Happiness : Deconstruction 11/23/12

First I apply what I have learned from thinking of a previous question. Happiness, is term denotation or a whole. Happiness is a state of being, that most come from properties as they exist in relation to being human. Happiness is thence a first property, that may have second and third properties. Herein, I have listed this "properties".

Primary: Happiness
Secondary: Fulfillment of needs, money, health, friends, higher desires.
Tertiary: Amount, frequencies, quality.

Secondary Deconstruction:

Having by virtue of income, need, and want, brings happiness.(1)  pleasure in action (work, education)  (2).

1. Needs and wants are satisfied through many outlets or inputs. Food, drink, relations, entertainment, shelter, clothes, transportation, education, occupation, business, etc. are all forms of needs and possible wants. The things which become an end of needs, can be thought of as second properties of happiness. Third properties would be amount of those ends, as in having a certain amount of food or number of relations. Health can be considered a need.

2. Pleasure in action - this means not only the need of education and occupation or the needs of relationship activities, but rather having those activities and find pleasure in them.

Examples:

1. Resources/education/occupation: People become so unhappy when they don't have what they need, that they either revolt, work harder, or perish. Social:  People become so unhappy when with negative relations, they can disconnect the ties, become depressed, or contemplate suicide.  Health: People are less happy the sicker they are.

2. People that are unhappy with work or education, quit, or they can't stand work, end up living on very low access to resources.


These results are not always true in all circumstances.


Below I have created a mock-up of a possible graph and variables that can be used to graph and quantify the existence of the prominence of the properties of happiness or dissatisfaction.

With this graph we can determine where we are when it comes to what we have and the state of mind we exist in as a consequence of having those things. The x is plotted as having a value as judged by the individual and that is added to its excess or deficiency.

Once the plotting or grading if complete, for any variable, one can think of how they might increase the first or second properties of the primary being.

As examples :

Secondary property -

Relations : Happiness within in the relationship depends on the feelings that are created by the people in the relationships. Doing things that are of mutual intention or desire, can bring about a greater positivity of the relation.

Food : One can try to buy food that has a greater beneficial or happiness quotient, as in the properties of the food and how they effect the living being and there sense of pleasure or health that come from that food (2ndry).

A1 Moving towards greater value of these properties can be called, "increasing positivity of secondary properties," or "positive emotional intentions for secondary properties" (peisp).

B1 Moving towards lesser valuable secondary properties can be called "decreasing positivity of secondary properties," or "negative emotional intentions for secondary properties (neisp)."

A person can judge their social life dependent on not having friends just as positive as one can rate it negative, thus this chart allows room for relative states, that is satisfaction with introversion or extroversion. However, more satisfaction, as a general principle can be said to come from relationships with other people where happiness is an end product.

Tertiary property -
Relations : One can try to increase the amount of positive relations they have or the frequency they spend in stimulating positivity from the relationship.

Food: One can increase the amount of foods they store.

These can be split into

A2 Moving towards greater excess can be called "increasing excess of x".

B2 Moving towards greater deficiency  can be called "decreasing excess of x".

These ideas of excess and deficiency correspond or are very similar to the regulations of essential nutrients in the body. This deconstruction works not only with the quality and health advantages of food and the metabolism process, but the process of judgment and actualizing conditions of life, i.e. happiness-dissatisfaction.

If you are looking to measure your happiness-dissatisfaction, I have made a video an another blog for doing so, as found above. It is actually missing the ratio of expenses to income, but it isn't essential as these properties have relation to attainment of material happiness.

This is not completely compatible with a blog on the non-existence of need and happiness, which I deemed to no more than forms of acceptance or rejection of specific things.  

This idea can be integrated with the Lövheim cube of emotion, as well as algorithms for desire-end functions. The second being an integration that might work with another theory I posted on accepting and avoiding ends, and the intensity of that judgment, reaction, or intention, as the only things which exist. Thinking like this, is to decrease the complexity of mental content, as emotional and biological (beneficial/detrimental) distinctions and judgments, reaction, or intentions, are more complex than in accepting or rejecting ends.

J.A.

To Thank

Thanksgiving day is a day of sharing appreciation. This appreciation is aggrandized by large amounts of food, which the body appreciates, and marks as reason to be thankful for the world that one lives in. What is being appreciated on this day, is the acquisition of a new land, the freedom of that land, the abundance of the production in that land, and the existence of family and people in that land.

When we thank people what are we doing? When a person thanks someone else they are showing that accept their kindness, their altruism, or plainly their actions. Take for example the phrase, "no thanks." This phrase shows us that thanks is acceptance.

Being thankful is part of etiquette, manners, treating other people with notice of their kindness. It may not be much of a tool, but as they say, a little thanks can go a long way.

If we approach the world and be thankful for it, we stimulate our own sense of being, in noticing the world as it is, is something to be "acceptant of". What do you have to be thankful for?

From thinking of this idea through out the day, I have thought about how being thankful might be consider a positive effector in relationships. People can appreciate others through gifts, as in the saying "Just a little way of saying thanks." There is a distinction that becomes noticed, between being thankful and exhibiting flattery, admiration, or other forms of human acceptence.

To Describe as for to Act 11/20/12

Most thoughts that we think are of our description. Upon observation of the world, our focus begins to take it apart, by locking into a thing and thinking of what it is. Clearing the mind, is as simple as not having to describe the world that is encountered by the mind.

If the mind stops describing the world, and one continues to look at the world, they might still be processing what things are at a subconscious level, but it seems to have a consciousness of the world, that it requires description of things.

Upon not describing the world, there is still the possibility of internal thought. Internal thought is not always description. It can range from comparing subjects, to think about the future, to asking oneself a question. A task that might be taken up by a person is to watch there thoughts and categorize them, much like thinking of your thoughts as descriptions. If one were to do this, they might be able to form a categorization of the mental activity.

Why do we describe things? "That is a rock." The thing itself is given a name, and that name has mental associations wherein there are properties in the mind that are alike the object that is being observed. Description, is as if to be in the world, or to be conscious of the world, which brings into itself the emergence of the thought.

These descriptions, like the categories of thought, have categorizes of themselves, linked back in the mind. When a thing is seen, there is often a category that it falls into. The way that it looks, stimulates the categorical contents of the mind. Description is about ontology, of being. A sufficient mode of contacting the ontological world, is through the description process of physics.  Size, shape, volume, area, can tell us what a thing is. The thing is, that we observe things easier just by a simple description of properties, and some people are not inclined to observe the world through the eyes of the physics, or mathematics, of it.

Most have a view that I would call "extracting the properties" or "denoting with category." The word rock tells us enough about the rock, since we do not require to understand or think of the rock in any more context than the denotation.

When suddenly we are aroused to description of a thing, that description becomes relevant to our reactions.There are some things which do not have as much as potential to react with as other things. With a rock we might think of moving it, breaking it up into pieces. With a person we might think of asking them not to do or to do something. Thus, the description of things prepare us to react toward the thing.

It is hard to think of how to react to an external phenomena if we do not first describe it at some level of conscious activity. This is to say, when something is not in a person's focus it is harder for them to react towards that thing.

When we have described the ontology of something, we can go onto describe the future or our reactions with the object. Thus the object of description becomes an object of ends which too can be described.

Describing the possible ends of the object, is to impute the object with movement of a categorical kind. For anything to be a teleological description one must think of the objects movement or self's movement in relation to that thing.

This connection isn't always how things happen. Description without teleological reactive thoughts is possible. It is possible to have an aesthetic judgment as part of a description, or to judge things based on "secondary" descriptions. For example: A denotation is "trees" description of parts would be "branches", "color" and secondary description would be "complexity", "isolation."

The denotation, the first and second description might tell us what might be done to increase or decrease the parts or the properties of a thing. We can thus have an idea of these descriptions as an imaginary state where the properties or parts exist in a less or more extreme. For example: The denotation of object x, in space y, we can think to have more object x, or to increase or decrease any of the physical properties that we can describe the thing to have.

Imagined property endowment, is a mode of thinking of how to react and change a thing as envisioned by the mind, brought on by combing a non-existing property x of y, to a possible state where x becomes part of the ontology of y. This kind of thinking, as to act, works so by use of the imagination. To of what is not, and to think of how that not can be.

Our actions tells us we can stay in a condition or we can change the conditions. This means we can keep things as is or change things from the not into the is. The is is always the present, and is brought into existence by the "will be."

What is honesty?

1. Honesty has relation to commitment or promises. When one promises something they may be judged on their honesty, when or when not the have fulfilled what they have promised to do.

2. Honesty also means giving accurate information about an experience. After having done something, instead of promising to do something, a person's honesty can be judged based on whether not they depict an experience accurately.

How does one know when some one is being dishonest?
1) Experiencing or knowing that a person was or wasn't doing something as communicated. For example, one can find out if another person was being honest about their whereabouts through an alibi. This is even so effective at determining truth that it is part of the determining guilt in crime activity.
2) By the person proving that there take on events is accurate. General example: I have x, therefore I was at A.
3) By a person admitting that they were dishonest. A person admitting that they were dishonest, and offering another explanation for things, might not be as valid as way as determining honesty as other methods.
4) Physical indications. People can have tells. For example, when I am lying usually if asked if I am telling the truth I smile when lying. Other tells can be hints of increased nervousness, a sense of the person being deceitful in their communications.

When do people lie?
1) To avoid trouble - People think of others in terms of how they will treat them. When thinking of the possibility of avoiding undesired effects, avoiding punishment, people may try to lie there way out of the consequence.
2) To conceal behaviors of self or other - one might lie so as to conceal behaviors, as to avoid some kind of judgment, not just punishment.
3) To benefit self or others - It may be in one's benefit or another benefit to lie, in situations where life is threatened. Some humans have lied to save the life others, while other people may have lied to gain something they couldn't without concealing the ordeal. Right or wrong lies, aren't as relevant in a world where we lie because of how it will effect others or ourselves. People themselves, may have their own code of morals, which work to determine when it is acceptable or rejectable to lie.
4) To tease - it might considered humorous or a reason to laugh at people that can be easily think as they are lied to.

Honesty as expectation - The expectation of dishonesty/honesty comes from frequency of person A being honest/dishonest.

Honesty as a characteristic - Being honest becomes the characteristic of integrity.

Learned honesty - Children may be taught not to lie, or commanded. It also may be a conditioned way of communicating.

People can also be bribed to tell the truth or bribed to lie.

The Flux of Order -

Disorder might be conceived of as greater outcomes existing than another state where less outcomes existed.

Disorder might also mean a greater number of possibilities permitted or allowed compared to a state where the possibilities were less.

One can observe through the lenses of chaos and order, when observing some new behavior, that behavior tends to be conceived of as chaotic, when old behavior patterns emerge these are said to be orderly. What the body systems are satisfied with are patterns that are orderly, feeling comfortable in the established regularity, decreasing entropy. Some people have trouble moving out of their comfort zones, because they will encounter a new experience that disturbs their equilibrium. 

1) Focus : My first blog talked about decreasing disorder as a effect of focusing, or single-mindedness. The rule is, that as you decrease the outcomes you have in mind, the more probable the outcomes left are, and therefore the more order arises. The complexity of a life may be thought of in terms of the number of outcomes the person partakes in achieving on a daily basis.

2) Environment : I have also come across the ideas that order is the result of organizing your environment. It can be part of your identity to do chores that organize your environment. It might even be part of your occupation to organize things. The mind can be cleared of disorder in having to repeat organizing the environment in a "desired and repetitious pattern." This might sound complex, but its as simple as putting cups in cupboard.

3) Identity : Order is the result of the behaviors which consist as part of your identity.  The behaviors that consist of your identity are a part of routine or habits, and these can be thought of fairly clearly, as emerging from your center. One can depict this emergence through a rough sketch up of this idea, and use it to add in possible behaviors that one wishes to have become their actual life, or eliminate behaviors that one wants to no longer experience.

4) Social : It might be thought that if you have relations with people you know, that you can decrease the disorder of your social life by limiting your relations to a number of people. Social life always becomes more disordered as a result of increasing the number of relations you have. The more variation in those people, the more they are not alike, the more complexity that arises out of your center.

5) Government : Order also exists as a governmental necessity. The very laws that are accepted, and the behaviors that come of them are a part of maintaining an enforced order. This order can be replaced through the majority instigating the order, but not if the government and those giving the orders, is stronger than the majority. In this sense it might be in the greatest of the interest of the people to ensure that the majority always can superseded the laws of the government.

Establishing laws that are enforced through the forces of punishment are a way of ensuring that the world created from this order continue to exist. Without a central government or laws and rights existing therein, anarchy as it were, would be no more than disorder. 

Currently, we live in the order of Survival: live or die, and our powers to determine the actual world are minute, very centered to ourselves.

Even in anarchy, the powers that produce life and produce death would have existence as they do now, but in such a lawless state, there would be no justice, no being held accountable, and there would be unleashing of the malevolent and aggressive, upon society. For these reasons I oppose anarchist society, a state of societal disorder.

The Leviathan (1651), in which Thomas Hobbes defended absolute monarchy and justified centralized government as necessary because the condition of Man in the apolitical state of nature is a “war of all against all”, for which reason the lives of men and women are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” without the political organization of people and resources.

This is not to say any society with laws does not lead to individual expressions of unwarranted aggression, but when people exist within the boundaries of enforced law and order, they are less likely to behave with misconduct towards their fellow citizens.

Anarchist extremists would do away with all human rights, including rights and legalities upholding personal property, ownership, imprisonment, the entire justice system, the separation of powers, as these by their very principle are law bound. Looking into past examples of such people or tribes, we may refer to the Indians or the Vikings. There will be violent human beings in any large society, but abiding by laws of the state of non-harm, enforcing security over those that act against the property, well-being, and lives of others, and by limiting (blocking) sensory consumption of violent interactions violence can be mitigated; furthermore by making certain drugs that reduce the quality of life illegal, benefits the health and productivity of the nation's citizens.

Expectation

Expectation has the same origins as commitment, being intention. It can also come from "knowledge of". Both will be touched on in the following blog.

Likewise it can be classified using:
1) For self
2) For other
3) Of physical results

1) Intentions don't become a self-expectation till one agrees on intending specific consequences. Multiple intents as thoughts of decisions don't have to be expectations. For example: I can describe an intention but that doesn't mean you have to expect that decision of yourself or other. This means, like commitment, expectation exists from intention and has consistency dependent on conformity or rejection of the intention. The more conformity to intention, trust, acceptance of, place on the intention the more one expects self or other to manifest or act out the intention.

Expectations exist as a product of A) Repeated behaviors B) Expressed agreement to intend. C) Conclusions of self based on personal "thought as," or "for."

When B exists others expectations take on more validity and the more the more the will (Ex: I will do x definitively) imposed the stronger the expectation will tend to be.

It is useful to ask a person what they will do so as to expect based on expressed intention.

2) A) One might expect others as well as themselves to do a certain thing because of frequency of past behaviors. People are pronse to expect your personality and behaviors based on past experiences.

Non-routine expectations or as they are intentions, are possible applications. A person may even agree to a non-routine behavior. People might look forward to non-routine behaviors, as forms of art, or even breaks in frequent routine, as in vacation, as some examples.

3) Physical expectations are a product of:
A) Cause and effect laws, B) Concreteness C) In-group-similarity D) Frequency and repetition.

Errors can arise from D, in personal or social life. Example: "driver" (p) "uses clutch" (q). New car "without clutch" still may manifest the same habit. This phenomena is called latent inhibition, and may also be a form of bias (ex: I think person A, only dresses as x).

What is the difference between knowing and expectation? There is a simple difference, seen in the conflict of "is" and "will be." Direct experience as causing similarity between the properties of mind/world is "knowledge", where as prediction as thought is expectation. Ex: John sees that his friend is lifting weights, and knows this. He expects that he WILL be lifting weights on another time.

Questions that may come from this:
1) Why can habits be stronger than rational/beneficial behaviors/ends?
2) What is honesty?
3) What is routine?

Commitment - Question for 11/17/12

What is a commitment?

An intention that is fixed, is a commitment as so far as it remains fixed. Before a commitment exists it must emerge as an intention. It can emerge from desire, or thinking of ends which bring about desire.

Desires may be connected back to need, but when they are connected to wants they take on more variation. We know that intention is biological and material, and a compact relation exists between the two, a relation that permits for mental and material fulfillment.

The intention becomes fixed as it occupies the time of the person, in their life. It exists in the mind till it is fulfilled or dropped. Example: John commits to not eating a certain amount of carbs daily. This intention as a commitment is long-lasting, but only so far as it continues to what is thought. The commitment becomes a part of a person's actual life, meaning that it causes the existence of the peron.

We could compare two people, and observe one with commitment and one without, and in doing so observe how the commitment itself effects the person.

A commitment is similar in nature, to obsession or even addiction, as it can take control of the life which contains and acts for the commitment.

The commitment is either:
1) For self for x.
2) For other for x.

The request for x can become a commitment. This means that a person is a result of for, a person can be x, by being the for, the cause of x. Just as materials can be for a result people can be used for a result. This is using a thing/person to achieve end and actuality.

The request causes the desire to emerge in the one or the other, if it doesn't this is because it does not cause desire, and thereby is rejected for some subconscious reason(s).  In this way person A can promise person B a thing for their actions. This creates two possible commitment: Person A doing x, for B, and person B giving or doing y for A, after or before A does x. In this way commitment might be disguised what might be called a favor.

When something interferes with commitment, the interfering variable may cause the commitment to be lost, or through conformity to commitment the intention is continued, none-the-less.