Carl-Richard

Hedonism vs. Eudaimonia

29 posts in this topic

Hedonism

  • short-term happiness
  • dysfunction
  • lethargy
  • fragility
  • rigidity
  • decadence
  • vice
  • instability
  • imbalance
  • disorder
  • meaninglessness
  • degeneration
  • dependency
  • self-destructive

 

Eudaimonia

  • long-term happiness
  • functionality
  • vitality
  • resilience
  • adaptivity
  • integrity
  • virtue
  • stability
  • balance
  • structure
  • meaning
  • regeneration
  • self-sufficiency
  • self-improving
Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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TDzLWbsQ1RE40qbB3Lt9lBm84nCJ6fIFzT8sgDFTkLk.jpg


“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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@Nilsi

14 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

  • adaptivity
  • balance
  • structure
  • meaning

 

 


Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Nilsi

 

Fair.

Don't you think you're missing something by rejecting "Hedonism" though?


“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

Fair.

Don't you think you're missing something by rejecting "Hedonism" though?

You're missing something, but maybe you want to miss it :) You're still partially aiming for happiness, just not in a way that is shooting yourself in the foot. You'll always have some aspects of hedonism within you. You need some short-term pleasures, and eudaimonia contains that. It's just more holistic, more guided by wisdom. So you reject unbridled and unconscious hedonism, which sure can be a bad thing if your aim is to be a degenerate ?

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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15 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You're missing something, but maybe you want to miss it :) You're still partially aiming for happiness, just not in a way that is shooting yourself in the foot. You'll always have some aspects of hedonism within you. You need some short-term pleasures, and eudaimonia contains that. It's just more holistic, more guided by wisdom. So you reject unbridled and unconscious hedonism, which sure can be a bad thing if your aim is to be a degenerate ?

Fine.

I tend to project a lot when it comes to this stuff. I always assume people repress their more base instincts, because I did that a lot, but you seem to be doing well for yourself.

Still, I feel a kind of desire for short term pleasures in my life and in my estimations the best way to deal with them is just to burn though them.

When you wanted to quit weed, didn't you smoke so much that it made you sick and nauseous to the point of never wanting to touch that shit again?

I'm going with that strategy.


“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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I could talk about Freud and Nietzsche again and how repressing these desires make you resentful and bitter towards those that exercise their will freely. 

Maybe I'm just sick in the head and most people don't care for beauty and power that much, but I always did - and I know I'll become twisted in the head if I never actually live that out and burn through it.


“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

When you wanted to quit weed, didn't you smoke so much that it made you sick and nauseous to the point of never wanting to touch that shit again?

I'm going with that strategy.

Your memory is sort of mixed up. One time I talked about smoking cigarettes until you puke and teaching your brain to associate cigarettes with something bad, and another time, I talked about the time I smoked weed for the first time in a year and went into a full panic attack / ego death, which had the same effect. As for applying that logic to your general life, sure, that is just growing up while being authentic to what you are. I'm really doing the same thing still.

There is also an extreme version of this called rock-bottom theory: you load everything into the hedonism train and set off at the speed of light down to hell, preferably fueled by drugs, and then your life becomes so unbearably shit that you're left with the choice of either completely revamping yourself or losing everything. Steve-O and Brandon Novak got their own versions of that story (me too, but not to the same extent lol).

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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this philosophy seems robust. i just asked a ton of questions to chatgpt and the concept is very holsitic. it doesn't deny pleasures, material success etc. but includes it in the philosophy. very interesting 

Edited by Jacob Morres

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1 hour ago, Jacob Morres said:

robust

Could add that word to the list :D 

 

1 hour ago, Jacob Morres said:

i just asked a ton of questions to chatgpt and the concept is very holsitic. it doesn't deny pleasures, material success etc. but includes it in the philosophy. very interesting 

It's quite logical as well. Fundamentally, it solves "the paradox of hedonism" (chasing pleasures makes the pleasures less pleasurable). Why does the paradox of hedonism exist? Because what gives you pleasure is not a static thing. It's constantly changing depending on what is salient to your survival right now. If you eat food when you're hungry, that is pleasurable. If you keep eating food when you're stuffed, that starts become not so pleasurable. It's like this with everything in excess, whether it's masturbation, entertainment, or even exercise, and it's the foundation of virtues like "nothing in excess", "discipline", "courage". You need to be constantly moving, adapting to what your body tells you and what the environment craves of you.

Basically, you can boil it down to concepts like balance, holism and meaning: do just enough of the right things, don't neglect any aspect of yourself, and do what is meaningful, either with respect to the particular situation or just as a guiding principle. These principles extend far into abstract realms like healthy daily routines, having a disciplined work schedule, creating your life purpose, etc. It all adds up to maximizing net enjoyment in the end. Enjoyment is not just pleasure as a physical sensation. It's the experience of meaning, purpose, understanding, love, truth; connectedness, beingness, aliveness. There is a richness to life that is only experienced by participating deeply in it in all of its manifestations, and that requires something from you. You don't just receive life. You uncover it as a growing organism in the game called life, and you need to play it well in order to truly enjoy it.

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

I tend to project a lot when it comes to this stuff. I always assume people repress their more base instincts, because I did that a lot, but you seem to be doing well for yourself.

And there is a lot to be said for that, but let's distinguish between the philosophy of hedonism (and how it translates in modern terms) and integrating your base instincts, because the two aren't necessarily one and the same.

I mean, do you have a "base instinct" to watch porn or to have sex? Arguably the first falls into the modern hedonism territory.  The first is easy, on-demand, short term pleasure, long term psychological harm.  The second may require considerable struggle or overcoming for people with certain psychological issues or hang-ups.  Getting off to porn isn't really an adventure for an ubermensch.

Edited by SeaMonster

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Sometimes, directly exposing yourself to something challenging can be inherently revitalizing and facilitate growth. The only time where stress becomes unhealthy is when it's unbearable and leads to a breakdown of the system. This is why things like ice baths, saunas and physical exercise, when done in the right way, leads to a higher baseline state, because it makes you more capable to handle life. This is the deeper metaphysical reason for virtues like courage. It's in a fundamental sense the driving force of your life.

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

Sometimes, directly exposing yourself to something challenging can be inherently revitalizing and facilitate growth. The only time where stress becomes unhealthy is when it's unbearable and leads to a breakdown of the system. This is why things like ice baths, saunas and physical exercise, when done in the right way, leads to a higher baseline state, because it makes you more capable to handle life. This is the deeper metaphysical reason for virtues like courage. It's in a fundamental sense the driving force of your life.

This is all good, but why are you so stuck on the body? If you took the same logic and expanded it to the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions, you would realize the limits of your approach and courage rather quickly.

Only maxing your physiology is a rather convenient cop-out from some of the real work.

This is precisely how being too engrossed in science and academia makes you dumb in a very real sense.

Edited by Nilsi

“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

This is all good, but why are you so stuck on the body?

I'm not. That was just an example.

 

18 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

These principles extend far into abstract realms like healthy daily routines, having a disciplined work schedule, creating your life purpose, etc. It all adds up to maximizing net enjoyment in the end. Enjoyment is not just pleasure as a physical sensation. It's the experience of meaning, purpose, understanding, love, truth; connectedness, beingness, aliveness. There is a richness to life that is only experienced by participating deeply in it in all of its manifestations, and that requires something from you. You don't just receive life. You uncover it as a growing organism in the game called life, and you need to play it well in order to truly enjoy it.

 

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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If you want a more mind-oriented example, you also can see the utility of courage in concepts like disruptive practices (breaking with habitual cognitive functioning to gain new perspective), which can lead to deep insights into the workings of the mind:

 

Quote
On 17.1.2023 at 3:35 PM, Someone here said:

I obviously agree . Did you do any psychedelics yourself? 

I did LSD 3 times and weed ~1000 times, and then at one point after I discovered the concept of mindfulness, I spent a week in the mountains with my family doing active mindfulness 24/7 sober (with heavy weed withdrawals, which also meant no desire to masturbate), and at the tail end of that week, I did my 3 first seated meditations ever, and on the 3rd meditation, I awoke.

The thing about psychedelics, meditation, or any temporary change in state, is that it's a so-called "disruptive practice". It disrupts habitual functioning and allows for a contrast to arise, which allows you to become more aware of deeply ingrained mechanisms. Imagine being a fish that has only been in water all of his life. The fish doesn't feel the water at all. It doesn't know what it is, because it has always been in water and is fully habituated to the constant stimuli. If the fish is then suddenly lifted out of the water, it'll experience the contrast between water and non-water for the first time, and then as it re-immerses itself, it'll become more aware of the true nature of water. That is the essence of a disruptive practice.

The explanation for why I awoke when I did is not mainly the fact that I had smoked weed so many times or done LSD a couple of times, but that I had spent a week where I didn't smoke weed and also where I did something completely new (active mindfulness practice). This was in fact a massive confounding of several disruptive practices. And then on top of that, at the end of the week, I didn't go back to weed, but instead I did something I've also never done before: seated meditation. Essentially, that week was like a huge active meditation retreat with a chronic pharmacological disruption (weed withdrawal) as well as nofap (another disruption), as well as being in a different environment than my usual daily habits (skiing in the mountains), which then finally culminated in another completely new practice (seated meditation). This is what it takes to truly get underneath your own skin. You have to see how it's like without it, and sometimes you have to go to the extremes.

 

This was a more spiritual example, but you can also apply it to exposing yourself to other points of view, new perspectives, new mental challenges, new skills, etc. Courage would be to take those opportunities when they arise, despite how hard they might be (within reason; again, balance :P).

Edited by Carl-Richard

Intrinsic joy is revealed in the marriage of meaning and being.

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8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

If you want a more mind-oriented example, you also can see the utility of courage in concepts like disruptive practices (breaking with habitual cognitive functioning to gain new perspective), which can lead to deep insights into the workings of the mind:

 

 

This was a more spiritual example, but you can also apply it to exposing yourself to other points of view, new perspectives, new mental challenges, new skills, etc. Courage would be to take those opportunities when they arise, despite how hard they might be (within reason; again, balance :P).

It's hard to talk to you because none of what you're saying is wrong, but it's still so limited by your scientism.

Real courage (or spirituality for that matter) is not doing what science and society at large has already confirmed to be safe and acceptable.

You're so obsessed with being factual and maintaining your "integrity," that you just double down on your biases when someone tries to point them out.

How many times have I admitted to blindspots and biases and openly laid them out? Is that because I'm a biased idiot or is that because I'm trying to be honest and grow? You never do this, because you're too afraid of destabilizing your mind - which is fine, but don't pretend it's courage please.


“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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On 2/1/2023 at 10:19 PM, Carl-Richard said:

It's quite logical as well. Fundamentally, it solves "the paradox of hedonism" (chasing pleasures makes the pleasures less pleasurable). Why does the paradox of hedonism exist? Because what gives you pleasure is not a static thing. It's constantly changing depending on what is salient to your survival right now. If you eat food when you're hungry, that is pleasurable. If you keep eating food when you're stuffed, that starts become not so pleasurable. It's like this with everything in excess, whether it's masturbation, entertainment, or even exercise, and it's the foundation of virtues like "nothing in excess", "discipline", "courage". You need to be constantly moving, adapting to what your body tells you and what the environment craves of you.

Basically, you can boil it down to concepts like balance, holism and meaning: do just enough of the right things, don't neglect any aspect of yourself, and do what is meaningful, either with respect to the particular situation or just as a guiding principle. These principles extend far into abstract realms like healthy daily routines, having a disciplined work schedule, creating your life purpose, etc. It all adds up to maximizing net enjoyment in the end. Enjoyment is not just pleasure as a physical sensation. It's the experience of meaning, purpose, understanding, love, truth; connectedness, beingness, aliveness. There is a richness to life that is only experienced by participating deeply in it in all of its manifestations, and that requires something from you. You don't just receive life. You uncover it as a growing organism in the game called life, and you need to play it well in order to truly enjoy it.

Do you not think this is ego/fear based? What gives the "meaning, purpose"?

And Is this not in the same paradox as hedonism, if you're always trying to "maximize net enjoyment", or "it's constantly changing"?

Isn't this just like a hedonism but for the ego?

Edited by Devin

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Of course there are socially acceptable ways to be courageous like being a fighter fighter, stopping a thief, speaking up for a minority - but even that is kinda half-baked; when you fully well know everybody will praise you for it and tell you what a great guy you are.

Overcoming yourself by stepping into uncharted territory, without any safety mechanisms and everybody calling you all sorts of names for it - that takes real courage.

Meditation can be that, I'll give you that.

Edited by Nilsi

“We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.” - Heraclitus

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