Happiness is something humans have been pursuing for centuries. The quest for happiness is so cemented in the minds of human beings that it has been used as a method of control, and as a weapon against others. Humans are moths, ever drawn to the distant flame of joy. Over the past year I have learned much about this pursuit that has plagued humans for millennia. Pieces of literature like The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men and The Devil and Tom Walker all explore this pursuit in unique and diverse ways.
This is achieved through adding a sense of realism as to how happiness should be experienced. Thus, it provides tangible means for people to grasp an abstract concept such as happiness. As a result, this enables her to persuade readers to take up her advice. For example, she draws links between the need to experience happiness with others through studies and real-life evidence regarding the lack of the time spent with others e.g., only 24 hours a year spent socialising (Whippman, 2017). This shows us the real-life implication of our actions in search of isolated happiness which has caused an unintended outcome on us as we are supposed to share joyous moments together.
Siddhartha’s experiences with the Brahmins, the Samanas, Kamala and the City and as a Ferryman all contribute to his idea of what is right and essentially good. Overall, he leaves the establishments and people he finds because he does not believe their ways anymore but instead wants to pursue something else until he finds peace as a ferryman. Throughout Siddhartha’s journey he encounters people who question what he believes in and show them what they think is the ‘good life’ but he ultimately follows his own beliefs despite of this.
Tom Robinson: Would he be guilty today? “Order in the court.” Court systems have changed a lot over time. With male vs. female or blacks against whites. Today, unlike how it was back then, there are four stages in a court; Pleading, Discovery, Trial, and After Trial.(How court cases work).
“I don’t think that man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it” (Dumas 18). In this quote, Dantes is speaking to Danglars, a greedy and envious crewmember of the Pharaon about how lucky he is to have a beautiful fiancee like Mercedes.
In Khaled Hosseini’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini suggests that the factors outside of our control often significantly impact our potential to achieve a sense of happiness in life. This is first seen with Mariam in part 1 of the novel. Mariam’s wants to go to Jalil’s cinema with him, but when the time comes Jalil doesn’t show.
In The Alchemy of Suffering, he imposes that happiness is something that each individual processes differently. This is something not usually affiliated with the idea of happiness but it certainly proves to be true with the way Matthieu presents his thoughts. His work brings in the teachings of the Buddha himself and the Four Truths of Happiness. The first being the truth of suffering which is recognizing it. The second truth is the cause of the suffering which explains itself to be a mental experience and that it is all in the mind which ties into the third truth.
Darkness Behind the Light The stories “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin and the play Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’ Neill show that there is darkness behind happiness. Both stories display this by having a paradise like setting that no one is content in. Both stories start off with a utopian tone, then slowly descend into a more unpleasant feeling. No character ever truly solves their problem and sadness, but rather they try to find a quick and easy solution to find temporary happiness.
In today’s society, people achieve happiness through interaction with others, but in Ray Bradbury’s dystopian Novel, Fahrenheit 451, his characters believe that they need technology to enjoy their lives. People’s main priority is to be happy and have a successful life. They don’t want to have to worry about anything and just enjoy themselves. “‘You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, what do we want in this country, above all?
Not many achieve happiness in their lifetime. Either they do not live long enough to witness it or they are not prepared for what their happiness is. Happiness is very subjective. Each person’s version of happiness is different. This version of happiness is universal.
The work “The entombment of Christ” clearly demonstrates mannerist characteristics. The format is vertical and the theme is the entombment of christ. First of all, the image does not fit in the frame of the painting; for example, the guy to the right is cropped out from the frame. It seems as if he did not fit in the frame. The figures look as if they are going to spill out.
In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the concept of happiness is introduced as the ultimate good one can achieve in life as well as the ultimate goal of human existence. As Aristotle goes on to further define happiness, one can see that his concept is much different from the 21st-century view. Aristotelian happiness can be achieved through choosing to live the contemplative life, which would naturally encompass moralistic virtue. This differs significantly from the modern view of happiness, which is heavily reliant on material goods. To a person in the 21st-century, happiness is simply an emotional byproduct one experiences as a result of acquiring material goods.
In a critique of both the works, the paper adopts the Aristotelian thought citing that actions of human aims to fulfill goodness, which arguably is the happiness, one that arises from virtues practiced out of habit. Both the philosophers weigh in heavily on the role of happiness in the day to day lifestyles of humans. Adopting a sharp critic to the conventional principles of utility, Mill recognizes that happiness, as opposed to pleasure has a wider space in human attainments. He goes in deeper to explore the levels of pleasure
People miss the fact that happiness comes from within. In an attempt to find joy – we must also be cautious about over excessive desire to acquire material objects and wealth. There is a delicate balance that must be reached between the pursuit of happiness, satisfaction, and contentment. While there are many conditions that fulfill ones emotional wellbeing, happiness and how we acquired it, depends upon the
At the end of everyone’s lives, the goal appears to be about attaining happiness. Describing how to obtain happiness has been an issue that was debated in the past but is still talked about now . In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle expands on his view of happiness and he focuses particularly on how reason helps recognize and pursue what will lead to happiness and the good life. I feel that Aristotle’s philosophies on happiness are important works within the field of philosophy and he considered one of the………of it . In this paper, I will explore Aristotle’s beliefs regarding happiness then compare and contrast them to those of Martin Seligman.
