<p>apple pie!</p>
<p>i honestly feel like that with one friend, known her since 6th grade. 
i would like to think you work your way up to that level with a friend. you dont just meet each other and then your attached at the hip.</p>
<p>does anyone like the nickname “cupcake kid”? i really want to be able to call someone that.</p>
<p>Noone can really know anyone else. The whole excercise is a beauty pageant.</p>
<p>Just as a note, I’m not really this broody, I just can’t resist devil’s advocacy sometimes… wink, you’re the Satan-possessed, it should be you in my place right now…</p>
<p>Funny, I’m kind of the other way with my true friend. We were vaguely friends in middle school and before this year, and the suddenly we realized that we were two halves of the same soul. We just get each other really well for no discernible reason.</p>
<p>Classik is Hermit, since he doesn’t need any superficial beauty pageant friends. Like, dislike?</p>
<p>Passivity=happiness. Happiness doesn’t really exist. If your entire life, you are fed stimuli to your brain that induce feelings of pleasure, you would be happier than any other man in the world, but of what worth would this “happiness” be? The thrill is the chase. Attempting to obtain happiness is what satisfies us. Getting the promotion is a temporary high, working towards the goal of the promotion is more rewarding to us.
The gist is, you will never be happy, you can only try harder next time to succeed.</p>
<p>lol. sorta catchy.
anybody get interview letters yet? i heard some got them.
and, do you know if it’s by email or snail mail? (i think they should just combine that into one word. smail. shweet. although the rhyming DOES have its appeal…)</p>
<p>Happiness as pleasure gradient… I like.</p>
<p>oo, oo, check post 61**!</p>
<p>Post 6121 on page 408, buddy. It’s the FAQ of everything we know so far.</p>
<p>Having a relationship with someone is fundamentally different than achievement based happiness, though. You’re happy whenever you see your friends, not when you see them and hang out longer than ever before or something.</p>
<p>ok maybe not the whole person, i don’t think i’ll ever know the whole /me/ but enough. i guess it is relative, compared to my other friends she tops out.</p>
<p>Well there are two (plausible, in my opinion) theories of human motivation, aside from basic, instinctual drives. Interestingly, they are kind of opposites:</p>
<ol>
<li>We seek homeostasis. Example: we want enough to eat, not too much not too little, or we feel pain. This could apply to relationships.</li>
<li>We seek stimulation. Example: we are bored, so we eat to stimulate ourselves (not sexually you pervs). This could apply to relationships.</li>
</ol>
<p>Which brings “happiness”? I don’t know. Maybe both theories are false.</p>
<p>so happiness is like cocaine?</p>
<p>Still say that neither your life not changing to suckiness nor temporary stimulation provide the long-term happiness and contentment of building relationships with other people you like.</p>
<p>But that is mostly how humans operate, Earil.
We think in the short term, selfishly, etc.
We are animals –> behaviorism arises again.
Or maybe I just have no faith in our race.
Clearly you are humanist, and do have faith.
:)</p>
<p>Switching gears to another school of psychology:
Even when you consider the psychosocial stages of development (Erikson), there is the question of reproduction, and almost all humans feel strong desires to be generative at some point their lives. We may have higher cognitive functions than most animals, but we still have the same basic needs and drives, such as facilitating the continuation of the species and ensuring that our genes survive to the next generation.</p>
<p>it could depend on the person. if they are solely motivated for work then that will bring them their contentment. the question for me is what will i remember more when im dying: that awesome joke i had with my bestie or my job promotion. i would choose the joke.</p>
<p>Long-term happiness is an oxymoron. Happiness peaks and then drops back to it’s level prior to the experience that induced the peak occurred.</p>
<p>I have a really strong relationship with someone I used to really click with, but who now is totally off in his own world… where does that put me?</p>
<p>Yes, this demands a pithy one-liner… move along, I’m still trying to hit my CC groove.</p>
<p>If what you say is true, why would we have friends nowadays? We don’t need anyone else to hunt in packs with us or to huddle together at night to protect us from freezing to death. No one needs to take care of their children after they can feed themselves. We do. Why? Because building those bonds with people makes us happy.</p>
<p>Do you prefer the term contentment? I’m talking about general baseline feelings- are you satisfied or unsatisfied with your life?</p>
<p>Classik- Do you still derive joy from the relationship? Do you still see him/her and does it improve your mood?</p>
<p>Friendship is a kind of mutually beneficial contract.
I help you, you help me, together we continue the species.
This applies to families more specifically.
That is the primary motivation. There could be other reasons too.</p>
<p>Friends give us stuff, and hugs. A study showed that baby monkeys given the choice between a bottle of life-giving milk and a huggy soft blanket will usually choose the cuddly blanket. Google the images, it’s adowwable.</p>
<p>Because we are egotistical beings that would rather have someone looking at us than not. </p>
<p>I highly recommend this TED talk by Dan Gilbert on Happiness.
[YouTube</a> - TEDTalks: Dan Gilbert (2005)](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA)</p>
<p>Really, watch it! If not now, later, when you have time. It will truly put the concept of happiness into perspective for you.</p>