Canvas by Natalie Perez Guzman

Thesis: Balance

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:11:19 UTC

We should maintain a balance between our experiencing and memory selves to maximise the full potential of our happiness.

Treadmill

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:11:53 UTC

Only following desires/making decisions based on our memory self only causes us to obtain happiness from accomplishments, hence leading us to follow the hedonic treadmill.

No goals achived

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:13:16 UTC

Only making decisions based on our experiencing self will cause us to only experience happiness in the present, but will not help us make decisions that will help us further achieve our goals.

It's not hard to be happy

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:14:31 UTC

It doesn't take a lot to make our present self happy, and it’s something that we can find in everyday activities. Making it very easy and possible to obtain experiencing happiness and then balance it with memory happiness.

Quote

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:16:23 UTC

"When you get an emotional shock -good or bad- your brain wants to re-equilibrate, making it hard to stay on the high or low for very long. This is especially true when it comes to positive emotions, for primordial reasons that we'll get into shortly. It's why, when you achieve conventional, acquisitive success, you can never get enough."

Quote

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:17:03 UTC

“The experiencing self has no voice in this choice. We actually don't choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. And even when we think about the future, we don't think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories.”

Quote

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:17:53 UTC

"But I'd argue that for a messy person, prone to leaving piles of miscellaneous items in their wake, it's euporic."

Quote

nmp274 — 2025-07-30 13:23:39 UTC

"Now, the two selves bring up two notions of happiness. There are really two concepts of happiness that we can apply, one per self. So you can ask: How happy is the experiencing self? And then you would ask: How happy are the moments in the experiencing self's life?"