How To Have A Good Time

People have debated about the meaning of “good” for a very long time, even though it should/might probably be obvious. For example, when a human is laughing it is usually correct to assume that they are happy and so they feel good. Feeling good can be a little confusing or hard to accomplish sometimes. A lot of people who feel good or are used to feeling good say that it’s “easy,” but for other people it is not easy. For a lot of people it is really not easy.

If you want to have a good time, it is important to know what it means to have something. The word “have” means to possess, undergo, own, experience, or hold. What do all of these words have in common? The necessity of an existing agent! If you are a human being you HAVE the ability to have, I think, mostly because, your species invented the concept “to have.”

POSSESSION has sort of an intense connotation to it. A lot of people refer to possession negatively, like it is wrong to own a material item or a human or something like that. But imposing your autonomy onto a foreign object is a very common, normal, normal thing to do and lots of people do it every day. All day.

Is it possible to own time? Is that a real question?

The human heart beats about one time per second. The second is defined in terms of the day and the year, but really: the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of radiation emitted from a transition between two hyperfine ground states in a cesium-133 atom. WHO CARES.

Humans. Humans interpret data, interpret language, interpret themselves. Humans are filters of their own experience and if you are reading this then you are a human or a computer.

You have the ability to own time by virtue that YOU experience time.

You have the ability to experience time by virtue that you own time?

(You experience the ability to have time by virtue that YOU possess time.

You possess the ability… to have time… by virtue of… your experience.)

GOOD TIME. What is good time? What is bad time?

Sometimes good is defined as “positive,” while bad is defined as “negative.”

Cesium-133 is stable, so it is not positive or negative. “Good” must refer to the possession of experience.

Laughing, as mentioned earlier, connotes being happy and therefore positive feelings. Is it possible also to laugh and have a bad time?

This depends on our measurement of the time in question compared the measurement of the laugh. What if the laugh lasted 6 seconds but the time under observation was 6 hours? This is important.

While it is possible to have positive feelings without physically laughing, it is probably possible to measure the biological responses in much the same way. The word “dopamine” is used a lot in popular culture to scientifically characterize positive feelings, like reward and gratification. Does the presence of dopamine equate to a good time?

How many standards can there be for the definition of good?

What if a human is depressed for several years and then they go to a party and laugh all night?

What this qualify as a good time or no?

What if a human is depressed for several years then they go to several parties for several years and laugh for much of the duration—would they no longer be having a bad time?

What if a human is laughing, endorphin-rush, sure, but meanwhile they’re thinking, “I have to get out of here,” the whole time, as they are laughing?

It is complicated. Sadly, it can get even more complicated. For example, some people have completely different perceptions of what it means to have a good time than most of the rest of the human population. Some people inflict violence and pain on other people and feel happy. Apes laugh when they are wrestling with their siblings or parents or offspring or friends, to signal that they are playing in jest. That is the theory. Can animals feel good and bad? Can an environment impose feelings of positivity or negativity? How much of a human’s perception is based on their immediate environment? Is it possible for an agent to have a good time when they are hungry, sleep-deprived, or in captivity?

“Hangry” is a word used to describe being angry and hungry. If you are never fed because there is no food available, from the time you are born, maybe you are used to hunger and so you don’t feel intrinsically deprived all your life? (Short life.) There are so many ways to look at the situation.

“Thirsty” is used colloquially to describe behavior that is taxing to the recipient of the (most often verbal) behavior.

Generally, having a good time seems to be the result of three different components.

• Agent involved (ability to perceive overall health?)
• Quantity of isolated time compared to biochemical activity
• Environment