Happiness for the Social Beings

"The Happiness Hypothesis" discusses humans and their social nature. It goes into detail about the biggest part of what makes people happy which is our conditions. It says, "We are ultra social creatures, and we can't be happy without having friends and secure attachment to other people." This statement is completely accurate and reveals how humans live their lives. I am constantly around friends and when I am alone too much it lessens my sense of happiness. 

One condition that is vital to one's happiness is the emotion of love that is given in a relationship. Love is something that connects us to others. Love deepens our feelings and strengthens the bonds with our peers. There is many ways love can give a person value. A mother loves their child so much and that is the foundation of that child's life. We focus our lives around love by being with the people we love. We have parties to celebrate our loved ones and we get married to further our love. This condition is very important in establishing a happy life.

There are many things that go into being happy and finding lasting happiness. The people we have in our life and the time we spend with them vastly improve our sense of happiness. We are social beings and our friends and family make our lives important.

Stoicism in My Own Life

For me it has always been easy to put off happiness and think "Well I will be happy when this happens or this happens" instead of being happy now. In high school I thought once I got to college I would be happy, but when I got here I wasn't much happier at all. If anything I was worse. I felt alone and like I had no friends. It really took this class and a little bit of Epictetus for me to change my mindset.

When we started talking about Stoicism and Epictetus at first I thought it was kind of silly for us to ignore our "bad" emotions, but then I came to create my own view of what he had to say in The Handbook. I really just thought about how if I don't choose to be happy and work to be happy then I will never be happy. I cannot choose what bad things I experience, but I can choose how I react to them. I can learn to enjoy the small things like the smell of freshly mowed grass and the sun on my skin. I realized I need to learn to enjoy those things because tomorrow is most certainly not guaranteed and that I was taking life for granted every second that passed me by. I have already lost my dad at a young age and new that I needed to appreciate my family. I had been working on this for years now and have come far, but Stoicism opened my eyes to new things that I was not appreciating. I learned that I need to appreciate what I have now because I have little control over many things.

Accepting what I cannot change and having the power to change what I can is a big thing to most people, including me. So thank you Dr. Rider and Epictetus for opening up my eyes to a beautiful world.

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? This is a question that I don't necessarily think there is any right or wrong answer to. I think the answer is based on one's experiences and expectations in the world. In our book, there was an example that was used that caught my attention. The movie example. One individual saw the whole movie, while the other missed out on the beginning and the end of the movie. Not seeing the whole movie led them to have questions about certain aspects so they could piece it together and make better sense of what was happening in the movie. In this sense, life is like a movie. We walk into it well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before the storyline reaches the conclusion. I think this is referring to the lives that we are already living. Walking in after the opening scene is referring to when we are born and the opening scene is everything that happened before our lifetime. The middle section of the movie is the world we live and experience. And the "stepping out long before the storyline reaches the conclusion", is referring to our deaths because we can no longer experience life. I think it difficult to form one right answer because no one is really able to experience all of life, but I think each individual can form an answer that is specifically right to them.

Philosophical Ideas of Epicureanism and Confucianism Found in Television

By Madison Stewart

 As I watched an episode from “The Andy Griffith Show” this afternoon with my grandpa, I realized that this particular episode’s plot directly related to Chapter 11 of Epictetus’ Handbook of Stoicism and the idea of filial piety supported by Confucius. In the episode “Opie and the Spoiled Kid,” the main character Andy Griffith aides his son Opie in learning about the value of responsibility and resulting consequences for poor actions/choices made.

Opie learns that one of his new friends is rewarded with expensive, elaborate gifts from his rich father for just being a child. Opie fawns over his friend’s brand new $70 bicycle. On the other hand, Andy requires Opie to do chores around the house for merely a quarter a week (keep in mind, this is in 1963, so the current U.S. economy does not reflect these prices). Opie’s friend soon explains that he just needs to throw a temper tantrum in order to get his way. Opie later tries this after he asks Andy for a raise in his allowance and Andy denies him this raise. As Opie rolled around on the floor, Andy simply requested that he not get his pants dirty.

Later in the episode, after the second time Opie’s friend is stopped by the deputy sheriff for nearly running a woman carrying groceries over with his bicycle, Andy the Sheriff holds the boy’s bike until his father comes. When his father arrives, the little boy threatens the sheriff by telling him that his dad can take anything that comes his way since he has the money to take care of himself. Andy then asks him if that includes putting his own father in jail in order to retrieve the bicycle and the little boy responds with a definitive yes, ordering the sheriff to put his father in jail because he just wants his bike back.

It is at this point that the little boy’s rich father realizes that he has not been properly disciplining his son, to the point that it has influenced his son to acquire a great lack of disrespect for his father. He then tells the sheriff that they won’t be needing the bike back, as he plans on selling his son’s bike. Andy also points out that they have a good shed out back behind the police station in case his father wanted to give him a spanking.

After thinking about this plot, I realized that this spoiled kid did exactly the opposite of what Epictetus instructed in chapter 11. Chapter 11 explains that we should never say of anything, “I have lost it,” but instead, “I have given it back.” If someone were to say that their wife died or their land was taken, this too was given back. Another way of looking at this idea is accepting that whatever you “have lost” is a gift. You get to use it, but it isn’t really yours.

That being said, the concept of filial piety is not properly distributed here either. One of the Confucius Chinese terms that we learned is xiao, which means filial piety. This refers to having a proper love, respect, and obedience to your parents. Xiao is also the root of ren, which means goodness, and is an inner quality of character acquired by developing proper habits of emotion and action in your relationships and social roles. The spoiled rich kid never displayed this for his father, even though his father bought and gave him everything that he wanted. He would even sacrifice his own father’s status as a free man in order to get what he wanted. This is the total opposite of how xiao and ren are meant to be displayed. I would imagine after the way this boy’s father talked to him and took action to sell his bicycle, this son would learn and exhibit the value of filial piety.

As for Opie testing his limits as a child, the stoics (such as Seneca and Epictetus) explain that emotions like anger, hate, jealousy, envy, etc. represent irrational, immature, and unhealthy responses to situations so it is best not to have them. On the other hand, Aristotle explains that these emotions are a natural part of our psychological functioning and, when properly regulated and trained, play important functions in our lives as social beings. I think that both the stoics and Aristotle are correct in this situation. For one thing, Opie is just a young child. Children are smart in that they look for different ways to do things and accomplish certain feats. In this example, Opie is looking for a way to be happier in a materialistic sense. Yet, his actions taken to get what he wanted were displayed as childish and immature, showing he still has a lot to learn while growing up.

On the other hand, situations such as these are all just part of being a child and learning about life while growing up in the process. It was a good thing for Opie to experience this situation because he learned an important lesson: the value of growing up with responsibilities and respecting your parents for the decisions that they make (regardless of whether you care for their decisions or not). This shows that Andy’s son will benefit in the long run by being prepared for future responsibilities in life, while staying humble, and being able to maintain respect for his parents throughout the course of his life. In this way, we should also adhere to this lesson and do the same in our own lives.

Les Miserables

I was watching one of my favorite movies of all time, "Les Miserables", the other day and it got me thinking. One of the main characters, Fantine, had quite a rough start to her life. She worked for a sewing company in order to make money for the innkeepers watching her child in the town over. However, she keeps her child a secret from everyone in order to keep her job. Unfortunately, a letter from the innkeeper is sent to Fantine, and her secret is revealed. This causes her to be thrown out of the sewing company and out of a job.

Fantine realizes that she has to find another job or another way to earn money for her child. This is due to the fact that there's no way she could care for her child in this town. So, Fantine sets out looking for another job. She is stopped by an individual who says she could earn money from selling her hair. Fantine believes she has no other choice, so she agrees. Right after, another individual says he will pay her for her teeth, and again Fantine agrees. By this point, Fantine has lost a lot of her self-esteem and worth, but is still determined to get money for her child. She eventually begins selling herself to men through prostitution. After a while, Fantine gets sick and passes away without being able to see her daughter for one last time.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because it is an example of when choosing the dangerous path of life doesn't bring any joy in the end. Fantine chose to stay in the town and work hard for money. She went through so much pain for her child, and none of it mattered in the end. Her goal was to be able to earn enough money to get her child back, but that never happened. I am one to believe in taking the dangerous path of life because the majority of the time it ends well. However, this is just one case where that didn't necessarily happen.

What path to take

The other day my friend was worried about how to set up her class schedule for next semester. She could either be positive she gets the teacher she wanted and have class on Friday or risk not having a good teacher and not having class on Friday. She was really fond of the idea of a three day weekend every week. So I jokingly lectured her about what we just recently talked about in class. I told her about Nietzsche's philosophy and taught her about the safe and dangerous paths we have to chose from. I said that if she choses the dangerous path, which is risking not having a good teacher but also not having class on Friday, she will be more pleased with her decision.

In life when we chose from the safe and dangerous path we need to remember that we will grow only if we take the dangerous path. Yes, it will be scary because it is something new and the turnout is unknown, however; that is the exciting part. If we always knew what was gonna happen in our lives that would not be a life worth living. Nietzsche says we need to say yes to life! We must embrace the good and the bad.

Struggle Bus

Jonathan Haidt writes about the importance of overcoming adversity and enduring struggle in the book "The Happiness Hypothesis". The chapter "The Uses of Adversity" discusses why going through hardships are vital to becoming strong and confident when future struggles occur. Struggles can be difficult and feel heavy in our life, but they help us to overcome obstacles.

Religions such as Christianity teach that struggles are beneficial for one's faith and relationship with God. The Bible says in Romans 5:3-4 that "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope" which reveals the religious value for suffering. When someone goes through a traumatic experience or just an ordinary hardship they have the potential to grow into a stronger person. Thus able to face adversity with a confidence that they can overcome anything that life may throw at them.

The most common misconception people have about their abilities is that we can't get through something. It is discussed in the text that people might say "I could never survive what Y is going through" which shows how people underestimate their capabilities. The biggest thing a person can learn from a bad experience is that they are much stronger than they realized" which gives them the "confidence to face future challenges". Haidt teaches that struggles are unavoidable so when we do experience them we should learn from them which lets us become stronger as people.

Having too many choices

The paradox of choice is an observation that having a lot of choices will lead one to better choose the option that best suits them. However, a large variety of options will actually hinder your decision-making process. Once you actually pick something, you then might begin to wonder if that was actually the best option for you, which could potentially cause stress and anxiety. I think this idea coincides with college students today. We are all already stressed with our classes we are currently taking, but on top of that, each semester we have to pick classes/clubs to be a part of. This whole idea is stressful because there are so many options and opportunities it is hard to really know what you will enjoy the most, but nearly impossible to try everything. I feel like this also goes into choosing a major. Most of us already have a general idea of what we want to do, but there are so many options out there it is kind of hard to really decide what is the right fit for you if you are stuck about what you want to do with your life. The idea of having to choose can become overwhelming for the individual, making it ten times harder to make a decision.

Is adversity for the best?

The movie "When the Game Stands Tall"  is a perfect example of how going through tough situations will bring growth.

The movie is about a football team that had the highest winning streak record for any high school in history. The whole town had parades for the team when they came home from winning. Sadly, when the new season started the team lost the streak. When this happened the team seemed to fall apart. They could not get out of their funk and began losing many games. Another bad thing also happened, one night a team member was picking up his friend from a party and got shot. The team and coach were lost with what to do, but ultimately came to the conclusion that they should not feel sorry for themselves or use any of their suffering as an excuse to not win games. Instead, the team decided that they would play their hardest for their teammate who lost his life. They went on to win their hardest game of the whole season and learned a much bigger lesson in the process.

Without going through this adversity the team would not have pushed themselves to their maximum level, earning them another championship. While it was never easy to lose the streak or lose a teammate, the De La Salle football team took their tragedies and turned them into motivation. So in the end, I believe adversity is the best way to overcome and push your limits to uncover abilities that were unknown before.

Options All Around

In "The Happiness Hypothesis," Haidt explains the concept of a "paradox of choice." This paradox is that having too many options is detrimental to a person rather than beneficial. Those who maximize their options or possibilities are not better off than those who have a few select options. Career specialization is such a common thing in our society today for this very reason. Going to college for a specific type of career rather than simply learning general skills has become the new norm among American culture. If someone didn't have to choose a specific major area to study, then it would be a lot more difficult to determine which career they would want to pursue in the future.

Since the beginning of man people have been innately aware of this concept which you can see in hunter-gatherer societies, in which one group is taught how to differentiate between berries and other resources while the other group is taught the best technique to hunt each specific animal.



The "paradox of choice" also allows people to recognize that they are capable of having too much. The United States, which is recognized as a highly developed country, has high rates of depression than other, less developed countries. One could argue that this is due to the "paradox of choice" in daily American lives.

 

What is Flow?

Flow has three key ideas. These being, There's a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step. The progress principle ties into this because it states that pleasure comes more from making progress towards a goal than from actually accomplishing your goal. One example was when I was at baseball practice, during high school, I had to pitch during practice. My coach told me to strike the batter out in three pitches. He would give me feedback after every pitch on what I was doing right or wrong. It took me several batters but I overcame the challenge and struck out the batter within three pitches. I grew better as a pitcher from learning what I had accomplished and not giving up when I couldn't strike them out in three pitches.

The Happiness Formula

The Happiness Formula

 (H=S+C+V)

The "Happiness Formula" is one                                        

of the most important ideas in 

positive psychology. Three 

psychologists (Lyubomirsky,

Sheldon, and Schkade), composed

a formula that calculated one's 

happiness based upon three 

different variables: biological 

set point(S), the conditions of one's

life(C), and voluntary activities(V). 

H: level of happiness that one actually experiences 

S: biological set point

C: conditions of one's life

V: voluntary activities 

When dealing with "C", the conditions of one's life, we must realize that there are external conditions that we have no control of. Things like race, age, gender, and socioeconomic status are conditions that humans have no control over. This goes hand-in-hand with the card game analogy that we discussed in class. We can not control how old we are or what our ethnicity is, but we must choose how we handle these conditions. 

Love Your Life

As we learned in class, the Epicurean philosophy focuses on the idea of ataraxia and living a good, stress-free, and happy life by means of simplicity. One does not need the more lavish things in life in order to be happy. True happiness comes from within. It comes from having what you need, as well as from having loving relationships with the people you care about. 

Just about every verse in J Cole’s song Love Yourz illustrates Epicurus’ idea of a good life in a more modern perspective. He states “For what’s money without happiness, or hard times without the people you love?” You can obtain all of the unnatural and unnecessary things that life has to offer, but you will not be living a good life if you are not happy and at peace with just having the natural and necessary things. Life will always have obstacles we will have trouble overcoming, but we will struggle even more if we do not have good relationships with people we adore who help us get through them. 

The song continues, “Always gon’ be a bigger house somewhere, but feel me, long as the people in that love you dearly... always gon’ be a whip that’s better than the one you got, always gon’ be some clothes that’s fresher than the ones you rock…but you ain’t never ‘gon be happy till you love yours.” There will always be someone living better than you financially, but that means nothing if they are not as content as one with very little of the supposed "finer" things in life. At the end of it all, the true finer things of life are the things that money could never possibly buy. J Cole's music video for the song even depicts greatly Epicurus' idea that having more or wanting more does not lead to happiness; it can be found on YouTube.

The reality is that looking for more unnecessary, unnatural things in life in order to fulfill an insatiable desire for happiness will not ever bring happiness. It will only bring more loneliness, sadness, anger, etc. J Cole’s song stresses that in order to be happy, you must first love your life, no matter how rich or poor it may be.

What is Happiness?

What is Happiness?

The question that has stood and will stand until the end of time, "What is happiness?". This is because the definition of happiness is fit to the person asking the question. Some people find happiness in wealth and fame. Some find happiness in living life alongside people they love. Personally, I find happiness in whatever brings me fulfillment. This can be crossing off a to-do list or spending the evening with my friends. How do we determine what happiness is if it is different for every person? To me, this ties back to Taoism. Tao, or the way, is different for every person. It cannot be defined because its definition relies on the user. Is happiness the same? Could the question we have been asking for years be unanswerable? We go throughout life in pursuit of something that we do not fully understand. So I ask the question, "Is the pursuit of happiness an excuse for not knowing what we are trying to obtain in life?" If this is true, then do we have a purpose or are we merely existing and grasping at straws for why we are here?      

Freedom Writers and teaching

The Freedom Writers is a movie/book based on a true story of a young teacher, Ms. Gruwell working in Los Angeles during the aftermath of the L.A riots. The war raged on into the classrooms and Ms. Gruwell faced a classroom of hostile, at-risk teenagers from different races and backgrounds. One day Ms. Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing her students were passing around. She gives a lecture about how during the Holocaust, racist drawings of Jewish people were circulated. Ms. Gruwell then finds out that her students do not know what the Holocaust is. This leads to the students learning about the Holocaust and more. Through reading and connecting with the stories of Anne Frank and other survivors of atrocities, the students learn tolerance; they begin to show respect for Ms. Gruwell and their pupils. Then the students start to write their own stories and they create the book The Freedom Writers Diary. With the guidance and support of their teacher, the Freedom Writers learned their self-worth, exceeded expectations, and began to see their futures as bright.

Ms. Gruwell exhibited several qualities that Confucius discussed in his Analects. In passage 11.22 in the Analects, Confucius believes that the teacher should treat students as individuals. At the beginning of the school year, Ms.Gruwell encourages her students to keep a journal of their life and if they want to they can turn it in for her to read. Through reading her students journals, she gets to know them personally; she even learned from them (3.8). Ms. Gruwell also knew their learning styles; she catered to them and still pushed them.

Ms. Gruwell's teaching somewhat resembles the four corner teaching method Confucius talked about. Ms. Gruwell provided her students with materials (books and information) and support, while her students held up the other three corners (7.8). Like Confucius said, teachers to a student should be like makeup to the face, they should enhance (3.8). Ms. Gruwell does just that.

Changing your genes for happiness

As Haidt explains, research done by psychologists has demonstrated that some significant percentage of a person's average level of happiness is genetically determined. Much of this research has relied on studying twins, and comparing identical twins and fraternal twins separated at birth.  Even when they are raised separately and in different environments, identical twins often share an affective style (that is, being a "Tigger" or an "Eeyore" or something between), indicating that there is a strong genetic component.  Early estimates claimed that genes determined as much as 80% of a person's average happiness level; more recent studies put the number lower, at 30-40%.

In the near future, using CRISPR-CAS or similar technologies, we may be able to change a person's genes, even altering embryos before they develop. If this technology develops sufficiently, it may be possible to identify and change the genes to ensure that a child is born with one affective style over another--that is, you can make sure your child is a Tigger! 

If such technologies were available, should we use them?  Would you use it on your child?  Why or why not?

A happier life

Today I was listening to music and the song "Happier" by Marshmello and Bastille came on. This song is about a story that involves a love affair between the narrator and his significant other that is rapidly coming to its end. He wants to stay with her but knows the only way his significant other can be "happier" is by abandoning the relationship and going their separate ways. This connects with living the good life and Socrates. We talked about Socrates in class and Socrates says, "happiness does not flow from physical or external conditions, such as bodily pleasures or wealth and power, but for living a life that's right for your soul, your deepest good." The narrator has to leave his significant other in order to allow both of them to achieve what's right for their soul. In the lyrics, it says" Lately, I've been, I've been thinking I want you to be happier, I want you to be happier." He comes to realize that in order to benefit both of their souls, he has to leave. This will let both of them live out their own lives in happiness.

Controlled VS Automatic

In the section, "Controlled vs Automatic", in the book The Happiness Hypothesis, it brings up Pavlov and how he conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. Every time they heard the bell they were given food, so even when they weren't given the food, they still salivated at the sound of the bell. He conditioned the dogs to behave in this certain way, which became an automatic response for them. I thought this might be cool to share because I actually got to experience something similar in a psychology class back in high school. My teacher had a squirt bottle and he would say a series of words. On specific words, he would squirt the student in the face with the water. After a while of doing this, eventually, he stopped actually squirting them but kept going through the series of words to see what their reaction was. They would automatically flinch every time he said those keywords because they were expecting to get squirt in the face. I just find it interesting how little time it takes to condition someone to react to some sort of stimuli.

The Rider VS. The Elephant

Today in class we talked about the characteristics and importance of the Rider and the Elephant in the first chapter of The Happiness Hypothesis. Some traits of each include:

With the Rider: He is the conscious side and the thinker. He tends to plan ahead and weigh all of the options. He uses logic, evidence, and reason to come to the best conclusion.
With the Elephant: It is mostly unconscious and reacts to stimuli. It relies on instinct and intuition. It uses emotions to come to conclusions, but they aren't always the best.

When the two of these work together everything will turn out as good as possible, but it is not always the case for things to work so well. In most cases the emotions side will be more powerful and take over what is rational, hence the elephants size.

An example of this would be wanting to go out to party when you know you have a test the next day. It might work a few times to hold yourself back and say "no" but each time that happens you are wearing the strength to deny partying down and the urge to go is getting stronger, so you end up going.

Not resisting can lead to not so good outcomes, so before you go ahead and act on your emotions think of  the consequences.

The Handmaid's Tale and the Second Sex

The Handmaid's Tale is a popular show on the streaming service Hulu. It is set in the future where another civil war breaks out. The United States then becomes a new country and changes many of the laws and the structure of the new country. In this new country women basically have no rights especially the handmaids. The main character in the show, Offred, is a handmaid. In this new society reproduction rates are very low. Handmaids are assigned to important officials ,who are men, and their wives to try and have a baby. The handmaid is named after whoever the man of the household is. The household Offred is a handmaid for Fred, therefore she is named Offred. These women are definitely reliant on the men they are handmaids for otherwise they will have nowhere to live and no food to eat. If they misbehave they are sent somewhere else where everyone is scared to go. So they are stuck. They aren't allowed to read or write or watch tv or play any games. They are basically sex slaves. I thought of this show when we are talking about The Second Sex. These women are not their own person. They don't have opportunities to grow or learn or fend for themselves. They are looked as the inferior compared to men. They are seen as the "other".

Epictetus/Stoicism

I was listening to the song, “Wake Up Call” by Maroon 5, and I actually listened to the lyrics and they reminded me Stoicism and Epictetus. Basically, the song is about how a man loses his girlfriend because she cheated on him and he reacts in a violent way, then the song goes on to the man not understanding why the girl did what she did because if she was feeling neglected in any way she could have just spoken up about the issue. Anyways, this reminded me of stoicism and Epictetus because of how each of the individuals reacted. No one can control what situations we will have to face in life, but how we go about them defines how well we will live life because Epictetus believes that we control our emotions/impulses. For example, the girl in the song. If she had just faced the issue she was dealing with and chose to control her emotions and the way she acted, things would have possibly played out better in her favor and the relationship as a whole.