The true contents of happiness are stated in the article “A Formula for Happiness” by Arthur C. Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks states that people realize life and view happiness depending on genes, one-time events and basic values: faith, family, community and work. He pays special attention to the last one. According to Brooks, meaningful work and success considered as passion can make people happier. Brooks cites as an example Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money;…
The book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is one book on happiness that sticks out from the rest. It convinces us that we don't even know what makes us happy in the first place- so why worry about it. The author proves that we often do not know what really truly makes us happy now, what made us happy in the past, and even what makes us happy in the future. The book uses real life psychology experiments and tests and implements them into this book to back up his argument.…
PSYCH253 Book Review: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert In Daniel Gilbert’s, Stumbling on Happiness (2006), Gilbert attempts to explain how our current reasoning for happiness is in fact, flawed. Many examples explored within the book as well as experiments provided in class supports the overarching theme that our memory is influenced by external factors that we are unaware of. Our memory cannot be solely relied upon when retrieving previous…
The Modern society is filled with fears ranging from random shootings to world wide infection, but one thing that does not cross the many minds of those living in the today’s world is the fear of the world simply coming to an end. Years of religion and science have not led anyone to feel that the end of the world is fast coming. In the article by Ira Chernus called “Cheer up, it’s just the end of the world” she goes into great detail about just how much the end of the world lacks fear. After expressing the downward slope that the world made in the sense of fearing their last minutes on earth, Chernus goes on to tell how the whole idea got started. The idea that the world could even come to an end has been long forgotten yet Chernus brings up the good point that “Apocalyptic stories have been around at least since biblical times, if not later”.…
Reading the article Happy" by Pharrell Williams: Why This Song Has Grabbed The Nation by Eamon Ford we can see his interest in a phenomenon he presents to us, analyzing and feeding information to us. A part that stands out in the beginning of this is his justification of writhing this article, "the crowd at the World Indoor Bowls Championship in Great Yarmouth clapping and grooving along" his writing from that sentence displays that it’s a song many people enjoy and from many age groups. He puts us in a scenery we can image and then proceeds to show the relationship between the earlier statement and how many cd`s have been sold in the Uk as well as how many times it plays on the radio. Forde shows us how they may relate how the people in the stadium may know the song through the times of listening to it on the radio,…
Ron Carlson’s “Happiness,” is about a trip with a father, his two sons Nick and Colin, and brother Regan, visiting the family’s cabin in Utah to fish for the last time as the Father says goodbye and makes sure his sons are prepared for him to pass. Carlson suggests the central idea is that family needs to remember the happy times to prepare for the hard ones and uphold the traditions. Carlson uses setting to focus on the happy memories the family shared and the importance of tradition. Carlson uses language such as similes to imprint the landscape into the reader’s mind, symbolism to show how deeply rooted the traditions of the family lay and diction to bring the tradition alive. Carlson creates a calm and humorous tone.…
In A Fierce Discontent, McGerr bequeaths an astounding historical synopsis of the progressive era including subjects as, social action, urbanization, and social reform. Using the once individualistic middle class as his basis for argumentative purposes, McGerr breaks down the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Class relations play a big part in the paperback, focusing on the working class and the immensely wealthy “upper ten” percent. McGerr’s argument was that the progressive movement created a middle class with aspirations for a better democracy, but their ineffectiveness is the soul explanation on the weakness in the political world in the early twentieth century.…
In “A license to be Happy” Nicholas Roes believes that there is hope for addicts to live a happier life after many years of substance abuse. He admits that “More and more research is supporting the idea that people can learn to be happy.”(41) Roes acknowledges that if clients can focus on more of the positive things that brings out the outcome of happiness, the client will achieve their goal of being happy. He agrees that his clients have the power to control their own life once they understand the true meaning of happiness.…
Being unhappy should be enjoyed by everyone. We must experience a wide range of emotions in order to learn how to handle everything life throws at us. According to Bernard in Brave New World, ‘[he would] rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness that he was having here”, (179) this quote means that he would rather be unhappy than live in a happy lie. This book describes a utopian world yet there’s a quote in the book that is in direct conflict with the “utopian” world they are living in.…
In the end happiness vs. truth is all make believe, everything everybody believes that is truth is actually not the truth, and everything everybody believed was happiness is not true…
Secondly, the concept of knowing unhappiness to know happiness is what we have in our society. Let me ask you: are you truly happy? Maybe you are, but what if I told you that that was not true happiness. What if I told you everything you experienced and know about being happy was just an illusion? Could you comprehend…
In Young's argument he believed differentiated citizenship should be allowed to have individuals to remain true to themselves and their needs. Young believed that population was not predictable but wanted. He argues when it comes to the homogeneous public it leads to oppression, because of the results from the people voting for the public’s well-being. Young says that the public’s well-being is chosen by what the majorities’ wants and needs. “In society where some groups are privileged while others are oppressed, insisting that as citizens persons should leave behind their particular affiliations to adopt a general point of view serves only to reinforce that privilege."…
Darrin McMahon in his article “In Pursuit of Unhappiness” (2005) he states by searching for happiness you setting yourself up for disappointment. McMahon supports his claim by citing quotes from Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. McMahon purpose is to tell people not to look for happiness because in order to be happy you just got to live life and let happiness find you. McMahon explains his point of view in a serious tone and tells American and everyone else who may be looking for it. I disagree with McMahon because in order to be happy you have to find what makes you happy.…
"The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" by Jon Gertner was published in September of 2003. It is an essay that discusses the difference between how happy we believe we will be with a particular outcome or decision, and how happy we actually are with the outcome. The essay is based on experiments done by two professors: Daniel Gilbert and George Loewenstein. The experiments show that humans are never as happy as we think we will be with an outcome because affective forecasting and miswanting cause false excitement and disappointment in our search for true happiness.…
Yet, happiness is all about a healthy lifestyle. As an illustration, negative emotions, like the ones mentioned above, sink people into a “thread mode” and keep them from developing a positive attitude. Julie Beck in the article, “How to Build a Happier Brain” categorizes people emotions into two categories. People that are constantly stressed, pushed, or rushed fall in to the “reactive mode” category. People in this mood cannot adopt a positive attitude. On the other hand, people who are calm, in peace with themselves, grateful of what they have belong in the “responsive mode.” As a result, people in this group will be able to focus well in their daily activities and adopt a positive attitude. Granted, people want to be in the “responsive mode” right? This so called state of mind just derives from a healthy lifestyle. As note by Dr. Hanson, “exercise is not only a good physical health factor, but also gives mental benefits.” For instance, regular exercise can be as powerful as antidepressants and no stress equals a happy life (or at least part of it). In addition, regular exercise promotes the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus. Dr. Hanson affirms that these neurons are involved in learning from life experiences, as well as learning how to put things into context, which means see things in the bigger picture. In a nutshell, happiness comprises a positive attitude, which…