Happiness vs truth

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You mentioned happiness, but I am not sure I understand where truth fits in? I suppose we all want a reasonably happy life. It is funny that you mention it, because my demands seem so modest. While non-autistic people dream of being millionaires, getting the prettiest spouse, etc., I dream about having just a plain Jane girlfriend and a few close friends. I call that far from being obsessed with happiness. I find it just wanting to be less lonely in life.

However, your title is profound. I find that happiness is more important than truth, and that truth is the road to destruction. For example, I have a strong tendency to get addled and stressed out about irrational and illogical tendencies in the World. I get in huge political arguments with both liberals and conservatives, because I can't conform to their versions of reality. I rebel against it, because I have my own sense of right and wrong. So, truth to me is an illusive, destructive thing. I prefer to be loved and wanted by some people. That's more important than truth, because I have also learned in this World that it has always been a mad, crazy place. You can't have reason in an unreasonable World.

Putting it in caps doesn't make it true. Ever consider the fact that you didn't in fact choose to be happy? That maybe you were just blessed with a better brain chemistry/wiring? The whole notion of saying happiness is a choice (and thus being unhappy is some kind of sin or vice) comes across as the epitome of arrogance.

Even if it is a choice, do people really want to be happy all the time?

Not all people have like mirror neurons. Continuous subjection to pain, discomfort, and/or hopeless situations might down-regulate those "happy" mirror neurons.

I also know that when something is getting me down, I need something else to change my focus. I can't "get over it" by doing some mindless activity with a smile planted on my face. Negative states have to be replaced with something positive. I can't replace the negative with a vacuum. I'm not like the average folk who don't have too much going on in their head and can easily find contentment with simple things. I need fairly heavy mental activity to find contentment or replace all the bad s**t rattling around. In most cases just smiling isn't going to cut it.

Forcing myself to be happy does not work. Antidepressants do not work on me (in fact they are no better than enhanced placebos - I didn't know this when I first took them, but now know why they didn't work, I am not susceptible to the placebo effect). In general depression is a way of the body saying that something is wrong in your life and needs to be changed, although often at the time you don't realise what is wrong or how to change it.

Nowadays my moods go up and down (often without obvious reason), but I have learnt to deal with it (as long as not too extreme) and that is the best thing to do as medication just messes things up. When I am happy I can be very happy - perhaps more so than most people. Certainly I am satisfied with my life and don't fruitlessly wish for more, although I dislike what society has become and don't think I fit into it properly, that is a general problem however. I can spend weeks loving my life and then weeks thinking about suicide and feeling on the edge of madness. It can change very quickly. To a certain extent I have got used to it - I have realised how feelings can change and so the lows are not so bad as there is always the possibility of a high just around the corner. I wouldn't fake happiness though and to be honest I can't see how it is possible to fake it or to 'choose it' - I do value truth more, and being truthful about being unhappy is more likely to lead to change to make you happier than denying it and pretending happiness.

I wish I could say the same. I am bitter from the very beginning. I wanted such a simple, fair life, and instead got neglect and loneliness. As far as society changing, I am slowly adjusting. However, I think today's biggest flaw is thinking that there is some "perfectly fair" answer out there. The past is distorted into either a horribly, bigotted World or a dreamland. Well, every era has its ups and downs, and that also depends how one looks at it. The thing I dislike the most about the last twenty years is how we have moved away from true inclusion and love to a narrow-minded, selfish viewpoint (Right wing and Left wing).