Andy got it exactly right. Happiness is a gluttonous maw that will only close for a moment at a time to swallow whatever you've thrown into it. No matter how much goes into that bottomless pit, sooner or later it'll open again to demand more sacrifice. Happiness is is overrated. Happiness is the sarlacc pit of the soul.
Satisfaction is where it's at. Once you are content with your life, everything you have will be enough. It'll do and you will be fine.

This type of person is pretty common in Britain. They mistake self satisfaction for happiness.
The illusion falls apart when they get to around 50.
It won't be long before she'll be sitting at an Italian marble work surface in her bespoke kitchen drinking Pinot at nine in the morning, calling her blind twelve year old Labradoodle “Darling”

Droppin' burritos from RC aircraft; I can see how a fella'd derive a whole lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of it.-Delmer

Part of my point is that I don't think gender roles are inflexible. There are going to be times when a man is truly happiest when he is at home spending the majority of his time engaged with his children's development. And there are going to be times when a woman is in her element when inundated with business concerns or creative obsessions.

But most of us won't be like that. Most of us, I think, will feel the greatest satisfaction following the guidelines our biology has laid out in front of us. Guidelines, not rules.

I really hate that they bring in (mostly) unrelated crap like abortion statistics, but the core of their argument here is correct.

Yes, correct, in my opinion.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately, and if you are rejecting what they say about female breadwinners out of hand, you are not thinking deeply on the subject.

Certainly, every woman should have the right to do with her life as she pleases. Whether that is career, family, or some combination of the two. But I think in the coming years there will be more and more people realizing that the average woman can NOT have it all. While there will be a few exceptions, most women will not be good mothers to their children while working 40+ hours per week, and ANYBODY who doesn't give 110% to their career will not reach the highest levels of that career.

Women need to be taught young that they need to make a choice and prioritize. If you look at young girls, you will see them fantasizing from a very young age about being a mother. You will see women of all ages fantasizing about marriage. And you will see feminists telling them that they are wrong for doing that. You will see society pushing and pushing and pushing for women to choose career over family while giving nothing but lip service to the importance of family. And if you look at the statistics, you will see this is beginning to have an effect on society. More women are postponing starting a family, and some are even working through the height of their childbearing years to the point where they can no longer find a suitable mate to have children with at all.

And if they do have children, the women are not at home to raise them. Sure, they are home for the first few months to a year, then they're back to work and the children are being raised by strangers. Mom comes home in the evening and asks how everybody's day was, exactly the way dad does (assuming dad is still in the family core).

This is not a popular sentiment yet, but I believe that gender roles existed for a reason. Just looking at male and female biology, it is plain to see that (in general) men are equipped for the tasks that require strength, and women are equipped to raise children. And for most of recorded history, gender roles followed biology. I believe we are beginning to see a reckoning. It won't happen in every relationship. And of course I think we should be very careful about judging others. I think you should take this information and apply it to your own life. What kind of a family do you want? Do you want to have two working parents and kids in day care, or do you want one parent to stay home? Are you going to feel more satisfied staying home with the kids, or leaving every day to earn a paycheck? These are questions that nobody can answer but you. I think that absent a serious internal drive, women should gravitate to careers that will give the maximum flexibility so that they can spend all the needed time with their children. I think that we should be teaching our children that they can do anything, but there are certain traditional roles that tend to bring people the greatest amount of life satisfaction. And I think we need to keep doing research and watching the statistics to verify or debunk everything I have just said, because I am fully aware that it is mostly speculation and gut instinct on my part.

Actually there's some pretty decent evidence to suggest that "juicing" is not a good idea at all.

You're essentially ruining perfectly good fruits and vegetables and ingesting more calories quicker. Plus, you don't get the same fibre content.

That said, cutting out processed food can only be good for you. The paleo diet is a good example of this.

Personally, I've stopped drinking soda and fruit juice, as they essentially just fructose in water and fructose is bad. I try not to buy any sauces or packaged foods and pretty much make as much as I can from scratch. It's better for you and there's more satisfaction from it.

And honestly I don't miss sugar at all.

But then there is my weakness, my kryptonite, my Achilles heel if you will. I do love me some ethanol.

There are other studies showing a different result:

https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=246605

or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia for a list

Basically when you look back in time past the gun buy back you see a linear rate drop in murder by firearms that is not affected by the buy back.

In fact, there are more firearms now in Australia than before the gun buy back (and the ownership rate is still increasing) and yet the murder rate by firearms is much lower than it was at the gun buyback point (and it is still decreasing).

Here's some facts and ideas. We have a very good mental health program. We have a world class free medical system. We have a world class welfare system for the unemployed/disabled/old/single parents/etc. We have world class free education to year 12 and then government subsidised university education. We have a 99% literacy rate. We have a high rate of satisfaction with life in this country. Our quality of life in general is one of the best in the world for just about everyone. I'd suggest this has a lot to do with our low murder rate.

*promote excellence in the field of self-satisfaction

FAQ #38 - Abuse Guidelines

Point 1:

Video votes must be cast only for the content and nothing else; the video must be viewed before voting

Abuse of the site, other members, votes, posts, comments, or any privileges, especially star abilities, whether mentioned above or not, may result in account suspension or a permanent ban

...as to relentlessly pushing crap...

Where is this delineated as an abuse?

Further, me thinks you overestimate the quality of a great deal of the content here and underestimate and undervalue user satisfaction or contributions to said satisfaction.

However, have it as you will, it is your dog and pony show.

Please, save the spurious platitudes.

I dunno, I think they're playing with meanings here. We use the word "happiness" to describe two very different things: 1) an emotion of well-being (which is always temporary) and 2) a general sense of fulfillment or satisfaction with one's life (which could be quite stable).

So yeah, money used in the way shown here can buy the 1st meaning of happiness but I don't think it's necessary for the 2nd (although it might help). For instance, Victor Frankl was able to find the 2nd meaning of happiness even while suffering at the hands of Nazi's in a concentration camp--he found things like the love for his wife, his work as a doctor, his camaraderie with his fellow prisoners meaningful enough to overcome the dark circumstances which he was surrounded by.

Ultimately I think it is we who are responsible for transcending our circumstances and environments (whether those be affluent or otherwise ) and creating our own happiness. But I do think the video does show us one way we can start down that path (i.e. by thinking of others and not just ourselves).

>> ^bobknight33:

Single payer system will drive up costs and inefficiencies. What these guys are doing is a good thing. Putting up prices and letting you decide.

If Coke was the only drink in to have then they would no no issue to set the price high. As soon as a competitor shows up and delivers a comparable product at a lesser price the true price of the product will be discovered.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^bobknight33:
Obamacare is not driving out the cost of healthcare for this group. Capitalism is.
from the text above:
The major cause of exploding U.S. heath care costs is the third-party payer system, a text-book concept in which A buys goods or services from B that are paid for by C. Because private insurance companies or the government generally pick up most of the tab for medical services, patients don't have the normal incentive to seek out value.
The Government gave us the third party payer system during WWII. Government is at fault.

Patients shouldn't have to "Seek out value." They're busy, usually being sick, or trying to work while being sick. It shouldn't be a for profit industry, everyone should have healthcare it should be a single payer system.



sorry i live in a "single payer system"

i know people who work in multiple departments/sectors of healthcare...everything from doctors, to home care, to IT

and i can say with full knowledge and satisfaction, that your statement that a single payer system drives up costs/inefficiencies is either ill informed, or completely full of bs...

the notion of competition as being the great equalizer is moronic, in a system where insurance companies spend 100s of millions of dollars lobbying to get the game rules changed in their favor... insurance companies main goal is to make profit... they do that by minimizing cost/quality of service while maximizing return... if you can't see how that contradicts the purpose of health care, you are either naive or morally bankrupt

the arguement that businesses are held to be more financially responsible than government is also a lie... a business only has the financial obligation to report accurate numbers while being fiscally sound... the government has that exact same obligation, but further more has to show VALUE for what it is doing

your argument about Coke mystically assumes Coke is the only drink, thus they could set the price at whatever they want... I assume you are making the arguement that Coke is healthcare? but a company who's goal is to sell coke to make profit... that's an insurance company.... a company who has to be accountable to the people giving it money while making sure that the MOST people have cheap and easy access to coke... that'd be the government

you can either argue that government operates the same as business (as you are trying to do with your horrible coke analogy), or you can argue that they operate differently (as most people who back the business produces better financial results than government argue)... but you don't get to argue both in the space of 2 paragraphs

you, sir or madam, have taken a big old swig of the kool-aid

I have to disagree a bit. Do you need to do hard work? Yes, but there are plenty of hard working people who struggle and never become financially successful. They may obtain some personal satisfaction, but the "rich people are rich because they work hard, and poor people are poor because they are lazy" mentality that is so popular in the US is flat out wrong. Not everyone working at your local restaurant, retailer or whatever is there because they are lazy, sometimes people get stuck in a rut and hard work alone won't get you out of it.

There is a great deal of talent and luck involved as well. Had Carnegie not worked for Scott, he very well may have never became the rich guy he became. He lucked out working for someone who mentored him and gave him a huge boost. Had Carnegie never gotten to where he did, then perhaps Frisk would have just been a hooligan and the Johnstown Flood never would have happened... had Carnegie been more himself, he probably never would have hired Frisk, which at least would probably have stopped the disaster of the Homestead Strike (of course then he may have never became the philanthropist he became). There were also plenty of hard working people in the early days of computers, there was a ton of luck involved for Apple and Micro-soft to break out and become what they would eventually become. In those two cases, it helped that Gates and Jobs were asshats in their early days, which gets back to being yourself. But for each Gates/Jobs there were many more equally hard working people who never became successful and faded back to obscurity. It's not like Romney became rich through hard work, he came from money and Bain Capital is named for Bill Bain who appointed Romney CEO... not to discount Romney's work there, or his work at school proving himself, but how likely would it be that he would have been CEO had he come from a poor family and didn't get to get to go to such a high end university? Likely no.

That all isn't to say hard work doesn't help, it is a key, but hard work alone counts for squat.

>> ^chilaxe:

Basically he's saying "Be yourself and somehow you'll become successful or something if you're lucky."
Better advice: "Hard work and perseverance beats talent and luck, and successful careers can be reduced down to an algorithm."

I laughed so freakin hard when I saw this. "To my satisfaction. And more importantly...."