Ghost of the dead horse
filling some space
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2007
- Messages
- 3,553
- MBTI Type
- ENTJ
Happiness is often portrayed as a catch-all label for emotional well-being. Yet I find there's plenty of stuff going in my head that I see as part of my well-being but doesn't make my happy.
One of those things is knowledge. This goes against the popular saying, "ignorance is bliss". Or does it?
Its easy to see some activities may make people happy for a while, while they can expect something bad to happen from their activity later. In these cases that old saying might be true.
I dont think there's a big emotional content in knowledge for me. I desire knowledge nevertheless, and if I had to attribute a feeling to it, I guess it would be that of contentness.
So we're back to the definition of happiness, and its nature in relation to person's well-being. Is contentness just a sub-category of happiness, or is it different from happiness entirely? Is it possible to summarize a person's emotional and other well-being to a single word? How good of a summary would it be? How would our result improve if we were to use two words? Five?
What I'm trying to do here, I'm trying to paint myself a mental landscape of a person's well-being. Some would recommend me to portray just "happiness", but I would include knowledge, contentness and some others. What would you do?
One of those things is knowledge. This goes against the popular saying, "ignorance is bliss". Or does it?
Its easy to see some activities may make people happy for a while, while they can expect something bad to happen from their activity later. In these cases that old saying might be true.
I dont think there's a big emotional content in knowledge for me. I desire knowledge nevertheless, and if I had to attribute a feeling to it, I guess it would be that of contentness.
So we're back to the definition of happiness, and its nature in relation to person's well-being. Is contentness just a sub-category of happiness, or is it different from happiness entirely? Is it possible to summarize a person's emotional and other well-being to a single word? How good of a summary would it be? How would our result improve if we were to use two words? Five?
What I'm trying to do here, I'm trying to paint myself a mental landscape of a person's well-being. Some would recommend me to portray just "happiness", but I would include knowledge, contentness and some others. What would you do?