Happiness Industry Sparknotes

When having good experiences, most people, if asked, would claim that they feel happy. However, if one decided to ask Martha Nussbaum, author of “Who is the Happy Warrior? Philosophy Poses Questions to Psychology,” she would most likely respond that she was feeling pleasured. In her article, she draws a restrictive line between pleasure and happiness. She introduces the viewpoints of many intellectuals who have spoken on the definition of happiness, and then offers her own opinions in regards to theirs. Her thoughts generally align with those of Aristotle, Plato, and the ancient Greek thinkers – the very ones she spent much of her higher education studying. Her main ideas, that happiness is too complex to be concretely defined and that pleasure is a feeling that we may experience while doing certain things, are well-explained and supported. She offers the idea that happiness is not an emotion – rather, it is a state of being that we should all hope to attain as a result of self-reflection. Nussbaum continually counters the beliefs proposed by psychologists, like the notion that happiness is a one-note feeling, or the concept that happiness is only influenced by positive emotions. In my essay, I will explain how Martha Nussbaum’s explanation of the complexities of happiness is superior, as well as how the ideas of two psychologists, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Daniel Gilbert, are faulty and disreputable. However, it is important to note that just because Nussbaum is the least wrong

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.

“The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt is the first book I've read of its kind, mostly because I've been trying to feel my way through life so far one step at a time, and I will likely never forget it. There are things to be learned within this combination of ancient wisdom, research, and Haidt's connection of it all, valuable lessons for approaching and understanding the human experience. Reading something like this young, and taking it with me throughout my life and comparing it to my own experience will indeed make it a very valuable tool.

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.

Happiness is one of the most significant dimensions of human experience. Many people can argue that happiness is a meaningful and desirable entity. Studies indicate that everyone pursues happiness in various aspects of their life. Our four fathers saw happiness as a need, so they made the pursuit of happiness as one of the three unalienable rights branded in the Declaration of Independence. There is a sense of complexity behind the meaning of happiness; its definition is not definite. Think of happiness as a rope; there are many thin fiber strands bonded together to become the strength of the rope. Like the analogy of the rope, there are numerous factors that can contribute to an individual’s overall happiness in life. This study is going to

Happiness on the job is closely related to contentment of values. In fact, happiness could just be

Happiness is a popular topic that is constantly being discussed by experts around the world. In the article “Happy Like God”, written by Simon Critchley, Critchley proposes his view on happiness and its inability to be measured or found through sources outside of ones-self. In another piece written by Richard Schoch, titled “A Crtique of Positive Psychology”, Schoch also discusses the topic through a process of critiquing studies and experiments that claim to have the answer to happiness. Both of these texts not only make claims that happiness cannot be measured, but they also bring questions to the table that provide valuable insights on the wrong answers in order for us to find the right ones.

In the Eating Chapter of The Happiness Myth by Jennifer Hecht, she quotes the Ms. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book of 1883. She introduces the site by describing the happiness that comes from a mother’s home cooked bread and uses the topic of baking in order to ease into the quote. Hecht quotes the phrase,“Nothing in the whole range of domestic life more affects the health and happiness of the family than the quality of its daily bread.” In response, she says, “what an extraordinary and bizarre claim.” (Hecht 186). Also, how she believes that households today do not depend their happiness and health on how good their bread is, contradicting the quote.

“Synthetic Happiness” By Marie Fouche ENC1102 Exploratory Essay Final Copy Period 3 Professor Weinberg 10/06/2014   The reason I chose this topic is a by-product of watching a TedTalk by a Harvard professor. He was talking about how he was studying happiness and found out the secret to being happy.

According to the classic sense, a life full of happiness is a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness. However happiness has been twisted by a secular culture and the classic sense has given away to “pleasurable satisfaction”. Pleasurable satisfaction depends on external circumstances going well. Moreland points out that because of this the modern sense of happiness, “pleasurable satisfaction”, is unstable and varies with life’s circumstances. Pleasurable satisfaction becomes increasingly addictive and enslaving if it becomes the dominant aim of one’s life. By contrast, classical happiness brings freedom and power to life as one ought, as one increasingly becomes a unified person who lives for a cause bigger than one’s self. Western culture has been disillusioned into seeking happiness as their main priority in life. Although, happiness is important, when its importance becomes exaggerated, it leads to a loss of purpose in life, and even depression. What Western cultures need to realize is that true happiness can never be achieved. Over the past 50 years, levels of health, wealth, and liberties have increased, but levels of happiness haven’t.

Based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “Happiness Revisited” People have many different points of view about how to achieve happiness, it can be based on the type of life one is having, an experience, a way of living, culture, and religion. Happiness can be defined in many ways but happiness is not something we find or get just by magic. In “Happiness Revisited” by Csikszentmihalyi, the author emphasizes that “It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.” And just as he stays that happiness is when someone is involved in everything that happens in live either good or bad, one example that I think Csikszentmihalyi will describe as an optimal experience

The Merriam Webster dictionary describes happiness as a “state of well-being and contentment. Though there are multiple things that can make one happy. The Happiness Myth, by Jennifer Hecht and the article, Which One of These Food Will Stop Cancer? (Not so Fast) by Gina Kolata both discuss the category of bodies. Hecht has a whole section of the book dedicated to this, describing that when it comes to taking care of our bodies we often think of the extreme or nothing at all. Meanwhile, Kolata’s article talks about people who change their diets because they believe it can protect one from cancer and that even though there is little to no scientific proof it actually does. However, whether these measures make people happy is ideally up to the person. Therefore, if eating healthy or working out makes a person feel like they have control over themselves then who is to say that is not happiness.

Brave New World, a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley, is about a society that gives into pleasure to form a happy society. The society functions on the idea that everyone is happy because no one denies themselves the things that give pleasure, such as drugs and sex. However, hinging the entire structure on such an abstract concepts of happiness is dangerous and scary. Researchers today still don’t know everything they would like to about happiness health. Although there is a science to happiness, a societal happiness is a much more complicated concept than Huxley imagines.

Even if we use the word “happiness” on daily basis, has anyone ever tried to define it? It’s harder than it seems. When do you feel happy? How is it when you feel happy? Is there any way to understand how much happiness to you experience? This is the main hypothesis of this paper – Can happiness or wellbeing be measured? And if it can be measured, how do we measure it? Happiness is feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation (Meriam Webster). Pleasure and enjoyment are very subjective and means different things to different people. This is where the term subjective wellbeing comes from. There are a lot of things that can be included when measuring wellbeing. Various studies have been conducted to assess wellbeing and how does it affect other factors. For example Earlstin(1995) and later on Ferrer-i-Carbonell(2005) have examined the relationship between income and happiness. Gruber(2004) studies the relationship cigarette taxation and happier smokers. Richard, Clark, Gerogellis and Diener(2004) analyze the effect of unemployment on wellbeing.

Our internal world governs our happiness, not conditions put upon us from our external environment or conditions we place on ourselves. To put it another way, our search for happiness is the very reason we’re unhappy (McLeod, 2007). Psychology considers happiness an emotion or mental state and a predictor of how well one’s life is going. Some say that happiness is a choice, and therefore a behavior that one chooses. Happiness is a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it (McLeod, 2007).