Quote:
Originally Posted by hankster
I think matt is just trying to find an evolutionary reason to be happy, like if you can be happy, you have a better chance of surviving and passing on your genes, so thats why it would be considered "superior". If you read his other threads and some of the posts here, i dont think hes arguing that "im better than you are" - its more like, what is the optimal, natural state for a human being and why? Its more philosophical.
We dont really have a philosophy forum.
|
Like eugenics? 
Perhaps you are right, but if it is an examination of what might be experienced as an optimal state, it's an unusually inflammatory one. For instance, having lost loved ones to the far end of severity of bipolar disorder, it's a bit discomfiting to hear one of its poles being described as a superior state, since without the existence of those poles in tandem, certain persons I have known might still be here.
The reference to Hitler certainly seems to go beyond the possibility of being innocently inflammatory. 
Anyway, it is indeed my own philosophical belief that no person is superior to any other. Looking at us from far enough away I'm sure that we look like one single, messy organism.
__________________
“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day.”
— Antonio R. Damasio, “The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness” (p.28)
|