The Secret of Happiness

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By relegating ourselves to unhappy lives, we are making the world a better place!

I think, in reality, those bad people are just dragging us down with them.

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It must be nice to be privileged enough to ignore politics and be happy. I could, but my employer doesn't. My landlord doesn't. CEO 's don't. They lobby to keep prices high, wages low, and workers powerless...

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Joking aside.....the wise man knows his shit.

HubertManne

I think the promise here is the idea it will bring happiness. As any good buddhist will tell you it will just avoid suffering.

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Agree. But if you're not going to argue in good faith, if you're not going to discuss with an open mind, if you're going to add toxicity.....then best to stay silent. Shouting your opinion at other people (no matter how ignorant their opinion is) is never going to change their mind.

Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod

Well they’ve got the time and money for hobbies like that.

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Not sure what you mean, Buddhists are some of the best activists out there. Buddhism believes in the Middle Way. By avoiding suffering, you are denying yourself enlightenment. However seeking/creating unnecessary suffering is also bad.

HubertManne

I mean it will not bring happiness but it will avoid suffering. I get that is not what is meant I was just being cute about the comic and the general interpretation of the four truths.

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Totally fair. I misinterpreted what you meant, my bad

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I can see where you come from, but as a gay man, I would go crazy if I had to enter every homophobic encounter with an open mind.

Also, entering an argument might not change the other persons mind, but it might change the mind of bystanders

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The aesthetic lifestyle is one of divorcing oneself from the world in order to achieve the nirvana of oblivion.

It is less the secret to happiness and more the secret to the absence of sadness.

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It must be nice to be privileged enough to ignore politics and be happy.

Is "privileged" what we're calling it when when you've resigned yourself to being powerless? That seems like like privilege and more like despair.

my employer doesn’t. My landlord doesn’t. CEO 's don’t. They lobby to keep prices high, wages low, and workers powerless…

If the privileged people are engaged with politics and the disenfranchised people are powerless, wouldn't this suggest that engaging with politics is the privilege and its being reserved for the exceptionally wealthy?

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If you aren’t out there commenting on political issues someone else will be.

If you're participating in a social media ecosystem full of artificial content and bot-engagement, you're not engaging in any kind of interpersonal debate. You're just arguing with robots.

If only 1 group of people comment then lurkers will think that group is the majority.

This is why the best use of your time is to go onto the 8chan boards and spend all your time posting.

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“I'd far rather be happy than right any day."

"And are you?"

"No. That's where it all falls down, of course."

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Scrubbles

I think you're correlating people who have stopped engaging with people who don't care.

I have panic attacks when I think about the state of our world. I block out most posts that trigger me. If I didn't, I'd be a nervous wreck sitting in misery if I didn't. That doesn't mean I don't know what's happening, I'm very aware and I keep up, but I'm also not going to have a constant feed of anxiety forced in my face.

We used to be informed if we read a daily newspaper. Don't confuse "refusing to have constant anxiety" with privilege.

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Open mind to racists, homophobes, ....? Are you serious?

NaibofTabr

(what is "political" ?)

Anything that relates to the polity

in general it is important to talk about "politics" with people

Absolutely. People used to talk about this stuff in pubs and on the streets all the time. People used to literally go out and stand on streetcorners and harass everyone passing by with their opinions (soapboxing). Political structure and governance were common public discourse, with strangers, in public settings. The Federalist Papers were widely distributed and read because there was an interested audience, and they weren't the only example of political publishing for public consumption at the time, just one of the best-known examples.

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"This may alarm you...It scares the willies out of me."

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I don’t think they meant to bite at anyone. I feel compassion for anyone who has been beaten down by our system and doesn’t have any fight left. I still have a little, and I take that statement as encouragement to keep fighting. Despair and depression are brutal and I’ll keep fighting for both of us.

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Most of the time when I get into an argument with someone on Lemmy (formerly Reddit) it was for the people who may read it more than the other person. The best outcome in those cases is civil disengagement, not changing their mind. But the goal is to reveal some faulty logic and dismiss some disinformation for random strangers.