The Happiness Conspiracy, By John Schumaker

On February 22, 2016 author John Warner published an article on Just Visiting entitled “Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay.” Warner creatively talks about how rudimentary of a structure this type of essay holds. Writers are locked inside a cage of regulations and guidelines making them unable to write the essay as they please, but rather having to piece together regulated sentences and paragraphs because that’s what they have been told would score high on certain test questions. The article targets people of all kinds, but is more directed towards early college aged students. The purpose behind this article is to get them to expand their horizon, disregard all the regulations they have been previously taught and start to write in a much more open-minded sense.

As a political personality, Robert Reich writes a book that closely relates the deteriorating status of the U.S. economy with the greed of other politicians and the government as a whole. To some extent, Robert Reich pulls out the sense in economy deterioration with the help of pinning the major government policies. Robert Reich 's argument comes out clearly, directly, and at some point presented willfully. From the heading of the topic of the book, what went wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it, a reader can clearly picture the content of the book that is politics and the financial mess that the United States of America is in today. The book provides a clear, simple, and easy to understand information on how the author, Robert Reich relates the cause a bad financial status for the country and how the government and other wealthy people living in America contribute to causing the financial crisis.

In the novel The Joy Luck Club written by Amy Tan, there are several stories that intertwine into one novel. Each of the stories takes place China where the roles and the actions of woman are vastly different compared to American tradition. In the different stories, they all are about different mothers and daughters. Throughout the book, the reader can see the development in each relationship between mother and daughter with their conflicting backgrounds from China to America.

A nation's success and standard of living is determined by its economic growth, which is measured by percentage in real GDP. Capitalism is an economic system that yields strong incentives for rapid increases in output of commodities. The most advanced capitalist economies have been more successful in raising productivity, as a result of their low unemployment rates and ability to adjust to new and improving economies. Developed countries in general, contain a lot of natural resources, which can be used as income. As stated in Sarah Ahmed’s book “Why Happiness, Why Now?”, developing countries are shown to be happier than undeveloped ones (3). Would this supposed happiness be due to the progression of their country? A country’s growth and advancement

In society there are still differences in classes such as higher class, middle class, and lower class. In sociology, we observed a film called The Pursuit Happyness, where we witnessed the struggles a father went through to succeed. Chris Gardner, who was played by Will Smith, is living in his apartment with his wife and his son. Due to their struggles, the mother walks out on and leaves Chris struggling alone with his son. In the film Chris Gardner applies for an unpaid internship for a competitive stockbroker company where out of twenty men, only one gets the job. While he is on his internship, we see the hardships of getting kicked out of his apartment to staying at a shelter home to then sleeping in a subway bathroom with his son. Viewing the movie through a sociological lens, The Pursuit of Happyness will be analyzed according to the major three sociological paradigms: structural functionalism, social conflict theory, and symbolic interactionalism.

In the article "Why Happiness is Healthy" by Elizabeth Landau, she elaborates about why people want to be happy. Landau agrees with this concept and approves Happiness' choice as a lifestyle. She explains the main reasons why you should consider happiness in your life. Then she introduces the origins of happiness and uses logos to prove scientifically how genes and environment affect the levels of your happiness. She defends herself using a naysayer using money and time, people think that money can't buy them happiness but it can satisfy them, she then proves that money doesn't make you happy but has the power to satisfy you. Lastly her last paragraph consists of her proving how machines can't replace human emotions and encloses

For this essay, I will be examining the article “Absurd Self-Fulfillment,” written by Joel Feinberg. I will be pinpointing the central conclusion of this article, as well as the argument’s premises and the article’s central argument. I will also explain how the article relates to the film Being John Malkovich, and finally the school of philosophy, which we call “existentialism” and three of its central tenets.

In this passage by Cass Sunstein, he expresses how money can make individuals happy. He is a professor at Harvard Law School and works in the White House in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The passage is a summary of Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton’s Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. Elizabeth Dunn is a professor of psychology and Michael Norton is a professor of Business Administration. There are five main points stated in the passage of why money makes people happier.

Making resolutions on the day of New Year's Eve is traditional, but most people don't stick with it. Sticking to a goal is pretty hard to do, but in “The Happiness Project” Gretchen Rubin, author of the New York Times Bestseller, focuses on different goals she wants to achieve throughout the year. Each month she focuses on one goal to tackle the objective in such a short amount of time. Other than just being a phenomenal writer, Gretchen is also a law school graduate, book club leader, blogger, wife and mother of two. In my happiness project I will work on my patience,doing new activities, family, health and friendships.

When I think of social experiments, I don’t usually think about people actually changing their lives to merely test a hypothesis. But Barbara Ehrenreich decides to do just that when a successful editor with whom she is having lunch suggests so. This sudden decision is what many people, myself included, would call INSANE. If I were faced with this challenge, I have no doubt that I would try to wiggle myself out of it. In fact, I try to wiggle myself out of many things that are not quite as difficult as attempting to live in poverty. I have decided to compile a list: 1) cleaning my room, 2) awkward conversations with people that I have just met, 3) babysitting my sister after she’s eaten any kind of sugar, 4) skinny jeans. You get the point. A “normal” person would not drop everything to make a point about and draw awareness to social injustice in our world. Even in the first few pages of her book, Barbara shows us that she is a very capable and bold woman in whom we

The most universal goal every human has in common is the pursuit of happiness or “creation or construction of happiness” (Achor, 78). To be able to fulfill this wish of becoming happy, people often think the key to achieving happiness is success. In the book, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, he debunks this theory of success leading to happiness by illustrating the reverse theory of success. Through dozens of studies and experiments as forms of evidence, the author argues that an individual needs to achieve happiness in order to be truly successful. Achor 's argument is valid in that happiness should come before success because there is a clear advantage to being successful in an individual’s work life, personal sphere, and liveliness if they are happy first and foremost.

Sadness, anger, and fear are vital parts of development in a person, without these emotions one would lack the wisdom that stems from these emotions, and one would be far less empathetic since one would have no background on how the a person suffering feels. Everyone experiences loss, and some degree of tragedy which invoke these ‘negative’ or ‘uncomfortable’ emotions, and coping with such emotions is a necessary part of life. Wisdom is only achieved after experiencing, if we do not experience such emotions as sadness, anger, and fear then we are ignorant to our own self. Sharon Begley wrote in her article ‘ Happiness: Enough Already’ she writes “ One becomes more analytical, more critical and more innovative. One need negative emotions, including sadness to direct your thinking.”

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s

In the speech The Good Life, Robert Waldinger asks ‘what keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life?’ He briefly explained a survey for millennial’s; what were there life goals? Over 80% said to get rich, and 50% said to become famous. Waldinger states a quote, “some of the worst things in my life never happened” (Marc Twain). Research shows that we tend to see life more positive as we get older.

Be aware that every essay is guided by the perception of the person who wrote it. It is virtually impossible to be completely impartial and objective towards everything we analyze. Our life history continuously shapes us into thinking and acting the way we do; the place where you were born, the childhood we experienced. It all has an effect on our decision making process. Even our sex: male or female. Everything makes a difference in perception.