Comments by "Peter deWolf" (@StoneShards) on "Adventure as Lasting Happiness | Dr. Arthur Brooks | EP 528" video.

  1. If you want to "command happiness" you have to charge the word, "happiness", with your intention that it will trigger the "happiness" you intend, which requires you to entertain the state of "happiness" within you. The more you charge the word, the stronger and more potent the effectiveness of the word for its intended purpose. Without such extensive practice, the word's triggering effect is weak and ineffectual, as Jordan complains. You CAN deliberately entrain emotional energy to word values and thought trains! You do it, anyway, whether deliberately or not. Intentionally accentuating the process is potentially advantageous.
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  2. Each moment of awareness is imprinted in the "material" of "existence" according to character of cosmos's resistance to the totality of the experiencer's being. The individual's habit nature accounts for his experience of "remembering", even though the memory, itself, is the property of cosmos. The nervous system provides a memory access mechanism, like a radio that tunes in a particular radio station.
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  3. You have the power to induce happiness--or any emotional, or mental, state. That's not the same as having the functional ability to do so. The latter requires practice. Everyone is always doing this without being aware of it--they practice poorly, so their success is limited. If you invent anything, you invent yourself, as well. I'm not persuaded by Arthur's exuberance to accept his pronouncements at face value. He's weaving a tapestry of neuroscience and religion--and it's not a tight weave.
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  4. Happiness is the liberty to be unconcerned.
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  5. You discover "what's good for you" as you pursue your desires according to your characteristic proclivities. "Experience" does the work of modifying desires even if you don't participate consciously in the process, though, participation will accentuate the process.
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  6. Discernment is perception of that which is obscure, by conventional definition. The "obscure" is lacking light, a reference to "darkness". What we do all the time naturally--it's a survival skill--is extend the light of order into the darkness of disorder. What happens in this process is moderation of associations that arise with the experience of the darkness, giving it FORM, thereby "ordering" it. The critical point is that all associations are from experiential memory. You order the unknown in terms of your personal experience, giving the unknown your own face.
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  7. "No difference between remorse and learning"?? If that was true they wouldn't be different words. Remorse may be re-learning. But original learning is an organic function of correlation and instantiation of experience. Insufficient or defective learning naturally elicits correction, and, in the "moral" sphere that could well be motivated by remorse. I just don't find it helpful to assert the identity of obviously different things. That's...poetry, a clever and interesting abuse of language.
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