X-Message-Number: 25291
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 08:58:55 -0800
Subject: Suffering and Happiness, to Robert
From: <>

Dear Robert,

[snip]

You wrote:

"The absence of pain does not imply stagnation. Pleasure can have  
differences of kind and differences of degree, providing ample  
motivation."

People will always choose what they perceive to make them happiest. 
Therefore, if they switch from one kind of experience to another, 
this necessarily implies the kind of experience they switched from 
made them less happy (in their own eyes) than the kind of 
experience they are switching to. This implies one of two things: 
people will never revisit old experiences, and will eventually 
stagnate on the kind of experience that gives them the most 
happiness (unless there are an infinite number of new kinds that 
they keep discovering), or the value that people place on an 
experience changes with time (e.g. goes down with overexposure to 
that experience).

In the latter case, clearly change of experience can only be the 
result of some measure of dissatisfaction---i.e. thinking that some 
other experience will give you more happiness than the present one, 
at the present time. This is what I meant by 'suffering'. 

Of course, I would consider it a very tame world in which this were 
the only kind of suffering to exist.

[snip]

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

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