Image taken from Pixabay
We cling to our devices and traditions like butterflies cling to flying and pollinating flowers. Butterflies are made of aesthetic virtue, but they will die so soon without having properly enjoyed it. Wait, properly? I was going there for a tragic mood and then got into a philosophical question, what is "proper enjoyment"?
I don't think that butterflies are unhappy. I would dare say that fulfilling the calls of our instincts is our greatest source of happiness. Chasing endorphins, success, dreams, and when we make progress, we feel this emotion rush through us that makes us want to do it all over again. That's all animals have, isn't it?
Then what? Then we keep chasing, and sometimes we don't achieve much. If we don't fulfil our preservation instincts, we are miserable, perhaps we end up homeless, poor, lonely and/or regretful.
What does the butterfly have? Fulfilment. Absolute fulfilment. Instincts guide it forward perfectly and it cannot leave the road set by nature to enter a state of contemplation. Only we can do it.
Perhaps that is bliss, but why don't we like it? Why would I have thought that this enjoyment is not "proper"? We are proud of our consciousness. We deem ourselves more worthy, better, superior because of our minds, our intellects. We are glad of our freedom to be sentient and to be conscious of our consciousness, happy to know that we know that we know.
And maybe that is why Buddha insisted that happiness is not the objective of humanity but reaching the Nirvana: a state of absolute contemplation beyond the influences of the surrounding world; acceptance and meditation. Maybe that is our ideal, shared by most conscious beings, but we don't realize it or even less admit to it.
Do you think animals tend to be happier than humans? I'm not talking about the miserable and broken animals in a slaughterhouse or in terrible conditions but normal, free animals, just like us, free humans.
I think it easier for animals to be happier than us just for the mere fact that their intellects are factually lower which means their emotional intelligence is also lower... of course this doesn't mean they can't feel sad or other emotions, they just don't feel them as deep or punish themselves as much as we do over small little things...
I sometimes still grieve about decisions i made or didn't made 10 years ago, i doubt your average animal does that...
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I strive to be happier than the amount of happiness we ascribe to the happiest animal. I'm special :D
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Hahahahaha <3 I want to be happy too! I feel left out. 🙃
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Do you think humans are free today? We build concrete and wooden jails called "houses" to enclose ourselves, we deny every instinct of our own nature, both personally and socially. Look carefully at the pavement of the roads, you can see the nature represented in a bush trying to cross our impediment, but we don't leave it, we cut it and keep it away from our sight.
Every time we see a sample of who we really are, we look the other way, and we cover it, you can see any representation of our future, in a movie or book, there is not much nature there, it seems that we believe that development, technology, and progress, are far from nature, when it is not like that.
We build social networks and virtual worlds, when we are more asocial than ever, and yet we dare to call us society.
The human has made concessions to his freedom for many years looking for security, we no longer trust our neighbors. But security will always be the greatest threat to freedom, because the only way to be safe is by avoiding exposure, and in turn, by denying our nature.
No one who denies his true nature will ever be happy. The human is by nature, like animals, free and happy, but it is up to us to follow our nature or reject it.
Answering your final question; Yes, I believe that "free humans" are just as happy as free animals, but we will have to settle for being as happy as zoo animals.
I regret having extended so much in a comment, but its publication made me think. Greetings.
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Check out this post I made yesterday, and this one I made 16 days ago. Both touch a certain topic I'm very passionate about and that you seem to feel strongly towards as well. The topic is the inability we have to forego our natural impulses. We are tied to a myriad of forces that push us around and even if we notice them, we are unable to walk freely.
We may choose which forces to heed, which to avoid, and put some pressure toward one direction, but really, there is nothing we can do apart from that. We are slaves to nature and, as much as we want to believe that consciousness is some otherworldly ability to escape these forces, they're just a part of them. As @alejandromata said in yesterday's posts: we only notice that thoughts happened after the fact.
Don't regret that!
No! Extend as much as you want. I'll always read it and I feel that it's an awesome way to interact. I can only wish that most of my commenters didn't hold back and just exploded with their thoughts down here. I confess that it's one of my greatest pleasures on Steemit to read what people have to say about these questions and about my posts.
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I think our worry and the need to control our destiny makes us unhappy. Why do we always preoccupy ourselves with next month, week and year. Of course we need to plan but if we can just live in the moment even for a few seconds we can be like the butterfly. Interesting post @cryptosharon I enjoyed reading it.
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Thank you, bluefoxy! I'm glad you enjoyed the read. I've seen people that say that they have tried to live in the moment and it hasn't gone well for them. We have to lower our heads sometimes, and this might be the point of acquiescence. I'm not pleased about this, though.
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I asked my dog if he would rather go outside and sleep with the other animals. He said "no". I think he knows he's got it good.
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LOL, poor dog. My dog once slept on the streets. It was a bad day. She's blind, she escaped, she fell into a ditch and could not climb back up and was trapped there crying for hours and maybe even passed the night there when a woman found her and brought her to a local veterinary, where we were contacted and recovered her.
I never lost hope of finding her, but I wasn't very optimistic about it. I think about her struggle and I struggle myself with a bit of anxiety.
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Wow. That is quite the tale. I'm glad it has a happy ending. I would be a bit anxious too. Dogs are the best though, aren't they? :)
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I don't know if animals are happier in general, so much as they simply are. Mostly, they live in the moment, it seems to me. Some are probably happier than others, by human standards—domesticated cats and dogs with good owners/people, for instance.
I haven't spent much time contemplating the thought, I suppose. It's an interesting question—thanks for asking!
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Thank you for your input, Tessara! I've seen that whenever we cover a worry and solve the problem, we have new worries. The poor worry about not having something to eat and the rich worry about who knows what, but they worry, I'm sure, I'm not just comforting myself. Lol.
Perhaps as domesticated animals have no worries of being chased by tigers, they have worries about food and strangers passing by, their owners leaving them alone when they go to work, etc.
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I propose a counterargument:
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And I propose a counterargument to your counterargument:
In fact, and this is more controversial, beyond "human-made", artificial things are part of nature too. We evolved to make these buildings, these technologies, the internet, electricity, cryptocurrencies and particle accelerators. Lions evolved to chase gazelles. It's just the way it is, and we wouldn't say that the death of the gazelle is wrong because it's artificial (lion-made). It just is.
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I'm sorry, but I have to disagree on two parts.
Firstly, If I kill somebody with a gun, he/she did not die of natural causes.
Therefore, technology is not natural, or, as you put it, a part of nature.
Secondly, technology is not just the way it is. It could have been different, a human or a group of humans decided to make it that way.
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It could only be the way it is, for time has passed and it ended up that way, or that is what determinism would say about it.
I believe this is mere cultural terminology. Natural causes. Artificial means manmade, so yes, technology is manmade, gunshots and gun wounds are manmade, and so they are artificial. But we are animals too. When an otter uses a rock to break a nut and eat its insides, the nut being broken is artificial, otter-made, but you would not call it "unnatural", "outside of nature", "beyond evolution", as you say in
Every action a butterfly takes is within its nature, and evolution is part of nature, Darwinism is part of nature and its actions and reactions, as @vieira would call them, maybe due to the lack of free will in butterflies, are also part of nature.
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I would like to think that at least hard determinism is not true. I can agree on some things being predictable by means of statistics, a-priori knowledge, phenomenal experience, etc., but a predetermined totality of existence, I cannot possibly agree on that.
I disagree. If you compare a mobile phone to a rock and declare: otter technology is in principle the same as human technology, I would tend to argue that we used to use rocks once as well, and that rocks are accessible to all species. Rocks occur naturally. But we have improved on that natural rock on such a fundamental level that I think you are comparing two different things, separated by a long (technological-) evolutionary path that led to us using mobile phones and otters still using naturally occuring rocks.
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Now you made me think if animals have the same system of emotions like we. Of course they have different feelings like anger or so but do them possessed mixed feelings like we do? Ie; excited+scared, or sad+fullfilled? Maybe their feelings are not as complex? Thanks for sharing! :)
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I'm sure they have feelings, but the extent of them, as you say, may be variable. I also want to know how complex they are now! I may watch a Youtube video or two about scientific experiments on animal emotions... maybe... I don't know if I'll find anything relevant!
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It is very hard to compare animals with humans regarding happiness. It is hard comparing humans to humans because we do not know what is going on in other persons mind. The only thing we can do is observe and contemplate based on our own preferences and thoughts what would make us happy. On that note, some animals are extremely happy and some are extremely sad :) Thank you for sharing this, it is a truly wonderful read and a thought-provoking post. 💚
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Aww, thank you for your loving comment <3 :)
I also think that it's a hard question and it will vary from individual to individual. I'd say that we could only hope to reach a statistical consensus and even then, we'll have a tough time defining happiness.
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I'm not really sure about this! Are dogs happier than me? Am I happier than a bird? Hmmmm. It really depends maybe. You got me thinking here. lol
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I may be happier than an earthworm :D Or maybe not :O
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:) ahahhaha and I so love your brain Sharon!
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