Happiness does not foster growth.
Multiple disciplines philosophies and religions maintain that is picking up one’s burden of existential self-awareness and making the proper sacrifices that ennobles the human spirit to overcome the challenges and even the suffering that life brings.
So do you think our pursuit of happiness has come at the expense of nobility of spirit?
And that when happiness refuses to hold still for us, things spin off into nihilism where there is neither happiness nor nobility of spirit?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
43 responses to “Do we forgo nobility to pursue happiness?”
If necessary.
Let me turn your question on its head: is nobility worth total misery? Let’s say you’re noble, but your nobility causes you to be beat up, ridiculed, and causes social ostrication? Let’s further say that it causes you to be falsely accused of crimes you didn’t commit, for the gain of the accusers? Let’s say that your nobility caused you and your family poverty, such that you needed to go to the government to beg for sustenance and housing? Let’s say your nobility causes you to face violence and/ or injury? At what point does your nobility come at too high of a cost? Some of these things happened to me and my family; others i know stories of those who they happened to. If this is the cost, i want nothing to do with it.
@Jear77
Nobility brings the strength to face misery. Even if it starts as “total” at the beginning of the journey.
Which it rarely is, because we always tend to imagine ourselves as the worst sufferers that have ever existed when we get into toxic mindsets. (One will even try to use the suffering of others to magnify their own).
It becomes a lot like depression where one actively resists the therapies that will be of the most use: and to dig ever deeper into the stifling grave of isolation and misery.
Others doing evil and refusing to reach for a higher standard is zero excuse . . . for us to become one of them.
One of the ones that we hate.
This twists the psyche so we start finding rationality in the irrational: things like glorying in hypocrisy!
That’s a warning sign my friend.
Please take it seriously. There is no mitigation of shame and suffering on the path you’re currently on.
And worse, it makes you actually dread the only path out of Darkness.
It is an axiom of Darkness that once it has us it wants to hold us.
Being courageous is the only escape .
It’s far better to risk being dashed on the rocks of life than to rot away and be devoured one piece at a time.
@griz disagree. If i learned anything in life, i learned that you have to fight and claw and bite and scratch and lie and cheat and steal..and yes, sometimes even kill to get what you want. All these things are ignoble… but ultimately necessary.
@Jear77
The problem with that philosophy is that you can only use it on each person once or twice before they get wise to your tricks.
Once people know someone is dishonest untrustworthy deceiving resentful arrogant etc, they want nothing more to do with them.
The problem with being a psychopath is that one always have to be on the move and cannot trust any to be allies save for those who are more psychopathic than you, who think they might be able to use you for something before throwing you away.
Nobody wants to hire such a person or refer them for a job. if they do manage to land a job, any hold on it will be tenuous it best.
It is the perfect path for generating a terminal feedback loop of misery and suffering in self and in the world around you.
But rare is the person who cannot avoid this once they see it; provided they are willing to make the appropriate sacrifices of things that are only hurting them in the long run anyways.
@griz did you know that 90%+ of all criminals are never caught? It also follows that 90%+ of all workers stretched the truth to get a job. It’s the same with *Every* area of life. And rhere are 2 sides to every story… who will you believe? The person who honestly comes to you saying that things were tight and they did what they had to in order to survive… even though their choices weren’t always the best, or the person who upholds virtue as a badge… yet we all know how easily such badges tarnish. I’ll go with the former every time. The latter will more likely than not be a liar.
@Jear77
The idea with things that tarnish over time, is that you don’t just leave them sit. You take them out and renew (polish) them periodically. And that takes both dedication and effort. (It’s also the hero archetype. Plus it ties into the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths about how to keep any social structure from decaying).
Since something is only a crime if jurisprudence judges it as such I have no idea where you would be getting that statistic from.
You may be thinking of sin and then you would have to raise the level to 100%. But how is that a reason to not try to do something about it in your own life? Especially if like you someone is hyper sensitive to pain and suffering?
Where is the sanity in both perpetuating and magnifying that which one asserts is so wrong in the world and hurts them so??
So then they make more; complain there is too much; and then use this as justification to make even more!
What sort of unholy shit is this??
What it is is the unholy trinity of resentment arrogance and deceit.
You better grab a Lifeline because you’re sinking in it fast.
@griz the idea is unless you’re at a doctorate of mathematics, constantly and 100% accurately calculating your contributions to a given situation… mistakes, bad choices, and even outright ignoblity happen, and sometimes those things are deliberate and help the person out who can instead of weep and gnash at what they had to do is the person who, at day’s end, doesn’t let their choices bother them. Far better that that waste one’s time or energy trying to something that knew it was going to happen anyways how sorry one is. Isn’t it a greater sin to waste time? Better by far if a person who is convinced that they are doing some wrong they simply stop it, and not do it again. That takes zero time. What’s more is that is spent in anguish, in trying to correct the wrong, the less time one has over all.
@Jear77
Failing to hit the mark is no reason to stop practicing unless one values incompetence.
It is a greater sin to self, society the species and Life itself to stop trying.
That only honors fear and death.
@griz the point is two or three words MAX “i’m sorry” or “i was wrong” should suffice. Anything more is superfluous, stupid, and time wasting. Once said MOVE ON. Don’t dwell on the would’ve, could’ve, should’ves… such is useless.
@Jear77
The thing is we cannot force another to apologize or to make it genuine.
Our inability to move on unless they mouth certain words makes us their slave.
Or put another way, if they fail or refuse to say three words, or die before saying it, we are psychologically stuck behind that trespass for the rest of our life.
@griz i have an even shorter answer to the statement that i’m wrong “great!” or “awesome!” That avoids the whole “i’m sorry.” bit. At least that’s a positive. Even of something is the most messed up thing in the world if someone (myself included) can say either one of those responses, and move foward in a different direction, not looking back… What’s the deal with having to admit one’s wrong to do so?
@Jear77
It avoids adult responsibility for oneself.
And few employers offering good living wages want to employ a child.
Turning a negative into a positive usually involves more than just whitewash. It takes effort sacrifice and yes responsibility for oneself.
@griz “ok” an equally short answer does the exact same thing, and *still* ends up acknowledging responsibility because it comes with the connotation that the person who’s speaking is 100% right.
@Jear77
Responsibility for oneself?
Or trying to afix it to another?
What person is 100% right
@griz the person who saying “ok” about the wrong. Linguisticly “ok” goes back to an American political cartoon that shows a German saying “oll korrect” or in English “all correct”
@Jear77
I’m not really sure where you are trying to go with this.
I know I said some things that could be difficult to accept.
@griz perhaps Shakespeare’s thing of brevity being the soul of wit, combining with an idea that doing any more than is absolutely necessary is wasteful, even when wrong
@Jear77
in relation to what specifically?
@griz try rereading the conversation and you’ll catch what I meant.
@Jear77
The point I was getting at is that we tend to be absolutely horrendous judges of the minimum necessary to get the job done.
Laziness, feared fragility, a low opinion of self and ideological possession can all have us failing to follow through.
@griz but my point is if we can… if we have the strength of character even “ok” is redundant, in that if one’s actions change the act of changing one’s direction should be a sufficient indicator that they realize they are/ were wrong
@Jear77
Geez Louise! That’s one twisted bag of snakes, with a few cats thrown in!
Just take note of how extreme you are going to try to make a possible point.
We all have the strength of character to make most situations “better”. We also have the potential to make most situations hellishly worse as well — and usually this is the easiest course, requiring little strength of character.
We each have not just conscious awareness in us, but conscious moral awareness. Most (all?) of our “incongruities”, performance disparities and “bags of snakes mixed with cats” come from our trying to deny that we have this awareness and potential.
We have the innate evolved ability, to detect “wrong-ness”. Our whole right hemisphere has become more or less specialized unto this.
But whole toxic ideologies of our society try to rail at this, insisting on lack of meaning, lack of effectiveness, lack of suitable goal, lack of transcendent standard to reach for.
All so we can avoid the often “troubling” messages of our right hemisphere . . . warning us that we are moving in “troubling” directions! (And then cue the left-hemisphere to try to rationalize those messages into something small enough to ignore!)
BTW, in sorting through all these messages I got behind in, I cannot find that article you wanted me to read. Could you either re-post it in a more current thread or better yet, summarize it.
@griz The whole idea of repentance is an EXACTLY 180 degree turn, yes? And for the chatty fellow who does nothing but talk… the BEST 180 degree turn is to STFU and DO something (for those unenlightened to street language that would be “shut the fuck up.” )
@Jear77
IIRC, the word “sin” is most closely related to an archery term, “to miss the mark”.
Sure, one can be 180º turned from the target and shooting into the audience! But one can also be shooting at the wrong target, or at the right target but aiming poorly.
Repentance from sin is a recognition one is missing the target: that there is a good and correct target to be aiming at, and aim to be perfected.
But for sure if you are shooting off into the audience you need to do a 180!
@griz point
You got red pilled recently.
I’m glad you’re enjoying and being challenged by Jordan Peterson. Classical Liberalism is a far cry from what we are experiencing from the socialist left today.
Carry on.
@Weenis
There are modes of socialism that are not destructively reconstructionist. (neo-Marxist)
If they come to a point where it’s a toss-up between money and people, they tend towards people. Capitalism is nested within the society rather than the society being nested within capitalism.
@griz
Seeing as how there’s really not an actual definition of “neo-Marxism”, it’s hard to debate that specific point.
All socialism is wrong, all the time. That’s just the way it is.
Regardless, you being critical of social inequality, or “equality of outcome”, is at odds with whatever you propose neo-Marxism is, since those who call themselves “neo-Marxists” are proponents of equality of outcome.
Keep listening to Peterson, he’ll teach you this.
@Weenis @griz
Awwwwwwwwwwwwww
@luftballooneyegouge
They are Concepts that take some effort to understand.
@griz
….vague much?
@luftballooneyegouge
I study under your mastership!
@griz
Does that mean if you’ll stuff some beggar patreon account with ridiculous amounts of money to chat with me?
@luftballooneyegouge
You are going to have to explain that one.
@Weenis
Neo Marxism is Marxism redressed. The same as neoliberalism is liberalism redressed.
We are intelligent beings in really don’t need some “authority” to come along and defined what is up and down.
Socialism just means the society is the trump card. capitalism means the capital is the trump card. That’s just the way it is.
And in that regard too much capitalism is toxic; because it destroys the game one is trying to win at. History shows that if the society crumbles everything associated with the economy ( including capital) either disintegrates or is redistributed.
Whereas if the economy fails but the society and yours a new economy can be rebuilt. The society is the base within which capital nests.
@griz
Add some Milton Friedman to your listening mix.
@Weenis
I’ll check it out when I get to sufficient WiFi for streaming.
But until then let’s strain the brain weenis with the following supposition:
The end outcome of unregulated capitalism is the Pareto Distribution into oligarchy. And with no active management of the Gini Coefficient by government crime rises and revolt looms.
I would appreciate your actually internalizing and thinking these things out and coming up with intelligent discussion.
@Weenis
OK, I found it in surfing around.
You can disregard my other thread and comments.
I’ve come across his observations before, but just didn’t recognize his name. I’m not in disagreement that free-market economy has been the single most effective method discovered to-date to raise people out of abject poverty.
But free-market economy produces the Gini Coefficient, and augments the Pareto Distribution.
Part of both the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian mythology is that if “the Order” is not carefully watched, it will corrupt and stagnate and the entire structure of society will eventually fall. Their various “messiahs” were those who were first of all aware (eyes open) to the trends and then could effectively articulate solutions — rather than just charging blindly ahead on a process that by it’s nature produces a toxic distribution of wealth.
The “effectively articulate unto Creative Process” also ties into the Christian notion of the Logos.
The clip you wrote-and-produced (or just parroted?) only provides the apologetic component for capitalism — and totally neglects the cautions of it.
The capital is the “object”. The society is the “subject” that HAS the object. To just focus on the object, is to neglect the subject.
And no society — however good at a particular good goal — can survive not looking at ALL it’s people. Capitalism with out some socialism will destroy itself — despite all the other good it might accomplish up to the moment of revolt.
I disagree that happiness does not foster growth, & I’m not just saying the feral pursuit of happiness can foster growths all nasty.
Parents chase happiness-for-their-childrens with those proper sacrifices.
Even the biggest happy-chasin’ folks will put in the work. KISS is all about hedonistic fun, but they got all their fun through practicing with daily 8-hour rehearsals.
One can sacrifice one’s righteous attitude or noble-spirit, if you want, for anything: happiness, power, broads, Beanie-Babies®, stupid politics, a dumb buzz, 8-hours of sleep, pet food, nice hair,….good intentions, etc.
This response was brought to you by NiHiLiSM,…
…NiHiLiSM, it’s just brutal honesty!!!
@luftballooneyegouge
I think wise parents wish not for happiness on their children so much as they wish for fulfillment, meaning, for them to become all that they can be.
If happy is the absolute pinnacle of all one can be, one will be defeated the first time happiness fails. And thereafter being addicted to pursuing that which can only fail.
Whereas the other things I mention can tide you through times when happiness may be harder to find.
They are the superior wish upon self or child. Nihilism sells Humanity and the individual short, for something akin to a drug fix.
@griz
I think you’re projecting.
No, we do not forgo nobility to pursue happiness. Nobility is a birthright endowed by our creator. Happiness, like glory is fleeting…we enjoy brief periods of happiness while maintaining personal struggle to survive life. All else is fleeting. General George Patton said it best, in my humble opinion…
@immortal_pirate
My thought is that muscles and intelligence are also like a Birthright endowed upon us by our Creator.
And if you don’t actively exercise them it can be like they’re not even there.
Consider also, that the Angels did not proclaim happiness to the world at Christ’s birth, but joy.
There are intrinsic differences between them.