The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective well-being, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances

Albert Camus famously declared: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." But this is imprecise. Rather, it is a matter not of deciding only whether life is always worth living, generally, but of judging whether life is ever worth living or not, whether, even in principle, life can be worth living at all. Indeed, judging whether life ever can be worth living, and perhaps even under what abstractly possible or conceivable conditions of practical implementation, might even be deemed the most central of all questions.

And hope for life worth living is either vested in the quest for honest integrity together with the pursuit of happiness and functional relationship, or else Nihilistically rejected and condemned as by the Zen.

FoolQuest.com is dedicated to the expressive drive and vital interest of reaching beyond the phony faint hearted "low hanging fruit" of online culture, to the non-zero-sum prospect of creative collaboration simply for it's own joy, and also to the challenge of substantive, realistic, capable and effective collaboration on ambitious undertakings.

Standing certain of all one seeks may only demonstrate failure to imagine better. Technology exists to aid and empower us all to do more and better together. Alas, it is the culture gone awry that cares ever less. Indeed, anyone still so callow and venial as to continue pipe dreaming that all on a whim and without focus or attachment, perhaps reducible to mediation by the next inane simple-minded paint-by-numbers webgizmo, we can ever actually maximize our achievement and satisfaction in cyber-Utopia, has cut costs but lost values and just doesn't get it.

If You Desire Anything You've Never Had, Try Something You've Never Done
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” — Simone Weil

Your attention, please! The challenges and dynamic of human relationship are similar despite individual differences, regardless of context and specifics:

Do you even know: What kinds of interaction do you yourself most acutely lack?

And how, instead, might such fulfilling social interaction best be consistently achieved and such happy experience sustained? That is the question!

Happiness comes in meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others.
Satisfying interpersonal interaction and connection in order to successfully resolve loneliness may very much depend upon
the specific different choice and change in the very nature
and deliberate purpose of interpersonal interactivity.
"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight." —Thomas Carlyle

Trustworthy reciprocal cooperation elicits unique joy and satisfaction,
as does proactive creativity.
“The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.” — Jean Caldwell
Thus our challenge : to forge a CREATIVE MINORITY!
Happy people are sociable, extroverted and known to reach out, exert effort in order to actively make things happen, attentively pursue new understandings, choose creative activities, seek new achievements, and thereby uplift their own thoughts and emotions, even improving their circumstances by centering their lives around whatever pleases them most. Activity and goals thereof ever put forth must be varied and novel yet well-suited to personality, practiced diligently and successfully in a continuous stream of fresh positive experiences so as to outweigh negativity bias. Schedule and routine must also be flexible in order to avoid getting into a rut.

It turns out that staying in high spirits is a actually hard work! But then, happy people are known to place an extremely high priority upon happiness. A less labor intensive and demanding individual disposition to happiness might conceivably operate by natural tendencies for excitation to negative emotions to deflate more quickly and excitation to positive emotions to deflate more slowly. But your mileage may vary!
Thus, character, fortitude and functionality aside, the Capability Approach pioneered by Amartya Sen, of critical analytic examination of the effects of various social institutions upon the development of capabilities of people subjected to their authority, is the idea that individual substantive freedom to lead a life one has ones own reasons to value, is both the primary end objective and the principle means towards a good life with autonomy and respect, all depending upon accessibility of whatever needed resources, and will be attainable when human beings are free to chose in actual practice and not merely in theory, indeed really able to get what they have reasons to consider important to do or to be or become. In this sense, human development means human flourishing while poverty is whatever obstructs or undermines aforesaid capability, any lack of various freedoms people value and have reason to do so.

And somewhat patronizing rebuttal to the above argues how simple beings are most abundantly in truest wealth, enjoying as they do, easier access to simple pleasures because being as they may be, blissfully ignorant and oblivious so as thereby to indulge in their pleasures unspoiled by other worries. For who so increaseth knowledge and wisdom, increaseth vexation, indignation and sorrow. What then, has forever eroded all such hitherto innocent simplicity for humankind?

Indeed, a major complication and suffering unique to human childbirth is the sheer size of the babies head squeezing through the pregnant woman's pelvis during labor. Indeed, for the required resources, the massive human brain demands up to one quarter of the total cardiac blood output. All because competition for fitness within our species, drove evolution of the ever larger human brain far beyond the initial needs and challenges of environmental adaptation and true peril of survival then eliminated with human success and comfort, in the process creating new uniquely human stimulus appetites, all too often underserved and even repressed as simply inconveniently complex. But as the saying goes, elation is a flower that blooms only when you do, and that is precisely why:
: "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." — Ernest Hemingway
Hence, the best strivings of human civilization, social interaction, arts and science, at there very best, comprise social institutions of culture contrived expressly for the alleviation of lonely boredom without natural privation, danger and violence. And so, happiness, fulfillment, resilient self-efficacy and optimal well being derive from the challenge of achievement, eustress, interest therein sustained through the pursuit by anticipation, no longer of real safety in any actual peril, no actual struggle for survival, but instead, of the momentary release from contrasting worry and frustration following a problem solved, truth revealed, a new concept grasped, an ideation expressed, a fear resolved and abated or a desire realized and satiated.
: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”; — George Bernard Shaw

All carrot and no stick!

The existential human condition most particularly as centered about work, is oft times disparagingly compared to the tragic and empty travails of the long suffering pack mule, eternally egged on by the unattainable carrot ever dangled before its nose, and reluctantly spurred on by the very real sting of the whip stick. How unreasonably sublime, then, would be howsoever at least relative freedom from all such harassment, and rich intrinsic reward always genuinely within reach. But please, never a carrot actually so fulsomely delicious as to permanently kill all apatite!

The much maligned hedonic treadmill in pursuit of happiness, may even illicit anticipatory eustress rather than distress, only provided ongoing, fresh, novel and active dynamic rather than static goals ever put forth, with the stimulus of new desires and ambitions ever to exceed those achieved and gratified, all motivating growth and thriving progress from novelty with difficulties and crucial discontent sufficient to challenge but never so excessive as to completely frustrate and deadlock.

For exactly such is the remedy to boredom amid all too quickly familiar, accustomed and habituated modern safety and comfort barring the suffering of violence and danger.

• The Progress Paradox

• The appropriateness of grief?

In my own brazen contempt for purported power of positive thinking even merely to the extent of the practice of gratitudes, of counting one's blessings, I may male allowance for one exception as regarding progress at all, indeed, even to the extent only of exchanging bigger problems for smaller ones, which is really nothing to be whining about so.

Pain persists until cause is removed and injury healed. And such is the appropriateness of grief. Indeed, Zen or bio-Utopian cessation strategies howsoever of blotting out the pain might be much like unto simply letting the mercury out from the thermometer when the temperature climbs too high and then being surprised at succumbing to heat stroke all the same!

Whereas, much by contrast, happiness is transient, impermanent and at best renewable. Happiness cannot be possessed. Happiness is dynamic, a journey not a destination, a striving not and achievement. Not just overbearingly contrived distressfully alienating punishment and reward systems of manipulative materialistic compensatory sublimation, but howsoever genuine new positive events, must always be experienced in order to sustain happiness.

And that is as it should be. Because the innate aggressive imperative of pleasure principle is motivation to avoid pain and thereby harm even while seeking gratification, immediate and impulsive or else realistically deferred, and thereby, ultimately, advantage. And hope is no less indispensible. Indeed, beyond maintaining past gains in peace, only by ever and further raised expectations, the sweetness of temptation fired by ambition, does even the brightest flower of robust democracy ever rise to improve and exceed sheer complacent and orderly mediocrity.

There is no "paradox of prosperity" says Daniel Ben-Ami:

[That] people are dissatisfied with their lot can be seen as a healthy motive for change. Humanity has historically progressed by constantly trying to improve its position. As a result people are better off than ever before. In this sense unhappiness should be welcomed. It is a sign of ambition and a drive to progress rather than one of inherent misery. In contrast, the essentially conservative message of the happiness gurus is that people should be happy with their lot.

From here it should be clear that there is no paradox of prosperity. The rise of mass affluence is an incredibly positive development. It has bolstered the quality of people’s lives enormously. But there never was any guarantee that such progress would bring happiness. One of the most positive qualities of human beings is that they often want more than they have got.

Yet how ubiquitous endures the typical cynical Nihilistic heteronymous perfectionist Luddite scorn, despair and lamentation all bewailing that anything good or pleasant is actually bad and painful because it only brings "affluenza," leaving one perpetually covetous, envious, dissatisfied and wanting more. But one might as well similarly curse the oxygen in the very air we breath, because, likewise, we always need more to keep breathing, and never finally get enough while we live. So, obviously, likewise, the real problem is only in sustaining ongoing progress, simply because the life needs and support of anyone or anything that grows, likewise continue to grow.

And the Nihilism of Zen bio-Utopian cessation, apathetic or ecstatic, quelling or eradication howsoever of desire, met or unmet, is a damn foolish purpose defeating solution. After all, Nihilism is value destruction, the empty rejection and dearth of exactly that known best to sustain interest and determination and to resists jaded habituation, namely: active meaningful involvement. For it has always been meaningful values that captivate and sustains the human imagination.

Indeed, whereas negative emotions may even tend to be insulating, positive emotions often render us all the more fearful and vulnerable to loss and disappointment. And in truth, perhaps actually thus inspired and so ill-considered and then rationalized is the all too tragic resignation simply to end all striving and submit, conform and go with the flow or howsoever just to retreat inward in search of contentment, never to engage proactively, risk nor even so much as to hope for happiness howsoever from the world outside of the self at all. -Indeed, precisely because of the obviously beneficial evolutionary individually variable responsive motivating trait of intrinsic reactive happiness, of how increased happiness or decreased unhappiness may ever either way howsoever arise as expressive of and responsive and relevant to actual and even ongoing improvement in situation and circumstances, again, in a word: progress, even growth, all not despite but because of never achieving any perfect and permanent contentment nor any guarantees against repeated failure and painful frustration otherwise.

Indeed, common causes of suffering especially for autonomous intelligent people, even amid howsoever unnaturally sufficient affluence to negate direct and perilous struggle for survival, relative peace thus making boredom even possible, are loneliness and perhaps even more insidious known cause of depression, is the dull and meaningless futility of suboptimal utilization of labor, also termed subemployment or underemployment defined as howsoever such dismally persistent unsatisfying circumstance, unclear direction, barriers, limited choices and lack of opportunity, as howsoever fails to exercise, stimulate, challenge and fulfill, much less cultivate, the full range and extent of ability and potential, all simply because of whatever available but unwanted personal resources and abilities howsoever in excess of currently insufficient demand.

• Frustrated values that so often drive gifted people so neurotic!

Strategic perspectives upon the quest for happiness include descriptive personal narrative accounts and testimonials as of Nihilistic Zen or bio-Utopian cessation and apathetic bliss attained, that oft times seem quite daft, unappealing and unrealistic to personalities too different to relate, and perhaps rightly so. Also prescriptive often dogmatic particular rules or behaviors to be observed and cleaved to, their chronic failure dismissed as weakness and doubt reviled as faithless. And cutting edge science engages in observational field research upon the behavior of happy people, much as the doings of successful entrepreneurs and others are followed for clues to success, likewise, in hopes of precise procedural duplication. Alas, however, such behavior actually well may be effect rather than cause; hence going through the motions might achieve little better than a frustrating and profitless mockery of contentment unless and except to the extent cause and effect may actually be reversible as some even claim. In truth, even in best application of the wisdom of learning from others, intangibles of unique individual variation in personality and motivation still must be fully taken into account.

And even far short of eudaimonia denoting happiness in the grandest sense of flourishing in wellbeing most broadly and completely, a most ancient conundrum of hedonism, the most general doctrine of the value and intrinsic good of pleasure to begin with, remains salient today. To wit: Are pleasures events, properties, states, or howsoever some other kind of entity?

For in current thinking, despite all the hoopla, quite frankly, Positive Psychology is somewhat problematical, eclectically recycled and largely uninspired excepting one notable inclusion wherein review of the past has actually born any fruit: indeed, the makeshift application of Utilitarian Calculus to the quest for reproducible external causes, circumstances or stimuli precipitating happiness, that has actually yielded a crude yet salient value calculus, a convergence of the traditional three paths to happiness into the much touted and endearingly succinct happiness formula, being something of a misnomer, dealing not with happiness exactly, but seeking optimization of variable volitional or intentional activity towards vastly underserved true fulfillment, a Full Life of Authentic Happiness wherein, taking any motivating emotions as neither mythical endogenous traits of disposition being entirely subjective and Phenomenal and hence howsoever amenable to any sort of stoical character building via dishonest and passive autosuggestion (that actually only strives for detachment in order to stifle activating motivation), nor merely as situation or wherewithal as applicable to howsoever attainable objective material or economic needs let alone joyless workaholism in pursuit all thereof, but strictly as dynamic individually reactive states variable, authentic happiness in specific being an abnormal side effect resultant only from the dynamic process, more than merely the sum of individual pleasures, but of pleasurable engagement in meaningful activity, gratifying enough to do for it's own sake: creativity, curiosity, active intervention necessary in order to observe and extrapolate hidden logic, order, meaning and illumination even amid seeming chaos, and hence all only thus approachable or achievable obliquely and indirectly in leading life. Breaking away from dull boring routine, involving engagement, focus and concentration along a learning curve of skills of capability matched to challenge, accrues growth towards clear goals ever put forth best guided by ongoing and timely feedback.

passion + reason = fun constructive action

pleasure + engagement + meaning = gratification

where fulfillment of desire is the measure of happiness

But because, even for volitional or intentional activity, time as signified by the letter: 't' and as applicable duration of events and their frequency, is also a factor, and indeed as lasting happiness is distinguished from transitory joy, a more precise formulation might be:

(pleasure + engagement + meaning) ÷ t = gratification over time = fulfillment

In other words, only whatever artifice if need be, of simultaneous ongoing (pleasure + engagement + meaning) can allow for the happiness of sustainable gratification in order to produce and sustain fulfillment.

Of course, in case clarification is necessary, yes: the word 'meaning' here is employed not in the simple linguistic signification of denotation, but distinctly in any deeper sense.

Also, silly misunderstanding of the happiness formula has arisen because the law of diminishing and negative returns inevitably applies. Thus, as must be expected, increase of any one resource or value may decline in additional benefit or productivity, even eventually going negative and detrimental, unless the other necessary resources or values also increase proportionally. -Particularly with time and effort, resulting in fatigue and discontent, unless, just perhaps, the level of fulfillment increases proportionally.

Meaning and by implication, engagement, is most noted for assuaging not only boredom but loneliness even during solitude, and solitary pleasure with no one to share it, for most quickly wearing into loneliness. But eventually meaning too yearns for communication, for the most passionate engagement will ever be, of course, with others. Indeed, the resource of time, man-hours, remains finite to any single individual, and even the most authentic happiness must then be delegated, shared, and if the old saying is true, doubled! Nevertheless, for any individual, active intrinsic happiness may ever reach saturation, and the best time to savor the fruit of satisfying endeavor.

Indeed, success may often depend upon a variety of activities each with the full support of anyone more advanced therein, Dialectic in planning so as to break up tasks into more manageable parts, and due recognition of effort.

Happy people are more likely to choose creative activities. Truly, few factors enhance productivity more than happiness! For the intrinsic happiness of fulfillment in volitional or intentional activity, in continuous fresh positive experience of doing what you love, is the motivation outweighing negativity bias and thereby smoothly promoting self-respecting industrious behaviors such that aid in achievement of success, rather than vice versa.

• The Road to Success - with commentary stock photos

Employment sometimes affords a measure of security and stability, but neither always nor for everyone. -There are many variables. And alas, to do what you love, the common dilemma of unsatisfactory alternatives is either striving in career development, however torturously and gradually to steer ever more towards your bliss and away from unwanted drudgery, or else simply to work for money in order to fund cultivation of what you love on your own free time.

• Why Finding The Perfect Career Is So Hard

Narrowing focus prematurely for wont of resources,

when instead, your net must be cast wider

• Pitfalls of doing what you love

Don't make of it an exhausting freelance job you'll only hate!

Instead, if only you can enjoy building a business...

Happiness requires steady progress towards valued goals ever put forth. For success beyond sheer arbitrary futility can only denote the progressive realization of howsoever worthy dreams, howsoever admirable and meaningful goals ever put forth and objectives that one can conceivably ever be either successful or unsuccessful in achieving even by sheer trial and error. And it often can be argued that uncaring complacency, inactive dormancy and exhausting dispirited over zealousness are each and all far deadlier to eventual success than any past or current failures alone and in of themselves.

Indeed, the happiness formula, however misnomered, may also readily be applied to relationships and social life.

Alas: social success ≠ fulfillment. There must be more at stake than the lonely boredom of sheer pointless and utterly irrelevant inclusion! For what value are either relationships or social life, joyless and sans savor or gratification, detached, meaningless and futile?

Certainly, intimidation and anxious uncertainty hold people back from the pursuit of happiness demanding any sense of power at all over ones own situation and circumstances. Indeed, happy and even successful people tend to be highly active doing what they love. Fun and engaging activities known to increase happiness tend to involve investment of energy in anything exiting, novel, social, better still: close, and even meaningful.

Personal involvement is best cultivated by a good match between skills and challenges, in whatever median falling between overqualified boredom and under-qualified fr

lustration. But involving engagement manifests not only privately and individually, but also as to render social interaction lively and fulfilling. And in any culture of meaningful involvement, there are five recommended steps to repeat in a fulfilling cycle of engagement:

1. Thank others in order to build recognition and appreciation.
2. Invite others in order to demonstrate intentions eliciting commitments.
3. Ask critical questions in order to draw attention and long-term focus.
4. Get feedback from activities in order to further engage associates.
5. Share assessments and open dialogue.

So, what manner of empowering close social interaction or relationship involves investment of tangible reciprocal support in high activity such as engages novel excitement, meaningfully?

The group formation agenda of FoolQuest.com is actually nothing less than to socialize in tangible reciprocal support of creative volitional or intentional activity, true lifelong learning and improved gratification for the highly evolved human social intelligence, by the offer of artistic culture, meaning: purely creative interaction for it's own joy, and Entrepreneurship in the broadest sense and application, meaning: initiative and creative problem solving, whole concrete planning directed towards any gainful purpose, private and/or public, and to realistically confront all questions and challenges of what will be required, each from one another, that as a byproduct may indeed sustain optimal gratification of the highly evolved human social intelligence, but principally to nurture whatsoever optimal qualitative productivity from the conduct of all such collaborative process and maximize any prospect of success.

The positive value of personal autonomy enfolds that of self-integration resistant to the self-alienation and denial of whatever heteronymously "appropriate" mold. Hence, full autonomy, the actual and effective capacity to develop and pursue ones own conception of a worthwhile life, can often be extremely difficult, but at all more readily achievable under however more socially supportive conditions, transition from vicious to vital cycle.

FoolQuest.com is an utterly unique outreach, first of all to initiate and sustain serious discussion towards the following desirable goals of capability as put forth:

To respect your intelligence! To network.

For the creative effort of brainstorming, writing and rewriting fiction, together, without pity, until it becomes readable and innovative. Thus to share our gifts sans apology!

Likewise, incubation, strategic thinking and planning of implementation logistics well outside the proverbial box! Recruitment and team formation, to band together and to depend upon one another in the furtherance of ambitious plans realistically, with all due diligence upon the investigation of implementation logistics in salient detail, from conception through to execution, actual coordination, cooperation and full collaboration in Activism, Entrepreneurship and more:

In the common defense, to counter-conspiratorially undermine bullying because, being a great evil, devious, insidious, costly and dangerous, unpunished persists.

All of the above will entail responsible free exchange between creative individuals, rather than the compliant and complacent embrace of typically repressive "socialization" against independent thought and genuine emotion, all just for the comfort of spiteful dullards.


FoolQuest.com showcases a range of provocative project proposals for online collaboration, not only in cutting edge Entrepreneurship but also grass roots Activism and more, to focuses upon the very earliest "kitchen table" and even first concept phases of new venture creation, a topic much neglected and a market segment vastly under served. Plus creative fiction writing and brainstorming as an uplifting group diversion, with extensive resources provided.
Find and discuss all details of participation within.

MISSION STATEMENT

Beyond ongoing revision, ever changing and new content and the maintenance and improvement of comprehensive online resources, only FoolQuest.com exists in order to attempt that which no one else offers:


To open to the online public, complete beginners and accomplished writers alike, free participation into the authentic creative collaborative brainstorming experience of the fiction writer's bull session, from first inspiration, through creative development and on to final polish.

Because, anywhere else online, actual fiction writing collaboration, such as it is, compromises utterly on the openness, creativity, critical standards, discipline and diligence of any genuine fiction writing effort.


To solicit, incubate and showcase ambitious and innovative first concepts in Entrepreneurship, Activism and more, with the express purpose of recruitment and organization towards realization, all from scratch.

To embrace all due diligence. To persevere even in all such the most daunting challenge openly and honestly. To realistically confront the barriers to entry, ascertain all requirements for attaining whatever desired conditions from current circumstances and then to follow through.

Because, beyond the undertaking of simply the most modest and pedestrian of various retail operations, nowhere else at all are the actual challenges and difficulties of planning, development, networking and organizing the very beginning of ambitious and innovative Entrepreneurial or Activist projects and hurdles towards getting off the ground at all, especially for the real utter beginner aspiring Entrepreneurs and creative thinkers, even social misfits and certainly business outsiders, explicitly and seriously considered, much less genuinely fostered.

To delve into and to intelligently confront all that frustrates the serious creative individual from fulfilling and productive collaboration, essential to the only truest fraternity of peers.

To establish FoolQuest.com as the online community nexus of such endeavor. And to these ends, outreach to interested parties.

GOALS

To establish FoolQuest.com as the nexus and starting point online 1) for free collaboration in the creativity of fiction writing collaboration, actual brainstorming for the serious effort at readable quality output and 2) for team building for new venture creation entirely from scratch, from innovative first concept to completion and execution, in such areas as Entrepreneurship, Activism and more.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Entertaining creativity for it's own sake (play):
To host open ongoing collaborative fiction writing projects online as part of an open ongoing online collaborative fiction writing workshop.

Creative problem solving:
Collaboration in the authorship and ongoing maintenance, improvement, revision and updating of Entrepreneurial, Activist and other proposals.

Inviting wider participation and soliciting new ideas.

Team formation towards business / project planning in earnest for follow though to prospecting for capital for completion and execution, as applicable.

Effort and inquiry towards a minimal code of responsible conduct and reciprocity crucial to sustaining viability and improving accessibility of effective collaboration, especially outside the structure and framework of existing social institutions, and without their resources.

Maintenance, revision, improvement expansion and updating of the various resources provided on FoolQuest.com

Strategic partnership and promotional exchange.

FUNDING

FoolQuest.com is open to the online public free of charge. And before there can be any monetary investment there must first be sweat equity, an investment of effort such as offered by yours truly, the webmaster, reciprocally with other interested participants. Only with diligence and persistence will all ever be in readiness to prospect for Venture Capital.

CAVEAT

These are as yet, only proposals. No promises are expressed or implied.

Does any of this sound like hard work? Because how could it ever not be? As should be expected, this website is filled with long wordy and extensively hyperlinked texts struggling with daunting and complicated problems. You have been warned!

So, be prepared to interactively chart your own path through the hypertext pursuant to whatever your own interests and concerns, by scrolling lengthy pages, choosing and clicking many links in succession. And while for many as much goes with out saying or worth much mention as the very nature of the World Wide Web, for others just such has emerged as a matter of much staunchly uncooperative fuss and pother.

Moreover, as regards human interaction, much as creativity may derive from the broadening and expanding frame of reference of of unusual associations, nevertheless, communication and exchange of new ideas, which so often consists of the negotiation of reciprocal incomprehension, will often depend upon the infinite patience that comes more easily to some than to others, with the fine points, hair-splitting in order to "connect the dots" and ferret out whatever true crux of misunderstanding that only then may be addressed, let alone confronting the vexing central unanswered questions of this website.

Only such care derives accuracy in the investigation of reality at all whatsoever, from what would otherwise only degenerate into bypassing tangents of sheer fantasy. A crucial consideration in even the barest beginning of any serious effort at substantive real change in an indifferent universe. But what is there to lose?