Meanwhile in Denmark: Distorted Danes

Blogged on 31 May, 2013 at 9:52 AM by Andrew
 

So they say Danes are generally quite introverts, but you need to see them during Distortion. It's a 5-day celebration with street parties that start from around 2pm and end with night parties. This is like THE time of the year for them, and they seriously get distorted. Things get crazy, and I mean...craaazy. Constant drinking,  crowd surfing, reckless dancing, weird dress ups, and so much more. Apparently it's also a thing to open a beer can and just throw it high up in the air. You won't look at it or where it falls if you're like a 'baws'.

So the first day, we had just arrived and a group of drunk Danes skål'ed at me (cheered) with a beer, and my response was "I can't skål, I have no beer yet". Within seconds, he takes out a beer glass bottle from his jacket, opens the bottle cap with his teeth and gives me the beer. "Have a nice day" he says. Cool, free beer with some extra saliva. Won't complain.

The second day, after the street parties ended, an unofficial party followed after a guy on a bike, playing club-loud music...from his bike...from his tablet. There must have been over 100 people gathered around the bike and strolling the streets, hands pumping in the air and head bobbing with the rhythm of some of the classic and modern songs.

Meanwhile in Denmark...heh.

Lastly, since I have a pre-historic, vintage mobile, I do not have any photos that I would have liked to take. But there are some here and here, from their official page.

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Living The Life #2 - Happiness vs Contentedness

Blogged on 26 May, 2013 at 9:04 PM by Andrew
 

I have been dormant for a long time, and even neglected my own philosophies...shameful. However I am finding myself again and here I will write about a theory that I've had in mind since around 4 years ago, that is nice to know, be aware of and could help with understanding and possibly reacting in certain situations.

What I want to talk about is the difference between happiness and contentedness. Now 'happy' and 'content' are both synonyms according to the dictionary, however I would like to distinguish between the two.

Contentedness can be seen as a standard of living but in regard to the pleasant 'state' of your life. Generally rich people would have a high level of contentedness while poor people find themselves quite the opposite. However, they do say that rich people are (sometimes) not happy despite the money, while poor people can be happier. This is where 'happiness' comes in.

In this context, I like to associate the term happiness closer to excitement, a temporarily good feeling that is greater than your previous feeling. Happiness is a change of contentedness towards the better. Now this gets interesting when we picture these two terms in some charts to visualize the idea.

First, we look at a very content person and a very non-content one. The chart shows the level of contentedness against time, so far so good.


It becomes interesting when we look at happiness in this regard. Happiness becomes directly represented by the gradient of a line in that graph. Let's have both persons in the graph get a feeling of happiness:

The change of contentedness is the happiness, and how steep the line is represents how happy we are. A person who just won the lottery has a massive upwards curve from their current level of contentedness, and that's how they achieve a huge level of happiness. The asterisk in the graph represents a loss of contentedness resulting in the opposite of happiness. I do not call it sadness yet, as I'm still unsure of what 2 distinguishable terms can represent the opposite of happiness and the opposite of contentedness.

This idea seems to explain certain impressions in the world. They say rich people are sad or bored. That can be true if they have a high level of contentedness, making it hard to achieve upward curves at that level - thus hard to achieve happiness. On the other hand, people with very little possessions and money easily get a sudden steep curve of happiness with little objects, perhaps even just food for the day. Sure their level of contentedness might return back to normal after, but there's still a small but steep curve that gives them happiness. This is why the poorer people appreciate the little things. The curves that little things do for rich people can be tiny and negligible, thus not felt.

So what to do with this? It's good to have it in mind to judge your life currently, whether you are simply content or you are happy. Generally happiness means you have events, whether small or big, soon or more long-term, possible or certain, that you are excited about. If you feel somehow bored or uninteresting, but you think that you have already so much in your life, then perhaps you are content but need some extra activities to feel that happiness. A small change to your daily routine, a plan of a certain event, doing something unusual, doing something from your to-do list. Anything that can get you that small but perceptable curve. The gradient is your happiness.

Feel free to agree or disagree with this, or find exceptions to it as I'm sure there are many. Additionally if you have ideas for words that can refer to the feeling opposite to happiness and that feeling opposite to contentedness, do share.

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