Happiness in the modern world
 

So this morning I was reading through Spinoza's Ethics for the first time, and one thing that caught my eye was his insistence that suicide can only happen by external influence, exemplias gratias bereavement or shame. He flat-out said that it's impossible for the mind to wish for non-existence according to its own nature. Having read De Civitate Dei a number of times and that Spinoza was a huge fan of patristic literature, I realized that Spinoza was simply lifting this idea from Augustine.

I'd already created a thread, long long ago, about Augustine's arguments about the irrationality of suicide. It strikes me as odd, however, that in the 1100 years from his time unto that of Spinoza, the opinion hadn't changed between the two. I know that suicide was a problem in the middle ages, but all the instances of which I've read were associated with what Spinoza would consider an external influence. This begs the question: has anything changed in the human psyche since the 1600s, and if so, why?

When I thought about it, I realized that happiness has undergone a drastic overhaul of definition in the past few centuries. Reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, it becomes clear that, at least among the Stoics, the ancients held happiness to be nearly antithetical to temporal joy. Happiness to them was satisfaction in having lived a worthwhile life, and little more. Ad hoc joy was associated with folly or ignorance. Two and a half years ago, when I warned my priest about my mental collapse and eventual suicide attempt on account of never experiencing any satiating sense of joy, he just said "So what? Joy is transitory."

Today, however, happiness is considered the possession of sound mind, the fulfillment of all pertinent needs, and the attainment of lasting somatic joy. If any of these is lacking, it's considered a serious defiiciency, hence being poor is considered a social evil.

Having studied biology, I highly doubt that there's been any shift in the frequency of depression-related imbalances in the past three millennia. However, coupling these imbalances with social norms that imply that its unhealthy to not smile and see rainbows all the time probably leads to a new evolution in depression. Depression becomes more palpable because social norms posit it as being abnormal.

I've never read papers on the subject, but I just had to rant a bit.

Well classifying external influence is a big thing here:

Even to be awake and observing a natural environ is external influence.

Self-awareness is moot without a context and the context is in essence interactive.

I agree that an organism would not be self-defeating unless strain is excersized on it's psyche.

Re: Happiness in the modern world
 

That's interesting. What were Spinoza's and Augustine's thoughts on madness? I'm talking about big-time craziness. Whereas the notion of depression as disease is probably relatively new, madness has been around since forever, and they must've noticed it. Is it somehow tied in with their notions of evil? Would they say that someone who is mad could commit suicide, even if that act is unencumbered by "external influence"?

There's also a bit of ambiguity about what is meant by "mind". I wonder if they believed that only an irrational person could wish to commit suicide, or that the only time a rational person could rationally commit suicide is because of grave "external influences". I think it's fairly rational to say "gee, I might as well kill myself before this black plague consumes me in a couple of days, to avoid the horrible pain associated with dying."

I agree with Helm on this one, the definition of external influence is far too broad. It's almost as if stating the obvious. Statistically speaking, ALL suicide is caused by external influences. Hypothetically, even people unhappy with themselves are mostly looking at themselves through an externally posited and influenced social standard, and their failure to satisfactorally live up to an artificial (read: external) influence leads to the ultimate decision.

I could in theory defeat my own argument if you accept certain liberties, such as that in nature lemmings are prone to thoughtlessly throw themselves off cliffs and hillsides (though the scientific validity of this is in somewhat question, and I don't know enough about it to submit it as absolute proof, but food for thought nonetheless.)

Though one could also argue that in nature, animals that are innate loners simply don't kill themselves, but that could also be the lack of intelligence necessary to do so.

That was, I believe, a one-time occurrance, and it was because the lemming population literally tripled and there was just no where else to go. They didn't throw themselves into the ocean, they were pushed into it.


Edit: Come to think of it, a better example would probably be the sterile worker bees in a hive, who are literally born to die. They can't reproduce and are there only to slave and to die to protect the hive.

In reality, lemmings do not participate in mass suicide - this is a myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming

I know, I know, I admitted it myself that it probably wasn't scientifically sound...

Just trying to bring a new facet to the debate, really.

In another vein... it could very well possibly be that suicide isn't innate BECAUSE you don't see "lesser" animals participate in the act. Maybe it's not the external stimulus itself that causes it but the subject in question's conclusions about the stimulus.

This is how I understood what Seth meant by "external influence":

How does someone explain why he or she wants to commit suicide? One has to give an explanation - I want to off myself because _____. To Spinoza, a possible explanation could be "because my son was killed in the Thirty Years War" or "because I have dishonored my family" or even perhaps "because I am already dying of the Plague". It appears that Spinoza held that it was necessarily impossible that one could rationally argue for suicide for purely internally subjective reasons, such as "because I have a sad temperament" or that "my existence makes me unhappy".

I'm guessing that some sort of Cartesian mind/body separation is implied here, and that Spinoza holds the mind to be fundamentally rational and would not want to do irrational things, but that's just a guess.

unless you hit the "nuke all lemmings" button


Also, I just found, and love, this site
http://www.soulselfhelp.on.ca/suicide.html

Assuming that the lemming story is true, did they -know- they were killing themselves? If not, it is less like suicide and more like accidental death.

animals probably do not 'know' in the sense a human knows and that's a really misleading argument that doesn't add to the discussion at hand. The Lemmings weren't 'knowing' that they were killing themselves, at any rate.

spinster: I'm not sure if Spinoza uses dualist foundations in his reasoning, but it would make sense if you think of the rest of his work. I am not a dualist, and therefore this discussion becomes even more complicated from my point of view because external and internal stimuli are much more difficult to seperate.

I think the argument at hand, although interesting to debate, can and will eventually be broken down to scemantic debates over the uncertain terms used, and therefore will end in stalemate while we throw our hands into the air in the collected frustration that discussing linguistics and epistemology usually brings.

Do you think we could just ask Seth to clarify what he meant by external influence?

And I agree with Helm's view that this argument would eventually turn into a linguistic debacle, but then, I've found that most things in philosophy usually do.

From the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/

Not a useful solution. 'Thought' and 'Extension'? Sounds dualist to me. It's not how you name the two parts, it's that you even consider them to exist. The whole holistic issue is that much of how we're used to think of 'people' is fundamentally flawed and can therefore only lead to flawed conclusions. It goes right back to "I" versus "everything else", the inside and the outside. What we're discussing, really. A new philosophical language is needed to more accurately portray the complicated interconnections that form the whole of a human being.

Guys I would just like you to know that I live in the modern world and I am pretty happy with my life so far

DEFINE LIVE

DEFINE MODERN

DEFINE HAPPY

DEFINE DEFINE

def·i·ni·tion ( P ) Pronunciation Key (df-nshn)
n.

1.
1. A statement conveying fundamental character.
2. A statement of the meaning of a word, phrase, or term, as in a dictionary entry.
2. The act or process of stating a precise meaning or significance; formulation of a meaning.
3.
1. The act of making clear and distinct: a definition of one's intentions.
2. The state of being closely outlined or determined: “With the drizzle, the trees in the little clearing had lost definition” (Anthony Hyde).
3. A determination of outline, extent, or limits: the definition of a President's authority.
4.
1. The clarity of detail in an optically produced image, such as a photograph, effected by a combination of resolution and contrast.
2. The degree of clarity with which a televised image or broadcast signal is received.

Emu, what are you doing

You guys talk about stupid shit. Seriously. How do you know how animals think and feel, none the less a human being. Psychology isn't as simple as smiley faces and sad faces. :) :( << Does that explain anything? No.

What I basically meant by "external influences" is any stimulus that provokes thinking or actions inconsistent with the brain's usual activity.

I guess the fundamental point is that most cases of clinical depression are not external influences, since they reflect the nature of the mind itself. If you go into a line of infinite causations, then ultimately EVERYTHING has roots in external causes, but I think it's easy enough to know when to draw the line. This provokes the question, why are depressed people so much more visible now, and why are they killing themselves?

On the general question of "madness", it's been my assumption that until the Victorian Era or so most people who were "mad" simply found ways to blend in with their society, unto the point of their being batshit insane. Perhaps violent crimes were more prevalent because of this; it wouldn't be surprising, but I haven't seen statistics either way. An interesting statement that Augustine posed is that "Man would rather be unhappy and sane than joyful and mad". I've always wondered if that's the case for myself.

as far as the augustine "madness" theory goes, maybe it's at leawst in part about a desire for the life of greatest ease. if you're a smoker in a room full of non-smokers, you're likely in for a load of crap piled on your plate if you even mention the fact that you smoke. expectations and not feeling up to or not wanting to withstanding the tumultuous waves of dischord. i've seen it in myself with my parents.

i'm refusing to edit that w out. to repress my anal tendencies toward such things.

Happiness and sadness are caused by too many variables. One person could've "lost their son in the war 30 years ago" and offed themselves, while another would've become a freedom fighter and bombed some government building, while another could've just moved on with their life.
So you might be tempted to try to take that single persons suicide and group it with other suicides that generally share the same scenario(not everyone reacts the same) to try to derive some common factor. The only issue with that is, "Not everyone reacts the same". You can't isolate some single principle, because it's not some single principle. It might, at some token, be that they are sad with their existance(and that's such a blanket statement, you could say that about ANYONE, why do puppies cry? They are sad about their existence), but again, some people are sad with their existence and chose to move on. Essentially, there is no blanket statement you could give in an argument like this that would make any sense whatsoever if you were considering all angles, which any reasonably intelligent person should be doing.

Good day.

Re: Happiness in the modern world
 

Social evil depends on the society. Even where poverty is considered evil it is still subjective based on a person's willingness to let society influence their mental health, self-esteem, ect. Some people are just happy (or happier) with less ... to a degree.

Are we talking happiness in our station in life, our view of ourselves, a feeling of acceptanctance/love of others, a feeling of comfort/safety be it from material possesions or otherwise, ect? This could all spiral downhill into arguments of semantics without really make any true in-roads into what happiness means.

and possibly anal.