pingeroo

I'm in the process of doing this now with my first enterprise meeting coming up this week.

Could you share more insight on the shift from D2C to B2B? What challenges did you face while making this transition and how did you combat them?

Thinking it could be worse makes us grateful that it is not. Thinking it could be better makes us desire for more. In that way I think the two ideas are different.

I think there is great wisdom in the buddhist idea of desire being the root for all suffering. But if we want to make progress we have to desire for more. So then we have to embrace the Buddha's idea that "life is suffering".

Another factor I haven't seen mentioned much in this thread, which undoubtedly plays a role in our happiness is genetics and upbringing. Some of our brains are just wired in ways that predispose us to being (un)happy.

Oh yeah I remember he brought this up once

Some more questions to add to this list: 1) Are you short of food or water 2) Are you or your loved ones in constant fear of being enslaved and/or blown to bits 3) Has there been a systematic effort to drive out your culture and replace it with another

I could go on but I think I've made my point. So many people today live in what could only be described as hell. Sitting in the western world with our cushy lives, regardless of how many headlines we read about war, famine, rape and death, it just doesn't really matter to us. It's not our world and it's not our problem. If only we could see things from their perspective. If only we could feel their suffering the way they do, I don't think we could be unhappy for a day in our lives.

But as humans naturally we are never satisfied with where we are and what we have. We always want more. Even when we have enough to eat, we want more. Even when we are surrounded by people who love us, we want more. Even when we have money, we want more.

In many ways I suppose this is both a blessing and a curse. The constant desire to make things better, faster, stronger, and never being satisfied with what we have is what fuels us. Without it we would not have made all the astounding innovations that, to an observer from the past, could only be characterized as magic.

I guess it all comes down to mindset in the end. The good old question of "is the glass half empty or half full?"

I look around at the world and see the same wretchedness that you do, but perhaps I don't see it as you do. I take solace in knowing it could all be a lot worse.

I think religion is absolutely a huge factor in happiness. Some of the most deeply religious people I know are also the happiest. Conversely the most miserable people I know are not. Most religions erase uncertainties & fears that haunt us, like death of loved ones and our own. They give people purpose and a reason to live — the sense that everything will be fine in the end. I don't like when people dismiss religion and liken it to fairy tales or delusion. At a fundamental level religion is perhaps the most effective antidepressant.

This. I came to the states from a country where I would routinely see people living in literally shitty conditions. When I see people depressed in America, I can't help but cringe a little. I'm not discounting people's misery, because I know these feelings are based on a relative scale.

When you are born in heaven, you don't realize you're living in it. Funnily from what I've observed, the same goes for hell.

I wouldn't say it's a short term state. At least personally, I can pause at any point in the day and think "am I happy", to which the answer is usually yes. Of course there are peaks and valleys, which as you described, are usually short bursts of emotion — like when you listen to your favorite song or see your best friend. But I think happiness also exists at a more baseline level when you are just... content in being.

I suspect the answer here is politics. Eearly into the pandemic, the lab-leak theory was being conveyed mostly by conservative voices.

This time article dives into this idea: https://time.com/6051414/donald-trump-wuhan-laboratory-leak/

Funnily enough me and my peers usually end up watching Khan Academy videos anyway since they do a way better job of explaining topics than university content.

I realized the absurdity of this when I found out that my university's president earns more than the president of the United States

Is this real?

Waiting for someone to get doom running on one of these bad boys.