philosophy ft. art, for once.

I disgust myself. No blogging for 10 days straight?! Get a grip, Victor! God!

I guess you could say I've been busy. Or, busier than usual. I've got less on my plate than ever before, school-wise especially, but still I find my days too short. It doesn't make much sense.

I believe the problem stems in the fact that I've been neglecting productivity in favour of easy fun. Perhaps a lingering of the summer's carelessness and laidback days.

While it may seem that living in the now and just doing whatever makes you happy right now is the perfect stress-free way of life, that's not the case. It's called hedonism, living for the day. Present-tense joy is both the father, son and holy spirit for the hedonist.

It's not a perfect way of life, because it's not sustainable. While you can always afford to lay back and take it easy, and prioritize time to relax, the degree to which it's possible to be happy while relaxing varies, and long term nonproductivity becomes unsustainable.

The tendency to prioritize recreational things, relaxing, and not being productive, is called being Lazy, and doing productive things now so that you can enjoy later is called building a Career. A healthy bit of both makes for a stable life.

Anyway, it's like the earth. No, not made of dirt and filled with lava, but in the respect of the climate dilemma. We have a hedonist's attitude towards it, we keep living for the day, because we can't bring ourselves to see the bigger picture, and the fact that all we are doing is poisoning our dear Tellus, killing it slowly, though surely. In time, we will no longer be enabled to enjoy the day as we do now, because the day will be different.

In the same way, this Carpe Diem-attitude is bad for individual humans. Every day that you neglect your career, health, social life, is a day when you make your life shorter. On the other hand, every day you prioritize happiness is a day when you know you were as happy as you could have been.

You could be doing drugs right now. I wouldn't know, but it would probably make you happy right now. But it very well might bite you in the arse later. Worth it? I have no idea.

It's an age old philosophical question. Live fast, or live long, arguments for both can be found but there is no answer. There is no perfect way of life, whatever someone may claim. Our lives are but a pursuit of maximum happiness, like a high-score game. Living a hedonistic life is no better or worse than a life that spans a hundred years, because I believe it's all about the sum of happiness you accumulated rather than the rate of happiness experienced.


Philosophy.