happy and laughing

For a long time, I didn't know what buying happiness is. Most people's explanations always reveal that happiness is an innate function of human beings. The implication is that people who lose the ability to be happy must have some kind of mental illness. Presumably when I don't understand what happiness is, I must be carrying some unforgivable original sin.

After thinking about it, the so-called happiness may be nothing more than a by-product of the combination of passion and intention.

The word passion is a big supporting role in the entire history of philosophy. After all, it is a necessary premise that drives people to do things other than survival. However, in the Chinese context, this concept seems to be undervalued. I guess it is because Chinese treats passion as an overly ordinary emotion; .

happy nature

Going back to the nature of happiness, let's say that I want to do something first, and then whether I want to do it or imagine it, it's possible to get a corresponding level of happiness. In fact, the starting point of doing things is passion, not just the expected and unobtained "happiness". Happiness cannot be a kind of original emotion, otherwise Schopenhauer or any depression patient has no reason to continue to live. on. In addition, "fun things" in the imagination are only memories or structures of intentions, and there is no joy without purpose. Expected pleasure can only be used as part of the motivation to act, not as the cause of something or an imaginary. Therefore, the happiness that people get in acting or imagining is only a by-product of acting or imagining, while the expected happiness comes from the experience of the value of a product. Otherwise, the expected happiness can be almost equal to the passion. The difference between the two is that, Passion depends almost entirely on the expected result, and the expected pleasure can be in the result as well as in the process.

In this definition of the nature of pleasure, one does not derive any pleasure from random events.

Then soon there is an intuitive counterexample: laughing.

laugh

Perhaps it is difficult to understand human laughter when it comes to animals. Showing one's teeth is a threatening behavior for self-protection. How did this thing evolve into goodwill. As far as all kinds of laughable artistic actions are concerned, laughter must be accompanied by some form of pain, whether it is a low-level embarrassment or a high-level verbal humor, in order to make some people laugh on the premise of hurting an object. I have a very irresponsible guess that the laughter may have originated from the primitive battlefield, a malicious imitation of the painful expression some soldiers made when the enemy was in pain. The reason is that ancient comedies are now found, almost always vulgar imitations. Then the carriers that can be ranked before the ancient art forms, such as war, sacrifice, hunting, gathering, etc., it seems that only the conflicting form of war fits the painful nature of laughter. There is, of course, a relative, more silly and romantic explanation: the grinning grin is a ruthless irony of grinning and crying just to get a mouthful of breast milk.

Back to the topic, from this, in my opinion, laughter can bring the feeling of happiness, but not the same as happiness. Whether or not the act of laughter originated on the battlefield, the original sender of this act must be a person with a "victor's attitude", and this primitive laughter still fits my definition of the nature of pleasure. It was later art that detached laughter from its original purpose to form laughter in the present sense: some of it does not mean happiness; some sudden laughter is still out of self-preservation mechanism, just the hormone secreted by the act of laughing Similar or identical to the hormone secreted by happy laughter.

In this sense, the primitive, malevolent laughter still fits the purposeful nature of happiness; others are laughter that has been stripped away from art and society and is not happy.

pain and pleasure

If you intuitively say a concept that is opposite to pleasure, you should quickly think of "pain". However, pain is not a by-product of anyone, but always follows everything that is not intentional. That is to say, any process, result, event, imagination, or even an ordinary proposition that goes against the will of a thinking subject will bring varying degrees of suffering to the subject. So, pleasure and pain are not completely opposite feelings. My understanding is that pleasure is just a hedge against pain. In this sense, pleasure cannot be the purpose of human action (Freud's pleasure-only principle); pain can (Schopenhauer), but it is not necessary. The starting point of action is still personal intention (which can be pain), not personal free intention (covering expected pleasure). Because the intention to act is always non-free, but follows individual reason: the freedom mentioned here is not laissez-faire, but freedom in the ordinary sense, and the choice that conforms to individual reason must be single , unless the chooser is completely indifferent. A choice forced to make an understanding of one's own situation that does not correspond to acting out of personal intent.

It is possible that there is a person who wants to refute maliciously and makes all choices by rolling the dice, but I want to know how this person makes the act of rolling the dice without personal intention. If he is simply seeking stimulation, then the purpose of seeking stimulation is his intention, otherwise it is just self-deprecating self-deprecation.