do you think that Caesar was happy?

Hiteler may have been, there have been indications though it is hard to say what is or isn’t just fabricated BS…

Caesar has also been “accused” by his contemporaries of being at least gay-ish, because of how he walked and how his belt was loosely hinging on his hip. Of course even stronger rumors go around about Alexander. I do not think that homosexuality stands in any fixed relation to bad health.

No i wouldn’t think it does either… rather i was saying that Hitler though out of sight in his sexual life, may have actually had what we now consider a healthy one, with the possible influence of some negativity presuming he actually had to hide it very much from say those close to him…

I am reminded of this aphorism by Nietzsche:

“The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.”

I suppose we may understand a great deal of Hitlers sex life by looking at his ideals. It is clear that he was certainly not impotent!

i imagine that it is quite probable that he was quite sexually active likely even hetero sexually but hid it so as not to dissway the public…though it is plausible that he did not find sex necessary…I do not…personally…

How is happiness, a purely emotional state, moral or immoral? It is neither a vice nor a virtue, purely a reactive state, not the idea.

Humility is a introspective form rooted on shame (decreased serotonin), that exploits several feedback loop a in the mind simultaneously. But a mere increase is not happiness. Happiness can be known without a fluxuation in serotonin, but the absence of Noradrenaline or Dopamine as well.

These are very different transitive states, dependent of the durability of social circumstance.

His contemporaries, those still loyal to the republic, focused on giving him “surprise”… A death that screams out over the ages, to match his fame, that the rules of Tyrants would not be tolerated. The attack is one of pure serotonin and noradrenaline, causing a serotonin collapse in Caesar… That serotonin mixed with dopamine gave him joy. He wasn’t angry when he died, was surprised, but felt more betrayed, on a familiar basis… Et Tu Brutus?

Sounds like they got the formula wrong… His dopamine was still intact till the last, he wasn’t angry… was shocked.

How did Marc Anthony and Octavius react? Marc was fearful, Octavius was angry.

They actions react to a void… Happiness can be many things, but I suspect for Caesar it was just a serotonin and dopamine high. His two political heirs had to unite to rebuild Caesars system, and in their successes, outdid Caesar. It was a very exciting time… Drove them to civil war, changed it well beyond what Caesar intended. Caesar had a lesser vision. They would eventually split the empire between them and and seek to slay one another. Anthony was the lover and soldier of necessity, campaigning far in the east into Azerbaijan for Cleopatra, Anthony drove the masses to Anthony’s indignities in submitting to a foreign, decadent queen, betraying the principles of the republic (cough cough hipocrit)

Cesar was not happy, he was probably trasexual. Did you ever watch Titus?

any man who gives the thumbs down to murder another man, from 100 yards away, is no man, but a mouse.

He was bisexual, not a tranny.

Those two aren’t mutually exclusive.

This is actually interesting.

So excitement and interest are the most chemically optimal states. Its valuable to not that one requires joy to be interested in anything. That is true, and corresponds to the notion that understanding can only occur based on valuing. Neutrality is not a possibility. Scientific understanding is based on joy. So Caesar, in all his methodical efficiency, would have been happy.

I don’t understand the relationship between morals and happiness, Jakob.

If morals are a means to happiness, and ONLY a means to happiness, can they actually then be called morals? I’m not sure. I’m just asking.
It just seems to me then that that so-called moral person is more or less just a hedonist, just as a mystic to me in a sense is also a hedonist. At the end of the day, is the hedonist a happy person or do they just want more more more more more.

As far as Caesar goes, he was probably happier than some of us and less happy than others.

Do you think that he was a happy camper when he was in Cleopatra’s arms or might he have been just thinking about his next conquest. It may seem funny but who could know the mind of Caesar. lol

You make a good point.

You conflate physical pleasure and happiness, which is exactly what the hedonist does.
Happiness is broader.
What makes me very happy is to conquer and idea, to crack it open, to advance human thinking on it. That happiness shapes for a good part my morality.

He was surely enjoying her as a prize. I doubt the sex was very good, but who can know.
I take some stock in the rumours of Marc Anthonies superior qualities as a lover.

Caesars happiness came from political conquest, we can deduce that from his morality. We can construct an idea of his morality from his choices and preferences (whatever else is morality but the type of choices we consistently make?) and we can see his great political happiness in his choice of Octavian as heir. Can you see why I recognize happiness there? It relates directly to my notion of courage and the original afterlife.

Has nothing to do with whether someone is a hedonist.

My robotic analysis indicates that happiness is a form of pleasure.

If conquering planets is your thing, that is also a form of pleasure for you.

Granted.

Octavian seemed pretty content. Even the slanderous stuff seems to suggest someone who is basically “OK” with himself, so I’ll call a win for him.

It’s been decades (how strange it is that I’ve lived long enough to talk about not just one but decades plural) since I read Gaul and I can’t separate my feelings for the text from my feelings for the time but Julius seemed very petty and unpleasant. It reads like a bad job interview. I knew he was a traitor but he was ~~my friend~~. Oh no, we’re not “retreating” I’m just tricking them into thinking I’m retreating and this is genius because there happens to be a bunch of food we can loot while I’m running away. I’m going to throw a big old tantrum and berate my troops but they were so ^^ INSPIRED ^^ by my words.

I get that media, etc. have improved a lot since then. But he came off as a whiny try hard to me. Dude was not a happy guy, is what I am saying.

Fuck, thats a good approach.
Yes, I can see your angle clearly.

Caesar was definitely overzealous where it concerned his image, and completely obsessed where it concerned his glory.

I would annoyingly counter that he simply needed to do this to get where he did get - that he was happy an yet still had to play the petty micromanaging self-propagandist, since it was Rome, after all, and you had people like Cato and Cicero to contend with. But Im not entirely convinced that you are entirely wrong.

It is known that he was cruel even for a roman field-commander. I am not clear at all on how cruelty relates to happiness.
I dont tend to follow Nietzsche here, as the cruelties Ive witnessed in my life have been rather the result of extreme wretchedness and self-loathing than of joyful indifference.

Lol.
Oh yeah? Well thats just, like, your… opinion. Man.

Which caeser? There were four. Egalubus Caeser was a transsexaul transvestite emperor who ruled the world. Heshe got to watch grown men battle each other in mortal combat in an arena for his own amusement. Of course heshe was happy.

One time I saw this homosexual who looked like a feminine Caeser, normally I prefer women but he didn’t go for me anyway. Still, the unrequitedness of it all made me want to challenge him to mutual combat in the arena. Hell hath no fury.

I think we have all played videogames. Videogames are a tie-in to our ancient primordial minds.
We have all slaughtered, genocided in videogames. In Halo when you genocide it is called “kill joy”.

I think there is a certain joy to killing, at least in videogames. When you look at the bodies, and the bodies are on the floor, there is a certain serenity. Like you cut through the crap and realize they are human souls, they are you, that you litterally killed you an innocent and pure soul. And for a moment you cut through the social crap, the hysteria, the wound-upness of modern living, and you see them for living, breathing feeling human beings, and not just hostile rats in a rat race.

There is a certain joy in when Adagio Dazzle is about to consume the souls of everyone at her concert. Like the purifying essence of the tragedy, a certain holy sense of compassion and collective love.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2UhUtBzxHM[/youtube]