Should we give up on happiness and seek truth? — TheMadFool

I think the truth and happiness can coincide; depends what you believe the 'truth' is I suppose. I've spent years thinking about the 'truth' and I think it has made me happier rather than sad.

What aspect of the 'truth' do you find incompatible with happiness?

Should we give up on happiness and seek truth? — TheMadFool

Maybe if we could fully accept the truth, no matter what it turned out to be, we’d be happy.

Hedonism is so natural. Everybody wants to be happy. — TheMadFool

Should we give up on happiness and seek truth? — TheMadFool

These tell me you don't understand your own questions. As such, well, why don't you try either offering some definitions of your terms, or, if you don't understand what happiness (or Hedonism) is, then just say so and ask for a discussion of that. Don't ask what truth is; that's been covered and recovered many times. If you want to go through it all again, start a different thread. Which is not a bar to your saying what truth is in the context of this thread....

We're simply not built for happiness. We're build to feel both rapture and agony. These feelings are aspects of your being, all, and cannot be expunged without simply their neglect, lack of integration, delegation to the unconscious. All things have their place, all things have their moment.

We all know that in the context of murdering someone, feeling rapture is a worrying thing. Just as it is inappropriate to feel agony at someone else's fortune, and well being. To focus on feeling particular ways, is to suggest that one either become this sort of delusional, or that one shuts out, and hides from "triggers" of unfavorable emotions. Insanity, and decadence. Humanity's favorite flavors.

But sometimes the truth doesn't make us happy. That means that truth is an objective with value separate and independent of happiness. — TheMadFool

Not necessarily. Truth may not make us happy in the short term, but if you avoid the truth and do self-destructive things that make you happy in the short term you will end up a very sad person.

We're simply not built for happiness. — All sight

At least we're not built for enduring uninterrupted happiness. If life doesn't interrupt our happiness, we will do it ourselves.

Maybe it is more important for us to be useful in the world and to feel wanted and needed than it is to feel "happy". Useful, wanted, needed... shouldn't be taken as cognate terms for "happiness". Feeling useful, wanted, and needed are feeling useful, wanted, and needed. People who are useful, wanted, and needed are often, as the result of their being useful, wanted, and/or needed, engaged in work or care that is not pleasure or happiness producing.

For instance, municipal sanitation workers are useful, wanted, and needed. When they are called upon to repair a ruptured sewer line in the middle of a very cold winter night I don't imagine they feel 1 iota of pleasure in the experience. Still, they are MOST needed and wanted on the wretched, cold, wet job. They are also useful, needed, and wanted when they lay new water pipe in a fresh, dry ditch on a cool, sunny autumn day.

The truth. Hmm. Truth about what? Truth about Life? Or 2+2 = 4? Some activities in Life make me very happy. Even if some are hedonistic like jerking off to spank porn after binge eating ice cream and listening to Chopin through both. I've had moments of pure bliss where I'm cuddling with a lover and a cat jumps on the bed to cuddle too? Is being naked next to another body under the covers a truth? It certainly is not a stable truth if a society forbids it but forbidden things can be even more joyous in a way. I'd like to get away with the truth as though I've successfully committed a crime!

These simple moments of bliss, writing this response as thought or turning on a porn is not the ultimate Truth, as it happens too rarely but it does happen on rare occasions when material relations present themselves as compatible such as free time or a reciprocal love.

Life is suffering and sometimes happy things happen but 2+2 = 4 is while true, not The Truth either and certainly doesn't make me happy even though it is always true. There is comfort in it always turning out, always being predictable, but lived life is a much more complicated equation with many working parts.

Overall to give up on happiness and seek the truth suggests happiness is not compatible with truth and that there is only one big Truth to be sought which will make us unhappy! I prefer a view which suggests that there is a variety of truths and some if these truths are boring such as the shoes are on the rug, some have functional utilities such as math, and others make us happy like writing or petting a cute furry kitten. Others sad like the fact loved ones die.

Truth is not just a woman, seek many truths, think many things, and have many experiences. Happiness comes and goes. Just keep busy.

Is happiness really a worthwhile motivational force or goal? — TheMadFool

What is happiness?

Should we give up on happiness and seek truth? — TheMadFool

What is truth?

What is happiness? — bloodninja

The definition of happiness I'm familiar with is the development of talents, satisfaction of desires and the avoidance of pain.

What is truth? — bloodninja

Truth is achieved when a hypothesis one entertains matches observation and predicts outcomes well.

Maybe it is more important for us to be useful in the world and to feel wanted and needed than it is to feel "happy". — Bitter Crank

There's something in this type of existence. To do one what must rather than doing something one likes. Indeed someone in a low-paying job is forced into it and, ergo, must exist without satisfying his/her desires. Perhaps one must bring into play Maslow's heirarchy of needs here. For some people it's not about happiness but about survival.

Not necessarily. Truth may not make us happy in the short term, but if you avoid the truth and do self-destructive things that make you happy in the short term you will end up a very sad person. — Purple Pond

What do you make of pessimism or absurdism? Are these happy philosophies? There is truth in them, right?

These tell me you don't understand your own questions. As such, well, why don't you try either offering some definitions of your terms, or, if you don't understand what happiness (or Hedonism) is, then just say so and ask for a discussion of that. Don't ask what truth is; that's been covered and recovered many times. If you want to go through it all again, start a different thread. Which is not a bar to your saying what truth is in the context of this thread.... — tim wood

Nobody wants to be in a fool's paradise.

But

Ignorance is bliss.

Maybe if we could fully accept the truth, no matter what it turned out to be, we’d be happy. — praxis

Will curiosity kill the cat?

Or

Will wisdom lead to Utopia?