Question for you lot wot read my Journal

[callistra]

How do you define successful?

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Relative to your goals, obviously.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Having enough.

[maelkann.livejournal.com]

Able to leap small buildings in a single bound!

But yeah. It's relative to your goals. Though admittedly, I'd have issues with setting low goals then going.. I'm successful! I managed to tie my shoe laces!

Re:Question for you lot wot read my Journal

[meljane.livejournal.com]

Having a job that pays me an adequate amount of money, that I like and that I can stay in for a long while and working with people that I don't feel like beating up after awhile of working with them and I suppose being happy as well .

[pmcmurray.livejournal.com]

tough one - dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/) seems convinced successful is a state of being, like satori, only richer, or happier, or something...

[syncretin.livejournal.com]

The quantity of your enemies' teeth that are broken due to gnashing, and the volume (in dBa, which scales nicely) of their women wailing.

Slightly more usefully, score the things in the world which have changed due to you - preferably which have your name on them. For a slightly stricter definition, you could also require that they changed for the better.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Achieving 50%+1 of what you set out to do.

[anysia.livejournal.com]

waking up the next morning and knowing who I am.

[aceris.livejournal.com]

To love and be loved.
:)

[dragonchrome.livejournal.com]

Bloody Big Fish

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

to get a bit more specific, whether you are successful in general is relative to your goals. But the ultimate goal will always, somewhere, include the pursuit of happiness, whether we achieve that through hedonism, self-satisfaction with altruistic achievements, freedom from desire and the road to nirvana, smug basking in the envy of others, or whatever. You cannot achieve true happiness through success at material things alone, but when we use successful we generally talk about the material aspects of our lives, and more specifically those aspects we have some control over. Money, career goals, life support networks, relationships, various hobby goals we set ourselves.

In this sense, we are successful if the material aspects of our lives are sufficient for our happiness, at least as much as we control them, whatever the requirements for our happiness might be. Money and material success can't buy happiness, but it can remove many causes of unhappiness.

[cheshirenoir.livejournal.com]

Hoo. Red Shnapper. Verrry tasty!

[japester.livejournal.com]

Achieving things that you set out to do.

Success

[(Anonymous)]

Anonymous my ass: it's Lee. Anyhoo, success for me is simple, mostly- either to set a goal and achieve it, or reflect upon an action (or set of actions) with satisfaction.

4ex, when I first started writing aaaagggghhh years ago, I set myself to appear in 3 places: Aurealis, Eidolon, and Writers of The Future. Aaaaaaaggggh minus a couple of years later, I returned to writiung after some years in the wilderness, cracked WoTF, then Aurealis, then Borderlands (Eidolon was, by then, dead.) Success!

As an example of the later, my daughter Erin is by no means a finished task (and never will be), but when I am able to teach or influence her then I feel a sense of satisfaction. I taught her the names of The Wiggles today, and now she remembers them. Success!

Okay, lame, but it works for me. It's not like I get any job satisfaction, now is it? :))

[syncretin.livejournal.com]

I'll politely disagree. Happiness is easy - it comes in $40 pills. Yes, there's a quality control issue, but the theory, I would suggest, is fundamentally correct.

Happiness is, basically, a solved problem. Or, if not quite solved, merely the distance of some solid empirical trials away from being solved.

You're structuring other things in life as being subordinate to happiness; I suggest that that's an arbitrary (dare I say axiomatic?) way to look at it.

I think it's equally valid to say that success could be measured against darwinian advancement of the race (for example), and happiness could well be a detractor from such success, insofar as it impairs excesses of achievement.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Sustainable long term happiness is *not* a solved problem, $40 pills being a particularly bad solution.

And I'm not actually saying you measure success in terms of happiness - happy and successful aren't linked. I'm suggesting you measure success in terms of sources of potential unhappiness and barriers to achievement of happiness that you have managed to overcome by your efforts.

So if you truly believe happiness can be found in the ingestion of $40 pills, then in your terms you will be successful if you are able to obtain a regular supply, afford $40 as often as needed, injest whenever you feel unhappy, and keep that lifestyle going long term.

As far as it being an axiomatic approach to the problem? Sure. But its a popular one. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" and all that. And happiness has, in general, been found to increase productivity.

Darwinian achievement opens up a can of worms, but suffice to say its a very poor substitute, starting with the implicit teleological fallacy that evolution has a direction. Should people with genetic defects consider themselves successful if they manage to stop breeding?

[syncretin.livejournal.com]

Sustainable long-term happiness is an oxymoron; happiness being either or both of an unstable neurochemical state and a subjective, comparative measure indexed against recent happiness.

However, given a model of an "ideal" cycle of happiness according to either of the above definitions, you can drive that cycle by means of $40 pills a good deal more easily than you can with any other method I can think of.

Happiness may have been found to increase average productivity, but does it correlate to frequency of genuinely ground-breaking progress? The tortured literary genius is cliched, but I find the idea that there is a genuine relationship in there somewhere quite appealing.

But then, I would.

I hardly see how anything can be a poor substitute for an arbitrary choice. That aside, I think that particularly unambitious people with genetic defects could well treat not breeding as a measure of success. In their position, I'd rather try to overachieve in some way instead - refer earlier opinion about correlation of achievement and discomfort.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi all, Lily here.

Success = work (preferably, but not neccessarily paid) that you enjoy, which uses your skills and talents and that you feel is worthwhile; a creative outlet that lets you express yourself and gives you satisfaction (writing, painting, sculpture, film, comics, music, cooking etc etc); having good relationships with people who you care about (partner/s and friends); being able to appreciate beauty (whether it be in wilderness, art, literature, or elegant computer programs) and seeing enough beautiful things to make you happy. Enough money to access adequate shelter, food, clothes and medical care is also a requisite.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Sustainable long-term happiness is an oxymoron; happiness being either or both of an unstable neurochemical state and a subjective, comparative measure indexed against recent happiness.

Its only an oxymoron if you define it that way. Happiness isn't unstable. Euphoria is, but not happiness. Its about as unstable as its opposite, depression, which can be an all too stable state.

However, given a model of an "ideal" cycle of happiness according to either of the above definitions, you can drive that cycle by means of $40 pills a good deal more easily than you can with any other method I can think of.

I'm far from arguing that chemical joy in general (lets not get sidetracked into specifics) isn't a valid part of a drive for happiness (I simply doubt that its sufficient for long term happiness in itself - though SSRIs certainly help some people). But we were arguing about definitions of success, not happiness. If you believe that $40 pills are the most effective driver of long term happiness, then your definition of success should include ready access to $40 pills, opportunity to consume thenm and money to afford them. Personally, I think the chemicals you are probably referring to are probably very poor drivers of long term happiness, but the pharmacological research is still inconclusive. They certainly work in the short term, though.

Happiness may have been found to increase average productivity, but does it correlate to frequency of genuinely ground-breaking progress? The tortured literary genius is cliched, but I find the idea that there is a genuine relationship in there somewhere quite appealing.

For some people, long term happiness might mean from time to time experiencing unhappiness. From artists to aid workers, long term happiness is the goal, and that can come from a sense of achievement which comes from facing challenges, etc. I don't know all that much about true genius, but there are certainly enough examples of relatively cheerful geniuses that we know its not essential to be miserable.

I hardly see how anything can be a poor substitute for an arbitrary choice.


Its an issue of logical consistency. You can choose your axioms, but some result in better systems - and poorly defined axioms (like the oxymoronic 'Darwinian progress') result in logically inconsistent systems.

[valeskah1.livejournal.com]

Success is usually defined by goals, but there is a certain amount of success that isn't, and just happens. Success is the feeling of "Hey, I did good in that", whether it's a tiny thing or a humungous thing, no matter what other people think of it.

But then again, I've just been watching season 1 of Buffy, so my brain is fried :)