kids dont make you happy, page-66

[QUOTE] "Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television."

[RESPONSE] Flawed arguement. Eating, exercising, shopping or watching television are momentary experiences of happiness. One cannot eat or exercise for prolonged periods of time, otherwise they will become sick, exhausted and ill.

[QUOTE] "Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact."

[RESPONSE] Again, this is false. Most people without children are lost and disparate and have little sense of purpose in life. People without children spend in their times in nightclubs looking for the next hit and drain their vital energies. I know few people without children that are happy (apart from those who have devoted their lives to spiritual development).

[QUOTE] First, when something makes us happy we are willing to pay a lot for it, which is why the worst Belgian chocolate is more expensive than the best Belgian tofu. But that process can work in reverse: when we pay a lot for something, we assume it makes us happy, which is why we swear to the wonders of bottled water and Armani socks. The compulsion to care for our children was long ago written into our DNA, so we toil and sweat, lose sleep and hair, play nurse, housekeeper, chauffeur and cook, and we do all that because nature just won't have it any other way.

[RESPONSE] Again nonsense. The speaker is showing a clear lack of knowledge and scientific fact. One cannot compare the pleasure of Belgian chocolate to the pleasure of loving people.

There are many levels of pleasure or love. The lowest level is sensual, such as the love of Belgian chocolates. When one become addicted to sensual pleasures, one is an addict, one has no resillience amd burns out quickly.

The middling level of love is called 'filial love' or 'affection'. When a person loves another with affection and care rather than sensual lust, this pleasure is more sustaining and longer lasting. It is mature love.

A higher level is loving-kindness and compassion. This kind of love or pleasure has few side-affects. Human beings develop a sense of strength and purpose by practising this love.

Another level of pleasure is called 'non-sensual or heavenly bliss", when a human being masters Zen meditation. The stupidity of Zen Machine appears to demonstrate they have not mastered Zen meditation.

In ancient Greek and ancient Indian thought, these levels of love or pleasure where know as: (1) eros and raka, meaning lust; (2) filo or pema meaning affective or filial love; and (3) agape or metta-karuna meaning self-sacrificing, beneficient love.

Therefore, this speaker is foolish using a lower level of love as an example of the effects of a higher level of love.

The fruits or effects of practising these different levels of love are the very opposite.

[QUOTE] "Second, if the Red Sox and the Yankees were scoreless until Manny Ramirez hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, you can be sure that Boston fans would remember it as the best game of the season. Memories are dominated by their most powerful--and not their most typical--instances. Just as a glorious game-winning homer can erase our memory of 812 dull innings, the sublime moment when our 3-year-old looks up from the mess she is making with her mashed potatoes and says, "I wub you, Daddy," can erase eight hours of no, not yet, not now and stop asking. Children may not make us happy very often, but when they do, that happiness is both transcendent and amnesic."

[RESPONSE] Similary, as stated above, one cannot compare a baseball match with the feelings of responsibility, love, friendship and accomplishment of nuturing a family

[QUOTE] Third, although most of us think of heroin as a source of human misery, shooting heroin doesn't actually make people feel miserable. It makes them feel really, really good--so good, in fact, that it crowds out every other source of pleasure."

[RESPONSE] Now this fool is really demonstrating his foolishness. As I have already stated and pre-empted, the different kinds of live had different results, fruits or side-effects. The side-effect of heroin is fast diminishing returns of pleasure and a fast death.

[CONCLUSION] Sadly Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert knows little about happiness.

Clearly Zen Machine knows little about Zen meditation.