The Roots of Happiness
Synopsis. One of the more interesting readings in Behrens and Rosen’s Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum was “Happy Like God” by Simon Critchely. His major point was his own opinion on the flow of happiness that everyone experience’s throughout their daily life.
For Critchely, teaching philosophy is a means of living and using his knowledge, he gives a very historical meaning for life. A very well-known philosopher, Aristotle, along with many other philosophers believed that the goal of the philosophical life was achieving happiness. Our idea of life is dictated and punctuated by the alarms of cell phones, computer woes, and the traffic gams. The meaning of life can be misguided with how our society puts emphasis on this self-reliant fast past world we live in. The key word reverie can describe happiness very well. The experience of reverie is like being awake, but half a sleep, thinking, but not in any orderly way, it’s simply letting the thoughts happen, as they will. Simply the feeling of existence can be the roots of happiness.
Happiness isn’t measurable or quantitative by any means of surveys, questioners, or any science. A passage from “leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman writes “Happiness is not in another place, but in this place…not for another hour…but this hour”. This is a great simplistic view that happiness is only in the present, not planed but discovered. Being in a reverie, a slice of time that only exists in the present is like being a god. We think of gods of being a happy entity that has no concern for time, troubles of the soul and experiencing calmness in anything. Being happy and being a god can be thought interchangeably.
But time passes, the reverie ends and the feeling of existi...
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... that fills our soul entirely as long as this state lasts we can call ourselves happy…”. (Critichley 449)
This quote from Critichley’s article was astonishingly in tune to how I feel when I am happy. To be able to simplify it down to a single paragraph and be coherently to how I think when I am happy makes this one of my favorite quotes.
Schoch’s article was more in depth of economics and the methods companies use to dull down the real meaning of happiness. This wasn’t as interesting for myself since Critichley went more in depth on one’s own insight of how they feel while they’re in a state of happiness. His approach to use the term “happy like god” and explain why it could be used interchangeably was very interesting to me as well. This is why I found “Happy Like God” by Simon Critichley more intriguing than “A Critique of Positive Psychology” by Richard Schoch.
Happiness, to Aristotle, is a term for which much exactitude must be made. He understands that, "Happiness both the refined and the few call it, but about the nature of this Happiness, men dispute." As such, he goes to great lengths to attain a fairly accurate accounting of what he sees as Happiness. He begins by illustrating that Happiness is an End, establishes what he finds the work of Man to be, sets conditions on being happy, and then explains where in Man the cultivation of Happiness is to be sought. The result of all these ideas is his fully developed sense of Happiness, an understanding vital to his conception of Ethics.
Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. "On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of
The author Ray Bradbury really focuses the book on this idea of happiness he's created. The societies happiness is portrayed in an idea of living with a sitcom family, and dreams of adding on various walls sized televisions. People in this society do not have their own thoughts or do not express emotion. True happiness comes from acceptance of the situation and living life so you matter, make a difference and change the world somehow.
In the book, The How of Happiness, author and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky sets her book apart from other self-awareness books by being the first to utilize empirical studies. She uses data gained through scientific method to provide support for her hypothesis. This hypothesis consists mainly of the idea that we have the ability to overcome genetic predisposition and circumstantial barriers to happiness by how we think and what we do. She emphasizes that being happier benefits ourselves, our family and our community. “The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that [she] and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players” (3).
Before we look into specifics, we’ll examine the history and development of “happiness” as a philosophy. Of course, the emotion of happiness has always existed, but it began to be seriously contemplated around 2,500 years ago by philosophers like Confucius, Buddha, Socrates and Aristotle. Shortly after Buddha taught his followers his Noble Eight Fold Path (which we will talk about later), Aristotle was teaching that happiness is “dependent on the individual” (Aristotle).
The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.
Prager, D. (1997). Happiness is a serious problem: A human nature repair manual. NY: HarperCollins Publishers
Gilbert, Dan." The surprising science of happiness." Ted Talks. Ted. Ted Talks, Monterey. 1 Feb. 2004. Lecture.
Bowman, James. "The Pursuit of Happiness." The American Spectator. N.p., Sept. 2010. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Early Modern Europe experienced several tragedies in which the citizens sensed that there must be a better way to live where happiness was more familiar. Alterations for what truly defines absolute happiness in a society during these times of catastrophe were expressed through utopian literature. Thomas More’s Utopia, Tomasso Campanella’s City of the Sun, and Caron De Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro together attempt to answer what truly creates a happy civilization during different periods of crisis within Europe. Each of these utopian literature’s suggest a different origin that happiness derives from, soundly signifying that change in Europe would be beneficial. The revolutionary ideas of change in Europe proposed by Utopia, City of the Sun, and The Marriage of Figaro through their individual utopias, demonstrated their beliefs that such change of social classes, the expression of pleasures morally, and a more unified government would lead to a happier, less corrupt society.
According to Webster dictionary the word Happiness in defined as Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. People when they think of happiness, they think about having to good feeling inside. There are many types of happiness, which are expressed in many ways. Happiness is something that you can't just get it comes form your soul. Happiness is can be changed through many things that happen in our every day live.
Only in recent years have psychologists begun to appreciate the benefits of happiness and positive emotion — benefits that include everything from enhanced creativity to improved immune-system function. Dr. Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, a leader in the field of positive psychology, posed the question, “What good are positive emotions?” and came up with the following possibilities.
Real happiness is more than brief positive feelings but rather a lasting state of peace or contentedness. According to Reich, a former professor of psychology at Arizona State University, happiness is “deeper than a momentary good mood” (Reich). When ordinary happiness is experienced, Jacobsen, a professor in the Department
Contrary to belief, genuine happiness is very rarely found at the bottom of a shopping basket or on the leather seats of a brand new car. Often we hear the cliché saying “Money can’t buy happiness” but this is in fact true. Whilst the elation and delight brought from finally owning a wanted item is extraordinary, you must remind yourself that your happiness should not become dependant upon your ownership of this item. Being happy is not something you can purchase from a shop or car dealership, it is the way you take on life. Unfortunately, happiness does not have its own aisle at shops and never will.
Gertner, Jon. The Futile Pursuit of Happiness. New York: The New York Times, 2003. n.d. Web. 27 Nov 2009.