According to the rules you can post something without link to some exterior resource as long as you abide by rule 2.

I look at these situations as “or statements” Bool DidMarcusHaveGoodTeachings(); { if ((marcus is right about finding) || (marcus was right about slavery)) { Return true; } Else { return false;} }

See how both things don’t have to be true, just one.

Psyche-ploútoia?

I’m a bit confused. I was taught that “Eudaimonia” meant “happiness”, “good spirits”.

So why is everything on here just a link to a blog post or an article? If you aren't sharing a blog link you have to post it under this thread? That's pretty dumb. This needs to be amended

tell me more about these people that have figured out what an interesting life entails for everyone -.-

The word "false" is entirely accurate.

From the link: >Examples of these include beliefs such as, “If I fail at something it means I’m a complete failure” or “If I don’t have someone to love and accept me it means I’m unlovable.”

These are patently false in a way that any Logic 101 student could unpack. Yet, these exact types of narratives are pervasive in clinical depression.

CBT is all about identifying and attacking those false negative narratives.

I don’t like the word false. They’re not false realities, just overly-focused-on ones.

I've dealt with serious and suicidal depression a couple of times in my life. States of depression absolutely are often brought on by pervasive self "false narratives". And one of the primary ways to treat depression is to gain the mental toolkit to analyze, reassess, and even rewrite those false narratives.

That's the whole underlying premise behind CBT. But don't take my word for it:

https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-837

No, sorry, they’re not false stories. As a recently depressed person I had real stories of personal mistakes and shit happening to me that was a lot at once. I could list them to anyone and they would say, ok, I would be depressed too. All real events.

Then I got a health scare diagnosis that literally said my days on earth were very possibly numbered and short. Overnight my depression went away. From knowing I was dying? On top of all else?

Yes. It shifted, instantly to me focusing on all that’s awesome in my everyday. I forgot all about the little annoyances and past/future concerns. Everything became deep and rich around me. I learned how to love deeply, those in my life because I wanted to milk each moment before I went into the black.

Perspective. The loss and shit of my past was real, but I no longer wasted time thinking about it. I live in the NOW, and ride every tiny beauty inside it. I thrive on what matters in the end now and ignore the rest as there is no time to waste. Depression is a waste of time. Anxiety is a laughable waste of my minutes. Being calm and happy is easy now.

If I escape this somehow, it will be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Depression isn’t about believing lies. It’s about self pity and a wasteful perspective.

When you truly life well, you milk the best around you. Most of the elderly get this, as they feel their mortality deeper.

Sure, I'll add some context too!

Some of my counseling clients have been very self-aware of their feelings and what works for them. They understand what they are supposed to do to feel better. But they find life is meaningless and don't see any purpose to their behaviors.

When they are in counseling, they focus on "why did this happen," and need answers. Unfortunately, in many situations in life, like a death of a friend, abuse, a series of unfortunate events, etc., we have little control. When people realize this, they bargain and negotiate - "I could've done this to prevent it" - they go into a negative thought pattern of guilt or intrusive thoughts about "what if" scenarios.

At this point, everything comes to their philosophical point of view - did they have control over the events? Did life give them this trauma for things they have done? Did they deserve it?

They try to make sense of the events and keep asking themselves questions about why the trauma happened. Some people adopt a deterministic point of view - what happened couldn't have been prevented. Some adopt a free-will point of view - they made mistakes, and now they have to learn not to make them again.

Those points of view determine how guilty they feel, how desperate they are to change their lives, and how they can move on.

• Those troubled by thoughts of re-writing their past benefit from accepting a deterministic point of view because then they accept they have little control.
• Those who are troubled because they don't do anything and just let things happen benefit from taking a free-will point of view, so they try to learn from their mistakes and focus on taking action to improve their life.

In both cases, the change in perspective gives them meaning; it gives them a reason to change what they are doing. They understand there are more forces at play than they can manage. They learn that, sometimes, they can make decisions all they want, but they won't matter, but they can't know this beforehand.
Changing their deterministic pov to a free-will pov (and vice versa) gives them answers depending on how willing they are to accept fate or exert control:

1. "I can seek meaning in my future actions and how I spend my time instead of past explanations since I had no role in what happened" or
2. "I can understand my mistakes and what I could've done better, so now I will focus on learning that instead."

Now, they find meaning in living in the moment, going on a learning journey, or spending quality time and embracing the good things when they happen. And when they have bad times, they focus on how strong they have become to not collapse during a crisis.

Because the Greeks didn't name it. 🤷‍♂️

Great. Now I need to be rich to be happy. Oh wait…

Depression often involves your brain/mind telling itself false stories about bad things happening to you. Often focusing on it being because you're a shitty person and it's your fault and you don't deserve good things, etc. That point of view is inherently toxic to a healthy mind, and it can be more powerful if someone truly believes that everything happening to them is out of their control. Because then, how could they ever change it?

Once people get a wider, wiser perspective on those events they can see that the stories playing in their head are generally false, which clears up a lot of their depressive thoughts.

I heard a bit of metaphysics, myself: if reality is a simulation or physics determines everything ahead of time, you're just walking through the motions and nothing is of consequence. However, if there is some sort of randomness generated in your brain, you can change and move the world with your actions, giving quite a bit more meaning to what you do and say.

Intuitively, if you didn't drive that truck full of food, people would go hungry. But, if you're brain is a computer that somebody programmed, you can know that and still feel like a robot doing the "right" thing, the best you can, according to programming

Yeah, and I have found that routine, if it is connected to a practice that can be deepened, like painting or a craft (and many other things), is actually a means to consistently have new experiences. It may seem on the surface like you do the same thing every day, but actually you encounter more and more the deeper you go. Like moving on the Z axis instead of the X and Y.

>taking a hard deterministic POV or a hard free-will-focused POV

Is there someplace that I can learn more about what this means? It sounds very interesting.

Hi, sorry. Is there any way you can ELI5? I'm interested in what you're saying but I don't fully get it

I'm not sure what entirely constitutes a real vs a fake Philosopher but one thing I think all real Philosophers need is intellectual honesty. The ability to confront and to take ideas seriously. To quote Ayn Rand -

> If a given tenet seems to be true—why? If another tenet seems to be false—why? and how is it being put over?

It seems like you are pointing out a shortcoming in our terminology. This is an interesting thing to key on, because it seems to capture some of the trouble with our therapeutic approaches. Chasing hedonia without a framework for a meaningful life may, in many instances, be the actual cause of the difficulty.

Eudaimonia is a tricky term. We don't exactly think in terms of daimons anymore. It looks like hedonia was used to encompass both forms of happiness initially, and the term eudaimonia was dredged up out of Plato when a need arose for more nuance. To form an opposite, you'd have to go with something like 'maldemonia' and this whole demon thing starts to intrude on it's utility.

Just the same, this right here is the fault line in therapeutic practice today. The need for a better set of terms for the moving parts of a well built life is enormous.

Good for you maybe, but I'm more interested in general and statistical level of how mass behaviors evolve. Perhaps "living many lives" suits reading books and to game play, I'm not entirely certain it's a good (on average) for authentic relationships online and off-line. But everyone has their rights of course, I'm not advocating taking any of those away - just interested in how technology shapes culture

It's really a stretch to translate eudaimonia as "meaning"

Wasn’t Emerson a pantheist or a deist, though?

Question: Is there something novel you can do today? Doesn't really matter what it is, so long as it's not something you do routinely and it isn't harmful (unlike our philosophical crack smokin' friend in this thread, lol). Doesn't have to be earth shattering, just something a little different than usual.

For example, I don't know the culture of the place you're from (Poland, I believe? Could be wrong), but Christmas is coming up. You could walk into a store you usually don't visit, looking for something a family member might like, or something someone can get you that you may not have thought of before. Even better, find something there that you don't know the function of and ask a clerk what it's for. Observe your thoughts and feelings walking in there, while being in there, and note any thoughts or questions you have after leaving. You may find something to dig into afterwards, either extrinsic or intrinsic.

This is just one example - there are many other ones that'd likely be better, but this one's comparatively easy since (in North American culture, at least) it's tied into stuff you 'have' to do anyway (cultural pressure's a bitch sometimes, I hate buying shit for Christmas as a rule).

Somewhat unrelated aside: Do you read fiction? One book I like for thinking about novelty (and its excesses) is "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart. Fair warning - it's very much a product of a different time. But it's an interesting exploration of a thought experiment - what if you forced yourself into novel situations by suspending your default judgements and pursuing particular actions based on a dice roll? It's a neat thing to think about in the context of this proposed category of 'psychological richness'. Then, of course, a picture of what it could look like if taken to an extreme, which I don't recommend - makes for a fun read, but a pretty risky life.

Anyway, peanut gallery comments aside, I hope you feel better about things in the near future. Life can be pretty grim sometimes, but neat shit always has the potential to happen. Most you can do is try and support conditions for said neat shit - which admittedly is hard when feeling lowly. Hang in there buddy, much love from Canada.

Well I'm (not) fucked then.