The Happiness Myth: Drugs, by Jennifer Hecht, discusses whether or not drugs really are as bad as we believe. Many only see one side, if we are taught they are bad from the geico, it makes one is hesitant. While many chose not to do drugs in their lifetime, others are ashamed to admit they have. People have always used happiness drugs, drugs that are considered illegal today, were once used them often as we use “caffeine and Prozac. Though, today, often we disguise our own legal drugs as antidepressants, numbing agents, soporifics, or stimulants, which says a lot about the drugs society deems as okay.…
The Happiness Myth: Drugs, by Jennifer Hecht discusses the misceptions about drugs in society. Throughout history there have always been happiness drugs, though our public for the most part has been morally against them. Today, legal happiness drugs are often labeled things such as antidepressants, numbing agents, soporifics, or stimulants, which tells one a lot about what society thinks about them. On the other hand, the drugs considered illegal today were, at various times, once used as much as we use caffeine today. Which is odd since some of the drugs in markets are a lot stronger than they used to be.…
In the article “Happiness: Enough Already” the author Sharon Begley draws up the argument that happiness may be the ultimate goal in life for many people, but too much happiness can also be as what she describes as “the end of the drive for ever-greater heights of happiness” (page number). Throughout the article Begley conveys that happiness is not always for the best, and that sometimes sadness and negativity brings out the best in a person. Begley proves her point by exploiting the negative views of happiness. Begley suggest that happiness is not instilled in a person for a long time because “negative emotion evolved for a reason” (page number). Begley then moves forward to better prove her explanation by emphasizing successful artists who…
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…
In planning her Happiness Project, Rubin turned to the wisdom of the ages, scientific knowledge, and lessons from pop culture all aimed at creating happiness. She uses this book to set down her adventures and discoveries along the way. She learned a number of things, including that novelty and challenge are important sources of happiness, that while perhaps money can’t completely buy happiness it can help in its purchase when it is spent with fore thought, that ordering and organizing her external environment contributed to a sense of inner peace, that treating herself could make her feel worse, that venting negative emotions didn’t get rid of them, and that sometimes it was the smallest of changes that could make the largest differences in her world and her happiness.…
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.…
Novelist Ayn Rand, in her book Anthem, wrote, “My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose”. Although happiness may seem like a simple concept to many, sometimes we don’t recognize it but we always take different paths, face many obstacles, and spend most of our lives trying to achieve happiness. Depending on the circumstances, every person has their own definition of what it means to attain happiness, whether through wealth, success, health, love etc. Happiness is a notion that be developed by focusing on the smaller things in life which are not given a great deal of thought to, but still can heavily impact us. One of these smaller yet significant ideas in life is individualism. Today…
The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner and Quincy Troupe entails the life story of Christopher Gardner. Like other books that movies are made from, The Pursuit of Happyness movie was very different than the book. In the movie, Gardner starts out in his late twenties; he lives with his wife, Linda, and his son Chris Gardner Jr., who was five-years-old at the beginning of the movie. The book starts out very differently; Gardner is just three-years-old and living in a foster home (Gardner and Troupe 15-16). By the end of the book, Gardner Jr. is barely four-years-old. The major difference between the book and the movie is that Gardner experiences physical, mental, and sexual abuse.…
Emotional happiness might seem redundant at first, since happiness is an emotion. We will be looking more at emotional well-being, or whether characters are emotionally satisfied. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “No aspect of our mental life is more important to the quality and meaning of our existence than emotions” (Emotion). So it seems reasonable that we would examine the effect emotions have on our well-being or happiness. We are first introduced to the emotional aspect of the novel when Clarisse asks Montag if he is happy (Bradbury 10). At first, Montag asserts that he is indeed happy, but upon further reflection, he realizes that he is not (12). This awareness prompts Montag on his journey that becomes the center…
People seem to struggle most with finding and maintaining happiness in their lives, mostly because they do not understand what happiness is. They assume happiness is a concrete destination. Little do they realize that you can find happiness in what you already have, no matter the situation. Some think that the only way to be happy is to remove all things negative out of their life, but one should not let their happiness be controlled by something they themselves cannot control. When things do not go exactly as expected, that does not mean everything has gone wrong, or that the world has turned against you. Problems will always be present in life, so it is better to accept their presence, allowing you to accept your life as is, which…
The Pursuit of Happyness stars Will Smith as Chris Gardner and shows his struggle as a single father facing homelessness yet striving to create a better life for his family. While it could be described as a Black man’s struggle, the movie manages to leave that as a secondary factor rather than the main source of conflict. Both the generosity and the discrimination he experiences at the hands of whites around him are portrayed, as well as, the reality that poverty has no color boundaries. People of all ethnicities are shown in impoverished scenes: in homeless shelters and food kitchens. His cultural interaction includes Asian Americans as well and depicts the cultural misunderstandings and language barriers experienced between them.…
Can we become happier? The answer is yes. Most people, especially those who are less educated, will say that happiness is simply having lots of money and luxury things or is successful at work. According to “Happier”, Dr. Tai Ben – Shahar – a professor of Harvard University – discusses true happiness in life and the way of making life become more meaningful. Through this piece of work, we realize that happiness is a combination of pleasure and meaning.…
In this video Dan Gilbert talks about what really makes us happy and what synthetic happiness is. According to Gilbert natural happiness is when we get something we want or we get exactly what we were trying to achieve for. For example getting an “A” on a paper you worked really hard on. Also another example would be getting the promotion you wanted at work. Gilbert also describes natural happiness as stumbling upon what you were exactly aiming for.…
"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.…
One out of every 500,000 twins are conjoined twins (Spencer). But for Chang & Eng unfortunately “fate had smiled,” (Spencer). They had a remarkable life after being conjoined twins during their early, middle and later years. During these years they learned to do many things.…