It's Me Against the World, or isn't it??

Some philosophers thought of what they called a pre-social human or the man of nature in ancient Greek terms. There is no evidence in history that such a human being has ever existed. Humans are essentially social animals. Any human being born in this world needs to be taken care of for a relatively long time. An infant born in this world without parental support will certainly not survive. However, in addition to the relatively long period of time required for any human being to be capable to survive on his own, the social nature of human beings extends beyond the need for parental support. We share with some other animals this tendency to live among large groups. This tendency to bond with others is a natural product of biological evolution shared by so many species including humans. The concept of pres-social animal defies empirical evidence. However, it might be useful after all to think of how the life of such a human being, isolated from any social relations, would be like.

In addition, to the empirical evidence suggesting that human beings need to bond to others in a manner equal to their need for food, sex and shelter, philosophical reflections upon human life revealed that human beings living in isolation would lack lots of what makes us humans. Such a pres-social human would not desire any thing other than his biological needs satisfied. Such a human being conception of happiness would be entirely different from ours. It can further be argued that such a human being might not be conscious of life as well. Consciousness has been explained as our ability to reflect upon our perceptual experiences. Such reflection requires an ability to form beliefs. Those beliefs can be thought of as linguistic representations of our perpetual and introspective experiences. A pre-social animal lacks language. After all, language is a social practice. It might be hard to think of a human being who is not conscious of his surroundings. However, this might be better understood by reflection upon the first two years of your life. As a two years old infant, you lacked language. In this early stage of life, you were certainly able to perceive your surroundings, hold memories, and be aware of your feelings of hunger, or pain. However, even though your experiences were to a large extent similar to your current experiences as an adult, it can be claimed that you were not conscious back then. Lacking language, you were not able to reflect upon those experiences and therefore you were not conscious of them.

So, a pre-social human has a motivational background so limited compared to us. In addition, his experience of the world lacks consciousness. This would certainly make such a pre-social human different from how we think of human beings to a large extent.

What is important about attempting to think of such a human being is that it reveals a lot about what makes us humans. Living among a society certainly has a great effect on making us what we take ourselves to be.

Others make us humans through two main ways interacting together, namely through language and actions. As we learn language, we don't only get to learn the name of things or the rules of grammar but in addition we learn the rules of rationality and the ultimate goals of life. Any language has inherent within it rules of what makes its own statements true or false. Those rules constitute the basis of rationality. In addition, language is used by others to guide our behavior. Guiding our behavior through language allows us to conceive the goals toward which our actions should be directed. So, as we grow up and our linguistic communication with other expands, we get to acquire rationality and we get to theorize of what is most significant and valuable in life. Linguistic communication with others provides us with reason and in addition it reformulates our desire so that it would extend to a much wider extent than being limited to the satisfaction of our mere biological needs. This claim can be better understood if we returned back to our pre-social human. Certainly this man of nature, even though might have mental and physical abilities similar to you, would lack reason and values. This is not only because he lacks a language through which reason and values can be explained to him but because he is not living in a society in which reason and values are crucial for his own survival.

Living among others doesn't only allow our desires and reason to evolve but in addition it shapes our will. Desiring something is one things and wanting to follow your desire or not is a totally different thing. Whether you want to follow your desires or not is governed by your own will. Will is shaped to a large extent by your habits. Others affect your habits either directly or indirectly. You get used to do things in a particular way either through imitation of others as you grow up or by finding your own way. Even, when you start doing things your own way, you are affected by the social system you live in, and therefore, others would still affect how you get used to do things even when you are not imitating them any more. This developing habitual pattern of yours shapes your will.

The effects of others upon you, whether of shaping your reason, desire, or will, are not objects of obvious awareness to most of us. Most of us at best have mere intuitions about what they generally desire, will to do, or figure out as reasonable. Cognitive psychologists have found out that most of our learning process goes unconsciously in our frontal lobes. Christof Koch in "The Quest for Consciousness" argued, based on empirical evidence, that consciousness lies at the prefrontal cortex rather than within the frontal cortex itself. Learning and thinking take place within the frontal lobes. The results of those processes are presented to our consciousness in the prefrontal cortex as mere intuitions.

However, as we reflect more upon our intuitions and as we brake down the components of what resides in our frontal lobes and bring them to the consciousness of the prefrontal cortex, we get to find out that reason, desire, and will might pull us in different directions. The wisdom transmitted to each one of us by others through language and actions is not yet prefect. That's why each individual human being still has an unfinished job. Each one of us through his life, needs to realize his own desires without violation of reason and through reshaping his own will. As you figure out new ways to solve this conflict and as you become more successful in achieving this piece of mind, you will affect others in return. This interaction between each individual of us and with the sum of wisdom created by others through centuries of cultural evolution might help us one day to know what is most significant to us and how to act in the right way.

When each one of us understand the role played by others in shaping the human being one is, we would understand the scope of our individuality better and we would get to learn to have a mutual respect between society and the individual. How you should respect others and how should others respect your individuality is something that I will write about later.

Game Life: Nothing Less Than Gods

Today, Game Life manual will be completed. The final stage will be revealed. Up till now no player has ever managed to reach this stage. However, with determination, hope and with the continuous cooperation among players it might be reached one day even if in the so distant future. Some might argue that reaching this stage is impossible and in fact it might be. However, the goal of Game Life or Eudaimonia can never be fully actualized unless this final stage is attained. In the final stage of Game Life, the impossible itself is what you are required to conquer. It is the stage at which the real nature of us is revealed with out any further fear or shame.

Humans, the most amazing species of creatures, have managed to survive through many long centuries. We were driven, by our basic desire to bond to each other, to cooperate together to start our very own process of cultural evolution. In this process, our amazing abilities of communication, conceptualization, imagination and adaptation allowed us to get into existence our very own creations. We created values, vice and virtue, wrong and right, good and evil. We created the concept of happiness. We conceptualized happiness as the attainment of the wonderful values of friendship, knowledge, accomplishment, practical reasoning and pleasure. The conceptualization of those values became the essence of our own nature and our own will. We suffered a lot in attempting to achieve those values. We faced lots of challenges. We tried to give up on them sometimes, but we can't escape our own selves. We can't escape the destiny we draw for our own selves. We can't escape the ultimate goal of Game Life.

As the challenges imposed upon us while attempting to actualize our core values became so strong, we had no choice but to use our strongest faculty, the faculty of imagination. We imagined gods. We assigned various gods with various values. We indulged ourselves in conceptualizing those gods as the realizations of those values. Gods represented those values triumphed over all possible challenges. Soon, gods were reduced to one god. We worshiped this god. After all, he was the essence of what ever we thought of as good. God resided in all of us, not as an entity distinct from us but as a symbol of our own essence. God is the realization of our own values, and our own happiness. God is the realization of the ultimate goal of Game Life. He is the realization of Eudaimonia. However, even though it might seem so daring to state it, God can't remain forever in our heads; we are destined to bring him into existence. Our nature as humans will never be completely revealed unless we become gods. This is the final stage of Game Life; Nothing Less Than Gods.

Final Stage: Nothing Less Than Gods

As more and more players reach the "Living it to the Maximum" stage, their contributions to the actualization of Eudaimonia will allow other players in the future to cooperate together more effectively to face the challenges imposed by the world we live in. hopefully, one day we will acquire complete knowledge of this world. Later, we will realize how to control it and power over universe will be attained. Such an absolute knowledge and absolute power guided with our other values will make us what we have longed for, for so long time. It will make us gods.

The task of any player who reaches this stage is to fully realize Eudaimonia despite all the challenges. Once this task is accomplished, Eudaimonia will be realized. With the realization of the ultimate goal of Game Life, game will not be over. The goal of Game Life is its own reward. Once Eudaimonia is achieved, its constituent values will be transformed to the absolute. Knowledge will become omniscience, accomplishment will become absolute power, friendship will become benevolence, practical reason will become wisdom, and pleasure will become total and absolute joy. Eternity will be accomplished and in this eternity you will get to enjoy those values to the point of infinity. Your limitless imagination and creativity will go on fueling your aspirations for knowledge, pleasure, accomplishment, benevolence and wisdom.

Such a goal might reside for ever in dream world. It might never escape this imaginary line of thought I called Game Life. However, what we can't deny is that this is our real dream. It is what we want. It is what makes up our will. We want to be nothing less than gods. Again whether you liked it or not, whether challenges you face managed to get you down or not, you have no choice but to seek this ultimate goal. You have no choice but to follow your own well, to listen to your real nature, and to seek your own dream. You have no choice but to play Game Life.

Game Life: Living it to the Maximum

I wish you are not bored yet guys. It seems like I am trying to answer a very big question in a very limited space. However, I still want to go on considering this fascinating game. It is at least insightful for me to attempt to conceive life in this manner. I think I should reintroduce my whole vision in a clearer manner. I will certainly do this in the future. However for now, I want to finish what I have started. Today, I will present another portion of the manual of Game Life.

After completion of the first stage of Game life, you will move to the next stage. "Just a human being" was the first stage of Game Life. The second stage is "living it to the maximum". By completion of the first stage you should have realized what is most important for you. You should know by now your most important value whether it is knowledge, practical reasoning, friendship, accomplishment or pleasure. You should have done considerable deal of work to attain this value. Now you are ready for the next harder stage of Game Life.

Second Stage: Living it to the maximum

In the "just a human being stage", your initial PTE was enough. In the "living it to the maximum" stage you are expected to realize nothing less than the general PTE. Your main task in this stage is to realize that Eudaimonia or happiness can't be attained unless you have actualized the various values of friendship, accomplishment, knowledge, practical reasoning and pleasure. You should have realized this from reflection upon your own life and the lives of other players. It is not only that other players in Game Life hold different values that all can be reduced to one of the five values mentioned repeatedly in the manual, but you yourself hold those values to be important even though you might have not recognized this initially.

Realizing the general PTE is an easy task compared to the second task in this stage. After realizing the general PTE, you are supposed to construct a corresponding PACT. This task is so difficult. Up till now no player has ever managed to achieve it. The problem is that since you have understood that the core values of the general PTE are shared by all other players, your theory of how to achieve those values, or your PACT in simpler terms, should not only allow you to achieve those values in your life but it should be suitable for any one as well to allow him to achieve the same values in his life. You are now participating in the construction of a general PACT that has not yet been adequately constructed. You are participating in the construction of morality itself.

So, your tasks in the stage can be explained further through the following points;

· Realize that happiness or eudaimonia can only be achieved through the actualization of the values of friendship, pleasure, knowledge, accomplishment, and practical reasoning.

· You should get involved in practices that allow you to achieve those values in your own life. In addition, you should commit to those practices so that your belief in the importance of those values becomes authentic and goes all the way down in your own personality.

· You should realize the real nature of those values. You should realize that in today's state of Game Life they are shared by all players even if they don't recognize it. You should also realize that those values can only be achieved through social interaction and can never be achieved in isolation.

· You are driven by the value of practical reasoning to construct a PACT or a theory of action that allows you to actualize your core values. However, since you now hold the value of knowledge as well, you are driven by this value to make your PACT accepted by all other rational beings. That's why your PACT can't be limited to your own situation but it should be suitable for all other players in Game Life.

· Construction of a successful universal PACT is difficult since most of the players in Game Life are still in the "just a human being stage" and accordingly don't recognize the importance of all of the values constituting the general PTE. Variations among those players in their starting points and the challenges they face make them vary even more considerably in their individual PACTS. In addition, the world you all players share place significant fluctuating challenges upon you that make it so difficult to construct a universal successful PACT corresponding to the general PTE.

· Since the construction of such a PACT is so difficult, all that's required from you in the "living it to the maximum stage" is to realize the five core values in your own life and to make what is considered by a significant portion of other players as a significant contribution to the construction of a universal successful PACT.

· Your contribution to the construction of a universal PACT should be transmitted by you to other generations of players in Game Life to allow them not to waste so much time in "just a human being" stage. Developing a successful universal PACT essentially requires solving lots of problems imposed upon you and upon other players by the world you share and by limitations of your abilities. Managing those problems successfully has never been achieved up till now. It will take the life time of so many players in Game Life. however, with the contribution of various players in "living it to the maximum"stage would allow one day other players to reach the final stage of Game Life, which is not only a stage of a game but the reward of Game Life itself.

Game Life: Just A Human Being...

Hi again guys. I will go on writing about Game Life. First of all, I would like to remind every one that the series of posts I write under the title Game life are not referring to some video game. It is rather an imaginary account attempting to answer the question "how should one live his life?" I thought it would be more stimulating and more appealing to you to answer this question in this alternative way. I wish you like it so far. Anyway, here is the rest of the manual of how to play Game Life. Enjoy it.

Stages of the game

Game life is a multi stage game. The first stage as argued before is a preparatory stage. In the preparatory stage you acquire the PTE and PACT. Again, you are not evaluated in this preparatory stage. The real game begins in the next stage. Once you reach adulthood, your mental abilities have fully developed and it is in this stage that evaluation of your progress in the game begins. Once the preparatory stage is over, you should pass through three different stages. It is those three stages that count.

First stage: "just a human being"

This stage can be considered as the first stage of the real game. You start this stage with a given starting point. You had a very limited role in shaping this starting point. However, you are supposed to work on this starting point to modify it so that you can achieve the ultimate goal of the game, namely achieving Eudaimonia. This is the main challenge of Game Life. Each player has a different starting point. The details of this starting point consist of the following:

· You are a member of various societies of other players. Those societies range from your family, the institution at which you work, circle of friends, marriage, partnership, recreational institutions and so on. In addition you are a citizen in a particular state. On the other hand, in today's current form of Game Life, you are also a member of a developing international society that extends to include the entire globe. Any of those societies might be more or less well defined. What makes a society or a group of players well defined or not is whether at least some of the players involved in this society have managed to constitute a well defined PTE or not. Any society with a well defined PTE would have a corresponding more or less defined PACT. This PACT might be well defined or not in the same manner as the PTE. In addition PACT might be successful or not depending upon whether it does in fact allow the realization of the corresponding PTE or not. Whether any of the societies you are involved in have a well defined PTE and PACT or not, and whether you recognize those social PTEs and PACTs or not, and whether those social PTEs and PACTs are consistent with your individual PTE and PACT might all vary in your starting point.

· You have a particular set of abilities; physical and mental. Those abilities together with the PTE and PACT of the societies you were involved in while in the preparatory stage have formed your own initial PTE and PACT.

· In addition to being a member of various societies, you also exist in a physical world. This world has its own form of behavior. This behavior has been explained best by the science theory developed by other players in the game. Taking this theory in account is essential for any successful PACT. The physical world you live in has a large impact on you in Game Life. All objects available to you in Game Life belong to the physical world and are governed by its form of behavior. Your body itself belongs to the physical world and similarly it follows its form of behavior. That's why having at least a primary grasp of the world surrounding you is essential for any successful PACT.

Clearly, your starting point in Game Life is complicated. Game Life is hard but don't give up on it, playing it properly would prove worthy of the effort invested in it.

Your ultimate goal in Game Life as mentioned before is to achieve eudaimonia. This ultimate goal can be achieved through fulfilling the tasks of each stage. In "just a human being" stage your tasks are the following;

· Grasp your initial PTE. The general PTE is the theory that is shared by all players of Game Life even though not recognized by them all. General PTE conceives happiness as a concept that can be reduced to various valuable concepts. According to general PTE, happiness or Eudaimonia can be achieved when one achieves friendship, understanding, practical reasoning, accomplishment and pleasure in his life. However, most of the players in Game Life start with an initial PTE that recognizes only one or some of those values but not all. This is again because in the preparatory stage your abilities, the societies you were involved in, and the world behavior surrounding you made it seem more possible for you to achieve one of those values rather than others. However, all that is required from you in the "just a human being" stage of this game is to recognize the value which is so important for you. Some might take friendship to be the most important thing; others might take accomplishment to the best thing in life, and certainly most would take pleasure to the most crucial in a happy life. Don’t resist your initial PTE. Take it as it is. Remember that what is required from you in this stage is to know what is the most important to you even if you have short slightness.

· Once you have determined the most important value to yourself, it will be time to move to the second more difficult task. The second task is the construction of an appropriate PACT. Knowing how to achieve what you take to be the most valuable is not an easy job. Lots of considerations must be put in mind while planning your action plan. This task can be broken down into the following more direct tasks.

· It is all about the activities you are involved in. to achieve your most valuable you must be involved in an activity within a social group that aims toward the actualization of this value. You can never achieve your most significant value in isolation.

· If the activities you are involved in are not adequate for the actualization of your main value, pick up new ones and get into them. You might even have to develop a whole new kind of activity directed toward the actualization of your main values. However, you will have to get others involved in this kind of activity. Together you will have to develop a well defined PTE and PACT of this new kind of activity.

· There are lots of challenges which will face you in actualization of your main value. Those challenges might be imposed by the world you live in, or by the social groups you are a member of. Manage those challenges as much as possible.

· Mange your time properly

· Mange your health situation

· Even if you don't accept the general PTE, you should try to remain away from any conflict with the PACT corresponding to this general PTE. Try as much as possible to avoid conflicts with others. If there is something you don't like about the behavior of others remember that what you are concerned with in this stage of the game is to actualize your main value. Affecting the general PTE and the corresponding PACT is left to the next stage of the game.

· In lots of times you might loose your motivation to pursuit your most significant value. Those are the times known as Pauses in Game Life. They might arise because of exhaustion or because of problems facing you. Remember that taking adequate care of your health status and solving problems imposed upon you by the world or by others is so crucial to avoid Pauses. However, most of the pauses are caused by neither exhaustion nor problems. Most of the Pauses are caused by lack of adequate habitual pattern. Your performance in Game Life depends to a large degree upon the kind of habits you have developed before. That's why you should develop a pattern of behavior that actualizes your most significant value and try to commit to it as much as possible to develop the adequate habitual pattern. By time Pauses will be encountered much less.

· Your performance in this stage can't all be devoted to the only one value you take to be the most significant. You will find yourself inclined to pursuit other values as well. After all the general PTS is still implanted in your head, its just lack of realizing it that prevents you from recognizing that all of its values are equally important. Don’t resist your desire to pursuit of other values. Instead learn from such tendencies. Learning from them will make you get more and more in contact with the general PTE which is very important for the next stage of the game. Allow your self to pursuit other values but without wasting so much time and effort. Save most of your time and effort to actualization of your most significant value.

· In Game Life, there are various supplementary games like sports, video games and so on. All of those supplementary games are great arena for training. They would allow you to develop the right sort of realization of a goal and rules in any game. They would also allow you to notice how being committed can help you greatly in playing this game.

By the end of this stage you are supposed to actualize your main value to a large degree. You should realize the general PTE and the importance of other values in your life. This stage of Game Life is not easy. However, when ever you feel like over whelmed by it, then this would be a good time to relax and focus on other values than the one you are most occupied with. After all it is just a game.

Before moving on to the next stages of the game, here is the summary of your task in the "just a human being" stage; know yourself and what is most significant to you whether knowledge, accomplishment, friendship, practical reasoning, pleasure or a group of those values. Remember that values can't be actualized except through interaction with others. Manage challenges facing you and focus on your goal. Develop the right habitual pattern needed for actualizing of your goal. Remember that Game Life is not easy but it certainly worth it

Game Life: The Ultimate Goal

In the last post I started conceiving life in a totally different imaginary way. Life is a game. I called this game "Game Life". Game Life is the game we all play. Whether we liked it or not we have no choice but playing it. I promised you that the manual of this game will be delivered to you soon. So here it is; the manual of Game Life.

Goal of the game

The ultimate goal of this game is to achieve Eudaimonia. You don't know what Eudaimonia is? Eudaimonia is an ancient Greek term commonly translated as happiness, flourishing or wellbeing. Why is the goal of this game stated as Eudaimonia rather than happiness? It is because the term Eudaimonia emphasizes the most adequate account we can offer of happiness. It emphasizes that happiness is the supreme good of any of your actions. It also emphasizes that achieving happiness can only be conceived as the realization of a list of irreducible values. Those values are friendship, understanding, accomplishment, practical reasoning, and last but not least pleasure.

Game Life is a multiplayer game. As a matter of fact more than 6 billion other players share this game with you at the moment. Millions of other players have played it long ago and those past players have contributed significantly to building this game and to your current situation in it. It is expected that many more players, more than what you might be even able to imagine will play this game in the future. Similarly, they will continue to influence this game.

To achieve eudaimonia, you must interact with other players. Interaction with other players is crucial for your progress in this game.

PTE & PACT

In this game each player must start with two different theories interacting together. First you must have what is called in this game the primary theory of Eudaimonia or (PTE). In addition you must have a primary theory of action or (PACT). PTE is a primary theory you hold of what you should achieve in this game. It is your initial vision of the goal of this game. PACT on the other hand is your initial theory of how to achieve the goals determined by your PTE.

In this game you pass through a preparatory stage. It is a stage corresponding to the childhood and adolescence stages of human life. In this stage you get, through other players, whether playing the role of parents, friends, celebrities, authors, or media figures, to form your PTE. In this stage you are not evaluated. Once you reach the adulthood stage, the real game begins.

In the preparatory stage, other players guide your actions. You are programmed to develop habits. Those habits will form your PACT. Your PACT aided by your built in ability to conceptualize will allow you to build your PTE. PTE and PACT interact together. Fist PACT form PTE, then PTE might change PACT. Again changes in PACT enforced upon you by surrounding circumstances or by the development of new habits might change the PTE which might again change PACT and so on. This continuous process of interaction between PACT and PTE is what is called learning. This process starts in the preparatory stage and goes on through all but the stage of the game. However, you will not be evaluated in this game until you pass the preparatory stage. It's PACT and PTE held by you then that counts the most.

Ancient players of this game had a PTE that was focused on mere survival and bonding to as much other players they can communicate with as possible. Through several generations of players, PTE has evolved into the form defined above. Current PTE held by most players conceives Eudaimonia as the realization of the above mentioned values. Unfortunately, lots of current players while holding this most recent form of PTE don't recognize that they do. In today's state of Game Life, lots of current players while in the preparatory stage get to develop a PACT that focuses mainly on the value of pleasure. This affected their PTE which similarly takes pleasure to be more important than other values. Such inappropriate PACTs and PTEs might have been facilitated by the relative easier possibility of gaining pleasure compared to other values in today's state of Game Life. Your very first task in Game Life might be to recognize the PTE that you really hold and develop a suitable PACT accordingly. More about this task will be explained later in the manual when tasks are explained.

There is an additional precaution which you must hold on your mind while playing this game. As it has been mentioned before, interaction with other players in this game is the most crucial part of the game. You have no choice but accepting the PTE and PACT formed in you by others in the preparatory stage. You can only develop the PTE and PACT you hold upon reaching adulthood. You can never discard them and start from scratch. If you do so, you have lost this game and game will be over for you. Developing the PACT and PTE you hold by the end of the preparatory stage is the main way through which the ultimate goal of the game can be realized. Again as mentioned before and as will be explained downward, developing PACT and PTE can only be achieved through interaction with other players.

Ok, guys, I think that's enough for now. I hope you like this imaginary line of thought I follow to consider how one should live his life. I will go on imagining in next posts. Till then, good luck…

Game Life: Wanna Play??

Through the last series of posts, and through the last post in particular, I offered what I think is the most coherent account that can be offered for happiness. The theoretical work is done. What I want to consider in this post is how this account can be applied practically in the life of each one of us.

The answer I offered to the question "How should one live life?" signified the importance of values in our life. However, arguing that one should live his life attempting to become ideal and reducing happiness down to morality might seem less motivating and more exhausting to lots of us. That's why I would like to describe the practical implications of this theoretical account of happiness in a totally different way. This way certainly depends on the utilization of the most significant faculty we humans have, namely imagination. So, I am asking you to open up your mind and let your imagination takes you to conceive life in a new way.

I am introducing to all of you the most fascinating game you could ever play. It's Game Life. Game Life is a virtual reality game. This game is not just a high quality third person game you get to play on X-box or play station. It is designed in a way that would allow your senses to be so soaked totally in it. It is an experience that is so vivid and real. It is so real that you can't distinguish it from reality itself.

You are not motivated to play Game Life just by the mere sake of having fun or by commercials surrounding you every where convincing you that is so pleasurable. Your motivation to play this game is the very basic essence of your own well. Your well screams upon you to play this game. You can't escape it. Even when you think that you have given up on this game and when you believe that you have reached the decision that it just doesn't worth, all you are actually doing is that you leave one tournament of it to another, gave up on one of its goals just to seek another. This game is you and nothing less than you.

Game life is not easy. It is the hardest game you might ever play. But while it is hard, it is certainly amazing and very much rewarding. It is a multistage game. None and I mean none has ever passed the first stage of it. However, every one is so eager to reach its end stage. Players are just crazy about it. Even though, most of them have recognized that its end stage is so difficult to be reached and might even be impossible, they keep on trying. They keep on transmitting their knowledge about how to play this game from one generation to another hoping that one day in the future some one might just do it. This game requires you to think and act, but above all it requires you to imagine. Some players imagined things so wonderful that have just enriched the game and made it much easier. Others let their imagination take them to wicked places and the results were awful. Even though imagination is essential to get through this game, it might have terrible consequences. However, with the basic urge of the players to survive, with reason, with hope, and with being open to learn, you will get to mange the dangers involved in playing this game.

So, are you ready to play this game? Whether your answer is yes or no, you have no choice but to play it. You are already playing it as you read this post. So, instead of resisting it, it is better for you to learn about its stages, tasks, rules and goals. You will have your manual in the next posts. For now, be patient….

Happy New Year.... :)

Happy new year every one. You can easily realize from my posts that I certainly believe that values and virtues play a significant role in our pursuit of happiness. The most recent branch of psychology, called positive psychology, emphasizes the importance of them as well. I intend to write a lot about this fascinating branch but I will do this later.

What I am planning to do in this post is to offer you guys a little gift for the New Year. Positive psychologists have developed various examination methods to help us in realizing the values and virtues which are the strongest in us.

This is a link to one of the most respectable questionnaires to guide you in discovering what positive psychologists call character strengths. http://www.viacharacter.org/SURVEYS.aspx Character strength is an alternative name of virtue. You will discover through this questionnaire the most significant personality traits about you which have been shaped by what you take to be the most valuable.

I think it would be great for each one of you to start the New Year while knowing his most significant routes to being happy.

Aristotle Rediscovered

It is clear from my previous posts that I am so curious about happiness. I offered lots of posts concerned with this subject. I presented the points of views of many writers and thinkers together with my own points of view. Today, I will write again about the same subject. However, this time I will focus on the ideas offered by one of the oldest philosophers in history, Aristotle, together with the findings of one of the most recent branches of psychology, namely positive psychology. Amazingly, their ideas mach to a very large extent. It has been stated by Christopher Peterson himself, one of the founders of positive psychology, that the ideas of this new branch of science validate to a large extent what has been preached by Aristotle centuries ago. Personally, I think that this account that can be constructed from both Aristotle and positive psychology represent the most convincing account about happiness I have ever encountered.

Aristotle in his search for happiness discovered brilliantly the relationship between the concepts of happiness, good, and actions. Aristotle argued that what is good is what we aim at through any action. I will try to explain Aristotle’s thoughts from my own point of view. I can argue that there are different classes of objects or states of affairs. Those objects or states of affairs have criteria. Those objects or states of affairs which have criteria that moves us to obtain them or bring them on are those which are called good. For example the statement “this knife is good” means that this knife has among its criteria some which would move me to buy it or obtain it in a particular situation such as if I need to buy a knife. Such criteria which would make this knife good include for example being sharp or being of an adequate size and so on. It is those criteria which would move me to obtain this knife and they represent what is good about this knife.

From this account, we can see that judging something as good entails a necessary relation to action. A T-shirt that doesn’t have anything about it that would move me to buy it can never be a good T-shirt. Similarly, this relationship can be applied to even less obvious examples. The statement “honesty is good” entails that honest actions move me to bring them on whether in my behavior or in the behavior of others.

Now, let’s go back to life and the question which keeps occupying me. How can I have a good life? Life consists of actions. A good life is equal to a series of good action. What make those actions good are criteria they must have. Those actions must have criteria which move us to bring them on and to execute such actions. If there is a single criterion which is shared by all those good actions and which can’t be reduced to any further criterion, then this criterion must be what can be called “the supreme good”. The supreme good is the goal which is common among all of our good actions.

Aristotle then considered whether there is such a supreme good shared between all good actions and what it would be. He argued that this supreme good can be called Happiness. He argued that the concept of happiness has the same feature of this supreme good. It is plausible to state that all of our good actions involve us moving to obtain or bring about a state of happiness. Accordingly, happiness seems to be a shared criterion among all good actions. In addition, happiness can’t be further reduced into something else we aim at when we act. I can state that I want to be rich, and when I am asked why, I can answer that being rich makes me happy. However, if I am asked why I do want to be happy, it seems that I wouldn’t be able to give answer in terms of a further goal or aim. If the concept of “supreme good” and “happiness” share the same feature, then they are equivalent to each other.

What is interesting about this argument is that it shows that happiness is closely tied to actions. You can never obtain happiness unless you act to bring it on. Bringing on happiness is mainly a criterion shared by all good actions. Accordingly, you must do a good action to bring up happiness.

Before moving further, I would like to summarize the previous argument in the following terms; what Aristotle did so far is to offer a conceptual analysis of the term “good” which leads us into conceiving that all of our good actions aim at some goal. Happiness is conceptually a common goal among all our good actions. Now we can move to the next question.

What does happiness or this common goal of all of our good action consist of?

Aristotle didn’t answer this question properly, however in his attempt to answer it he focused on making appeal to virtues. Our good actions are those which are virtuous. Our actions might be virtuous or not. However, it is our life which might be happy or not. Aristotle argued that one good action doesn’t make the performer of this action a virtuous one. The performer of this action must develop the habit of acting virtuously. Good actions as we have argued before have the criterion of bringing happiness and accordingly developing the habit of acting virtuously is what would bring a continuously happy life. Aristotle didn’t think of virtues as capacities or tendencies. Instead he though that virtues are obtained by habit.

What the most important about Aristotle line of thought are the following points;

· Happiness is conceptually connected to action. You must move to be happy

· It is virtuous actions which bring happiness

· Happiness is predicated on one’s entire life

Aristotle however, failed in providing an account for virtues, and how virtue would bring up happiness. However, the modern science of positive psychology might have tightened those screws and solved those hanging problems in Aristotle’s philosophy.

Positive psychology is one of the most recent and rapidly growing branches of psychology. The principle underlying positive psychology is that conventional psychology or what Peterson likes to call Business-as-usual-psychology focused mainly on what goes wrong in human life and how to over come psychological distress. Peterson among other pioneers in positive psychology argued that we should focus on the scientific study of what goes well in just as much of what goes wrong in it. In other words, we should scientifically study human happiness and well being.

Positive psychology made great steps forward. However, one of its most important theories is based on the old ideas of Aristotle. Positive psychologists argued that acting virtuously would lead us into happiness. However, instead of treating virtues as learnt repertoire of behavior, they defined virtues as personality traits. Personality trait is a disposition to act, think, and feel in a particular way. Positive psychology theorizes that human beings are born with tendencies to act virtuously and it has proved scientifically that acting virtuously would lead to a happy life.

What was not proven as a matter of necessity by Aristotle was proven as a matter of scientific contingency by positive psychology. I think later on, evolutionary psychologists might be able to show that this biological tendency to act virtuously was selected by nature through evolution to facilitate even stronger progress of human life and therefore greater chances of survival.

Positive psychology offered further amazing findings related to virtues and to other aspects of human life which might bring up happiness. I will present future posts related to the findings of positive psychology.

On the other hand, I am going to modify this blog so that in addition to what it has commonly offered it would reflect my personal attempt to live this life according to the findings and theories of positive psychology. So, expect some changes. I hope you like them.

Achievements Don't Have to be BIG!!

First, I would like to remind you of the five main values that make your life worth living. According to Roger Crisp, those are; pleasure, understanding, achievement, friendship and practical reasoning. I wrote about understanding before, and today I will write about achievement.

There are lots of things which you might think of as an achievement. Gaining your driving license, getting married, travelling all around the world, and lost of other things are commonly considered by us ac achievements. However, this is not what is meant by making an achievement here. All of the examples mentioned before are great things but what makes them valuable might be gaining pleasurable experiences or developing a strong attachment to someone or other values in life. However, satisfying the value of achievement itself is gained through other set of activities.

I will try to explain what I have just said a little bit more. To have a valuable life, you must achieve in it. To achieve in your life you must do something that will strengthen the theory you have about this life. As I have argued before, when I wrote about the value of understanding, we all need to develop a theory about life. Such a theory must be the most coherent theory we can come up with, it should explain the nature of the universe, the human experience and life in general, and it should invite agreement among all well informed rationally thinking human beings. Efforts made in science and philosophy seem to be the most promising among other efforts in developing such a theory. It is true that we can’t claim that the ultimate theory ,we are aspiring for, have been already developed ,but I think we are justified in holding a hope that one day we will do develop such a theory. In order to gain the value of achievement you must make a contribution toward strengthening this developing theory. In simpler terms, you should make an impact on this world or on humanity that will be beneficial according to the theory that enables you to understand this world. I can give some examples here. We are already discussing the theory of welfare presented by Roger Crisp. This theory seems to be the most promising in explaining what is good about life. If you accepted such a theory, then you would be entitled to think of yourself as making an achievement when you promote the five main values of life for other people surrounding you. Helping other people to gain pleasure, understanding, achievements, friendship or better ability to reason practically would be a great achievement made by you. Another example I can think of is this; science informs us that global warming is a great threat to our existence, accordingly making an effort to eliminate the causes of this phenomenon would still be another valuable achievement since it fits well within the theory that you understand the world through.

I have argued before that those five main values in life are all founded upon our basic desires as human beings. As I have mentioned before, those desires are raw and primitive. They contradict each other. They face lots of limitations, and all of them must be managed rationally to reach the best results. All of those desires lead to happiness when they are satisfied. However, the necessity of their rational management reveals that it is not only happiness we are seeking but those five main values we have mentioned repeatedly. I think it is an appropriate place to explain this mush further by making an appeal to achievement. The value of achievement might be based on the desires of self actualization and self esteem. Those desires are best achieved by recognizing and utilizing your most promising ability. One of the best instruments, to tell you that you are on the right track to satisfy those desires, is social recognition and approval. Now, if you only focused on satisfying those desires rather than focusing on gaining the value of achievement, you might end up having a less valuable life. Imagine if you were able to paint. If you focused on gaining social recognition to satisfy your desire of self actualization you might nice paintings that would be liked by so many people. Now imagine if you didn’t care about social recognition that much and focused instead on the theory you have about this life and attempted to express such a theory through your paintings. As an artist, you are most probably capable of figuring out the aesthetics behind paintings more than anyone else. Attempting to express your point of view of aesthetics might yield far better products, and attempting to express your theory about life might give a remarkable depth and meaning to those paintings. Focusing on the value of achievement rather than the desires of self actualization and self esteem might yield far better satisfaction of those same desires.

Now there is a final point I would like to make. I totally believe that each one of us is unique. The coagulum of each one’s abilities together with our different experiences would make each one of superior in a particular aspect of life. It is this unique ability which you should recognize and utilize to reach the value of achievement. However, even though your best achievement will most probably be made by your most remarkable ability, but lots of other achievements can still be made by you without depending on any unique ability at all. Any effort to strengthen your theory of life would account as an achievement. What I really believe in is that even though it is a great thing to be ambitious but it is still very important to be humble. As I have mentioned in my previous post, it is ok to accept that the fact that we still don’t understand life fully. It would be much better to make a humble contribution to further understand the world rather attempting to rush things up by giving a full blown theory about life which is filled with incoherent supernatural claims. The same thing goes when it comes to achievement. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a famous artist to think of yourself as having a life full of achievements. Helping your friend, participating in social work, arguing for what you think is right might all be great achievements.

I think everyone once defined the most promising theory to understand life, should start seeking achievements. You should recognize your most promising ability and make a long term plan to actualize the potentials you can achieve. However, in addition, it would be great to make an achievement every single day. Think each day of how you might do even a little thing to strengthen the theory you have about this life. Teaching your kid something that would benefit him or others, participating in charity, helping the deprived, acting morally, and promoting benevolence might all be great achievements that can be done on daily basis.

Passion to Understand

As I have argued before, whenever you feel like life is becoming nonsense or whenever you feel like you lost your purpose, remember that all of this is wrong. You are a human being. You are born in this world with desires, rationality, and abilities. All of those are mixed together to give you the five genuine sources of life fulfillment. These are; pleasure, friendship, understanding, achievement, and practical reasoning.

Today, I will write about one of them which is understanding.

Life is a great mystery which is still, largely, unsolved up till now. Many different people through out time have attempted to rush things up by offering a theory explaining life and what it is all about. Religions, ancient and modern spiritual ideologies were all among the products of such attempts. Those many different forms of religions aimed for more than any of them could have ever accomplished. They attempted to explain how we came into being, why we exist, what we should do in life, how to think about death, and lots of other difficult questions that maybe all of us have to encounter sooner or later.

Unfortunately, those super natural claims are infected with so many incoherencies. In addition to the particular incoherencies related to each one of them, they all share a common fatal problem. They use terms such as “God”, “soul”, “inner spirit” all of which can’t be used to yield a meaningful sentence at least within the context of reality. The details of this problem are mainly related to the theory of understanding and the arguments presented by Dummett, Platts, and Grayling. I will not go into its details here but maybe later.

Anyway, you might become content with such theories and reject their dismissal. If you do so, you are following your raw desires instead of attempting to rationally control them. Rational control of such a desire to know and to understand will lead you into rethinking about those super natural claims. Later you would find that we have to depend upon our rationality to understand. The proper way through which our rationality can be expressed is through philosophy and science.

Reality is not simple. It is so much complex. It will take more than a single, allegedly, divinely inspired man to solve its mysteries. However, lacking a theory that allows us to understand life should not lead us into despair. Having this passion to understand is all that you need to think of life as worthy living. Making a modest contribution among other contributions made by other humans through out different ages would one day allow us to see the bigger picture and to start dealing properly with all the problems we face in life.

Here is What Makes Your Life Good

I argued in my last post that it is not only happiness which we are looking for in life. Don’t get me wrong. Having a happy life is a great thing. However, focusing on happiness as the sole end of your life will most probably lead you into an unhappy life. So, what is it that we want in life? We have different desires in life. I have mentioned them repeatedly in previous post. However, it might be a good thing to remind you with them. Our basic desirers are; biological needs, security, attachment, self esteem, and self actualization. Some psychologists added self transcendence to the list. It is a bad idea to focus on the mere fulfillment of your desires as your strategy to have a good life. Our desires were designed by evolution to enhance our survival. I don’t want to under estimate them though. They were in fact great in accomplishing what was required of them to do. However, they are still primitive and not so well designed to be our sole compass toward having what is good. They might represent the foundation of what constitutes what we might conceive as good in this life, but there are other factors which are important as well, even more important. Another feature of human beings which was also developed by nature to enhance survival is our ability of rational thinking. It is very important to recognize the importance of rationality when it comes to determining what is good in life. The rational assessment of our desires and our abilities is the only way through which we can determine what is really good about life. Without going into the philosophical details, I would like to present to you one of the most plausible theories concerned with what makes our life good. Roger Crisp argued convincingly that what makes our life good and accordingly the ultimate end of our life are the following five main features to which any other feature can be reduced:


• Pleasure, including aesthetic pleasure
• Friendship and if possible the highest degree of friendship which is love
• understanding
• achievement
• practical reasoning


Each of those features deserves further explanation. Before I do so, I would like you yourself to think about what those features mean to you and their value to your life.

What is Good about Life?

What is good about life? What makes life worth living? Terms such as “good”,”bad”,”right” and “wrong” are all evaluatory terms. In other words, such terms will not make any sense if we though of them in isolation from an evaluating subject who applies certain evaluative criteria to determine whether those terms can be used or not.
I can further clarify this through the use of an example. What does the statement “this is a good car” mean? This statement would mean that if we took the car in question and examine its fulfillment to certain evaluative criteria we would be able to determine whether it’s good or not and accordingly whether this statement is true or false. Evaluative criteria for distinguishing a good car from a bad one might include; its speed, its design, its horse power and so on. All of those criteria are considered to be the evaluative criteria we need to use since they determine what the evaluator would like this car to do for him. Hence, the process of evaluation has to be under lied by the interests of the subject making the evaluation.
Now let’s go back to our main question; what is a good life? It might be clear to you now that this question can be paraphrased into the following; “what are the evaluative criteria we would tend to apply to determine whether a particular form of life good or bad?” we might think that the only one criteria that is of importance in distinguishing a good life from a bad one might be happiness. We might find it plausible to claim that I can say of myself that I had a good life if I had a happy one. Those who hold this assumption are called hedonists. It is important to notice that this assumption is a highly respectable one. Some might think that holding this assumption would mean depending on material and sensual sources of happiness to provide a good life. However, this is not necessarily the case. There are a lot other different sources of happiness other than sensual and material ones. It is clear that serving others, defending a higher cause or gaining success in work are all important sources of happiness which are neither material nor sensual.
However, hedonism still suffers from internal incoherencies which make it a less plausible theory. Those incoherencies were best demonstrated through the objections that have been raised against John Stuart Mill’s hedonism. Those objections were recognized by Mill as we will see and he attempted to defend his hedonism against them. However, it seems that he failed to do so. I will mention some of those objections here. It might seem highly intuitive that a good life is a happy one, but isn’t it intuitive as well that Socrates, who was delineated by his society and was sentenced to death, had a better life than any other fool who rejected his wisdom. You might argue that Socrates might have had difficulties in his life but this doesn’t necessarily mean that he was unhappy. He must have enjoyed his wisdom to a greater degree than what he suffered because of the people surrounding him. Even if this was true, we can still think of someone who was not happy in his life and yet he had a good life. We can think of some one who has discovered a particular truth that would benefit humans greatly. However, he suffered a great deal in his life to come up with this discovery; his discovery was not appreciated till after his death. Such a person might have felt happy for some time when he came up with his discovery but any one else who suffered less in his life must have had a happier life than him. Even though such a person didn’t have the happiest life possible but he can still be considered as having lived a good life, might be even better than the lives of most of us. It is important to notice that it is not only us, who see the whole thing from the outside, who judge his life as a good one, but this person himself would be considering himself as having lived a good life based on his assumption that he made a great achievement that will be evaluated properly one day even after his death. We might still argue that it’s his realization that he has made an achievement which will be recognized one day is still a significant source of happiness that can overweight any other suffering that he might have experienced. Therefore, over all, he had a happier life and thus a better life than most of us. By accepting this response we accept the assumption that making a big achievement yields a greater amount of happiness than most of the other sources and therefore it would over weight any other suffering that one might have experienced.
This would lead us to the following argument that was offered again in objection to hedonism. Imagine that you were given the choice between leading the life of a great scientist who would make very big achievements to the human kind, but who would die at the age of 78, and the life of a moderately intelligent man who would lead a luxurious life style full of sensual delights and who will die at the age of 500 or even will live forever. It seems that most of use would still find the life of this scientist better than the life of this immortal man, even though the amount of happiness experienced by the immortal man must at some point exceed what was experienced by the scientist. Note that even though you might choose to live this luxurious long life, but it is still hard to deny that the life of the scientist would still be more memorable and better.
In response, we might still argue that the happiness created by achievement is of entirely different nature that it can never be compared to what ever the amount of happiness developed by other sources. In such a case, we must have to face this question: what makes the happiness developed by achievement better or of higher value than the happiness developed by other sources. It seems clear now that there must be other evaluative criteria which we have to use to distinguish higher sources of happiness from lower ones. Accordingly, there must be other evaluative criteria which are important in distinguishing a good life other happiness.
We will continue searching for those criteria in later posts.

Happiness Project: Further Explanations

It’s been long since I started writing about happiness. Today, I will complete what I have started before. I have mentioned before that the transcendence program include the following activities:
• Appreciation of life
• Embracing life with its unsolvable problems
• Appreciation of people and the love you can share with them
• Enjoy pleasurable activities and stimuli more profoundly
• Enjoy your most rewarding activity
What is common between all those activities is that they don’t involve your Ego as their axis. In addition approaching them should be done through a form of thinking which is systematic positive and imaginative rather than factual. I will attempt here to further clarify what is meant by the utilization of an imaginative form of thinking.
There are many different contemporary thinkers who have suggested promoting your life through what I consider to be modern spiritual trends. Authors such as Eckhart Tolle, Mctaggart and Goswami have all preached some kind of what I consider to be an example of the imaginative line of thinking that I am suggesting here. Tolle argued for the identification of oneself as consciousness, Mctagratt argued for considering neotic science, and Goswami depended on the findings of quantum physics to argue for revitalization of ancient spiritual beliefs. There are many different writers with different theories of this kind. Such theories can be of great help in achieving all the activities I have mentioned in the transcendence program.
However, I would like to stress that all of those theories are not based on factual form of thinking. Even though such theories might appear initially coherent, with further analysis, it becomes apparent that they are infected with contradictions and unjustified speculations on so many levels. Even if you were convinced that they are coherent, they would still be much less coherent than the scientific naturalistic theory we have for explaining the nature of humans and the universe. The scientific naturalistic theory is the theory we can hold upon based upon factual thinking which ensures the best utilization of human rationality. Other theories even though might have a utility in allowing transcendence activities, as I can admit, but they lack stability and adequacy and other evaluative properties which justify us in accepting them to be literally true.
However, even if such theories are not true, I don’t think there is any reason which prevents us from using them in achieving the transcendence activities. Being committed to a true theory is only essential when it comes to the Ego program. It is the Ego program at which you need to achieve things and deal with solvable problems. It is at the level of this program at which you must hold on to reality. However, when it comes to those moments at which you are just too exhausted to think properly, and when it is time to relax and enjoy the moment, you can use such theories to help you enjoy life through all the various transcendence activities.
Imagination is an amazing ability which we should utilize as long as it doesn’t interfere with serious issues that are more worthy of our rational consideration.
Religion can be thought of as theory which has developed because of many reasons. One of the most important reasons, I think, why it developed is to help in allowing the transcendence activities. With time, people faith in religion was deeply internalized in them to the degree that it affected their factual thinking which they should utilize when it comes to the Ego program. This is why I would like to stress the importance of keeping the imaginative line of thinking that might utilize such theologies to the transcendence activities alone without crossing to the Ego program. When you consider such theories to approach the transcendence activities, you should think of it as if you are just reading a fairy tale or enjoying nice movies. Once, your session of transcendence is over, you should return back to the factual line of thinking to go along with your life properly.
It seems that there is still much to talk about regarding happiness. I will do this later.

Happiness Project: Transcendence Program

The term "transcendence" is not a term that I just came up with. Lots of psychologists have argued that the basic psychological needs, which I have mentioned before should be modified to include a further set of needs which they called self transcendence needs. On the other hands, most of the spiritual trends, whether ancient or recent, preach self transcendence either explicitly of implicitly. What I am trying to do through talking about what I call "the transcendence program" is to provide a clear comprehensive practical account of how self transcendence can be achieved.

The self transcendence program is a reminder of a set of activities which you must get engaged in on regular basis to achieve happiness. As I have argued in the previous post, happiness can't be achieved through the Ego program alone, and the transcendence program is far more important than the Ego program. Any way, the common feature among all those activities, belonging to the transcendence program, is that all of them revolve around a different axis other than yourself. In other words, they are not primarily done to benefit your Ego. In more precise terms, they are not done to add to your self esteem or self actualization needs. Psychologists have attempted to define those activities by appeal to the society again. They argued that those self transcendence activities involve mainly those activities which are done to serve the others, like charity work, taking care of children or pets, getting committed to a bigger cause and so on. Even though, it is true that all of those activities might belong to the transcendence program, but those examples are not conclusive and they don't help us getting in contact with the main essence of the transcendence program. I think that seeking spirituality is one other form of activities which are primarily done to achieve self transcendence. However, in addition to arguing for helping others, spiritual trends would invite you to perform other self transcendence activities like better evaluation of life and nature. I think the human need to transcend his Ego must be explained in a way that will not only consider tendencies to help others but in addition it should explain those spiritual tendencies of humans as well.

As I have argued before, the main feature shared by all self transcendence activities is that they are not primarily done to add to your self esteem or self actualization. All those activities are done because they allow you to enjoy this particular moment you are involved in. they are not done as a step of a bigger plan to achieve something related to your self actualization needs. In modern life, most of our basic psychological needs are satisfied by the social constructions we live in. In other words, we are born in societies which have drawn regular well established routes which will provide you with your basic biological needs, security and attachment to others. However, what we get totally occupied with for the rest of our life is to satisfy the two remaining psychological needs of self esteem and self actualization. I can't emphasize enough the importance of pairing those activities you do to achieve self esteem and self actualization with activities to achieve self transcendence. Happiness can never be achieved through focusing on one set of activities rather than the others.

There is a further important feature belonging to the self transcendence program. While the Ego program is based on reasonable factual thinking, the transcendence program might and should be, in most of the times, based on a different form of thinking. This form of think should still be systematic, reasonable, and positive, just like the form of thinking involved in planning for the Ego program. However this alternative form of thinking doesn't have to be factual. It can and should, as I have argued before, utilize the most amazing mental ability humans have which is imagination. You should depend on the use of systematic reasonable positive imaginative thinking when it comes to self transcendence activities.

There is another important feature about the self transcendence program which is that those activities are primarily done to allow you to experience life from a different prospective. All of those activities should allow you to get free from the pressure created by your self esteem and self actualization needs and get to enjoy the moment.

Self transcendence activates can be broadly categorized into the following; those activities done to have a deeper appreciation of life, activities which would help you embrace life together with its unsolvable problems, activities done to help you have better appreciation of people and the joy they can bring, new activities which are simply fun to do, and finally activities which are the most rewarding to your self. Each of those categories should be mentioned in details. However, I will delay this till later.