What is the Secret to Happiness?

[ripstanley]

Sorry but I have not read many replies. From reading this site and local friends and experience I think most achieve happiness through some sought of massage.

[Will B Good]

Just now, ripstanley said:

Sorry but I have not read many replies. From reading this site and local friends and experience I think most achieve happiness through some sought of massage.

Foot?

[ripstanley]

1 minute ago, Will B Good said:

Foot?

Of course

[GBW]

Happiness for me simple' I like this forum until some nit wit GG with boo hoo and that, find yourself another soapbox and again, listen to your doctor! 

Questioning peoples language, competence of stringing a paragraph together, not pandering to  your local ' Ma Pa Shop.  <deleted> get off your high horse and go and do something that actually is inspiring!   Prattle on all you want here, you obviously have to justify yourself by the amount of replies you have to your own OP, Have a bloody think of the time that you are wasting with your self indulgent shizenhouzen, when you could go and actually help one poor soul!

[Tanomazu]

2 hours ago, StreetCowboy said:

Are you happy?

I am on the happy scale, but not in the top numbers right now. But I am on the scale.

 

To hit the top scale you really need to have just overcome a major obstacle. Which I hope to do soon.

[ChrisP24]

20 minutes ago, Tanomazu said:

I am on the happy scale, but not in the top numbers right now. But I am on the scale.

 

To hit the top scale you really need to have just overcome a major obstacle. Which I hope to do soon.

Best wishes for whatever that is.  I suspect that just having the goal, having a plan that you can actively push forward through your own efforts, and having reasonable hope that it will work, is already more than half the battle.

[Tanomazu]

1 hour ago, ChrisP24 said:

Best wishes for whatever that is.  I suspect that just having the goal, having a plan that you can actively push forward through your own efforts, and having reasonable hope that it will work, is already more than half the battle.

Thank you.

 

And yes, that is exactly right. To find that purpose is half the battle. Of course if you are single you can challenge yourself every day, for instance by doing daytime approaches of women, and see how many numbers you get. You can set obstacles for yourself.

 

 

[WhiteBuffaloATM]

In rough order of importance then:-

Health- Purpose- Education- Trade (Skills) - Children - Love- Moderation-

No Desires (No Sins) - No Enemies- No Toxic People - House - Money - No Debt

[DEKEM]

buddha..  the more you want, the more you suffer.  so, to achieve that state of "empty" mind, try to eliminate all desire.  the less desire you have, the more content you are. gambling, drinking, whoring, smoking, drugs, etc.  these are things that make you happy for a short time.  but actually cause you pain in the long run because you become addicted to the behavior.  I am still a long way from achieving nirvana.  but I can see that I am much further up the ladder then many others.  my problem is I like accummulating material things.  pack rat.  I envy people who can live with nothing more than what they have in a backpack.  and are content with that.  I know a couple of people who have reached that level.  the closer you get to nirvana, the easier it becomes for you to recognize it in others.  it's all in the eyes.  where the eyes of a dead fish are cloudy, the eyes of someone aware are sharp.  when you look in their eyes, it's like you can see through them.  an endless hole.

[thaibeachlovers]

15 hours ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

But you no doubt agree that women should have every opportunity that they want to work and live how they wish. You would agree too that in the past women weren't given the opportunities in Western countries that they should have. You would agree too that the way women have to live in islamic and other countries is not fair. So you are a type of feminist. You can argue for women's rights and argue that the type of issues you raise above are not fair. 

I agree women should have the same rights and OBLIGATIONS as men in the WEST ( we don't have the right to say how women in other countries should be treated. If they want to be treated better they need to get out and do the hard yards for equality, not expect people in other countries to do it for them ).

I do not agree that women should have more rights than men eg always getting the kids, the house, the good car etc after a divorce.

Also, they shouldn't have more spent on their health needs than men.

Equality in everything, not being advantaged just for being female, as in special laws discriminating against men.

[thaibeachlovers]

4 hours ago, DEKEM said:

gambling, drinking, whoring, smoking, drugs, etc.  these are things that make you happy for a short time.  but actually cause you pain in the long run because you become addicted to the behavior.

Whoring never caused me pain in the long run. Being married did.

Good sex is enjoyable- I see nothing wrong in wanting to to do it as often as possible. It's only a problem if one starts to annoy women to get it. Consensual is always the right way.

[steven100]

drinking p_iss all day makes happiness  

[thaibeachlovers]

6 hours ago, WhiteBuffaloATM said:

In rough order of importance then:-

Health- Purpose- Education- Trade (Skills) - Children - Love- Moderation-

No Desires (No Sins) - No Enemies- No Toxic People - House - Money - No Debt

I'd only agree to

Health- Purpose- Education- Trade (Skills) - Love- Moderation-

 No Enemies - Money - No Debt

 

IMO not possible to eliminate toxic people as they are all around, and a house can become a problem if a marriage goes wrong.

Desire goes with being human, IMO. Eliminate desire and IMO we eliminate what makes us unique.

I left no enemies in reluctantly. It's too easy to make enemies. It is however a good aspiration.

As one with no children, I don't rate having them as being of high importance. I'm actually happy I never had any.

 

I'd add friends to the list.

[thaibeachlovers]

2 minutes ago, steven100 said:

drinking p_iss all day makes happiness  

It'll also kill you if you destroy your liver.

[SAFETY FIRST]

5 minutes ago, steven100 said:

drinking p_iss all day makes happiness  

Yes, but it will not be long term. 

You'll end up with liver disease 

[thaibeachlovers]

14 hours ago, Tanomazu said:

However, with the advent of women entering the work place and the welfare state it was clear that women no longer needed to provide sexual access in return for provisioning. The work place or the welfare state now did that. Finding a male now was no longer a matter of life or death, but merely of decrease or increase of luxuries, a better wardrobe or tv perhaps.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

 

I do get the impression that women like to have a man as an ongoing project. They find one that is amenable to being with her, and then proceed to try and change him. Having succeeded in changing him though, he is no longer the man she was initially attracted to, so he is over and out.

I had a partner and a wife in my life, and both endeavoured to change me to something else, but happily without success. I was still over and out though.

[StreetCowboy]

11 hours ago, GBW said:

Happiness for me simple' I like this forum until some nit wit GG with boo hoo and that, find yourself another soapbox and again, listen to your doctor! 

Questioning peoples language, competence of stringing a paragraph together, not pandering to  your local ' Ma Pa Shop.  <deleted> get off your high horse and go and do something that actually is inspiring!   Prattle on all you want here, you obviously have to justify yourself by the amount of replies you have to your own OP, Have a bloody think of the time that you are wasting with your self indulgent shizenhouzen, when you could go and actually help one poor soul!

You must feel a lot better now you've got that bile off your chest

[Hummin]

Happiness is waking up in the morning, and have no pain. Money in the bank and have someone you care for and live for, who respect you for who you are and also free and able to make changes in life if necessery. Also have a few good friends helps who you share interests and can also travel with. 

 

Health

Safety

Love

Freedom

Being able to adopt

 

To many come here after their first two weeks of asiafever with tinted glasses, and never manage to take control of their life after that experience. Fixtated on their very first experiences, and fail to see the reality and what a good life really is, and what it takes to get there. 

 

I would say being social is the hardest thing in Thailand, since everything is centered around alchohol, and not many can handle that in the long term, and lif gets boring where ever you are if you do not have somthing that engage you on a different level.  Just a good woman is not enough for most men, we need to be challendged, we need to feel like a man, and we need to work to feel satisfied. 

 

When you finely have landed, taken off your tinted glasses, and managed to settle in a good way, with interests that fits you, you can start learning to be happy in Thailand. Not easy, and it will take some changes to adopt, both to the culture and the clima. Of course if you not only live and breed inside one of the tourist places, then things are different, but it gets boring in the long torm for most where everything loops around the same. 

[rcuthbert]

15 hours ago, Tanomazu said:

When women entered the workforce en masse due to the exceptional calamity that was world war two this opened the door to women flooding into the work world. It looked innocent at first, however, this came at a price.

 

Pair bonding was not invented by women. Before the advent of pair bonding both women and men were wildly promiscuous. You can still see this in chimpanzee and Bonobo society today. Promiscuity was the starting point. However, the problem with this was that only a small select group of men, the victors in male on male competition, then had unlimited access to mating with women. Until the less successful males figured something out, that they could trade provisioning for sexual access. After providing provisioning to a female the male could however find that another male swooped in and "stole" a pregnancy. Obviously that was a wasted investment, so the male required the female to be faithful to him. The female agreed in return for provisioning. This trading provisioning for sexual access can also be witnessed in chimpanzee and Bonobo society. Thus was pair bonding born.

 

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/25/9923

 

However, with the advent of women entering the work place and the welfare state it was clear that women no longer needed to provide sexual access in return for provisioning. The work place or the welfare state now did that. Finding a male now was no longer a matter of life or death, but merely of decrease or increase of luxuries, a better wardrobe or tv perhaps.

 

Hence the terminal decline of pair bonding in our current time, with some women, usually feminists, now refusing to pair bond altogether and refusing to have children, whilst others merely use it for material gain and swiftly abandon the male once his economic value has been extracted.

 

If we had never introduced women into the workforce the crisis in pair-bonding may have been averted and possibly would never have happened. Women also would be much happier this way, for even if radical feminists who live alone think it's wonderful, if you ask them a few decades later they're just bitter lonely people. However, above all the unhappiness of many men would have been avoided.

 

Now women have very little reason to stay faithful to a man, unless they have kids and economic necessity, which is very often not the case anymore.

 

 

I had not considered the Chimp/Bonabo connection before reading your post. I find the fact that 98.8% of human DNA is identical to that of the Chimpanzee to be quite interesting, and supportive of your thesis.

[thaibeachlovers]

3 minutes ago, rcuthbert said:

I had not considered the Chimp/Bonabo connection before reading your post. I find the fact that 98.8% of human DNA is identical to that of the Chimpanzee to be quite interesting, and supportive of your thesis.

Take away our ability to reason and control our actions, and IMO we'd just be a larger chimp type animal.

[rcuthbert]

4 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Take away our ability to reason and control our actions, and IMO we'd just be a larger chimp type animal.

Agreed. Chimps wage war, and they punish those that behave differently than the majority. The 20th century demonstrated that when a human majority is bombarded with repetitive propaganda, it's intellect is overridden - and the slaughter begins.

[spidermike007]

16 hours ago, Tanomazu said:

Like you I am a radical believer in freedom. That is why I like Thailand and the USA so much. The feeling of freedom is quantitatively greater.

 

However, even in the USA, in Thailand we are not actually free. Yes, we have more freedoms than in say Japan or Denmark, however, even here our freedoms are curtailed on a daily basis. There are limits to freedom even in the USA and in Thailand.

 

I'll give you an example. Free speech. The USA is rightly perceived as one of the freest countries in the world, where you can say a lot of things you can not say elsewhere. However, in the US too there are limits to freedom of speech. If you scream "fire" in a crowded theatre, that is a potential crime in the US, and is not defended by freedom of speech.  For very good reason, to protect society.

 

Now, we have the unfortunate situation that the freedoms of some reduce the freedom of others. So in principle everyone can not be perfectly free. Never. It just is impossible. You have to realise that the freedoms of some are always at the expense of others, in the worst case your own.

 

In law this is acutely recognised, and the principle is generally that freedoms are allowed as long as they are not harmful to others. However, as I have said, the freedoms of some often are at the expense of others' freedom.

 

So it's not a question of should women's freedoms or rights be curtailed. They already are. As are mens' rights and freedoms.

 

Obviously you are very right in that one has to be very careful in curtailing anyone's freedoms.

 

The question is rather, are the rights some feminists claim, to be alone at home and never pair bond, ie not procreate and contribute tax payers to society, is that harmful to men and society at large? Is excessive expenditure on women's health harmful to society at large, male taxpayers for instance? Is a criminal law that allows women who burn their husbands to death and the lets them walk free after 3 years harmful to society, and men?

 

Does a family law, as reshaped by feminist lawyers, which encourages women to extract economic advantage from men and leave them, harm society, harm men?

 

My take on it is this, whilst I am extremely liberal, and in an ideal world would not care what feminists do, when they do something that harms me, and reduces my freedoms I would certainly consider rolling back on some of the excesses they have caused.

 

This is already happening of course, as lawyers in the UK have started to make family law a bit fairer, after feminist excesses made a mockery of family law.

 

The real issue is that pair bonding has created the basis of all civilization, the family unit. And allowing women to work has clearly undermined the family, feminists' decision to live at home alone, and never pair bond, has undermined the principle of family and society. Feminism is a threat to civilization, not just happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not sure I am qualified to say whether or not women in the workplace has undermined the family. I do believe in a woman's right to choose to have a career. In this day and age, many women have to work, with runaway inflation, and the ridiculously expensive cost of living in the West. 

 

I think the erosion to femininity came later. It is a threat to civilization, no doubt. It is me-too, and uber- feminism that has been the real nuclear bomb to relationships and a woman's ability to express herself, have sex freely, date normally, manifest the incredible dignity within femininity, and relate to men, in a healthy manner. It seems to contribute to an extremely unfulfilled female gender, and has resulted in making life very difficult for most men in the West. With Covid, things are even worse than before. A real life Zombieland. 

 

Thankfully, little of that toxic nonsense has reached the shores of Thailand. Women here seem to intuitively know how powerful their innate femininity is, and they use it to the fullest. I am very thankful for that. I think many have simply rejected alot of mind numbingly wrong headed Western notions, that women are saddled with. 

 

 

 

[473geo]

8 hours ago, DEKEM said:

buddha..  the more you want, the more you suffer.  so, to achieve that state of "empty" mind, try to eliminate all desire.  the less desire you have, the more content you are. gambling, drinking, whoring, smoking, drugs, etc.  these are things that make you happy for a short time.  but actually cause you pain in the long run because you become addicted to the behavior.  I am still a long way from achieving nirvana.  but I can see that I am much further up the ladder then many others.  my problem is I like accummulating material things.  pack rat.  I envy people who can live with nothing more than what they have in a backpack.  and are content with that.  I know a couple of people who have reached that level.  the closer you get to nirvana, the easier it becomes for you to recognize it in others.  it's all in the eyes.  where the eyes of a dead fish are cloudy, the eyes of someone aware are sharp.  when you look in their eyes, it's like you can see through them.  an endless hole.

I enjoy the tone of this post, I guess because it fits me well.

 

Expectations have been mentioned, lowering them may well increase happiness has been suggested, I like that idea too.

I feel however that consumerism coupled with expectation, and the images projected as 'success' will see many struggle to achieve  'happiness' perhaps because male or female they are chasing the wrong goal. But then the strive to achieve maybe their Idea of happiness? There is no one cap fits all, in fact 'happiness' is undoubtedly a very individual target and emotion.

 

[BigStar]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:30 PM, GammaGlobulin said:

This is Marshalsea.

Without this notorious debtors' prison in Southwark, we would not have the Works of Dickens, obviously.

. . .

I guess that I am no Dickens.

Right?

Right; nor, alas, even a Dickens biographer, what with writing fatuous Dickens posts on a public forum. First, confusing and making up the most basic details about Dickens’ well-documented life; then, from a hopeless muddle, inevitably pulling out a laughable conclusion—well. Not that having the facts straight would help your case anyway. @Sparktrader knows that.

But why? Ignorance? Dotage? Trolling, to be sure.

The good news, however, is that having failed to win the mistress, you may still hope to woo the maid. Instead of biographer, aspire to Dickens Googler.

 

On 8/27/2021 at 8:30 PM, GammaGlobulin said:

The POINT being that Happiness can be found in the strangest of places.

Unconvincing. The REAL POINT being that Rubbish is always found in the usual places. For example,

 

On 8/27/2021 at 8:30 PM, GammaGlobulin said:

Dickens found his happiness in debtors prison.

A notably pretentious example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, more amusing than your last. Keep ‘em coming.

 

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating that people with low ability at a task overestimate their own ability, and that people with high ability at a task underestimate their own ability.

 

As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the bias results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability . . . .It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from people's inability to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their level of competence.

     --Dunning–Kruger effect

 

 

 

[BigStar]

On 8/27/2021 at 9:32 PM, Sparktrader said:

So just walk around farting

 

On 8/28/2021 at 10:08 AM, digger70 said:

Up to you ,if that makes you Happy. ????

No choice, really.

[simon43]

6 hours ago, steven100 said:

drinking p_iss all day makes happiness  

I need to ask if you mean that quite literally.  I hear that drinking one's own urine is meant to have some health benefits, (although I haven't felt the urge to partake myself..)

 

Perhaps you can clarify what kind of p_iss you like to drink?  ????

[Tanomazu]

3 hours ago, spidermike007 said:

I am not sure I am qualified to say whether or not women in the workplace has undermined the family. I do believe in a woman's right to choose to have a career. In this day and age, many women have to work, with runaway inflation, and the ridiculously expensive cost of living in the West. 

 

I think the erosion to femininity came later. It is a threat to civilization, no doubt. It is me-too, and uber- feminism that has been the real nuclear bomb to relationships and a woman's ability to express herself, have sex freely, date normally, manifest the incredible dignity within femininity, and relate to men, in a healthy manner. It seems to contribute to an extremely unfulfilled female gender, and has resulted in making life very difficult for most men in the West. With Covid, things are even worse than before. A real life Zombieland. 

 

Thankfully, little of that toxic nonsense has reached the shores of Thailand. Women here seem to intuitively know how powerful their innate femininity is, and they use it to the fullest. I am very thankful for that. I think many have simply rejected alot of mind numbingly wrong headed Western notions, that women are saddled with. 

 

 

The thing is that the existence of the family is the result of the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding.

 

It was only this transition from a state of promiscuity to one of pair-bonding that allowed the emergence of the family unit as we know it in the first place.

 

Once males were freed from the impact of violent competition for access to females this reduced injuries among men, but above all it reduced the time spent on violent competition. That time could then be channelled into caring for infants. With a faithful female all males could be assured their offspring was theirs, and that their investments on the offspring were not wasted. In return the female obtained provisioning by the male.

 

This is not my theory, this theory was developed by academics and is borne out by observation among primates, where both the original state of total promiscuity and the action of trading provisioning for access to females, by males was observed.

 

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/25/9923

 

Thus pair-bonding was born as an idea by the male. Pair-bonding, ie the fidelity of the female in return for provisioning is what led to the creation of the family. The female understood that to be faithful to one male brought with it crucial advantages in provisioning that were vital to survival.

 

Now, fast forward thousands of years. Men, in desperation, during war time,  for the first time introduce women into the work force in large numbers. They start to earn their own money. To dispose of their own money. They start to develop financial independence. Then the developed nations introduce the welfare state, and women can get money from the state. All this has chipped away at the requirement for male support in terms of provisioning. However, from a male perspective, the issue is that a woman who has no requirement for provisioning by a male, effectively has no requirement to be faithful to a male. This notion of fidelity is then only enforced by custom, religion, culture, media and such, but not by actual necessity.

 

Is there evidence for this? If you look at the emergence of divorce, its increase in numbers emerged just after women entered the workforce in large numbers and started to enjoy financial independence. You are right that the unfulfilled female gender is a major source of unhappiness in the world now, an unfulfillment and unhappiness that can only grow as 45 and 55 year old women realise they will die alone, as 20 and 30 year old feminists propagate the live-alone and never marry option. And of course this unhappiness will not be blamed on feminists, but on men. To say nothing of the unhappiness this causes to men, witness the incel movement and rampages by men who are denied any mating access whatsoever.               

 

Me-too, the feminist terrorism of FEMEN and radicalised feminists in newspapers are merely a symptom of this. If you fund gender studies with taxpayer money, allow feminist lawyers to reshape criminal law, family, enforce women only voting lists, of course all of this strengthens and supports feminists.

 

Now, while it is true that in Thailand most women have not chosen the path of feminism yet, there are feminist centres all over Thailand. There is one in Mae Rim, Chiang Mai, I linked to it above, which, like all of them, operates under a disguise of Buddhism, offering workshops, yoga, meditation and such. Obviously only for women. There are other centres like this across the country. I looked into this when I saw a story about a feminist Buddhist based in Chiang Mai.

 

Thailand is a special case however, in Thailand it has always been women that worked, there is a long tradition of this, and of course the financial reward for that work is usually very small. This means that provisioning by a male is still very welcome. So Thailand is a special case. Plus Thai men are among the last defenders of patriarchy. So we will be spared the unhappiness of wide-spread radical feminism for a while, but there is no telling for how long. Already western feminists are flooding into these "meditation" centres run by radical feminists in Thailand, to support their cause.

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Tanomazu

[Tanomazu]

6 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Couldn't have put it better myself.

 

I do get the impression that women like to have a man as an ongoing project. They find one that is amenable to being with her, and then proceed to try and change him. Having succeeded in changing him though, he is no longer the man she was initially attracted to, so he is over and out.

I had a partner and a wife in my life, and both endeavoured to change me to something else, but happily without success. I was still over and out though.

I once tried to change my 41 year old wife back to her sexy happy 19 year old self. Sadly this also was not crowned with success.

[SAFETY FIRST]

1 hour ago, simon43 said:

<deleted> you like to drink?  ????

Its an Aussie term, he's not drinking urine. 

 

[Sparktrader]

2 hours ago, simon43 said:

I need to ask if you mean that quite literally.  I hear that drinking one's own urine is meant to have some health benefits, (although I haven't felt the urge to partake myself..)

 

Perhaps you can clarify what kind of p_iss you like to drink?  ????

Tastes ok