Just Sharing Some Thoughts

For awhile I’ve been debating in my head whether to write certain things in my journal or in my blog. I’ve been feeling an urge to share publicly more and more of my thoughts. But it’s hard to figure out what goes where. I don’t want to abandon my private journal that I’ve enjoyed writing in for so many years, yet I definitely to want to get my ideas out there. Nonetheless, I think I’m going to start putting more material online. And I’m going to start the process today.

There are a few issues I want to deal with in this post. One is motivation, another has to do with passivity, activity, judgment, and hypocrisy. I’ll start with the first. It seems apparent that we human beings pursue happiness, yet what explains certain individuals doing things that seem obviously to go against their happiness? For example, what explains a woman that has an abusive husband, but that refuses to leave the relationship? Let’s take this even further and assume that she “knows” that she will be better off without the man. So what we are now dealing with is a decision between pursuing short-term pleasure or making short-term sacrifices for greater happiness in the long-term. What accounts for the apparent irrational decision to not make the choice leading to greater long-term happiness? What I’m thinking is that we can actually narrow down the pursuit of long-term pleasure to the pursuit of immediate pleasure. The way to do this is by realizing that the pursuit of long term pleasure is the pursuit of an idea, which is something that can be pursued in the realm of immediacy. So what we end up with is a battle between the various pleasures and pains triggered by the various actions we take. To stay with the abusive husband triggers certain feelings and the pursuit of the idea of a better life without him triggers others. If you’re confused at this point, I don’t blame you; I have much to elaborate on. however, that will have to wait for later time.

Now, the second topic. Here’s the thing: through reason one will realize that he wants to be happy. Next, if one compares oneself to others, he will realize that there is no good reason to believe that one’s happiness is more important than others’. Thus, the rational ethic to pursue is that of the greatest overall happiness. This is of course the simple point, which most everyone will agree with. The real challenge comes in determining what the path to the greatest happiness is. The conservatives argue that our society is already doing about as good a job as possible producing happiness. This is a judgment of course, and it is also one I disagree with. However, my purpose today is not to attack this judgment. Instead I want to attack those conservatives who stress that their judgments are as good as anyone else’s. I am talking about the conservative relativists. However, it has taken me so long to get to this point in this blog that I don’t even remember what I was going to write. This would most likely not have happened if I was writing in my journal. But what’s done is done, so now all I can do is work toward designing a better method transferring my ideas from my head to my blog. And if you are disappointed about me not finishing up my second topic, don’t despair; I’ll do my best to get that figured out and will write up what I came up with in my next blog.