Positive way of thinking and happiness

I am afraid I did not quite grasp the meaning of your argument. I read again and again your thesis, but sadly I feel like I have not understand perfectly what you wished to say. Our environment is indeed important to our survival. I cant deny that, but quite a lot of humans are struggling to survive nowadays and somehow still manage to be happy. I personally know (a very few) people that have to exhaust themselves to work in order to make a living and they somehow still manage to have a smile on their face. Struggling to make a living does not guarantee you unhappiness, as much as a comfortable life can guarantee you happiness. Because even though someone may have a lot of hardships in his life e. g. working a lot of hours at a very difficult job in order to barely have enough money to eat, he may still manage to appreciate the little things in life, that can still lead him to happiness. This is because happiness is not based on the materialistic goods we possess, no matter how few they may be, but in our mental goods, meaning the emotions we feel, for example love. The majority of the populace is struggling to survive in one way or the other, but somehow a few of them are happy and i believe that if the rest of them, changed the way they are thinking, they may manage to be happy to! Even if someone is homeless he can still be happy, because happiness is a state of mind that only ourselves can define. Now, i am not sure, but i have the impression that when you refereed to struggling to survive, you did not exactly meant economically, but you might mean the need to have to find food, water, clothes etc. You are talking about a wildlife situation, like the one we may sadly encounter in Africa or the one the primitive humans used to live in. But, scavenging for food and water does not guarantee you sadness and despair. Based on your logic, all the humans that used to live before the construction of cities, before the invention of farming were in black despair. The tribes of Indians of the north and south America, that were hunters and had to struggle to survive, were unhappy and sad all the time? I don't think so. Plus, yes being cold can make you uncomfortable, but happiness is a state of mind that stays with you constantly for a long period of time. What you are talking about is joy. For example a little child can feel joy while it eats an ice cream, but when the ice cream ends it will stop feeling joy. On the other hand, the child will be happy (for example because it lives in a loving family) before it eats the ice cream, during and after. Same with being cold, uncomfortable or e. g. in pain. You may not feel any joy at the moment, but that does not mean that you stop being happy; because your happiness does not depend in one moment in your life, but is something constant that is with you for at least a long period. Have you heard people saying i was happy from 7:00 to 9:00? No. They will say that they had a good time from 7:00 to 9:00 because having a good time does mean that you were happy. The opposite is also true. For example if someone is happy, he is happy for a period in his life and he does not stop being happy from 3:00 to 4:00 because he had a stomach flu. Moreover, when you say we live quite passively, you don't explain in which area we are passive. Plus the way I perceive it, is that you are talking generally, but not all people live the same and so i am sure that not all people live passively in their lives. Furthermore, I must apologize because I don't know what is this Government ideology we work for and so I did not understand what you said. I did not say the world around us does not matter, but I said it does not matter as much as how we understand and see it (first line in my article). Plus, i our experiences depends on how we perceive the world. For example, what might be cold for you, it might be hot for me, because I live in Canada and i am used to different temperatures. We might be at the same environment, but you might want to wear a jacket, while I am cool with just a t-shirt. If someone hits me I will feel bad, but there are people who enjoy it. What I think is my dream job, you may find boring. What I think is beautiful, you may think that is ugly. The way we think of the world is what defines our happiness. What you see as a problem, I see as a challenge. What you might see as a burden, I may see it as a chance to improve myself. Except if it is a bullet haha but that is obvious and unnecessary to write. That is also the reason I said the world does not matter AS MUCH as the way we see it. If it is a truck running at you, well that is rather self explanatory :P That is the reason the world around us does not matter as much as our perception of it. Moreover, I really do not understand why you refereed to our ape-ancestors and what they have to do with the happiness of humans today. I think that what you meant is that due to the hardships and the way the earth managed to sustain life our ancestors managed to evolve all the way from monkeys to homo sapiens and therefore because we exist we can be happy. OK i do not disagree with science, but I do not see the point of bringing this up. Please explain to me :) Finally, in your last sense you claim that understanding and sensing the world means that we are using the world. Again, i never wrote about understanding the world, but rather about sensing the world. But sensing the world around you does not mean that you interact with it. Looking at something, does not affect it (expert if you are an quanton, but i think we can ignore this case). Again, reality is subjective. The way we see the world differs from person to person. Yes our environment affects what we perceive, but what we (or better said, how) perceive is more important. As an example of an extreme case, a delusional person will perceive nothing of the world around him, no matter how his environment may be, but he will continue to 'live' inside his head, in his own despair or happiness. So our views of it can affect how we feel. As i have stated before, what you find boring, I might find it fun. Of course we do not refer to extremities, like getting rolled over a tank, because this is out of the point and plain stupid :P Also, you argue that knowledge of our world will lead us to happiness. There is a specific name for the act of acquiring knowledge about the material world we live in. It is called science. So what you are claiming is that science will lead us to happiness, right? I presume, that you mean that science by making our lives more comfortable will make us happy. But again it is not how comfortable we are that will lead us to happiness, because happiness is an emotion and it depends on other emotion specifically the positive emotion we feel, like love, bliss etc. Physical goods, like a bigger car, or a faster PC does not affect our emotions. What affects our emotions are the ideas we have, for example the love we feel for our soulmate. Actually, this is more like what you stated in the first paragraph. Please read my article at ( . http://www.debate.org... ) where I state my case, why physical goods are not what is in control of our happiness. You did not argue with anything else in the rest of my article, so i assume that you agreed with me. Thank you (again) very much for debating me. I hope my articles will help you find happiness in your life :)