On happiness and the meaning of life

[Blue3]

This article on happiness and the meaning of life is a great read. I can see this question being asked more and more if technology continues to progress. What do we think of the questions it poses and its proposed answers?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210105-why-our-pursuit-of-happiness-may-be-flawed

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Good article, basically describing the hedonistic paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_hedonism

I like the Aristotelian view (also laid out in the article) that the end of man is 'human flourishing', not necessarily a feeling but a kind of excellence.

[°Leprechaun]

It should be obvious that the pursuit of happiness is the greatest cause of unhappiness.
This is because happiness should not be seen as the most important thing.
If a person loves what is true and good and seeks to better the self, the happiness that should occur because of this is a fringe benefit. Unfortunately people often tend to believe what they want to believe rather than searching for an unbiased objective view of things. This is difficult, because like all animals they are ruled by emotions rather than reason. If one wants to rise above their inherited animal nature one should do one's best to look at life with a purely objective point of view. One should start with a sort of tabula  rasa and reject any indoctrination to see things a certain way that they were taught by their parents and other elders.
Freethought is the key to success, I would imagine.

Happiness is a very good thing, but the pursuit of it is tainted with desire.

[Blue3]

So do we overall agree with its conclusion, that this interpretation of Aristotle is correct? Or do some of the other points in the article made by John Stuart Mill, or Nietzsche, seem more true? Are there major holes in this?

[°Leprechaun]

So do we overall agree with its conclusion, that this interpretation of Aristotle is correct? Or do some of the other points in the article made by John Stuart Mill, or Nietzsche, seem more true? Are there major holes in this?

I haven't read much of Mill, but he did say that utilitarianism need not only include our selfish desires, making ourselves happy, but also including others. He mentions the Christian ethic of love of the neighbor and the golden rule. So, it would seem that he was allowing for the possibility of including others in the utilitarian principles.
Going of on a tangent the issue for me, is do we include the maximum happiness of as many people possible or hold a principle that it should be all people, not just as many people as possible? (excuse me please if my words lack coherency, because I am thinking out loud, which is the norm for me). By all of this I mean do the needs of the one, need to be included in the needs of the many?
As for Nietzsche, yes an interesting point, that we can tolerate suffering if we can see the meaning of why we are suffering (that is to say that we see a greater good in the long term).

IIRC Nietzsche spoke about Amor Fati (love of fate), that is to say accepting things the way they are (although the contrary view is the change the things we can not accept, rather than accepting the things we can not change, although the former is not always possible, but sometimes neither is the latter, since some things simply can not be accepted).

The Buddhist philosophy if I understand it correctly and if I am not oversimplifying it, involves letting go of desire, which although something commonly understood to be the pursuit of happiness, in fact, leads to greater unhappiness. There is the desire to be happy and the desire not to suffer, but are these two sides of the same figurative coin?

edit: what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, but what doesn't make me stronger kill me?

[Fudotei]

One of the more interesting takes I've read on this was by Plotinus, the great Platonic philosopher from Egypt:

* "Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul. To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One.
* "If he remembers who he became when he merged with the One, he will bear its image in himself. He was himself one, with no diversity in himself or his outward relations; for no movement was in him, no passion, no desire for another, once the ascent was accomplished. Nor indeed was there any reason or though, nor, if we dare say it, any trace of himself."

It's not a Gnostic story, since the world is not so much evil but imperfect, there is only a "temporary ecstatic experience" found through contemplation of the Ideal Forms of things, a kind of spiritual exercise found through philosophical inquiry. There was mention in the Wikipedia article that someone who really understood in this sense was living through reason, not through their body; even if they were undergoing excruciating torture, the knowledge that they had that ecstatic power would put them on a level above the imperfect world.

Just a thought... might be misinterpreting the process here.