesthetics, and is therefore subjective. One does not have to have a reason to dislike something; one just does. There are simply some things that do not go well with the tastes and affections of one's heart. Mimicking the ideals that are supposedly en vogue is not education, it is simply following the intellectual trend of the day. It is easy to parrot that which one is being constantly told in textbooks and in the classroom. The truth is, bias and prejudice are a part of our humanity. Along with our critical skills comes the ability to judge whether we consider something fit according to our tastes. One can still accept it as part of the world community, yet nevertheless have the ability to dislike it and speak against it from a subjective point of view. The truth is everything is subjective, except mathematics and the sciences-- and even then, I'd have my doubts of the latter. What, after all, is truth? Alas, it is not in our human lot to ever find out.

The university system seems to be trying to make us into robotic, unnaturally uber-rational, human beings that are pre-programmed to a theoretical ideal of what social scientists call "political correctness, " which is a concept that is foreign and unnatural to human nature. The fact is that no matter how much education we get, and how much we are socialized into hiding it, humans will always be prejudice. Just like religion tried to stifle certain human urges, the university system wants to stifle emotions that are very human indeed. And the masses simply follow, of course, as they always have since the beginning of civilization. There is nothing educated in that.