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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 13, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Of what purpose is human flourishing? If flourishing is important because it makes humans happy, then happiness is the point.

"Flourishing" is eudaimonia/"happiness", it's just that translating it that way for moderns seems to bring to mind hedonism or fleeting emotions. Which is how you get the drug question. Or humorous misunderstandings like this.

If you don't take happiness to be the mere sensation of pleasure at any given moment (which always abates and you will always want more of) "why do drugs?" has an obvious answer

Well, because part of my flourishing is cultivating a variety of virtues and capacities - health, discipline, familial relations, friendships - that are all correlated with my well-being and, ugh, "happiness" in a deeper sense. Taking drugs provides me with short-term hedons but harms my ability to do that and may make me - and those around me - much unhappier in the long run.