Rhetorical Analysis Of Pursuing The Science Of Happiness By Andrew Guest

The Happiness Myth, by Jennifer Hecht discusses the assumptions of happiness that can be seen in both history and today's society, and what it means to be happy. Similarly, many of the beliefs we have today can be traced back to the past. When doing so, drugs, money, bodies, and celebration are four common factors that still continue to this day which are also influenced by societal views. Hect also describes three kinds of happiness: a good day, euphoria, and a good life. In addition to not only how they work together, but how they can also be opposites. As well as how society creates “trances of value”, preventing us from the things that actually make us happy.

There are many cases of someone’s potential to achieve happiness being affected by factors they can’t control throughout A Thousand Splendid Suns. This notion effects many of the characters in Hosseini’s novel and one could say that it might affect our own lives as well. In our lives our potential to achieve happiness may be impacted by factors we have no control

While many people feel like they are not capable of achieving true happiness it is possible. In Sandra Cisneros' essay, Straw into Gold: The Metamorphosis of the Everyday, she speaks of how she needed to stray from the conventional

Happiness plays an important and necessary role in the lives of people around the world. In America, happiness has been a necessity in our daily lives since Thomas Jefferson stated these famous words in the Declaration of Independence: “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, of Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Since then, Americans have been engaged in that act, pursuing happiness. However, as Ray Bradbury demonstrates in Fahrenheit 451, that special elements in our life which make us happy initially may eventually lead to our downfall. Beatty, the fire chief, has a contentious job which pulls him

All people experience tragedy at one point or another in life. Rather it be a death or a heartbreak, tragedy can be hard to recover from. However, the large majority of people respond in one of two ways. Some people become depressed and completely let tragedy defeat them. Not only is this physically unhealthy, but sadness can take over an individual's personality and mess with their mental state of mind as well. On the other hand, some people respond to tragedy positively. As a result of thinking positively, some individuals improve themselves and change their lives for the better. In chapter two of The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt discusses this approach through three different methods that include meditation, cognitive therapy, and

Happiness drives every action a person makes. It is the goal everyone seeks some secret key to, expecting an external force to magically unlock eternal joy. However, no secret key to joy exists. While material things provide temporary pleasure or sorrow, nothing in the world can ‘grant’ continual elation. Instead happiness comes from a positive mentality, where a person appreciates their blessings and strives to overcome their challenges. The true thinkers, like Lincoln, realize that only they hold the power over their happiness. These wise few, who internally accept their life and decide to be content with their situation, will remain merry despite poverty, familial strife, or any other obstacle. In contrast, those who rely on things to bring them pleasure will be dissatisfied, no matter how fortunate they may appear.

“My goal in writing this letter, is to pass along to you the important knowledge I have accumulated in my 67 years on this earth.” Dave Barry, Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster ).

In the article, Everybody Have Fun by, Elizabeth Kolbert discusses the differences and importance of happiness. She analyzes research perform to measure happiness between two different group of peoples, recently wealthy by lottery ticket and the second group were victims of devastating accidents. The research measure the responses on a scale for each group. The psychologist founded lottery group wining had a positive experience and the second group ranked victimhood as a negative one. However, the winning group did not view themselves happier compared the devastating victims group. The results were alarming because the concept of happiness was not viewed as materialistic belongs but, a range of actives that makes people be happy. The

“Stumbling on Happiness”, authored by Daniel Gilbert, is a book that will quite possibly change the way you think and look at with just about everything. Through perception and cognitive biases, people imagine the future poorly, in particular what will make them happy. I chose to read this book because as I go day-to-day, I want to do everything in my power to be happy, and do things happily. Making each and everything that I do have a meaning, or a reason for doing it. Many people think that they know what makes them happy, or what they have to do to make them happy. However, I do believe that one must really have to find themselves in order to be happy or know what happiness is. Overall, my understanding of the book is that Daniel Gilbert’s

Happiness has been often mistaken for another emotion while in reality it comes from the translated form of the greek concept of eudaimonia which means flourishing, or literally translated to “good spirit”. With the concept of happiness clarified to an abstraction of fulfilment, or acceptance in life, rather than just a term used for a feeling of elation, it becomes a more open ended discussion piece due to the questions one could ask. What constitutes happiness? Can you achieve true happiness if it is an abstract concept? An interesting point of view of happiness comes from the literary works of american romanticism from eighteen twenty to eighteen sixty with Thoreau, and a later person who held the ideals of the romantics, Christopher McCandless, the two of which I will compare with my own idea of happiness.

In today’s world, individuals seem to be going in thousands of different directions. From the moment that children are able to speak, society seems to stress the importance of them attaining anything that their heart desires and reaching for the stars. Although the idea of ‘dreaming big’ is certainly valuable, this idea also pushes humans in a variety of directions in order to achieve what each person individually deems as success or happiness. As a result, people devote their life to what they perceive will make them happy. For example, many people pursue college in order to obtain a degree that will allow them to have their ‘dream job,’ which will ultimately make them happy. In turn, these variations in journeys to happiness seem to increasingly

“The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” an article written by Jon Gertner, told that happiness is a futile thing. Printed in the New York Times Magazine, and published on September 7, 2003, it speaks about having high hopes for the future or finding happiness in the future would have no benefit. The author used research on happiness made by experts such as Daniel Gilbert, a professor in Psychology Department from Harvard University, and George Loewenstein, an economist from Carnegie-Mellon. He noted that our decisions in many circumstances are dependent on the emotional results from those circumstances. The author has noted that people don’t always know their requirements and start finding happiness in other places if they are unable to find them in one place. He goes on to state people adapt to the changing events of life, i.e. good and bad things becoming normal, as adaptation is a part of human development.

In American society today, there’s debates centered around how to be happy and to stay happy. There is generally lots of ways to stay happy and make you happy but sometimes those objects that make you happy are temporary happiness. As the prominent philosopher John Mill is that people shouldn’t be so focused on being happy, that shouldn't be your main purpose in life. Mill’s argument about happiness is correct in that we shouldn’t be focused on making others happy or the world a better place, try to be more focused on our own happiness.

Mark Kingwell is a Canadian philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. In the following passage, “In Pursuit of Happiness” he will talk about the philosophical aspects as to how happiness is perceived. The main ideas found were the ideas of how everyone questions happiness and how one achieves happiness.

“Happiness can’t be bought by money.” In the article “Pursuing happiness” by Timothy Renick, a Roman poet Horace recounts a story about a wealthy merchant named Lycas who spent most of his time having fun with actors in plays and in the imagination of the actor with their performance was his happiness. To other people they thought he was crazy. Should a person state that happiness is just an illusion? His family did not think so and told him of the reality could not be simply acted act, therefore and disrupted his dreams. So the story of Lycas shows of great obstacles to any debate of human happiness. Whether happiness exhibits or genuinely holds true value (Renick, P1-3). If happiness is intrinsically meaningful, it has the potential to be