Analysis Of Eric Weiner's Geography Of Bliss

I believe that one of the ultimate questions that all members of the human species asks is ‘How can I find happiness?’ and reflected in this question is a desire to find a happy, fulfilling, quality life. Many people try to find such happiness through their careers, material possessions, and all manner of other pursuits. What a large portion of these people do not realize is that happiness and the elements necessary to achieve a quality life may not come from place, position, or possession but from attitude. In both Gilgamesh by Stephen Mitchell and Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell, the reader can see these ideas explored in great detail.

As human beings we are naturally wired to seek happiness wherever we can find it. When we don’t, we may enter a stage of anger, anxiety, or distress. That’s why it is our personal goal to look for happiness and preserve it once we acquire it. Many have explored ways to find what triggers this feeling of “happiness” and what we can do to keep it; nonetheless, the evidence found is hardly sufficient to make a public statement on how to find happiness. For this reason, most of the time we speculate what might provoke this feeling of contentment. “Happiness is a glass half empty,” an essay written by Oliver Burkeman, highlights the importance of happiness and discloses how we can find delight through unorthodox methods. The prime objective of this piece of writing is to inform the audience about the effect of happiness on their lives and how their usual attempts of becoming happier can sabotage achieving this feeling. Furthermore, he wants to promote the benefits of pessimism and describe how it can help us in the long run. The author utilizes pronouns, logos, and pathos in order to prove his point and draw the audience into his essay, in an attempt of making them reconsider the way they live their lives and adopt this new pessimistic way that would greatly boost their level of happiness.

Senior compares what people think about people in other states and locations happiness, finding that usually these comparisons are untrue. Different studies and polls found that the Swiss and Canadians rank themselves among the happiest, while the Japanese are less happy. European countries tend to rank themselves the least happy, with Russia coming in last. Is happiness really based on location? I find that just because people don’t like the snowy weather doesn’t mean that they are unhappy during the holiday season. Families seem to come together and rejoice in each other’s company during this bad weather season. “And no matter where they live, human beings are terrible predictors of what will make them happy” (426). Senior discusses how we fill in the gaps, where we tend to remember only happy events and feelings and phase out bad ones. She discuss how our imaginations work in rationalizing situations and feelings, setting ourselves up for big disappointments, but deal with the successfully at the

She is an “award-winning staff writer at Newsweek” and “has written scores of articles that decode the complexities of science for lay readers” (554). In addition, Begley also “wrote for the ‘Science Journal’ column for the Wall Street Journal” which “first appeared on the Newsweek-affiliated Web site the Daily Beast” (554). These credentials are evidence that allow the reader to trust her as a reliable author. Begley’s article is also trustworthy because she introduces sources that have published research on happiness, are psychologists or psychiatrists, and support her argument. For example, Begley mentions Ed Diener, a psychologist “who has studied happiness for a quarter century” (555). She also mentions the global research that has concluded that the people with “the highest levels of happiness” tend to put in less effort into improving and changing their lives (556). Begley also supports her article by mentioning several examples of well-known people who used their “negative emotions, including sadness, to direct [their] thinking” (557). For example, Begley mentions that “Beethoven composed his later works in a melancholic funk” (557). Begley believes that the negative emotions that lead famous people to their critical thinking can also help people such as, college students (557).

The filmmakers really amplified the idea that everyone can become happier. They filmed people from many different cultures around the world, to show that there are no barriers for being happy. Rather than starting the film with an interview from an average American, Happy began with an Indian rickshaw driver sharing his daily lifestyle. Although it may have seemed like a hard, tiring, and anticlimactic lifestyle to the audience, he was happy. The narrator reports, “Research shows that he was as happy as the average American.” This may seem unrealistic for the audience at first, considering the audience is still discovering this principle that happiness is diverse for other individuals. Especially for an audience member who finds that a majority of their happiness is related with money, this moment in the film may have not been easy for them to comprehend. This part of the film really amplifies the main claim from the director that happiness is mainly influenced by our ecology. The Indian rickshaw driver found most of his happiness when he came home, and interacted with his son. The idea of ecology has a lot to with the social interaction between individuals of the same species, in this case, it was the interaction between the rickshaw driver and his son. Not only did the interaction with his son brighten his mood, but his interaction with his neighbors also brought him to be happy.

In the essay, “A Literature of Place”, Barry Lopez expresses the importance of nature as it applies to human life. Through this he states that humans’ imagination are inspired by the scenery around them. Lopez revolves around a central perspective; Ancient american literature has always been rooted in nature. By acknowledging that modern human identity has been interpreted by nature, Lopez describes how the landscape of an area can shape the structure of the communities and how it can help with spiritual collapse. Nature writing has often been summarised by being one of the oldest threads in american literature. With our nation's aging one needs to reflect on their literary past; therefore, Lopez insists that we find our path to nature that

Growing up in a family where both my parents came from poor immigrant backgrounds always made financial success a priority and when there was no need to be frugal, my parents did seem happier. But did money buy my parents’ happiness or did money lead to their happiness? Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener attempt to answer that question in their excerpt “Can Money Buy Happiness,” where they claim that “[m]oney can be a help in attaining psychological wealth, but it should be considered in the bigger picture of what makes people general genuinely rich (Biswas-Diener 161). Although not explicitly defined by Diener and Biswas-Diener, “psychological wealth” is the overall measure of happiness, beyond just fiscal affluence, including positive ties with other individuals and joyful temperaments (Biswas-Diener 168). By extending Biswas-Diener and Diener’s idea of “psychological wealth” to include the perception of what wealth is and what wealth consists of beyond monetary success, such as achievements or fulfillment, there exist a copious number of ways to view wealth. One can be rich in more than finances and happiness is dependent upon the perception of wealth due to money being one of several paths, including deliberate effort and being positive, to “psychological wealth” which leads to happiness.

Eighner wants to send his readers a message how people are able to live by the minimum resources being happy. People who try to find happiness in “material

Mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better. That philosophers might easily do this, even now, on many subjects; that the received code of ethics is by no means of divine right; and that mankind have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on general happiness, I admit or rather earnestly maintain.

In The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt talks about how our brains work and how best to find happiness with the different ways it works. Haidt describes the different ways a positive and negative person’s brain works and how each can find happiness through various and different methods. He also discusses different aspects of society that can affect our level of happiness. All of these things can be considered to find the best way to raise your level of happiness.

“The Geography of Genius”, by Eric Weiner is a book that dives deep into how geography influenced creative geniuses. Weiner travels from Athens to Silicon Valley, and throughout history, to show how creative geniuses flourished in specific places at specific times. He explores the history of Renaissance Florence, Ancient Athens, Hangzhou, and Edinburgh to show how urban areas contributed to ingenuity. Weiner also walks the same paths as geniuses who once flourished in those settings to uncover the secrets behind Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Socrates. He asks the question, “What was in the air, and can we bottle it?” “The Geography of Genius” is truly an intellectual odyssey. It is smart, original, and redefines how genius came to be.

According to Storm Jameson, “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” Jameson suggests that happiness is not just having fun, but it is to be present in the moment and to make connections with others. Happiness is rarely found in the novel Fahrenheit 451, because this joyless society defines “fun” as driving with the need for speed and with an intention of killing small animals and people or the deadening white noise of endless television viewing. The novel Fahrenheit 451 conveys this very idea as the protagonist Guy Montag and others in his society are unable to achieve full happiness. Author Ray Bradbury suggests the truth of Jameson’s statement primarily through

In my opinion, Weiner was trying to point out that happiness is not only for fortunate people. That people cannot find happiness by using self-help books. Even though he likes self-help books, he believed that people could not find happiness by using it. Therefore, I agree that self-help book is not the solution to be happy. We can get some ideas and information but not happiness. Finding happiness in a place where everything is different and new is crucial. People need to learn how to explore life, learn other culture like their beliefs, values and behavior. It is necessary to learn other cultures the same perspective of your beliefs.

In “A Literature of Place”, author Barry Lopez begins his work by stating that a kind of writing called "nature writing" or "landscape writing" has begun to receive more attention, creating the belief that it was a relatively new type of writing (at the time). It was actually quite the opposite. According to Lopez, writing about the impact that nature and location has on culture is one of the oldest, and perhaps most singular, threads in American writing. The real topic of nature writing, Lopez says, is not nature but the evolving structure of communities from which nature has been removed, often as a consequence of modern economic development. Lopez also states that it is his belief that a human imagination is shaped by the environment

In David Leonhardt’s “Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness”, Leonhardt discusses whether a larger economy increases a person’s content by displaying the different point of views and their evidence. Born in 1973, Leonhardt has won an adequate number of awards for his in-depth insights and publications on economics. These awards include the Peter Lisagor (Club, 1999), Gerald Loeb (“2010 Gerald Loeb Award Finalists”, n.d.), Society of American Business Editors and Writers (“Winners in Its 14th Annual Best in Business Contest”, 2009) awards. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary (“The 2011 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Commentary”, n.d.). With his economical knowledge, Leonhardt wrote The Get Happy Workbook, an instructional ebook on how to achieve elation (“The Get Happy Workbook”, n.d.).