What gives anyone the right to be unhappy when there always someone worse off?

[xisnotx]

Rights and feelings don't mix to begin with.

 

[PrincessButtercup]

Not really. It just means you've put up a lot of walls...

And why would that be such a terrible thing ? Happiness is overrated. I find happy people insufferably dull. And rather scary. To live in denial is not much of a life, IMO.
If it was possible to alter your brain (chemically/ structurally) so that you could never again be unhappy, there are people who would choose that... People lacking in character and depth.

Still, good for you. It's awesome that you're happy.
Faith is not a choice. It is a delusion.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with how emotions work. Emotions are a response to our own thought process. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is why two people can go through the exact same experience and have completely different emotional responses to it. They think differently. You control your emotions by altering your thought process.

One person sees suffering and is sad...someone you would call great character.

Someone else sees suffering and is happy and excited by the opportunity to help...someone you would call delusional and full of walls.

This does not even touch on victim thinking. Someone with victim thinking does not believe they have the power to change their situation or another person's suffering. They feel trapped like life is happening to them and not that they are the architect of their life. This causes depression and unhappiness.

Someone with a strong locus of control sees that they do have the power to affect their own life and the lives of others for good. This sense of personal empowerment leads to optimism and happiness.

So, do you still want to stand on your "unhappiness equals character" pile of horse hooey?

 

[Viridian]

If someone suffers from chronic depression, do you have the right to suffer from dysthymia (which is more long-lasting, but milder)?

 

[disregard]

It's like when you say it's hot or it's cold and someone is always within earshot to say, "I'm from Texas/Alaska/Pluto etc, THIS is NOT hot/cold!"

That scenario, like the one in the OP, gets under my skin because it's usually a stranger or an acquaintance saying it, and they just want to preach.

Preaching is so yuck.

 

[/DG/]

If someone suffers from chronic depression, do you have the right to suffer from dysthymia (which is more long-lasting, but milder)?

What about someone who suffers from neither?

 

[Cellmold]

Apparently you are unfamiliar with how emotions work. Emotions are a response to our own thought process. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is why two people can go through the exact same experience and have completely different emotional responses to it. They think differently. You control your emotions by altering your thought process.

One person sees suffering and is sad...someone you would call great character.

Someone else sees suffering and is happy and excited by the opportunity to help...someone you would call delusional and full of walls.

This does not even touch on victim thinking. Someone with victim thinking does not believe they have the power to change their situation or another person's suffering. They feel trapped like life is happening to them and not that they are the architect of their life. This causes depression and unhappiness.

Someone with a strong locus of control sees that they do have the power to affect their own life and the lives of others for good. This sense of personal empowerment leads to optimism and happiness.

So, do you still want to stand on your "unhappiness equals character" pile of horse hooey?

Emotions are just temporary states. If given the choice I would remove them completely from my being as I find them a destructive and dangerous addition to my makeup.

If this removed any real satisfaction, but left a dull, neutral acceptance or contentedness, that would....be enough.

 

[Viridian]

What about someone who suffers from neither?

What about them? They can have problems too...

 

[The Great One]

Counter question: What gives you the right to be happy when someone else is always better off?

 

[Society]

the idea behind the saying is "don't take everything you have for granted, there are people who don't have even that, so you should be happy with what you have". ofcourse, all the statement that "you shouldn't be unhappy" really does is making you feel guilty about being unhappy, which will make you feel even more unhappy.

however, the notion that under any circumstances, you don't have a right to feel what your feeling, makes absolutely no sense. its possible you shouldn't act on your feelings, or that you should seek where those feelings are coming from, especially if they are destructive, or perhaps stem from ignorance or a misunderstanding of the situation, or a projection from a different situation, or what things are might not be close enough to what things represent within your emotional reality to "justify" the feeling... but natural phenomena don't ask whether they have a right to exist.

 

[/DG/]

Is there a name to this sort of fallacy? I love naming things.

 

[Glycerine]

It's like when you say it's hot or it's cold and someone is always within earshot to say, "I'm from Texas/Alaska/Pluto etc, THIS is NOT hot/cold!"

That scenario, like the one in the OP, gets under my skin because it's usually a stranger or an acquaintance saying it, and they just want to preach.

Preaching is so yuck.

Yes. After awhile, it just becomes rather dismissive. It rarely ever is a productive thing to say.

 

[Athenian200]

Well, I never claimed to have the right to be unhappy, but regardless of whether I have the right or not, I sometimes experience it. I don't see any need to punish myself for feeling unhappiness. After all, I have different priorities than those starving children in Africa, and I believe that feeling pity for them is sufficient. I don't see how my being unhappy detracts from the meaningfulness of their discomfort.

I've always held the belief that to manage to be happy when others around you are not (and I mean this in a global sense) is an indication of something lacking in one's character.

Also, I think questions of "rights" don't apply when it comes to internal states. No one can legislate for those. Even the US constitution only offers the right to the pursuit of happiness. If pursuing happiness is every person's right, then the fact that so many are denied that right is going to occasionally put a damper on your day. Unless you're entirely egocentric, that is.

I agree with you here. I came from a community recently where one of the biggest problems was that people were completely egocentric, and formed up all these little cliques. They would pretend to be nice to your face, but in reality they were all hanging out in these tiny little chats enjoying watching others get excluded or feel lonely or miserable. And they would constantly backstab each other too. I seriously think there WAS something lacking in their character. They had no sense of justice and didn't really care about anyone except themselves.

I was not well-liked a lot of the time because I was always concerned with treating people fairly, seeing that people were exposed/punished even if they were friends with someone popular, and just had a major issue with this general backstabbing/secretive/clique culture they had going on. Actually, I was well-liked enough that I could start internal debates among people on these issues, but it was dismissed as me "causing drama" by the naysayers a lot of the time, even when I had valid points.

I also was appointed to, but stepped down from, a sort of status/honor position that was awarded based on votes of current members of that position, due to not liking the way people would always vote in their unqualified friends and feeling like it was corrupt. Also didn't like that random people kept begging and trying to bribe me for votes.

 

[Salomé]

I agree with you here. I came from a community recently where one of the biggest problems was that people were completely egocentric, and formed up all these little cliques. They would pretend to be nice to your face, but in reality they were all hanging out in these tiny little chats enjoying watching others get excluded or feel lonely or miserable. And they would constantly backstab each other too. I seriously think there WAS something lacking in their character. They had no sense of justice and didn't really care about anyone except themselves.

http://www.narcissismepidemic.com/

 

[Salomé]

Apparently you are unfamiliar with how emotions work. Emotions are a response to our own thought process. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is why two people can go through the exact same experience and have completely different emotional responses to it. They think differently. You control your emotions by altering your thought process.

Apparently YOU are. Emotions precede thoughts, in evolutionary terms as well as in human terms. Thoughts 'make sense' of emotions. Actually thoughts create meaning for emotional arousal, since all emotional arousal is identical in physiological terms.
Go read a book, or something, instead of trying to patronise your betters.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

Apparently YOU are. Emotions precede thoughts, in evolutionary terms as well as in human terms. Thoughts 'make sense' of emotions. Actually thoughts create meaning for emotional arousal, since all emotional arousal is identical in physiological terms.
Go read a book, or something, instead of trying to patronise your betters.

So which are you saying comes first?

 

[Salomé]

So which are you saying comes first?

It's not a simple formula. Thoughts can create emotional affects. Emotional affects prompt thoughts. Like most biological mechanisms, it's a feedback loop.

In terms of the function of primitive emotions - like fear - designed to alert us to danger which might put our health and safety at risk, the emotion (or the arousal, at any rate) comes first. This enables us to act without thinking, instinctively.

This is also the case with mirror neurons and the underlying substrate of empathy - we experience what is happening to another person as if it is happening to us, this creates sympathetic physiological arousal, which we can then reflect upon, cognitively.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

But for humans, in the beginning, there is always an object that the subject responds to. This object can be an animal, which then incites fear, or this object can be a belief that is learned from our crib.

We learn how to feel about things. What we learn we necessarily believe. Our beliefs become our mental objects and how we respond to that becomes our subjective expression. We are more familiar with our subjective processes, be they feeling or thinking, because we 'use' them all the time, but it is really our underlying objective beliefs which are driving us in everything we do, think, and feel.

 

[Salomé]

1. You are conflating feeling and emotion.

2. Objective beliefs do not drive us. We like to think we are more rational than we are. Beliefs are the stories we spin to explain our behaviour (and the behaviour of other objects) to ourselves.

 

[AphroditeGoneAwry]

1. You are conflating feeling and emotion.

It is unimportant here because in context to objective belief, they are subjugate.

2. Objective beliefs do not drive us. We like to think we are more rational than we are. Beliefs are the stories we spin to explain our behaviour (and the behaviour of other objects) to ourselves.

When you speak of rationality, I believe you are speaking of 'thinking' as a function opposite 'feeling', and I think both are subjective to our underlying beliefs of what we hold as true. So, in this context, thinking 'rationally' is really no different than feeling 'rationally.' We are as rational as we can be in response to what is deeply embedded within us.

So when you say we like to think we are more rational than we are, it is really true in a sense because the subjective, more surface, expressions can lead us astray or in circles at times. We know, when we look at our outcomes versus others' outcomes, that something is not working out, or we are not being 'as rational as we'd like', but the reality is that we are being as rational as we can be with what we are working with. We simply cannot see those underlying deep-seated beliefs that is what is truly driving us. Only when we shift our perspectives and are able to see them (the ones causing us problems), and change them, will we have a more rational response to them; our thoughts and feelings will then change to reflect what we have come to believe.


We could try out an example for fun, but I'm not thinking of any good ones at the moment...

 

[Salomé]

It is unimportant here because in context to objective belief, they are subjugate.

That's your assertion, not fact.

It is important in terms of what begets what.

When you speak of rationality, I believe you are speaking of 'thinking' as a function opposite 'feeling',

No, I'm not. Both are rational. Both are (can be) responses to emotional cues.