Response to The Futile Pursuit of Happiness, by Jon Gertner Essay

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As you know these words come from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps one of the greatest documents ever written. However, I do have a little problem with the last four words sentence, “the pursuit of Happiness” because I believe it actually sends an easily misinterpreted message.

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.

Iyengar, S. S., Lepper, M. R. When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing?

The U.S Constitution, famously known for establishing America’s national government and providing fundamental laws assuring citizens certain basic fundamental rights was a milestone in our countries beginning. In today’s society, especially with all the turmoil happening between people and governing bodies the rights which the Constitution provides is saving many Americans from being treated poorly or as most would say “unconstitutionally.” The Constitution is simply one of the most distinct and brilliant documents to ever see the light of day. Although some may have little to no knowledge of the Constitution, it

Gray said that many people do not know what they want when they come to him and they just say “I want a cake.” He compared this to saying “I want a car,” you could want something, like a Honda that it simple and gets you from point A to point B or you could want something expensive and flashy, like a Lamborghini.

Why should people be able to postpone their desire? Desire is a sense of hoping for something. Scientists have discovered that if people could control their inner desire, they would be more likely to have self-discipline, higher SAT scores and are more successful. Delayed gratification is a person’s ability to control his/her desire for something for a period of time.

The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.

Some of the most common themes in contemporary biographical films revolve around social life as well as the accompanying problems that living in today's society entails. By making connections to individual personal lives, these films help most people make sense of the world in which they live. In this regard, this paper focuses on the film, The Pursuit of Happyness outlining various cultural issues as well as problems faced by the starring; Will Smith playing Chris Gardner in the movie. Moreover, the paper discusses how such factual films reflect and create popular ideas about social problems.

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.

Picturing things going well can leave one disappointed when things do not turn out the way it is supposed to. Burkeman gave an example of such an occurrence. Gabriele Oettingen, a psychologist, conducted an experiment to discover what effect positive visualization had on success. “The results are striking: spending time and energy focusing on how well things could go, it has emerged, actually reduces most people’s motivation to achieve them” (Burkeman). If one sets overly hopeful expectations, the more likely one is to

For our Economics subject, we watched The Pursuit of Happyness, a movie based on Chris Gardner, a salesman who was not making that much money and eventually experiences homelessness with his five-year old son. He faces problems when his wife is unwilling to accept his goal to become a stockbroker and leaves him. However, he perseveres even under all this stress.

When it comes to predicting how something will make you feel in the future, you will most likely be wrong. In the book Discovering Pop Culture, edited by Anna Romasino, is the article “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness”. In the article, author Jon Gertner talks about how people think certain things bring them happiness but aren’t as fulfilling as they may think. Gertner gives examples by writing about four men that have been questioning how people predict what will make them happy and how they feel after it happens. Among these men are a psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, psychologist Tim Wilson, economist George Loewenstein, and psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Gertner uses facts from scores of

The novel tells us that the fear of failure is the greatest obstacle to happiness. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” So often we hide behind excuses of not being able to do this or that, but the real story is that we are too afraid to take a chance. It is our

Dan Gilbert’s examples about synthesizing happiness are perfect. Numerous times, I have told myself the “unwanted” option was originally what I desired. Losing out on a job opportunity or not getting that second date was justifiable because of whatever excuse I deemed a better option which nevertheless caused synthetic happiness. Moreover, evolution caused our brain to triple in size due to the fact that our pre-frontal cortex needed room to grow because present day human brains can now fake experiences including synthesizing happiness. I suppose our psychological immune system is there to protect our feelings. Nobody prefers to be sad, so we create synthetic happiness. I allowed my fear to cause myself grief as a result of walking away from

Happiness… It could be said that there is no one in this whole wide world who does not want to be happy. We live every single day in hope to find happiness, which also known as pursuit of happiness. We strive to bring happiness in our life. Nonetheless, along the journey to find happiness, some people stumble and find themselves unhappy instead. One might question why, but actually we all have different value and understanding to describe happiness. Therefore, we have our own unique approach to pursue happiness and there is no telling to the exact cause of our wrongs and errors in the process. What might have been the cause, which most people hardly notice, is their perception of happiness. There are three most common misconception of happiness that lead to unhappy life.