The Search For Happiness, By Ginny Graves And Ruth Whippman

Cliff Oxford’s essay “High Performance Happy” evaluates the effect that an individual’s happiness has on their beneficiality to society and how you should always strive to be the happiest you can be. Oxford’s main point is that

The pursuit of happiness is defined as “the fundamental right mentioned in the Declaration of Independence to freely pursue joy and live life in a way that makes you happy.” The ability to find happiness is a right guaranteed to all citizens in the United States, yet many countries do not possess the same rights as America and instead are plagued by corruption. Procuring contentment is a difficult journey for all people, but those who do not have access to knowledge will find it to be a much more daunting task. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Montag’s struggle to find joy under an oppressive regime required him to challenge his knowledge in a way he never truly had before. Happiness is analyzed constantly in the real world as well, and the philosophers and scientists who study it consistently link it to knowledge, as shown in the articles by Main, Socrates and in the article about Individualism. By gaining knowledge, a person can find a true sense of happiness due to the fact that contentment is found through intellectual freedom, the capacity to view the world on a deeper level, and the ability to make empowered choices.

By including the dictionaries definitions, the author shows contradictory explanations for happiness. In addition, using common daily facts he demonstrates how people’s decisions are based on the happiness desire, which we can see by the following words: “… it is nonetheless implicit in our decisions and undertakings, the ordering principle or end of our human projects” (413). Also, Kingwell includes words from other writers, such as John Stuart Mill, Eric Hoffer, Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Ralston Saul, to emphasize the point that the excessive pursuit of happiness causes unhappiness, which makes its definition even more confusing and

In Jon Gertner’s “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness” he obviously talks about happiness. This story also makes some good points. One of the ideas presented in Gertner’s story is “impact bias” (L. 34). He states that Impact means the errors we make and how much we will be affected by that decision. Bias also means basically the same thing that impact means, our tendency to make mistakes.

In the article, “How to Live Unhappily Ever After” written in 2012, by Augusten Burroughs for The Wall Street Journal, he explains his concept of living life without the constant pressure to be happy and healed. In other words, Burroughs addresses the true importance of happiness based on his own life experience, and why our view of happiness may be construed due to misleading societal beliefs. Burroughs supports this conjecture by contrasting the societal view of happiness with a more ethical perspective, describing the possible factors for the differing reality. He suggests happiness is often an unattainable goal due to it’s overly grown standards. The author’s purpose is to advocate that it’s okay to not be happy all the time; You can’t and don’t need to be happy in order to live a fulfilled life. The author writes in a very casual tone, humorous at needed moments while serious and sadly relatable at others. This sincere tone suggests Burrough’s intention is to simply create a comfortable connection with his audience, gradually gaining the reader’s interest in his own ideas and thoughts.

The outstanding ways that people can be brainwashed. Hitler was a dictator that didn't so much brainwash people he would just capture them and make them slaves in World War ll. In the book Anthem, they have been taught to think a certain way and make them live the way they want. Comparing the Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow, and then putting Anthem next to it, it shows that Hitler was a dictator that did not care about anyone.

Happiness plays an important and necessary role in the lives of people all around the world. In America, happiness has been an important idea in people’s minds since Thomas Jefferson wrote these 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, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson). Since Jefferson wrote those famous words in the Constitutution Americans have been focused on the idea of pursuing happiness. Happiness seems to

In Mark Kingwell’s excerpt, “In Pursuit of Happiness,” he discusses the challenge of defining happiness. This work serves to inform the audience on a topic they may never have considered while using evidence and support from philosophers, authors, and even scientists to contribute to various viewpoints on the subject. At the end of the excerpt, Kingwell discusses happiness, even unhappiness, and concludes with his own opinions on the subject.

In Happiness: Enough Already, Sharon Begley makes a case for the modern views of happiness and sadness by providing different professional opinions on the the happiness industry, some believe happiness is the sole purpose of life while others believe it is equal to sadness. Jerome Wakefield, a professor at New York University, is approached by many students with complaint concerning their parents’ opinions on dealing with depression, which consist of antidepressants and counseling. Ed Diener, a psychologist, at the University of Illinois, raised to question the idea of a national index of happiness to the Scottish Parliament. Eric Wilson, a professor, at Wake Forest University, tried to embrace becoming happier but ended up embracing the importance

The author begins his essay with a quotation from the Declaration of Independence because he wants to address to the pursuit of happiness as being dependent to us, not to the nation. This quotation helps the author to expand his argument because he says that citizens need the promise of the declaration of Independence, even though, they have to build their own happiness. This means that human beings need to be reminded what the meaning of life is which is to achieved happiness.

It is a fundamental aspect of society and of mankind that individuals seek their own happiness. Almost every aspect of life centres on the importance of self-fulfillment, and throughout history, the often selfish nature of man loans itself to the idea that life is about pursuing one’s own happiness. In a perfect world, the search for satisfaction in life would go unheeded, and every man would come to realize a perfect sense of self. Unfortunately, there are often many challenges and compromising aspects of society that inhibit individuals from achieving happiness. In Timothy Findley’s 1977 novel, The Wars, the nature in which individuals pursue and or compromise their happiness is explored through the actions of characters,

In the first paragraph of Yolanda Ypres’s article, “What Makes People Happy?”, she answers her titular question with the following: Taking each step in turn through “the route to happiness”, which is made up of good education, a good job, and marriage without children, is the best way to ensure that happiness in one’s life goes up in the long term. She explains that what matters most people’s happiness is the “overall pattern” of their experiences over time— lives which are the happiest being those that follow an “upward trend”. Ypres then speaks of the time intervals regarding this pattern. Also, she follows up this “upward trend” by saying that, as those who seek happiness in life, we must “find out what they could add to our lives to make

The novel All the Lovely Bad Ones by Mary Downing Hahn, follows two teenage siblings, Travis and Corey who are sent to an inn owned by their grandmother. The two mischief-makers accidentally awaken ghosts after what they believed to be as a harmless prank to the guests of the inn. The zodiac sign that describes the protagonist, Corey the best is Scorpio. Corey is a Scorpio because she is very bold as well as secretive. Because she is very secretive and bold, she is very good at lying and keeping secrets. As a result, she enjoys playing pranks with her brother just for kicks. According to the Scorpio zodiac sign, “These personalities are bold and are capable of executing massive enterprises with cool control and confidence…Scorpio’s can be argumentative and pack a powerful sting, but that’s simply because they see all opposition as a healthy challenge.” This fits Corey to a T in the beginning of the novel when the author writes, “She

A collection of philosophical, religious, psychological and biological approaches had attempted to define happiness and analyze its connections. Researchers have found that about 50% of people happiness depends on our genes, based on studies of identical twins, whose happiness was 50% correlated even when growing up in different houses. About 10% to 15% is a result of various measurable life circumstances variables, such as socioeconomic status, marital status, health, income, and others. The remaining 40% is a combination of intentional factors and the results of actions that individuals deliberately engage in to become happier. Studies have also found that most of us are born with a fixed “set point” of happiness that we fall in throughout our lives. We will tend to return to our set point despite whether good or bad things happen to