Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

[kitarohotono]

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true? ...or
Perhaps it is propaganda to undermine the happiness of independent people who don't always require the "emotional support" of others?

What do you think?
Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

Sex is way more important!

[bronan]

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true? ...or
Perhaps it is propaganda to undermine the happiness of independent people who don't always require the "emotional support" of others?

What do you think?
Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

Sex is way more important!

Now that i agree on

[ajareselde]

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true? ...or
Perhaps it is propaganda to undermine the happiness of independent people who don't always require the "emotional support" of others?

What do you think?
Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

Depends on what age. To the teenagers i believe its very important, sice withouth them they get that left out feeling and get probably depressed.
As u get older its more and more obvious that you dont need as many connections at all to be happy, ure happy with a small circle of family and friend, and some even with family alone.

cheers

[criptix]

big yes.
the first social contact you make is with your mother and their are some really interesting and cruel experiments that verify this fact.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I

This experiment was conducted by US scientist harry harlow in 1950.

[criptix]

I guess that's why solitary confinement is torture...

stop breathing. the will to die.

Won't work. At first you lose consciousness, then you breath again. You don't stop breathing when you sleep, right?

sure? and maybe at the first trial... when you are in solitary confinement, you have the time to train until reaching perfection...

Absolutely. No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all. The stories of men completely shutting down their heart by their will only are fables of the same kind.

I have to disagree.
there are some really interesting documentations about monks that seem to be able to control body functions which usually cant be controlled actively.
like body temperature, heartbeat etc.

[Snail2]

Depends on the given person. Most of needs it but few ppl are more happy alone.

[tee-rex]

I guess that's why solitary confinement is torture...

stop breathing. the will to die.

Won't work. At first you lose consciousness, then you breath again. You don't stop breathing when you sleep, right?

sure? and maybe at the first trial... when you are in solitary confinement, you have the time to train until reaching perfection...

Absolutely. No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all. The stories of men completely shutting down their heart by their will only are fables of the same kind.

I have to disagree.
there are some really interesting documentations about monks that seem to be able to control body functions which usually cant be controlled actively.
like body temperature, heartbeat etc.

The heartbeat can be controlled through CNS (as well as body temperature to a degree), but the heart itself cannot be stopped altogether unless you're dying on your own. But if your monks are, nevertheless, able to control some vital functions of the body why then they don't live forever?

In fact, there are a lot of interesting "docs" which ultimately turn out to be just fiction or someone's yet another insane fantasy.

[criptix]

I guess that's why solitary confinement is torture...

stop breathing. the will to die.

Won't work. At first you lose consciousness, then you breath again. You don't stop breathing when you sleep, right?

sure? and maybe at the first trial... when you are in solitary confinement, you have the time to train until reaching perfection...

Absolutely. No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all. The stories of men completely shutting down their heart by their will only are fables of the same kind.

I have to disagree.
there are some really interesting documentations about monks that seem to be able to control body functions which usually cant be controlled actively.
like body temperature, heartbeat etc.

The heartbeat can be controlled through CNS (as well as body temperature to a degree), but the heart itself cannot be stopped altogether unless you're dying on your own. But if your monks are, nevertheless, able to control some vital functions of the body why then they don't live forever?

In fact, there are a lot of interesting "docs" which ultimately turn out to be just fiction or someone's yet another insane fantasy.

no, they didnt stop their heart beating.
they were controling it to a certain degree (heartbeat and body temperature).

i dont see a direct link to immortality, but lowering your heartbeat and body temperature will increase your lifespan.
this is not fiction, there is alot of talk in the scientific world about unusual phenomenoms like that.

[tee-rex]

I have to disagree.
there are some really interesting documentations about monks that seem to be able to control body functions which usually cant be controlled actively.
like body temperature, heartbeat etc.

The heartbeat can be controlled through CNS (as well as body temperature to a degree), but the heart itself cannot be stopped altogether unless you're dying on your own. But if your monks are, nevertheless, able to control some vital functions of the body why then they don't live forever?

In fact, there are a lot of interesting "docs" which ultimately turn out to be just fiction or someone's yet another insane fantasy.

no, they didnt stop their heart beating.
they were controling it to a certain degree (heartbeat and body temperature).

i dont see a direct link to immortality, but lowering your heartbeat and body temperature will increase your lifespan.
this is not fiction, there is alot of talk in the scientific world about unusual phenomenoms like that.

You needn't be a monk to slow down or accelerate your heart. You lie down, calm down, hold your breath, and your heart slows down. You work yourself up, freak out, and your heart accelerates. The heart of well trained cyclists can slow down to 30 beats per minute at rest and accelerate to over 200 beats at load, more than six times difference.

There is nothing unusual or magic about it.

[criptix]

I have to disagree.
there are some really interesting documentations about monks that seem to be able to control body functions which usually cant be controlled actively.
like body temperature, heartbeat etc.

The heartbeat can be controlled through CNS (as well as body temperature to a degree), but the heart itself cannot be stopped altogether unless you're dying on your own. But if your monks are, nevertheless, able to control some vital functions of the body why then they don't live forever?

In fact, there are a lot of interesting "docs" which ultimately turn out to be just fiction or someone's yet another insane fantasy.

no, they didnt stop their heart beating.
they were controling it to a certain degree (heartbeat and body temperature).

i dont see a direct link to immortality, but lowering your heartbeat and body temperature will increase your lifespan.
this is not fiction, there is alot of talk in the scientific world about unusual phenomenoms like that.

You needn't be a monk to slow down or accelerate your heart. You lie down, calm down, hold your breath and your heart slows down. You work yourself up, freak out, and your heart accelerates. The heart of well trained cyclists can slow down to 30 beats per minute at rest and accelerate to over 200 beats at load, more than six times difference.

There is nothing unusual or magic about it.

where did i said you need to be a monk to do that?
the monk was just a good example, because this people can take control over body functions - which you usually can't control - through meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumo


accelerating your heartbeat or increasing your body temperature through running fast, sports or freaking out is something completely different.                

[9000]

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true? ...or
Perhaps it is propaganda to undermine the happiness of independent people who don't always require the "emotional support" of others?

What do you think?
Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

Sex is way more important!

Now that i agree on

Eventually you'll get tired of "meaningless" sex and get a feeling of emptiness, but sex is still a social experience.

[Marianne Skanland]

  

Eventually you'll get tired of "meaningless" sex and get a feeling of emptiness, but sex is still a social experience.

Would you say that sex is always - or primarily - a social experience? I'd say "maybe not", but intimacy is. Sex can include it or bring it but far from always does. Intimacy usually requires some degree of committed communication.

About the major question re connection(s) and happiness: What about the statistics here? Any studies anybody knows showing the proportion of people who are happy only if they are with others how much of the time and in what kind of relationships? (It sounds fairly involved, one would probably have to define "happiness" in some "measurable" way as well as some rough categories of relationships). A likely first hypothesis might be that most (a majority) are less happy if they are altogether lonely, and fewer and fewer are happy the more isolated they are? Animals make great compations for many people, pointing to companionship with living beings as important. I saw something about a little study of elderly people in nursing homes where they kept a cat and a dog; it seemed to improve their health (the peoples', I mean).
  

[tee-rex]

where did i said you need to be a monk to do that?
the monk was just a good example, because this people can take control over body functions - which you usually can't control - through meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumo

accelerating your heartbeat or increasing your body temperature through running fast, sports or freaking out is something completely different.                 

I didn't mean running or any other physical activity (the example with cyclists was to show the physiological range which can be experienced by a human). Any person can dramatically change his heart rate through strong emotions and emotional recollections, and no physical activity.

So what are you actually disagreeing with? No one in good health can kill himself with just a thought.

[criptix]

where did i said you need to be a monk to do that?
the monk was just a good example, because this people can take control over body functions - which you usually can't control - through meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumo

accelerating your heartbeat or increasing your body temperature through running fast, sports or freaking out is something completely different.                

I didn't mean running or any other physical activity (the example with cyclists was to show the physiological range which can be experienced by a human). Any person can dramatically change his heart rate through strong emotions and emotional recollections, and no physical activity.

So what are you actually disagreeing with? No one in good health can kill himself with just a thought.

of course this is possible, but the underlying reason to do so is not an active though - much more about the endocrine system and processing of emotions/memory of our brain. and even that has a limit which you cant go over or under.
but if you read the wiki link with the sources you will see things like:

1. increasing body temperature by 10+° degrees
2. decreasing heartbeat to ~10
3. decreasing metabolism by ~65%

just by meditation. studies made by scientist of havard university and etc.

that is why i was disagreeing to this:

No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all

[BitMos]

I guess that's why solitary confinement is torture...

stop breathing. the will to die.

Won't work. At first you lose consciousness, then you breath again. You don't stop breathing when you sleep, right?

sure? and maybe at the first trial... when you are in solitary confinement, you have the time to train until reaching perfection...

Absolutely. No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all. The stories of men completely shutting down their heart by their will only are fables of the same kind.

Though you can always starve yourself to death instead.

force feeding...

where did i said you need to be a monk to do that?
the monk was just a good example, because this people can take control over body functions - which you usually can't control - through meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumo

accelerating your heartbeat or increasing your body temperature through running fast, sports or freaking out is something completely different.                 

I didn't mean running or any other physical activity (the example with cyclists was to show the physiological range which can be experienced by a human). Any person can dramatically change his heart rate through strong emotions and emotional recollections, and no physical activity.

So what are you actually disagreeing with? No one in good health can kill himself with just a thought.

I think that maybe the first month in solitary confinement it's hard... but every wake up (remember there is no sun light) is an opportunity to practice. I don't know any life for on earth that could provide this opportunity of training but the "human". lol.

sad news.

[tee-rex]

I guess that's why solitary confinement is torture...

stop breathing. the will to die.

Won't work. At first you lose consciousness, then you breath again. You don't stop breathing when you sleep, right?

sure? and maybe at the first trial... when you are in solitary confinement, you have the time to train until reaching perfection...

Absolutely. No matter how hard you try, you can't change with just the power of thought what is made to function without any at all. The stories of men completely shutting down their heart by their will only are fables of the same kind.

Though you can always starve yourself to death instead.

force feeding...

You can also try to nip your tongue off and choke with blood, but this wouldn't be easy either. I read that some spies were taught this technique (how?) with the aim of committing suicide once caught. Don't know if it is true or just an urban legend.

[tee-rex]

I didn't mean running or any other physical activity (the example with cyclists was to show the physiological range which can be experienced by a human). Any person can dramatically change his heart rate through strong emotions and emotional recollections, and no physical activity.

So what are you actually disagreeing with? No one in good health can kill himself with just a thought.

of course this is possible, but the underlying reason to do so is not an active though - much more about the endocrine system and processing of emotions/memory of our brain. and even that has a limit which you cant go over or under.
but if you read the wiki link with the sources you will see things like:

1. increasing body temperature by 10+° degrees
2. decreasing heartbeat to ~10
3. decreasing metabolism by ~65%

I read your link, the relevant part is cited below:

Scientific investigation

A 1982 study of the physiological effects of Tummo has been made by Benson and colleagues, who studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India in the 1980s. Conducted in Upper Dharamsala in India, it found that the subjects, three monks, exhibited the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3 °C. In a 2002 experiment reported by the Harvard Gazette, conducted in Normandy, France, two monks from the Buddhist tradition wore sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism. A 2013 study by Kozhevnikov and colleagues showed increases in core body temperature in both expert meditators from eastern Tibet and Western non-meditators.

As you can see, there is no mention of decreasing heartbeat to ~10 beats per second, which is beyond physiological range. Also, I tried to follow the links in the article, and I could find only this:

Reliable increases in axillary temperature from normal to slight or moderate fever zone (up to 38.3°C) were observed among meditators only during the Forceful Breath type of g-tummo meditation accompanied by increases in alpha, beta, and gamma power.

...

There is currently no evidence, however, indicating that temperatures are elevated beyond the normal range during g-tummo meditation.

You can read for yourself. Just in case, if your core body temperature rises above 41 °C, the platelet membranes begin to disintegrate, blood clots and you die.

[criptix]

It seems you have some difficulties to read sources proberly.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html

During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat.

The researchers also made measurements on practitioners of other forms of advanced meditation in Sikkim, India. They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. "It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result," Benson exclaims.

To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation. Benson believes that such a capability could be useful for space travel. Travelers might use meditation to ease stress and oxygen consumption on long flights to other planets.
[...]
"Lazar found a marked decrease in blood flow to the entire brain," Benson explains. "At the same time, certain areas of the brain became more active, specifically those that control attention and autonomic functions like blood pressure and metabolism. In short, she showed the value of using this method to record changes in the brain's activity during meditation."

/edit

I just read the article you linked:

A limitation affecting the generalizability our findings is the small sample size due to the sacredness of the practice and difficulties in accessing g-tummo practitioners. Despite this limitation, we were able, for the first time, to document reliable CBT increases during the FB type of g-tummo practice, all within the slight to moderate fever zone, validating the legends of the extraordinary capacity of g-tummo meditators to elevate their body temperature beyond normal. However, the results also suggest that temperature increases during g-tummo meditation are neither solely a by-product of meditation nor its goal, but instead may be a means to facilitate the achievement of “deep meditative states”. The g-tummo meditators may use the CBT increases as a vehicle to enhance their attention and focus their meditative performance (which may in turn facilitate a further increase in their temperature through meditative visualization). Future studies of experts in g-tummo meditation who are capable of elevating and maintaining elevated CBT may offer promising research insights and approaches to investigating mechanisms of CBT regulation. Because many variables underlying neuronal functioning (e.g., transport via ion-selective channels, amplitude and duration of single-unit spikes) are temperature-dependent [42], [43], possibility of self-regulation of CBT may have a direct effect on self-regulating and maximizing neurocognitive activity. If future studies show that it is possible to self regulate CBT, by mastering vase breathing in conjunction with guided mental imagery without extensive meditation experience, it will open a wide range of possible medical and behavior interventions, such as adapting to and functioning in hostile (cold) environments, improving resistance to infections, boosting cognitive performance by speeding response time, and reducing performance problems associated with decreased body temperature as reported in human factor studies of shift work and continuous night operations [44], [45].

[blablahblah]

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true? ...or
Perhaps it is propaganda to undermine the happiness of independent people who don't always require the "emotional support" of others?

What do you think?
Is it true that strong "social connections" are required for happiness?

Maybe. But when do we need them? Is it something like water or vitamin d that I have to periodically top-up on?

I just saw a PBS show about emotional health that claims "social connections" are required for happiness. Do you believe this is true?

Yes, though it's not a matter of belief, this is science. Human beings are primates, we are social creatures. We need strong social bonds for our health and happiness.

All experimental results must first pass through the scientist's squishy pink spectacles, before he interprets them and writes down what he truly believes that his scientific findings were.

[tee-rex]

It seems you have some difficulties to read sources proberly.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html

During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat.

The researchers also made measurements on practitioners of other forms of advanced meditation in Sikkim, India. They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. "It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result," Benson exclaims.

To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation. Benson believes that such a capability could be useful for space travel. Travelers might use meditation to ease stress and oxygen consumption on long flights to other planets.
[...]
"Lazar found a marked decrease in blood flow to the entire brain," Benson explains. "At the same time, certain areas of the brain became more active, specifically those that control attention and autonomic functions like blood pressure and metabolism. In short, she showed the value of using this method to record changes in the brain's activity during meditation."

Me not reading sources properly? You call a news piece a source? Where is the original paper of Benson's? You won't buy me with science fiction. Moreover, the paper by Kozhevnikov and colleagues also mentions the previous "investigations":

As impressive as the peripheral body temperature increases during g-tummo meditation reported by Benson et al. might seem, they were in the range of normal body temperature (finger and toe temperatures increased from 22°C to 33°C). Furthermore, they did not exceed the peripheral body temperature increases reported in clinical studies of (non-meditating) individuals who were able to increase hand or finger temperature by up to 11.7°C during biofeedback alone or in combination with hypnosis, mental imagery, or autogenic training [9]–[11]. Subsequent clinical research, however, reported that such peripheral temperature increases were primarily mediated by somatic (e.g., altered respiration and/or tensing and contracting of muscles) but not cognitive factors [12]

The finger and toe temperatures rose from 22°C to 33°C. And this you would call intriguing when ordinary men were able to do even better than Benson's monks?