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Eric Weiner's Experiment In Slough Happy

424 Words2 Pages

In his quest for happiness, Eric Weiner traveled to Great Britain, where an unusual experiment took place in Slough town. First, he arrived at London’s Heathrow airport, but the British immigration official was mistrustful when Eric explained his purpose for visiting this country. However, after answering some questions, Eric finally went out of the terminal, where his friend Rob and his wife, Nancy, took him for dinner. During their dinner, the conversation went to the inevitable comparison between Brits and Americans. Nancy mentioned that Brits are very reserved and don’t want to bother anyone, but in the other hand, Americans are talkative. In fact, a brit being too “American” is not a good thing. Rob declared the happiness in Great Britain as a “latent happiness”. Then, Eric went at the campus of University College London to see Jeremy Bentham’ skeleton. In fact, this philosopher asked for his dead body, called “auto-icon”, to be preserved. Bentham founded utilitarianism and developed the principle of adding pleasures and subtracting sufferings to promote a happy nation. However, one of the critics is that it only makes most people happy but leave a minority by itself. According to Eric Weiner, happiness is also a business of the government. Fifteen years …show more content…

Fifty volunteers, who were residents of this village, were selected to follow an intensive happiness training during twelve weeks. Six “happiness experts” made them do various exercises, like hugging one another, preforming biodanza and laughing for absolutely no reason. At the end of the experiment, their level of happiness increased by 33 percent. However, Eric asked himself if it is possible to change of the psychological climate, so he called Richard Stevens. Stevens said it is possible, with time and money. With all the interrogations of Eric, Stevens told him to go see by himself

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