Happiness // Current

The Decade, in 7 Minutes

Newsweek has boiled down the the first decade of this millennium into a seven minute... more

Manatee_man
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5 days ago
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The Well-Being of 50 U.S. States

A survey called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reveals which states are... more

vincius
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11 days ago
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Happiness Hat Forces You to Smile

pjacobs51
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25 days ago
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Some more insight from an anonymous source

Very difficult life can be, but it is the nature of life. To come to an understanding... more

Fading_Chaos
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27 days ago
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Thought-Provoking Sayings for Your Life

Life can come and go. The better way to deal with all ups and downs in life is to... more

CHANLEEPENG
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29 days ago
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5 friends you don't need in your life

Who was the first person you called the day your ex dumped you? Or that time you found... more

larock
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1 month ago
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The Real Meaning of KARMA Is Taking A Step Forward

Do you believe in KARMA? Whatever may be your answer yet I m sure you will have few... more

Vivek_Nanda
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1 month ago
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Nigeria- Land of the World's Happiest People

Despite the difficulty many Nigerian royals have had getting their money out of the... more

Progresshiv
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1 month ago
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Some words of wisdom from an anonymous source.

Life and the lessons it teaches are both truly amazing, as long as it is without having others intentionally out to teach "their" lessons. It is Life, itself that teaches the necessary lessons, usually in the most trying of times. But, It is the severity of the circumstances surrounding a lesson that allows understanding. Not only just the realization of said lesson, or understanding as to why, but also the knowledge it contains, which is found on a multitude of levels. Events occur the way that Life needs them to, and seeking an understanding will just cause more issues to arise. Understanding comes when an individual is ready for it, and not when one is seeking it. Life will provide the answers in ways that are unfamiliar, but when the time comes for an individual, they will immediately understand the lesson.

Without the severity of the circumstances that Life places around it's lesson, understanding would not be attainable. This is why it is not for individuals to commit acts of revenge, or to intentionally interfere with others lives. Everyone is on their own path, and to intentionally cause others to encounter or experience suffering is in itself an act of evil, Life is too short and complex to intentionally be adding more suffering, and by doing so is the work of evil. Good does not intentionally cause issues or pain, no matter what. The influence of evil must be overcome within ourselves, as change comes from within. The battles between Good and Evil are only found within each of us, and can be seen on a larger scale, as it is the balance between the two that creates what we see in society as a whole.

We can only change ourselves, and to engage in activities that aim at influencing others to be more like "us", is, in actuality, the unwillingness to accept differences in others. This could result in conflict, as it could be seen as "right vs. wrong" "more right than you" or an inflated ego. Judging others' morality based on being gay or having a different belief system, is also the unwillingness to accept differences that surround us. Justifying oneself or seeking validation would be just as sinful as that is someone who murders, Those that believe that they are more important or better than others, or believe that they are "Right" and others are "Wrong" or to trying to make others have the same view, irregardless of what strategy is being utilized for said purposes, are all ways that demonstrate the unwillingness to accept differences.

It is the failure to cherish the differences in others that causes the amount of suffering that we see in our world. And only by changing our individual ways of thinking will we be able to overcome suffering. Cherish all life, not just the people, but all of Life's creatures. Realize that universal knowledge is too vast and is composed of all things. Failure to do so will ultimately have the consequence of causing the fall of civilization as we know it. As it will be our differences that not only saves us, but allows all of us to become fully aware of how amazing life truly is.

---AnonymousLife and the lessons it teaches are both truly amazing, as long as it is without... more

Fading_Chaos
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1 month ago
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Did feminism make women miserable?

Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so.

On Slate's DoubleX Web site, Christine Rosen concluded from the study that "the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave us a steady stream of women's complaints disguised as manifestos … and a brand of female sexual power so promiscuous that it celebrates everything from prostitution to nipple piercing as a feminist act -- in other words, whine, womyn, and thongs." Or as Phyllis Schlafly put it, more soberly: "[T]he feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy in which their true worth will never be recognized and any success is beyond their reach ... [S]elf-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness."

But it's a little too soon to blame Gloria Steinem for our dependence on SSRIs. For all the high-level head-scratching induced by the Stevenson and Wolfers study, hardly anyone has pointed out (1) that there are some issues with happiness studies in general, (2) that there are some reasons to doubt this study in particular, or (3) that, even if you take this study at face value, it has nothing at all to say about the impact of feminism on anyone's mood.

For starters, happiness is an inherently slippery thing to measure or define. Philosophers have debated what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it simply as a greater frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we ask people if they are happy, we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average over many moods and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day after I opened the bills, but then was cheered up by a call from a friend, so what am I really?

In one well-known psychological experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire on life satisfaction, but only after they had performed the apparently irrelevant task of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a randomly chosen half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the copy machine. As two economists summarize the results: "Reported satisfaction with life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy machine -- clearly not an income effect."

As for the particular happiness study under discussion, the red flags start popping up as soon as you look at the data. Not to be anti-intellectual about it, but the raw data on how men and women respond to the survey reveal no discernible trend to the naked eyeball. Only by performing an occult statistical manipulation called "ordered probit estimates" do the authors manage to tease out any trend at all, and it is a tiny one: "Women were one percentage point less likely than men to say they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample [1972]; by 2006 women were one percentage more likely to report being in this category." Differences of that magnitude would be stunning if you were measuring, for example, the speed of light under different physical circumstances, but when the subject is as elusive as happiness -- well, we are not talking about paradigm-shifting results.

more at link...Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway... more