What is paradise to you?
 

This came up in Clarke's thread, "This is what I want to see", and I'm curious to know what paradise means to everyone. I'm sure I'll get a lot of Pandoras, but what else is there? Do you have more than one ideal for paradise?

I feel like this sort of concerns both this board and the spirituality board depending on the context of the poster, but I put it in here because this one needs new threads :P

Exactly what you hear and see in this video.

There's no such thing, if you define it by perfect, because there's always a way something could be better. Past that, by a far more broad definition, I'd say there are multiple different values - obviously, Pandora, but I'd say that equally so would be an Earth cured of all the problems like overpopulation, superstition and war.

Whatever, I of course meant it very broadly, since there can't really be more than one ultimate perfection anyway :P

I can't ask for any more then what I see around me, so I suppose that's my own little paradise.

I suppose paradise for me would be a place where nature is in unity with its creatures, where people love each other no matter what and where people don't care about trying to be better than anyone else.

Paradise to me would have to be Earth, but to the full restoration of it.

Contra to what a lot of people see as paradise (living in a super-utopia where everything is catered for them, and they do not need to do work just to live...) I see it as the tangible side to life. To live in a way in that you are a part of the huge web of life, but you still have to work for yourself to stay there. Esentially the removal of all proxies to life, and being allowed to live with it completely manually.

Paradise for me would be a place where nature was undamaged, violence was a thing of the past, and there was no competition. People would just work for self-fulfillment; that way money wouldn't cause the problems it does today.

Some bioluminescence would be nice, too :)

I think I'll take Iron Jones' approach, and say it would be what this song does for me







The emotions and images I get from that song would be paradise. But I can't really put them into words. Also, paradise would have bountiful adventure, unspoiled nature, compassionate people, and a life mate.

Compassionate people are what would do it for me; compassion is so few and far between in the world as it is.

I think for me paradise would be if there were more people around me who would show some more positive feelings to me, who i could count on and who would take away some work off of me. And sure a better bed, and a big flat for me alone.
I mean this would be for me nearby and realistic, personal and a reallife Paradise at the moment.

Hmm, I see/hear music! (on this thread :))

What is paradise... The tune from The Beach came to my mind: I'll quote the lyrics.

Trust me
It's Paradise
This is where the hungry come to feed
For mine is a generation that circles the globe
in search of something we haven't tried before
so never refuse an invitation
never resist the unfamiliar
never fail to be polite
and never outstay your welcome

just keep your mind open and
suck in the experience
and if it hurts
you know what... it's probably worth it

you hope, and you dream
but you never believe that
something is going to happen for you
not like it does in the movies
and when it actually does
you expect it to feel different
more visirale
more real
i was waiting for it to hit me*

i still believe in paradise
but now at least i know it's not some place you can look for
cause it's not where you go
it's how you feel for a moment in your life
and if you find that moment it lasts forever

it lasts forever
lasts forever
(fade out)

*and it DID! Yes, I am about Avatar again...

Here's the video:
Beached - Orbital

And one more video: it was the music during the scene when (in the movie) they were diving in a lagoon with the water full of bioluminiscent plankton:
Spinning Away..The Beach Soundtrack. - YouTube

As in the music videos posted above, I'd say "it's the feeling that counts" - a happy, welcome, warm feeling of being in a place you want to be...

A short dream to go with it:
I was doing something absolutely prosaic, like sorting the papers on the desk, & suddenly everything "swirled", "unfolded", "spinned away" & I was in the swirling pink-purple light like those galaxies in the Spinning Away video (above) altho I only saw light, not separate stars. Of course it reminded me of Pandora :) & the feeling was this - I loved this place & I wanted to be there. Then I saw myself as a stick figure :S, & "a teacher stick figure" who was holding my stick hand motioned ahead & said: "It will be so, so much better" (this is when I remembered Moco Loco "heaven uni" dreams :P where many teachers are extraterrestrials & some look like stick figures (Moco Loco, correct me if I am mistaken) .

I couldn't imagine how it could ever get better 'cos I was already feeling top wonderful - but hey, as some said before, there's no limit to perfection ;).

It was curious - this mix of images united by one overwhelming feeling of happiness. So I'd say paradise is this.

To me, paradise is wherever you are truly happy down to your very soul and have no worries of any kind. And not just monetarily. Just how I see it though.

Isn't it preferable to be able to choose whether or not to pursue such manual activities? I mean nobody is stopping you from doing things manually in an automated environment, so why would you artificially limit the amount of choices when nobody is forcing you either way?

Would you rather do something because you must, or because you want to do it? Or should I say that in your case they are both the same, as in you want to do that which must be done, am I right?

Exactly. The reason that things are available in a non-manual way is to make it available to people who would be unable to access them - the same goes for specialisation, so people skilled at specific things, - manual labour, technological, or design, for example - can do what they are good at and benefit from the skills of others in return. Such a concept predates the bronze age :P
A lot of this 'anything new is automatically bad' is reactionism.