Friday, February 1, 2008

Happi

I noticed someone already posted a blog about happiness, but I had my mind set on writing about it, and thus, I will do so anyway.
Perhaps I'm in a philosophical mood today and I don't feel like writing about math this time, but I was thinking about the whole issue of happiness in class on Thursday, and I was trying to pinpoint exactly what it means to be "happy" in the One State. The numbers don't know love, or hate, or envy or anything resembling emotion, so how can they know happiness? And why is happiness not considered evil and bad like its peer emotions? I think the way that we define happiness is precisely through other types of emotions. We measure happiness on a scale that identifies how much of each type of emotion are we feeling, and then according to the results of those numbers, we decide if we're feeling miserable, unhappy, happy, very happy or ecstatic. We think of how loved we are (by our parents, our friends, are partners), some consider their financial security to affect their happiness, are we constantly jealous of what others have or are we satisfied with our own achievements? These are factors that affect what we call happiness. In fact, we define happiness as "good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy." In the One State, they all have similar fortunes, so there isn't "good fortune." People don't feel joy, or excitement, they just stroll through life in utter neutrality. I think that they epitomize the concept of "ignorance is blissed," and without imagination, they will never wonder or get curious about what is possibly out there that they are missing out on. So they continue on with their lives feeling nothing... no pain... no love... no true happiness. However, they have pure comfort. And that's what I think they define as happiness.

1 comment:

Sterbenz said...

So your saying that the peoples of the One State are happy when they feel "normal", right? Well that is pretty cool. But don't they still have all of the other emotions. For example, when D-503 is with O at R's place D seems a bit jealous that O is staying with R that time. D also seems angry when R knows about I-330. so maybe the people have the emotions, they are just taught to hide them.