Sadness or emptiness?

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Originally posted by InvisibleDuncan
Personally, I'm mostly happy. I've had bad moments in my life - who hasn't? - and I would gladly trade most of those for tedium instead. I would much rather be bored than, for example, have someone close to me die, and I think people who claim otherwise are both selfish and odd.

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Selfish? That's a strange way to describe them. I can see you might think them odd, but selfish? Why?

I don't think you are looking at this question in its purest form though. The death of a close friend/relative has persistant consequences, and does not involve just you. The question's essence isn't about consequences, it's about pure experience.

It's not about picking and choosing either. It's a hypothetical choice between two extremes - sadness and emptiness.

Duncan are you saying that you would rather live a life alone than have someone love you? or close to you? Have you experienced love or friendship. If you have not then you are the odd one not everyone else. If I lost any of my friends I would grieve for them, but be happy in the knowledge that we had good times together, experienced life together. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

Ultimately, isn't this all just a question of relativity?

The more sadness one experiences in their lives, the more sweeter the happy moments are. Indeed, are not happiness and sadness just flip sides of the same coin? Does one not define the other?

Exitement and tedium are perhaps slightly different. When we are yound, we crave excitement and cannot bear to be bored.

Whereas the older one becomes, the more one favours stability and security over excitement.

Well, as just about anyone I had my share of bad times (lost jobs, broke up relationships a few times, had relatives who died, financial problems, etc ... we all know that).
The trick is to realise that there is more to life than just sitting there and sob about how bad things are.
Just get up and gear up again, that's what I do.
I may seem hard at times but you'll have to carry on anyway so why not lift your butt an do something about it instead of whining.
This life is all I've got and I do not intend to sob, whither and waste away a large chunk of it.
There will undoubtly be good and bad times but someone (i.e. your parents) granted you this life and it's all you got so : Live it I say. :)

(perhaps I'm too hedonistic to comment in all earnest but I'd rather be that then a sad bastard :) )

Simon, there is an issue of relativity there when you put together a fairly normal lifestyle, but the question I ask concerns static, absolute sadness or emptiness. I know you're probably thinking that there's no such thing as absolute sadness, it's all relative, etc, but this is hypothetical and not supposed ot be grounded in a realistic foundation. The question is whether it is better to experience constant sadness, or constant emptiness, with no deviation from that state.

Sadness won't come without happiness either, you can't loose something without getting it first.

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Originally posted by Jamagei
Duncan are you saying that you would rather live a life alone than have someone love you? or close to you? Have you experienced love or friendship. If you have not then you are the odd one not everyone else. If I lost any of my friends I would grieve for them, but be happy in the knowledge that we had good times together, experienced life together. I wouldn't trade that for the world.

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I'm not saying anything like that, and I can't for the life of me work out how you arrived at that conclusion.

The question being advanced here is: is it better to be bored or unhappy? I have already stated that I am mostly happy. However, on the day that my brother was killed, I was extremely unhappy. I would gratefully have traded that experience for a bit of boredom. If I had been given the choice of having my brother die or sitting and watching a bit of daytime TV, I'd have chosen the TV like a shot. The death of my brother may have given me the chance to experience new and interesting emotions but - and here's my point - I didn't ****ing want them. Not at that price. Not at any price. They were/are not feelings that I'd recommend to anyone.

People who do savour that kind of experience are nothing but sociopaths.

Harry

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The question is whether it is better to experience constant sadness, or constant emptiness, with no deviation from that state.

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I realise you are describing a purely theoretical situation and have no desire to temper the debate with practicalities but...I don't think you can avoid it.

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Originally Posted by Kedaman
Sadness won't come without happiness either, you can't loose something without getting it first.

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This is exactly my point. There is no such thing as constant sadness. Without at least a brief perios of happiness, the contstant sadness would have no meaning. An experience may be perceived as sad, only when set in conjunction with a happy one.

InvisibleDuncan

I think the point you are making here is that moderate variations between happiness and sadness are preferable to stark contrasts.

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Originally posted by HarryW
Selfish? That's a strange way to describe them. I can see you might think them odd, but selfish? Why?

I don't think you are looking at this question in its purest form though. The death of a close friend/relative has persistant consequences, and does not involve just you.

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I think you answered your own question. Things don't happen in a vacuum. Someone who would like bad things to happen so that they can experience the rush they get from pain is ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people would rather that it hadn't happened. That, to me, makes them selfish.

However, I hadn't realised that the context of the question was one where things do happen in isolation. In that case, they're not selfish; just ****ed up.


Simon, the point I'm trying to make has nothing to do with the variation between extremes. It is simply that I do not choose to have such awful experiences.

Duncan, I can appreciate that you didn't think his death was a good thing, that's fairly obvious and I would be amazed if anyone disagreed.

Still, you are not talking about pure experience. Daytime TV is not emptiness, far from it. The death of a loved one, similarly, is not pure sadness (although there is a lot of sadness involved), it has many consequences.

I am talking about an entire life with nothing but one of these two situations. Constantly. Not the death of a loved one and certainly not daytime TV.

And also, it seems I am a sociopath by your standards. Although I didn't 'savour' the experiences as you suggest, I do feel that some of them are valuable to me.

If I am understanding you correctly Harry, you are asking whether we would rather live our lives in a bubble (with no outside stimulation) day in day out or if we would rather live a life of total sadness. Is this correct? If so I would have to choose sadness. In order to feel sad you have to have some input. To feel nothing would be much worse.

Simon, it is unlike you to avoid idle speculation where practicalities are ignored :rolleyes:

The point here is not that you enjoy the experience. It's whether you would rather have the experience than no experience at all.

The other question which I had been saving until the debate got stale (but it seems this isn't actually going anywhere so I'll bring it up now) is what makes happiness better than sadness? What is it that makes people seek happy emotions and avoid sad emotions? Some people seem to work the other way around.

I would like to avoid answers like "well they are just f***ed up aren't they", if you don't mind.

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Originally posted by HarryW
And also, it seems I am a sociopath by your standards. Although I didn't 'savour' the experiences as you suggest, I do feel that some of them are valuable to me.

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Um, you seem to have said that you fulfil the criterion I gave for being a sociopath, and then in the next breath expressly stated that you don't. I chose my words carefully, including the word "savour".

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Originally posted by barrk
If I am understanding you correctly Harry, you are asking whether we would rather live our lives in a bubble (with no outside stimulation) day in day out or if we would rather live a life of total sadness. Is this correct? If so I would have to choose sadness. In order to feel sad you have to have some input. To feel nothing would be much worse.

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Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about.

THANK YOU KATIE! :)

I almost sure you are speculating about something mindlessly.
To feel nothing is to be unconscious, to be asleep is pretty close to unconscious and it's not boring rather relaxing, i'd prefer it from experiencing sadness.
Boredom is a kind of sadness in other words, the lack of a needed stimuli. Happiness was induced at the introduction of that stimuli however

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Originally posted by InvisibleDuncan

Um, you seem to have said that you fulfil the criterion I gave for being a sociopath, and then in the next breath expressly stated that you don't. I chose my words carefully, including the word "savour".

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Okay then, so people who don't 'savour' but just value the sad experiences are perfectly okay?

That's an honest question, it's not loaded.

Bugger, I had a really good reply but lost the friggin thing. :mad:

*sighs*

Right...

Duncan
I know what you mean now. I did explain myself but I can't be arsed to retype the whole bloody thing. Basically I misinterpreted what you said. I read it that you would have rather watched the TV than had a brother. In simple terms :(

But as for Harry's question. I have anthor to add. In a life where you only experience one emotion only people outside your life could see the sadness or tedium. So if you were pure sadness all the time or pure tedium all the time, would you notice? would you care? It is only the conflicting emotions that define what emotion is.

It is true, some people have a very fatalistic approach to life. It's a state of mind, they might see it as 'it obvious something bad is going to happen may as well get it over and done with' so are constantly seeking the next bad thing that is going to happen instead of looking for the next happy thing. I think generally people are pessimists.

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Originally posted by HarryW
Okay then, so people who don't 'savour' but just value the sad experiences are perfectly okay?

That's an honest question, it's not loaded.

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Well, if you want to argue semantics... :rolleyes:

It depends on quite what you mean by "value". If you mean that while you wish you hadn't undergone an experience, you can see that you might have gained something from it and you appreciate those gains, fine. If you mean that you treasure the experience, and are glad that it happened, not fine.

Duncan, it's not me that's started to argue semantics, you said that you had chosen your words carefully and implied that I had misinterpreted what you said. Yes, I am concerned with semantics but no more than you seem to be, so don't try to make out as if I'm being unreasonable about that.

Yes, I value the experiences and I think I have gained in some ways from them. What, though, are you so concerned about when it comes to being glad you had the experience though? What is 'not fine' about it, if someone feels they've gained from it.

Are you just concerned with consequences again?

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Originally posted by HarryW
Duncan, I can appreciate that you didn't think his death was a good thing, that's fairly obvious and I would be amazed if anyone disagreed.

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Originally posted by HarryW
What, though, are you so concerned about when it comes to being glad you had the experience though? What is 'not fine' about it, if someone feels they've gained from it.

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I am obviously misunderstanding you on a grand scale, because your second point seems to directly contradict your first. I think I'll take it as my cue to step out of this argument, because, as you said, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

As a final point on the subject of semantics, I didn't imply that you were being unreasonable and I'm sorry that that seems to have been what you inferred. However, the point I raised was not about semantics. I had said that savouring such feelings made you a sociopath; you said that you fitted my description of a sociopath except that you didn't savour the feelings. That's not a semantical distinction - that's completely ignoring the only criterion I had given.

Of course it's semantics, semantics is about specific meanings of sentences rather than structure. If I misinterpreted your meaning, it was a semantic thing. I thought you were using 'savour' as a general term of value, but you meant it more specifically it seems. Good grief, this is a silly argument.

I really don't see how the two quotes of mine you gave are contradictory. There are two distinct issues here - the death itself, and the experiences associated with it. The death itself is clearly not valuable to you. The experience might be. That is not a contradiction - this whole thread is supposed to be about experiences and their value.

The point is, is it better to have sad experiences than no experiences at all? You seem to just say it's better to avoid sad experiences at the cost of being a bit bored. I am talking about complete lack of stimuli, not daytime TV (although I can see how they're easily confused ;)).

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I almost sure you are speculating about something mindlessly.

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No, actually, I put a lot of thought into my response. I would rather feel something even if it is sadness than be asleep my entire life. I didn't just mindlessly reply to Harry's query.

Okay, i was actually targetting Harry's paradigm, but well doesn't matter i'm not trying to targetting individuals if it seemed so i apologise.

np, ked:)

:)