Is being happy/content just a case of occupying the mind?

Philosophy of Mind
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I recently started thinking about getting back into computer gaming again then I was thinking how it is weird how just staring at a screen on one’s own seems sad yet with the right game you can be having a great time for hours on end.

Contrast this with sitting in a room alone with no computer and most would be bored to tears and begging for relief. Now of course there is the eastern perspective where you should become happy doing nothing which I will get into in a bit.

I posed this question on a gaming forum and someone replied suggesting it is that games occupy the mind and you could conversely be terribly bored in a park yet playing chess you could spend all day in the same park because your mind is engaged.

So this has me wondering, is feeling satisfied merely a case of the mind being engaged? I would hazard that, mostly, yes this is the case.

Many years ago I read the book Flow by author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of which this was the central thesis. It covers many different activities with the common thread that the enjoyment garnered, and indeed the goal of humans, is to experience this flow state. It does also cover meditation as one of these.

So I now naturally turn the the Eastern philosophies. Is it not the ‘disease’ of western thinking that we must busy ourselves in order to feel fulfilled and conversely the eastern traditions elevate none doing as the way to achieve happiness? Or course with China and Japan being massive players in the consumerist market I guess the east/west thing is not so clear cut these days but if we are talking where these traditions came from it is the western protestant work ethic that drives the incessant striving to feel you have earned your daily bread isn’t it?

That should be enough to not belabour the point and open it up for others to now take up the discussion.

I will just add that to make the eastern none doing part fit into this theory it is not that meditation and such occupy the mind but rather the opposite; winnowing away the desire to occupy the mind so it is satisfied with less and less doing up to the ultimate extinguishing in nirvana, no mind, where the individual is happy just being.

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I think this is a pretty traditional view. It reminds me of Blaise Pascal’s famous quip: “All of humanity’s misfortunes derive from one single thing: man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (Pensées 1670)

I’ve never played a computer game, but I have read novels and for centuries people occupied themselves by reading, often spending long periods sitting quietly alone.

I spend a fair bit of time sitting by myself thinking or daydreaming, and hours can pass surprisingly quickly. I don’t meditate or have a spiritual life but it would be a mistake to think that these involve doing nothing. There’s also a long Western tradition of contemplative prayer.

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Oh Mr. Holier than Thou. :blush:

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That does sound like a brag doesn’t it? I guess my point was meant to ponder whether it is any different playing computer games alone in your room or reading a novel? I would say no.

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Well there are other reasons besides the actual experience of engagement where it could be seen as more beneficial to read compared to just empty entertainment but that is not related to the experience, which could be said to be the same.

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Sure, which is why I agreed it could sound like a brag. But the truth is I’m older, and I’m not much of a games person, full stop.

But you may recall that in Don Quixote, even in 1605, Cervantes satirised the idea that reading popular literature could “rot the brain” and take people away from real life. Something has always been seen as a threat that distracts us from what is considered essential seriousness. Perhaps cave paintings were blamed in preliterate cultures?

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Often we’re too occupied or busy to notice whether we’re happy or unhappy. We might then believe that we’re happy or unhappy (or neither) depending on expectations, not whether our minds are occupied to not.

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I don’t think every mental activity is suitable for experiencing pleasure. The brain is an organ that, like other organs, needs to be occupied to maintain its functionality, that’s true, but there’s also the peculiarity that the brain itself is a source of pleasure. It’s the creation of new neural connections, that is, finding solutions, that provides the brain with dopamine. So, not every mental activity is suitable for pleasure. Interest in computer games arises not so much from the time spent playing them as from the opportunity to find answers to questions that arise during the game. If you try to play online against players who are faster and more agile than you and you won’t have a single chance to make a successful shot, I assure you, you won’t experience any pleasure.

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I think Computer Games are enjoyable but do not in themselves provide a happy life

We need to be able to move comfortably between activities, including thiose rhat generate opportunities, for sociallising, physical health and financial sufficiency.

The Harvard Flourishing Index identifies a number of measures of flourishing.

Our Flourishing Measure | Human Flourishing Program at Harvard https://share.google/XcEFsx51b4rL9Vher

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Something I like to do with questions such as this is flip things around. Lets say that meditation were a widely common activity and gaming is a relatively rare event for anyone to do.

Being comfortable with ones self and not engaging in the world is considered normal society. What could I then provide as something to say about gaming as an activity? Lets also flip our entire perspective of culture here. In our culture we see how people can get caught up in life, it leaves one to observe meditation as a healthy habit. Now the flip, in this other world meditation is so common that socializing and getting caught up in life is seen as something different, maybe even a bit odd. In this upside down world, one could say that gaming strengthens bonds at a social level and fosters large vocal communities in ways odd to being alone or in small groups and meditating.

The reason I like to practice flipping perspectives is it shows, underneath, the quirks of how humanity forms ideas and societies. We do a lot of things because of our “drive” to do so or reason but why do we have the drive we have? Why this particular case of attributes? Could I group it under the title of evolved traits and behaviors or something else entirely?

Personally, I think whether its meditation, reading, gaming, hanging out with friends… each person, unique in there on way, must decide how they allocate their time and efforts and define what it is they truly feel to accomplish within a brief lifetime… Or not, since its not up to me.

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@Tom_Storm

Circumstances matter.
Many live and work within cubicles, go from one place to another within another cubicle, seek entertain in yet other cubicles, and so on. Most have disconnect from this natural reality, and it’s something new.

I hate it, but when having to visit big cities, I can’t not think of John Calhoun’s population studies back when I was a kid.

Humanity grew up with the natural world (its dangers and benefits) right outside the door, or a few blocks through the town. Our minds were occupied with navigating that action packed reality and all the sensory data that needs processing.

It’s an entirely different reality for most these days and it’s no wonder our minds struggle keep up.

*Signed, *
rural Colorado resident, (with a forty acre private yard, and one other family. Sitting outside is an entirely different experience than looking at a wall.)

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Not sure how new it is, Dickens describes cubicles in his mid Victorian novels and writings and workplaces were often unsafe, dark and unpleasant going back to the Industrial Revolution. But if you mean it’s a product of modernity you may be right. But I would prefer a cubicle to survival on the savanna any time. These days when I visit offices it’s more likely to be open plan than cubicles and people are also working from home much more so there is that too.

I also wonder about our tendency to split reality into neat bifurcations of natural and unnatural, as if anything made by humans is somehow not of nature. Everything we do is natural it would seem to me. It may be imagined and refined by us but it’s still a product of creatures behaving and coping with the reality we’re living in, an extension of stone tools and mud huts. Thoughts?

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I think personal preferences explain this. We tend to think the lives we prefer are preferable because they are better in some way.

I like cities and buildings and am indifferent to nature. I live in Australia, a country with a huge outback which I have little interest in seeing. I can’t think of anything more boring than scenery. I’ve always been that way. I find buildings, roads, and laneways far more engaging because they’re the aesthetic and practical product of human effort and intention.

Which is why I live in the middle of a large city, in a loft. I don’t even have a car. But I recognize this is a preference.

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That you missed my point.
It was about me, offering some context to the perspective I’ve been sharing.

If you want, still we can’t pretend manmade objects are simply a derivative of natural processes. That discussion requires a bit more nuance and framing.

As a big Arthur Upfield fan I have some appreciation for what you are saying there. A hike across the Nullarbor Plain certainly isn’t on any bucket list of mine.

Yes we all have our space and preference, and we could not switch places. We’re both doing the best we can with what we have. :slight_smile:

I wasn’t trying to make this about a contest, it was more as background to better appreciate where I am coming, with what I write.

Incidentally, It’s not like I can’t relate to what you are saying. Heck I’m a Chicago kid, Lakeview district, in the city, with parents that spent weekends taking us all over. late '50s and '60. Today I watch our rural local kids growing and their limited exposure, and how it molds them, and I’m glad I did have Chicago.

My Earth-centrist thing has more to do with a scientific understanding that underpins all my intellectual and even spiritual interpretations.
And that is simply the product of being raised curious on the one hand and science never stopping to dish out amazing stories and answers, with more questions, and communicators to share them with the interested public.
For us to read, strive to understand, and then try to weave it into our perspective, or not. Depending.

We humans are nothing if not pliable, adaptable.

Still, our modern ways are totally unsustainable, and we accept unspeakable horrors towards others, and our future is in big trouble. A major cause is humanity’s disconnect from the rest of creatures and reality of this Earth and the biosphere that enabled and sustained us. Our disconnect is the path to our . . .

Okay a question: Like why the frantic rush for ever more?
When is enough, enough?

Cheers

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Me too.

How is what we make different to other creatures making things apart from scale?

Neither was I. Isn’t this site about conversations? You shared a perspective, then I did.

That’s fair. Science has never much interested me.

Haven’t versions of this idea been an official narrative for many people for years now? Most folk seem to hold that the future is dystopian. I assume you see the Greens movement as a farce?

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Yes this is something I have pondered about too particularly in recreational drugs spheres where people make distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘synthetic’ drugs often making some kind of snobbish remark that they only take ‘natural’ substances and they are somehow better for you.

I read a good counter to that once that there are plenty of things that are natural and bad for you - many poisons are natural and cancer and any number of diseases. Also viruses which are still salient in the public consciousness.

Yes I agree everything humans have created has been created out of nature. Just like Platos world of ideas eh?

I think that is a red herring to argue nature = good, not nature = bad, but I think there is something to get from the idea of science in the survive of nature not in the destruction of it, the latter being the general trend since the industrial revolution.

Science for the good of nature would be stuff like study into and mitigatioin of global warming and all the sciences related to studying nature rather than to bring it to heel. It is a balance of course - we manipulated nature to make it comfortable for us humans but think we went too far and has made us less happy as a result; having lost our way so to speak. I am sure life would often have been 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short during much of human experience when we were subject to nature’s whims but the same could often be said of an isolated and lonely existence as a wage slave now - but maybe not the short part - you just get to extend the suffering.

Well not acute suffering like before. Our base needs are taken care of but more of an existential suffering due to lack of purpose I would say is the crisis of today.

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Yes this is what I am gettig at above. Science got us into this mess but it can also get us out. Science made the cage we are in but it can also dismantle it. It is just the intention. Just like we could solve world hunger if we wanted to but instead billions are spent on male baldness products or female beautification enhancement instead. Comical/tragic. really.

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Lol isn’t this a bit contradictory to your disdain for the natural world? Everything you say you love - the big city life, is a product of science. Ok you can enjoy the life and not appreciate science - there are many dumboes in cities that couldn’t care less about it but you have to admit, on inspection, that science is a product of that way of life.

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I don’t disdain the natural world; I just don’t find it compelling. I want the environment protected, but don’t ask me to dance amongst the wildflowers. Not being interested in science isn’t the same thing as disliking science. Sure, I consider it the most reliable tool we have for making interventions in the world. But don’t ask me to care much further than this. :wink:

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Thank you for taking the time to respond.

Yes and thanks for the background.

Oh lordie, we could get in a huge discussion on that, one I don’t have the time for currently.

Sorry I read a curious defense between your lines and guess that was coming through. In fact your commentary and comparisons keep coming back to my thoughts.

So science is uninteresting and it’s philosophy you are interested in?
Does science fit into your world view?

Interesting observation. From my perspective we entered our dystopian era in 2025, from here on in, it’s a free fall. Even if it seems to be moving slow to our self-absorbed senses.

I’m not sure “farce” is the word I’d used.
Scared, frustrated, pissed-off, and backed into a corner, is where I’d start my discussion on the Greens movement.

Versions of what idea?
That we humans have over extended ourselves and that our blind passion for progress at all costs has us neck deep in the process of destroying our very life support systems.

I was born in 1955, which coincided with the scientific understanding of Greenhouse Gases was percolating up into the public awareness along with the realization that the human species was passing a threshold and becoming a dangerous geologic force. Followed by the international Geophysical Year 57/58 which brought us face to face with the fact that Earth was finite and that humanity’s impacts were starting to be felt in even its most remote place. Also that Earth was not the endless cornucopia humanity had always assumed it was.

One can take comfort in dismissing the hysterical exaggerations mass media feeds us. The haves also have the luxury of avoiding the reality by staying within their fabricated exclusion zones and districts. But none of that means the ominous deficit trends aren’t there and continuing, nay speeding up.

Population, clean water, forests, fertile farm land, Ocean acidification all are pushing towards limits. Tipping point have been passed, ignoring that is okay for a good night sleep, but it doesn’t make the reality go away.

Or, conversely, do you see a bright future once we make it to Mars?

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that your comments have stuck with me because I find them disturbing and illuminating.

That disconnect, and dismissal of Earth, even that assumption that what we humans are doing is no different than what nature does.

Show me one thing nature creates that destroys and wastes as much material resources - in comparison to returns - the way human production and construction projects do?

Show me where nature ignores recycling. If humans had the least bit of sense, recycling would have been built into our entire manufacturing chain. When your tires are no longer useful who better to figure out what to do with them than a tire producer, same thing for appliances and such. It was never given thought.

Raw profits on ledgers were all that mattered, waste and destruction were externalities to be ignored.

There’s also that staggering disparity between the haves and the have-nots and the inhumanity we display for other humans and the rest of animal/plant kingdoms? The ease with which we slide right back into that idiotic notion of war as a solution. Etc. I don’t know of anything comparable in Earth’s natural process. Of course you could point out that nature can be mighty destructive herself, but at least it’s managed to sow the seeds that repair the various catastrophes that have befallen Earth. What will human leave behind, an absolutely impoverished, deeply scared Earth, but that’s okay, some of us got what we wanted out of it.

Reminds me of the Golden Rule - He who has the gold, makes the rules, no matter how foolish that man might be.