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Scraps: "Happiness"
Note: I'm just grabbing the most interesting and/or coherent parts from these abandoned text files and deleting the rest. Don't expect it all to be stuff I still believe... or even, for that matter, stuff I can still explain. :P
It has been the mistake of everyone cradling a new insight, everyone who has followed a new path to its end, to stand in that new place and claim happiness.
Happiness is structural. It is an emotional correspondence to the relationships between one's parts and one's whole. What are the kinds of unhappiness, then...
It is a petty set of constraints under which can a life be optimized.
One can never go so astray as one can in adopting a metaphor.
The question of happiness is now an abusive one. To ask after happiness is to advance a two-pronged scrutiny, half of the scrutiny the probing of the questioner, who after all must have a reason to ask, and half the sudden need of the person asked to both evaluate and express himself. Are you happy? And can you ask the question without every answer preemptively rejected?
It has been the mistake of everyone cradling a new insight, everyone who has followed a new path to its end, to stand in that new place and claim happiness.
Happiness is structural. It is an emotional correspondence to the relationships between one's parts and one's whole. What are the kinds of unhappiness, then...
It is a petty set of constraints under which can a life be optimized.
One can never go so astray as one can in adopting a metaphor.
The question of happiness is now an abusive one. To ask after happiness is to advance a two-pronged scrutiny, half of the scrutiny the probing of the questioner, who after all must have a reason to ask, and half the sudden need of the person asked to both evaluate and express himself. Are you happy? And can you ask the question without every answer preemptively rejected?