The And Its Impact On Our Understanding Of Society And The Value Of Happiness 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.

Mahatma Gandhi one defined happiness as “when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Barring any better definition of happiness from either positive psychologists, self-help gurus, or any other academic source, I tend to think this is a great summation of the definition of happiness. Gandhi doesn’t say anything about how these things make you feel, rather looks at it from a point of view of harmony between thoughts, expressions, and actions. Since one single accepted definition of happiness doesn’t seem to exist, and happiness is different for everyone, this begs the question; how can you increase your own personal level of happiness?

To live a good life is the proposed goal of everyone and anyone on the planet who has not yet lost their will to live. As living beings native to this beautiful green Earth it is the intrinsic of the human species to not only survive but to pursue the highest quality of life available. In nature it more desirable from the lion to entrap an elephant than a gazelle, simply because while both result in the pride being fed, the elephant will feed them more comfortably. In nature it is never simply about surviving as it is about living. Most people will work to surround themselves with shiny trinkets of gold, luxurious fabrics, decadent foods, and high-ranking people under the pretense that those are the hallmarks of the good life. This idea permeates human culture across the globe, the idea of wealth a status being essential to a happy life. It becomes a pressure that, in the profound words of David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, burns a building down, splits a family in two, and puts people on streets. From the the skin bleaching epidemic in the third-world resulted from the fervent desire to reflect standards of wealth and beauty, to the powerful drug cartels that run entire countries, to the the poisonous music that resonates with the youth of today, many things are all in the pursuit of wealth and perceived status, at the expense of both the individual and the community. The good life equates to happiness. The definition of a good life is not marked by worldly goods and

Every other Monday morning the workers of the fast food restaurant next door line up in my lobby waiting to cash their paychecks. There is a wide range of ages, races, and sexes; there is no one demographic in the lobby. The conversations are about coworkers not present or about their spouses. They complain about the long shifts or an angry customer they encountered in the drive up this morning. One young woman discusses her daughter’s adventures at kindergarten. There are complaints of the cost of car repairs or a visit to the hospital last week. There are questions of who is working tonight and what time does the bus come, all of these conversations could be happening in any bank lobby anywhere in the United States. The noise level continues to rise in the lobby as more workers enter the building, the energy in the lobby rises as the excitement of the workers increases, today is payday. Or is it anxiety? Are their thoughts, masked behind idle chit chat, of how am I going to pay rent and feed my family? How am I going to make this pay last for two weeks? These fellow humans are the full time working poor.

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.

No one in any world, likes to feel sad inside or worry about the future and what's to come. So the people, when given the chance to always be carefree and merry, happily oblige. Their satisfaction is what they value most, they all say, “I want to be happy” (52). Any possession that brings them that joy, is then a basic necessity that they need to live. It is almost as if they are scared to see what a world without endless pleasure would look like; a world where you actually have to think and make your own decisions.

The British journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, defined Americans as “The pursuit of happiness, which American citizens are obliged to undertake, tends to involve them in trying to perpetuate the moods, tastes and aptitudes of youth.” Happiness, which every human wants, is the fundamental underlying quality by which America has built itself upon, proclaiming freedom, equality and the opportunity to those who seek a better life. Muggeridge suggests an American citizen meant to be in the pursuit of happiness. However, American citizens who were inclined to find happiness, pursue wealth, acceptance, and image hoping that it will preserve youthfulness. In reality, Americans’ pursuit of happiness turns into a search for youthfulness, in which qualities of the youth are often sought after. In The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald portrays a man’s pursuit of his dreams and happiness. Early in his life, Jay Gatsby realizes that with hard work, self-improvement, and an education, he can achieve his desires, like most Americans today. Like Gatsby, who saw the wealth of Dan Cody as a thing that brings happiness, Americans today look around and still associate money with happiness. Similar to Gatsby, who was willing to bootleg, lie, and work, Americans find themselves chasing wealth for its ability to perpetuate youthfulness. However, most

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.

After reading your article Happiness and Its Discontents, I have decided to define my own personal happiness and what it means to live a robust life. Living a robust life means something different to every individual as no one person can define happiness or success as a single entity. However, I do think individuals are able to determine their own meaning of contentment by analyzing the different components of their lives. When reading your published work, I could not help but notice how you spent a majority of time discussing the negative effects of happiness. Generally, when an individual thinks of jubilation they correlate it to positive events, but you seemed to gloomily depict happiness as an emotion that yields despair, thinking happiness is a forced emotion which must keep societal standards. You mention if people have mental health concerns, such as anxiety, in order for them to live a robust life they must create and display a pseudo personality to

"The United Stated was founded on our right to persue happiness." Everyone has there own definition of happiness, one persons happiness could be someone else's nightmare. Although alot of people like to volunter and it brings them happiness or possibly have good health benifits with doing so, voluntering is not for everybody.

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 Economist’s treatise “Against Happiness”, develops the idea that companies should not utilize happiness as “an instrument of corporate control.” The piece asserts that companies may request politeness from their employees but asking them to feign their respective psychological states’ is inherently wrong. For example, Pret a Manager employs mystery shoppers to determine if its franchises’ workers’ are greeting with a “requisite degree of joy.”

In “is everybody happy”, john Ciardi focus his attention on how the western civilization instinct to be surrounded by martial riches and to consume their way to the pursuit of happiness.

Take a moment and think about what makes you happy on a typical day? More often than not, one would base their happiness on their ability to finish tasks and being able to check “things” off that have been accomplished. Infrequently, people rarely take the time to reflect on the simple pleasures in life. As expressed in David Henry Thoreau’s essay, “Where I lived and What I lived For”, humans need to simply their lives. We, as a society, have begun to become “frittered away by details” (Thoreau, 1100) and material things. Thoreau’s argument is convincing as it stresses the significance and importance of living a simple life that nature can give. As such, people should follow this perspective of life in the sense that one should try to do the unconventional and live simply. By living simply, one will be able to find happiness from within. Although a simple life is ideal, there are others who feel simplicity is, and can be equated to ignorance. As the historian Thomas Gray once noted, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise” (Ode on a Distant Prospect, 1783). In simpler terms, the less one knows about the world around them, the better off they are.

However, those people with the means are reluctant to sacrifice an excessive amount that they would descend in status (Mill 89). Those who are of lower faculties #, and thus have less enjoyment, are more easily satisfied (Mill 90). Compared to their inferiors, people of higher classes continue to seek happiness and are never truly satisfied. Mill links this continuous search with dignity (Mill 90). Due to the sense of dignity, “someone will not feel envious of those who bear imperfections because he does not understand the benefits of those limitations” # (Mill 91). In explaining this concept, Mill compares a human being dissatisfied to a pig satisfied and Socrates dissatisfied to a fool satisfied. The pig and fool reason that they are well-off, but the human being and Socrates know they are superior because they are further educated (Mill 91).