There are no objective definitions. While we can provide a dictionary or professional definition for “Ginhawa” (e.g., “Feeling good), this definition is simply a consensual definition agreed upon by convention. A dictionary is simply a collection of commonly-agreed-upon definitions.

Even if Ginhawa-ness exists in the platonic realm, even if we can say that all of us experience Ginhawa in its core form, the context (i.e., the physical and mental states) that makes Ginhawa possible is unique for each individual. What makes you feel Ginhawa is not what makes me feel Ginhawa.

If I impose my own context on you, there’s a big chance that you will not feel Ginhawa not only because the prerequisites for your unique experience of Ginhawa are drastically different from mine but also because Being forced to do something hinders Ginhawa by itself. In order for you to feel Ginhawa, you need to be able to influence your own physical and mental states. You need freedom to do this. The more freedom you have, the more you can currate your context. Therefore, freedom is an essential prerequisite for optimizing Ginhawa.

It is impossible to optimize Ginhawa in a context of optimal authoritarianism, where one’s physical and mental states are optimally dictated by another person, a group of persons in power, a majority, or a dominant culture. Ginhawa may appear in authoritarian contexts, but it will not be optimized. Furthermore, such experience of Ginhawa is not resilient because individuals change all the time, so the physical and mental states that produce Ginhawa for them changes too. In order to continuously experience Ginhawa, one needs to adapt to these internal changes, something that is difficult to do if you don’t have the freedom to do so in your physical environment.

Optimal Ginhawa can only be achieved in a context where individual freedom is optimized.

To do

  • Develop more notes on Platonic objects.
  • For a discussion on how physical states influence mental states of Ginhawa, explore Steve Patterson’s indirect interaction theory.