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 The Lycaeum Forums » Integrate » Spirituality and Philosophy (Moderators: psilocyborg, Narkissos)Topic:
 Ignorant and annoying neo-hippies always say: "you should be happy and relax"...

[pylkko]

Why would anyone want to be happy if there is no reason? Gawd...  






Feeling grumpy 'is good for you'

In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you.

An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.

In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.

While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine.

'Eeyore days'

The University of New South Wales researcher says a grumpy person can cope with more demanding situations than a happy one because of the way the brain "promotes information processing strategies".

• “ Negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world ”
  Professor Joe Forgas
  

He asked volunteers to watch different films and dwell on positive or negative events in their life, designed to put them in either a good or bad mood.

Next he asked them to take part in a series of tasks, including judging the truth of urban myths and providing eyewitness accounts of events.

Those in a bad mood outperformed those who were jolly - they made fewer mistakes and were better communicators.

Professor Forgas said: "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world."

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style".

His earlier work shows the weather has a similar impact on us - wet, dreary days sharpened memory, while bright sunny spells make people forgetful.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8339647.stm

Published: 2009/11/03 11:14:26 GMT

© BBC MMIX

[spencer wallace]

Wow. You really go the distance to be healthy. Congrats 

[Hyperspatial Ape Beausoleil]

It seems to me that problem-solving is just the means where peace of mind is the ultimate goal.

But there is no end, not in challenge-inspired attentiveness or in creative satisfaction. There is a whole cycle here, a tension and release that repeats indefinitely, so to see only one aspect of the human energy spectrum may be short-sighted.

U, why does someone need a "reason," whatever that means, to be happy? Annoying miserable fucks is fun, anyhow. Oh Jesus, let joy be my knife to stab the grayfaces in their big stupid eyes!

At some point I've come to the conclusion that misery will always have a cause while true peace is acausal, or at least the total absence of causes of suffering. In a sense, it is freedom. We don't need no stinkin' reasons.

[pylkko]

I don't understand your questions. You seem to be extrapolating a lot of idea content from the original article that is not directly there. Are you saying that grumpy people use more reason?

You ask why some need reason to be happy. I think that if there is any answer to that question, it would be that people are different. They have differing personalities.

It may be that "problem-solving is just the means where peace of mind is the ultimate goal". But this probably also is the case in so called creative work. Of course the "world is never finished" by doing work. But I guess that some people think that some fights are worth fighting for even if you cannot win.

[WeeDie]

Is happiness the end and all of everything? I think satisfaction can go with a gloomy mood. To me life as it is, is the most holy of experiences. If gloomy is what is, then gloomy is ok. People say you should be happy. I ask them why? ...What is happiness really?

[pylkko]

The topic is age old btw. This is what Nietzsche and the ancients meant with dionysian and apollonian.


Apollo (Apollonian or Apollinian): the dream state or the wish to create order, principium individuationis (principle of individuation), plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation, the rational/logical and reasonable.

Dionysus (Dionysian): chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction, the irrational and non-logical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian

[Kosmo]

I think it's like HAB suggests, and U too, happy and grumpy are cycles in a day or a life, and also related to personality type.  

They are attitudes towards situations and events, but is there, or might there be, an attitude, like peace-of-mind, or existential joy, that coexists, or even supercedes the habitual attitudes of personality?

[edit by HAB: Sorry, Kosmo; I accidentally hit modify instead of quote on your post. Hopefully all of your original text is here.]

[Hyperspatial Ape Beausoleil]

I think it's like HAB suggests, and U too, happy and grumpy are cycles in a day or a life, and also related to personality type. 

They are attitudes towards situations and events, but is there, or might there be, an attitude, like peace-of-mind, or existential joy, that coexists, or even supercedes the habitual attitudes of personality?

Indeed! There is the purest bliss of being everywhereeverywhereeverywhere. Once the broken mirrors are swept aside you see it in everyone, beneath everything. The trick is being able to admit to others that you are aware of it and being able to express clearly this deepest of joys. For me, it makes me quiet and my eyes just want to beam it all around as if to say, "I KNOW TOO!"

Sometimes it's wildly funny that it gets expressed in such a variety of ways. It can seem tedious, but it is inexhaustible. Nothing is excluded from wholeness. We all love to simply be, whether it's happy or sad, or whatever other labels we want to throw into the pot. Bodhi svaha!

[pylkko]

Wow. You totally lost me. There is a bliss of being everywhere What does that mean? There is some special trick to it? And it is admiting? Do you think that I "know too"? Or is it something special that only some people "know", this admiting?

[Mens Rea]

I do agree that cynicism is good for preventing skepticism and having a realistic outlook on life. Though I don't know how it would be physically healthier--I would think that unhappy people live less long. I don't really believe in being happy (look at me, I'm freaking miserable lol), but I don't believe in living long either...

PS I actually agree u, hippies are damn annoying! Like I have learned that apparently, pollution is only bad when corporations do it. But it's okay when the little hippies throw their hippie festivals and leave trash everywhere. And apparently, it's also okay for the Mexican drug cartels to come in and invade national parks to dump their toxic chemical waste everywhere. As long as it's not a company, it's okay! 

[pshmell]

u, you are confused because you don't want to understand.

Crystal, i pick up trash at all the festivals i go to! Most fests even have volunteer tents where they provide bags for trash and recycling. And some fests even refund your ticket price for volunteering.

i'm not okay with anyone polluting. Throwing an empty coffee cup onto the street is worse than a factory dumping shit somewhere. Throwing a cup on the street is seen by many people, and creates the attitude that littering is okay.

With corporations dumping waste, all you can say is "Man, fuck you." But what're ya gonna do? How do you go about cleaning a scum-brown river?
But when you see someone throw a cup on the ground, you can say "Hey, pick that up", or pick it up yourself. Leading by example is the best way to teach.

[WeeDie]

There can be existential joy as well as there can be existential dread. And I believe the bliss of being is a subtle notion -  there and everywhere, if you want it to. If everything is viewed through the lens of love and compassion, there's a whole new layer of meaning to life. Appreciation, gratefulness.
I think also, the lens can be broken, and only gaping void and existential dread remain. It depends on what game you want to play, or what game God's grace plays on you. From what I've heard, the journey to no-self is not a pleasant one, neither is a life in Kongo or Darfur.

[Mens Rea]

u, you are confused because you don't want to understand.

Crystal, i pick up trash at all the festivals i go to! Most fests even have volunteer tents where they provide bags for trash and recycling. And some fests even refund your ticket price for volunteering.

i'm not okay with anyone polluting. Throwing an empty coffee cup onto the street is worse than a factory dumping shit somewhere. Throwing a cup on the street is seen by many people, and creates the attitude that littering is okay.

With corporations dumping waste, all you can say is "Man, fuck you." But what're ya gonna do? How do you go about cleaning a scum-brown river?
But when you see someone throw a cup on the ground, you can say "Hey, pick that up", or pick it up yourself. Leading by example is the best way to teach.

Hey, all I'm saying is, when the drug cartels destroyed hundreds of acres of national forest land and ruined the ecosystem of the wilderness, I didn't hear A SINGLE complaint from any of the hippies. When I have ever gone to a festival where people claim to be promoting the "collective unconscious," and yet the scene afterward looks like a garbage dumpster desecrated the land by disposing a land fill, the environmentalists NEVER complain. Am I sensing a double standard here? It might not be as irreparably damaging for a single person to dump trash, but we are talking cartels and festivals that can easily reach a population of 100,000 people. In other words: It's CORPORATE SIZED!!! Again, nobody cares so long as it doesn't contribute to the so-called desolate, destitute field known as business un-ethics.

I'm not saying that all hippies are bad, just that a lot of them have no idea what it means to truly be a hippie. You being a hippie, can probably brings some notable examples of "bad hippies" to mind.

[pylkko]

u, you are confused because you don't want to understand.

Wow. For some reason, there really is no come-back to that...

[pshmell]

Crystal, then stop blaming 'the hippies'! you're giving people like me a bad name 

[x]

Hell of alot of pigeon-holing and stereo-typng going on on this forum man, damn.

Drugs are the gate way to a greater human huh? Lot of personal searching and developing going on here?

Happy hippies are as much a media cliche stereo-type as unhappy troll-like internet nazis.

George harrison once sung .        Each day just goe's so fast
                                             I turn around its past
                                             You don't get time, to hang your sign, on me....
                                            
                                             A lifetime is so short
                                             A new one can't be bought
                                             But what you got means such alot too me

                                             There's people standing round
                                             Who'll screw you in the ground
                                             They'll fill you in with all their sin
                                             You'll see...

[Noman]

So you're disputing the hippie cliche by quoting George Harrison?
I think you're just illustrating the point.
Time to move on boys.
Hippies have become mythological figures to dress up as at Halloween
along with pirates and cowboys
and it's time to take a new tack -
with lessons of love and acceptence learned
tempered with the pragmatism
that our age demands.

[x]

So you're disputing the hippie cliche by quoting George Harrison?

No, you are missing my point.

Just because I like something, doesn't mean that if I like something else and som ething else and that puts enough ticks in the box to call me a 'Something'.

You see to me, George Harrison does not equal hippy, it doesn't equal anything. It, or he, is music. That is all.

Some analytical brains can't get their heads around somethings.

A cowboy is somebody who heards cattle, they do exist, but not in the media minds of some, nothing exists when you see with flat eyes, stuck in a box.

I'm going to quote Tool now  Overthinking, over analysing
                                       Seperates the body from the mind

How does Tool fit into Happy Hippy. There is so much more to people than labels, but it seems labels are indicative of the times and minds.

[Kosmo]

HAB slides into his bliss, speaks his truth from it, and who understands?

Only those with skates, with sails,
With happy feet too free not to move
When the ice forms
when the wind rises up
when music, just out of hearing,
range.

Yeah, I know.  Incomprehensible.

[foreward]

so then, maybe processed food is actually good for us? 

http://www.lycaeum.org/forum/index.php/topic,28185.msg286243.html#msg286243

[Gnome]

Lil' bit of grumpy a day makes it all ok.

But mostly happy.

[pylkko]

Only thing is that processed food is usually also disgusting.

[psilocyborg]

We all love to simply be, whether it's happy or sad, or whatever other labels we want to throw into the pot. Bodhi svaha!

At first glance it appears that I don't love to be sad, or depressed, or lonely, or angry, or whatever, seeing as these aren't particularly pleasant emotions to undergo.  But then I realize that I very often cause myself to feel these things quasi-intentionally - by some glitched-out, subconscious, neuroanatomic mechanism perhaps - and perhaps it is true that I love to revel in the thought loops of cyclical pessimism if for no other reason than, well, maybe for no particular reason at all.

Recently however I was drunk and rosy and it was night time and I looked around and I saw that everything is already awake and blissful and it didn't matter that I thought I wasn't because I am and everything always will be.

[pshmell]

At first glance it appears that I don't love to be sad, or depressed, or lonely, or angry, or whatever, seeing as these aren't particularly pleasant emotions to undergo.  But then I realize that I very often cause myself to feel these things quasi-intentionally - by some glitched-out, subconscious, neuroanatomic mechanism perhaps - and perhaps it is true that I love to revel in the thought loops of cyclical pessimism if for no other reason than, well, maybe for no particular reason at all.

Recently however I was drunk and rosy and it was night time and I looked around and I saw that everything is already awake and blissful and it didn't matter that I thought I wasn't because I am and everything always will be.

Yes, yes! This is why I love to be sick, too. There's something homey and cozy about having a 103˚ fever, wrapped up in a blanket, drinking tea and eating fruit all week.
Anything can feel good, as long as you are at peace. 'Sad' isn't quite so depressing anymore when you realize sadness isn't really anything at all.
Sadness is just a name you put on thought pattern (which is, after all, an arrangement or movement of neurons and electrical impulses)
I mean, do electrical impulses know what "sadness" is? Fuck no they don't. And neither do we, we just think that we do. And that's why we get sad, because we think we know so much, when we really don't know nothin' at all.

[pharmanimal78]

Yeah, well I have legal problems out the ass, I'm broke, at home with Mom in a bedroom with a bunch of girly piggy banks on a shelf above my bed. I'm fat, depressed & have a sprung ankle so I can't walk for shit & can barely find a tolerable position to sit/lay in for 5 minutes without amazing pain washing over my brain.

It's fucking gray, rainy & goddamn cold up in this drafty bitch.

AND I'VE GONE SOBER!!!!!!!!  

At least the G withdrawals have begun to lighten up a bit.

[hermes]

Anything can feel good, as long as you are at peace. 'Sad' isn't quite so depressing anymore when you realize sadness isn't really anything at all.
Sadness is just a name you put on thought pattern (which is, after all, an arrangement or movement of neurons and electrical impulses)
I mean, do electrical impulses know what "sadness" is? Fuck no they don't. And neither do we, we just think that we do. And that's why we get sad, because we think we know so much, when we really don't know nothin' at all.

If that's the case, then feeling good, being happy, being enlightened, grooving with cosmic bliss, or whatever, is nothing at all, being just an arrangment or movement of neurons and electrical impulses, and is as empty and impermanent as all other forms. So what's the point of seeing that sadness is just nothing but that, when seeing this about sadness is itself similarly nothing but that? Why advocate anything or be for anything or seeing anything a certain way if its all nothing? What's the point of even being happy then? Why even be alive?


And how the hell do electrical impulses know that electrical impulses don't know what sadness is? You are nothing more than electrical impulses, just particles and fields interacting, right? So how does your mind know that such things as what you define your mind as can't know anything?

[Newfound_wonder]

You guys make the idea that conscious experience is an electromagnetic phenomenon sound so boring!  The same force that pushes electrons through copper wires is the force that drives cognition and behavior.  How is that not cool?  How is that depressing?

[pshmell]

You guys make the idea that conscious experience is an electromagnetic phenomenon sound so boring!  The same force that pushes electrons through copper wires is the force that drives cognition and behavior.  How is that not cool?  How is that depressing?

You talkin' to me!? I don't think it's depressing, i think it's fucking beautiful!

hermes! glad to hear your voice again, you haven't been on here much lately.
I'm glad you brought that up. One important difference between Buddhism and Zen (the way I see it at least) is that in Zen, it is understood that enlightenment is not something that is somehow different from non-enlightenment, something that we have to "attain". We're already there. Everything is already 'enlightened'.
I'd like to go into it deeper but I'm a little drunk and this isn't the best thread. But here is a quote you will enjoy

The only laws of matter are those which our mind must fabricate, and the only laws of the mind and fabricated for it by matter.
-James Clerk Maxwell

[Noman]

AND I'VE GONE SOBER!!!!!!!!  

Jesus, I knew I felt a disturbance in The Force.

It is all electro chemical and the wonder of psychedelics is that they allow whatever it is that we think of as we to step out of that electro chemical reality and watch it work and realize that what we have come to know as we is not a part of that finite material thing, but that the finite material thing is a part of what we have come to know know to be we.

[OctopusRex]

Hippies never die, they just get really stoned.