If You Could Always Feel Happy, Would You?

nah.

nope

that'd be like being anesthetized

No way. Negative emotions are kind of like physical pain in that they alert you to the fact that there's something wrong. With pain, you learn that putting your hand on a hot stove hurts and you shouldn't do that because it causes tissue damage. With negative emotions, you learn that being mean to your best friend hurts her feelings and also makes you feel bad because it damages the relationship, so you avoid being a jerk because it feels bad to do so.

If You Could Be Anesthetized, Would You?

yes.

As pointed out above, if your emotions never changed, it would soon be indistinguishable from numbness.

I personally feel like happy isn't really an emotion; it's more like, a response to a positive thing, like food or a movie or being in the company of a certain person, or visiting a place that brings that feeling. it's not meant to be sustained as a mood. it's like, idk, laughing. laughing feels great when there's somethign funny but if you laugh all day you're a) exhausted and b) annoying.

positivity is maybe more something to aim for? maybe. idk or maybe I'm just mincing words there and there's a better word for what I'm trying to say

again, just my personal viewpoint, def not prescriptive

If you could press a button without having to press a button, would you?

i think i already did

xpost re: anesthetized, does the premise even allow for being numb or out-of-touch w/ others? It seems that you couldn't be, because that would = unhappy.

Unless "always happy" means "lacking empathy" or being stupid/unfeeling, I will have two of these, please.

Of course.

ow my head hurts now

i could do w/o depression but not sadness

sorry vg don't be sad

No. I already have a lack-of-motivation problem, constant happiness sure wouldn't help that.

http://ablognamedsue.typepad.com/a_blog_named_sue/images/2007/05/30/smilin_bob_3.jpg

I'd get rid of depression, maybe make heartbreak a little easier.

I instantly unliked some sorta-new-agey online group/mag on fb today because they posted some bs ayn rand quote about happiness. So, no.

if ayn rand is happy then that is def something I do not want :)

i might want this ability for myself but i'd be scared for other people because i want assholes to experience pangs of self-doubt sometimes.

Yes, at my age, just want to feel happy from now on and not anything else like worry, sadness, depression, anxiety etc....

A lot of people don't realise that they are actually living through happy periods of their lives. Happiness isn't some utopia, it's a simple balance of balance of good things that a lot of people often take for granted until it's taken away. Watching my wife physically deteriorate over 6 years has taught me that a lot of ordinary time we spent together was quite wonderful. When I leave this world it will be all I think about.

Hell yes, fuck misery.

I have known a few people that are genuinely happy all the time, and they truly live amazing lives.

no, but maybe i should

i don't wanna say something corny and borderline indefensible like "no misery, no art" but it's kinda lurking in the periphery of my mind daring me to say it

One of those people that I know that is genuinely happy all the time has multiple bands, and is on track to releasing 4 LP this year already.

r u friends with robert pollard

i bet his bands fucking suck though

j/k

(maybe)

for some people, misery only leads to art when they're doing okay enough to be productive. otherwise, creating is (a) not on the agenda (b) torture.

"emotion recollected in tranquility" iirc

Even miserable artists who ended up suiciding probably did their best shit when they were happy.

You can be happy as hell playing music that sounds all sad and stuff.

the wordsworth dictum above isn't so much about being happy as i understand it as about being able to capture something (whatever it is, ecstasy or misery) when you're in a place when work is possible.

When I hear "Misery leads to art" I just think of Calvin's dad invoking "it builds character" as a catch-all.

reading, i don't think you're doing it right.

if I were happy all the time, I'm pretty sure people would hate the shit out of me at funerals.

I bet Richard Pryor was more depressed than Nick Drake and Mark Rothko's collective sadness.

yeah It'd make it pretty impossible to empathise with and honestly relate to people. Like if my girlfriend's dad died and I was all bouncy with joy, she'd likely feel very alone in her grief. You'd end up alienated from everyone in your life. But I guess who cares, you're happy anyway.

tbf i think you can be happy without bouncing with joy at funerals

or at least i suspect so

ehh

You always feel happy, you don't necessarily have a huge shit-eating grin plastered on your face til the day you die. Surely there must have been times in your life when you were happy or otherwise fine and someone you cared about was unhappy and you still consoled them.

sure, but if you were happy literally all the time, how could you ever empathise with someone else's sadness? It would be unfathomable to you. You'd probably be able to follow social cues if you wanted to, (would you even want to?), but you wouldn't get why. Maybe like being a sociopath?

if i took this pill at my current age, i would still have decades of unhappiness to draw upon (and regret, testing the pill's effectiveness)

Provided you lived in a social society for a length of time before popping this pill, I think you would maintain your grasp of social cues and customs. And since none of these customs would have an impact on your personal happiness you would perhaps never feel the need to go against them.

I personally feel like happy isn't really an emotion; it's more like, a response to a positive thing, like food or a movie or being in the company of a certain person, or visiting a place that brings that feeling. it's not meant to be sustained as a mood. it's like, idk, laughing. laughing feels great when there's somethign funny but if you laugh all day you're a) exhausted and b) annoying.

positivity is maybe more something to aim for? maybe. idk or maybe I'm just mincing words there and there's a better word for what I'm trying to say

like this post

If You Could Always Have An Erection, Would You?

Provided you lived in a social society for a length of time before popping this pill, I think you would maintain your grasp of social cues and customs. And since none of these customs would have an impact on your personal happiness you would perhaps never feel the need to go against them.

Maybe. Hard to say what you'd say or do if none of it had any impact on your happiness. Like, I would take the no depression pill sure, but I feel that passing sadness has value in dissuading people from being assholes. Probably some other decent uses for it too.

There are plenty of assholes leading sad lives though.

Though yeah perhaps smiling isn't really a symptom of happiness so much as a learned technique for getting attention when you are a baby.

well I don't want people leading sad lives, but I think just having the capacity for sadness, or even just something other than happiness, makes us more decent people than we would be otherwise.

I wish I had the ability to always feel 'something', whether good or bad. I have large spells of time where I feel very little, which I suspect is due to my anti-anxiety meds, and it truly does suck. fortunately the last few months haven't been like that.

burning love comes once in a lifetime

i would not hesitate. the few times i've had the opportunity to take ecstacy were the best days of my life.

for some people, misery only leads to art when they're doing okay enough to be productive. otherwise, creating is (a) not on the agenda (b) torture.

― les yper-fem (get bent), Friday, January 11, 2013 6:00 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^

I don't think of happy/sad as being related to depression! Sadness rules. Cleansing and healthy and wonderful. Depression can go fuck itself though

id probably take it right now

I feel like this question is mixing apples and oranges. Depression isn't an emotion; you can be happy and depressed at the same time, and never suffer from depression but experience very deep sadness.

fuck yeah why'd you think i'm drunk all the time? fuck the dignity of suffering

I think that pill would turn you into the couple from leigh's another year and there is something off about them ...

I am.

i'd imagine it would make it v difficult to relate to other people's suffering? So, no.

don't they say people's overall reported level of happiness tends not to alter much over their life? anyway i am happy enough as is.

Surely Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh's 'Happy Go Lucky' rather than 'Another Year'?

Sorry I see my point has been raised several times above.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Miranda

Like let's say there's this new drug you could take, and it makes you happy all the time.

i believe you unconditionally! show me this new drug and then give it to me, i'll give you everything i have!

But you only take it once and it permanently changes your brain chemistry so sadness or depression affect is totally unavailable to you.

wow, i only have to take it once AND sadness and depression are totally unavailable??! YES. I AM SAYING YES TO YOU! metadata keywords: Emphatic Yes.

When a close friend or family member dies, you won't be able to experience the feelings of grief or mourning that often accompany those moments.

happiness is ultimately what we're all working toward, right? you can say intellectual curiosity or preventing widespread environmental catastrophe, but ultimately people seek those things because it makes them happy, or it eliminates terrible things that might prevent happiness. the example chosen here is chosen (i'm guessing) because a close friend dying is pretty much the ultimate sadness, and it's assumed (correctly, in this non-happiness utopia pill world) that grief and pain are necessary steps to get through it. and even more, not being sad, and in fact being happy in the wake of a friend's death would be almost insulting to some people. but it's possible to honor the deceased without tearing your shirt and beating your breast for 40 days and 40 nights. i've always admired the spirit and intent behind new orleans funeral parades, even if i couldn't manage to react to death that way myself.

You just have an uplifted happy disposition all the time, and in the face of any challenge.

yes i do, now that i have this pill! wait a second i still don't have it! FUCK!

Would you take the pill?

GIVE ME THE GODDAMN PILL RIGHT NOW MORDY

otm

i say this as someone who gets sad and depressed and anxious quite a bit, but (i don't think) that sadness is something that's a necessary part of the human life. we're sad so much that we're accustomed to feeling guilty when we're not sad, at least in some circumstances. earlier today, i was thinking about how my creative output climbs dramatically when i'm miserable, and i started to grimly think of periodic sadness as a necessary component to my life. but fuck that. when i get on a creative roll in the midst of my sadness, it makes me a bit happier. it makes me feel a little bit better about myself, and that's what i really crave. if i could skip the initial sad condition and get straight to the feeling happy part, i'd do it in a heartbeat.

the well-to-do are fascinated by misfortune. it's "realistic" and "interesting"

Really this should be a landslide for "yes" for every person on the planet.

So the entire world is happy....

THEN what?

We go get some pizza.

with pineapple

This thread was about suicide fess up mordy

yes.
the theory of sadness=deep thoughts and creativity etc doesn't work for me.
usually it's the opposite.

Fuck yeah I would. Permanently happy people piss me off but I want to be one of them

Yes. Fuck sadness + depression.

taking this drug would be like inducing a particular kind of autism. i don't think someone who was always happy, no matter what, would be able to survive on a day-to-day basis. not being happy is what makes us strive to survive. if i was ecstatic about everything all the time, i wouldn't get out of bed, i wouldn't eat, i wouldn't sleep, i wouldn't look both ways when i crossed the road. people would believe i was brain damaged and end up treating me differently because of it. but it wouldn't matter because i'd be happy just rolling around in my own filth. this is p much like asking, if you could become a heroin addict, would you?

and yes, i've done my best creative work while unhappy.

... or on heroin, amirite?

fwiw I've done my best creative work when I'm feeling up + positive, generally find it impossible to do anything worthwhile when I'm not

There'd be no emotional consequences, people on this pill would be able to go on entire killing sprees without feeling anything but sadness. It would be like removing all correctives to human behaviour. Fuck that.

wait, being happy renders one unable to cross the road safely?

But I wouldn't go on one of my killing sprees if I was happy (xp)

original question didn't say ecstatic it said happy. it didn't imply an inability to meet necessary goals. the task of survival in western society is not often v. difficult. if everybody was on the happy pills society might well be organised in a way that made that task even easier. a lot of this is semantics and a ridiculous old prejudice that happiness is the least noble emotional state.

wait, being happy renders one unable to cross the road safely?

― pandemic, Thursday, 31 January 2013 13:02 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, why bother ?

original question says you're happy, not stoned off your tits

interesting that some of you conflate those two conditions tho *strokes beard*

reminds me of sarcastic Ray from the early 90s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq_A6IYJYu4

Lol being happy makes you a serial killer

Mixing cause and effect here

I don't think for a second you have to be miserable to make art, but my various griefs are so deeply ingrained in my sense of who I am that to part ways with them would be like cutting off my hands

if i was ecstatic about everything all the time, i wouldn't get out of bed, i wouldn't eat, i wouldn't sleep

You do realize this is usually what happens when you are depressed?

wait, being happy renders one unable to cross the road safely?

― pandemic, Thursday, 31 January 2013 13:02 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, why bother ?

― dog latin, Thursday, January 31, 2013 8:29 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, 'why bother crossing the road safely' feels just as much something you would say if you were seriously depressed.

Indeed, think a lot of the anti-happy-drug people don't have that much experience of depression?

Trust ilx to take a challopsy cynical view on happiness tbf

http://www.hollywoodmegastore.com/Images/6971_Happy_Dwarf_Standup_683.jpg

This thread was about suicide fess up mordy

obv this thread is about prozac

i wonder if you were the only one on this drug it would sufficiently isolate you from communal experiences to the extent of inducing some sort of madness. uncomfortable to ponder!

nah, your happiness wd be the condition of taking the drug, you'd just drive a bunch of miserable gits mad

well i guess i find the idea that our emotional states can be totally cut off from out communal experiences (ie, what everyone else is communicating as their feelings) to be a bit strange to imagine. not that there aren't degrees of isolation and communion, but this would sorta effectively close off that relationship.

like, if your emotions can't really navigate and respond to your environment...you're sorta in some weird headspace that's hard to conceive of.

Matt DC otm provided you stay a fixed level of 'happy', there's no friction. If you can get happier but there's a base level of happiness that you can't drop beneath then that's different imo.

like, if your emotions can't really navigate and respond to your environment.

"You just have an uplifted happy disposition all the time, and in the face of any challenge."

Not saying you no longer have any emotions or shades of awareness other than "HAPPY!!!" just that your baseline is reset and there's a hard floor. Yeah, totes. Barring times of severe doubt and real tragedy, this is kind of what not being prone to depression/unduly harsh self-criticism is like?

To some degree yeah your emotional state affects what you do, but i think if you're going to accept the social contract and accept a psychological baseline that is in line with modern living then emotional states are largely backgrounded. Every day you do a thousand things you probably don't want to do. You act nice to people you don't like, or don't know. You obey laws and public decency standards when maybe you just want to run around the woods naked and climb trees. There is a type of normalization that comes with modern society which places the public norm above the concerns of the individual. Emotions are largely not a part of the equation.

I think in the context of modern society a happy pill would be more about just seeing the good side of everything and just being optimistic about it all. These claims of being unable to cross the street or relate to other human beings, maybe it makes sense for instinctual or id-based extreme happiness...

Wait will i be able to enjoy bittersweet comedies like idk drive or roger rabbit

The thing is, I am nearly totally happy placing the public norm over the concerns of the individual!

i wonder if this would be comparable to those people who cannot feel physical pain...

i also wonder to what extent empathy is critical to communication....as in, feeling bad when someone tells you about something bad happening is maybe a non-trivial part of understanding what information they are conveying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAq3fvlns0Q

question as posed says to me that you could still be empathetic - you would have the memory of sadness, grief, depression. i think it's a pure question of "would you personally miss too much by saying a perma-bye to sadness?" and i honestly think nah, i'd be ok

public norm over individual expression is a problematic dichotomy in so many ways

ryan - have u read teresa brennan's transmission of affect?

feeling bad when someone tells you about something bad happening is maybe a non-trivial part of understanding what information they are conveying.

Kinda think this is chasing the wrong ball? You don't have to feel sad with someone for the same reasons as them AT THE SAME MOMENT to understand the emotional content of their communication. Although I might be able to agree that having felt sadness at some point in life would be necessary, just not at that moment.

Xp DEATH SENTENCES!

ryan - have u read teresa brennan's transmission of affect?

no, but it looks great.

yeah - it is! and i think you'd be really interested in it, lots of stuff about how affect is communicated between bodies

yeah in fact it intersects with some of my "academic" interests, so i'll definitely be reading it.

Kinda think this is chasing the wrong ball? You don't have to feel sad with someone for the same reasons as them AT THE SAME MOMENT to understand the emotional content of their communication. Although I might be able to agree that having felt sadness at some point in life would be necessary, just not at that moment.

perhaps, but at the same time i think what this pill would do is foreclose the possibility of communication being able to effect you emotionally--you'd be invulnerable to a process (communication) that to me always implies a certain vulnerability.

there's always some risk for your current state of mind at play when you agree to communicate with someone.

Otherwise human society will breakdown into some .. sort of.. zingerfest.

zingers don't seem so happy

laughing on the inside

oh and the outside hang on

And on the other side of their faces

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay0hGz7DFPI

RE: Happiness affecting communication. I think you could more effectively and emphatically communicate w others in just about any situation if you were happy rather than depressed.

Whenever i get depressed, i stay in my room, sometimes i go days without speaking to anyone. Not sure if i was happy all the time i would choose to do the same.

I think empathy for others may be a basic symptom of happiness.

Rather the opposite imo

I don't even trust people who are happy frequently

No way. Negative emotions are kind of like physical pain in that they alert you to the fact that there's something wrong. With pain, you learn that putting your hand on a hot stove hurts and you shouldn't do that because it causes tissue damage. With negative emotions, you learn that being mean to your best friend hurts her feelings and also makes you feel bad because it damages the relationship, so you avoid being a jerk because it feels bad to do so.

This seems pretty OTM (and not at all challopsy).

Depression is not just 'not being happy all the time' - 'not being happy all the time' is what we currently call life!

xxp :(

I think you could more effectively and emphatically communicate w others in just about any situation if you were happy rather than depressed.

i agree, but only because we don't really have a condition for "happiness" that is as suffocating and complete as depression is for other end of the continuum. what's cool about this question is that it forces us to imagine such a condition!

it's like a happy person says to a depressed person "why don't you just snap out of it?"

to be fair, as many have pointed out, i am imagining a condition of complete and total happiness when perhaps the pill is simply meant to disallow your happiness to fall below a certain baseline--perhaps in the way most healthy people seem to have a built in protection against depression (or at least a time-limit).

Not being able to feel grief when an immediate family dies does seem to go beyond that.

Who said you cant feel grief

it could be happy grief

good grief

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

interesting!