1. Against Happiness

Background: Happy people are just as nasty as angry people. The happier we are the more liable we are to make bad judgments. Happy people overestimate our control over environmental events and give unrealistically positive evaluations of our own achievements. Over the past few decades African-Americans and women have had a decrease in happiness with the increase of their equal rights and education.

How I Intend to Use It: This article agrees with my thesis of happiness not being better for us. I intend to use the decline in African-American and Women’s happiness after be educated and given rights. This shows that the educated response to the world today is in fact not happiness. The realistic response is a decline in it.

2. The Problem with Happiness

Background: We are obsessed with happiness. This is because happiness brings us things such as: better sleep, being more creative, and having more intimate friendships. The only problem is that the most focused on being happy we are the less happy we become. People who spend more time thinking about being happy showed 50% less positive emotions. Out of these people 75% showed depressive symptoms just from thinking about happiness.

How I Intend to Use It: The more we think about happiness the less happy we become. The benefits of happiness are real but stressing about achieving them makes them even harder to achieve. Happiness is something we should not worry about but let happen if it’s going to happen. This article shows how happiness crazy we really are.

 3. Meaning is Healthier than Happiness

Background: In the timespan of three months over 1,000 books about happiness were uploaded to Amazon. Most of these books discuss the positive outcomes of being happy. A body of researchers found it might actually be bad for us. Happiness is associated with selfish taking behavior while meaning is associated with giving behavior. This means happiness without meaning gives us a relatively shallow, self-absorbed life. Happiness can be measured by asking questions such as “How often did you [we] feel happy?” This is compared to the questions asked to see if we have meaning in our lives. These read as “How often did you [we] feel that you [we] had something to contribute to society?”

How I Intend to Use It: This article does not support my thesis directly but gives me background information to use. The amount of books put up on Amazon in just three months shows our obsession with happiness. The very quotable questions show exactly the difference between happiness and meaning on our life also showing the selfishness of happiness.

4. How Happiness Changes with Age

Background: In this article, a woman explains how her definition has changed from when she was younger to now when she is “just shy of 40.” Happiness changes with age in everyone. When we are young, happiness is more extravagant and when we are older, happiness is simple and somewhat easier. When we are young, wild parties and crazy late nights will make us feel happy. When we are older, a simple night alone in the bathtub reading brings us the same feeling.

How I Intend to Use It: The acts in which make us happy are completely different per person. They also change with age as stated in this article. The acts in which we do to make us happy are still selfish acts. The acts might change with our age to fit our needs but still are self-absorbed acts.

 5. Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life

Background: Happiness and meaningful life are related and have much in common. Happiness is about getting what we want or need from others including things that just require money to buy. On the other side meaning is linked to doing things that express and reflect self in a positive way to others. Meaningful involvements can increase our stress, worries, and anxiety. This makes us even less happy. Happiness is about being a taker while meaningfulness is about being a giver. When doing things in search of happiness we are doing things for the “Now.” In contrast doing things that give us meaning are focusing on things that are in the past, present, and future. This brings us to thinking of past misfortunes which lower happiness but boost current meaning.

How I Intend to Use It: This gives me core examples of how it’s better for us not to be happy. I plan to explain how happiness is just short term and meaning looks in all areas of our lives timeline. Happiness can be achieved with something as simple as buying something we want why put so much stress on it. Explaining why our current obsession with happiness is frivolous.

6. Is Happiness a cause of Health?

Background: The evidence is clear that happiness influences health directly. In a study of 3149 Dutch people aged 65 and over Deeg and Zonneveld found that the happy ones lived longer than their less happy counterparts. Negative moods make us catch more colds and illness in general. Happiness boosts our immune system.

How I Intend to Use It: I intend to use this as my rebuttal to my thesis. I intend to prove that the studies done in this article such as the Dutch one and another with 1,650 individuals aged 50-55 were biased. They did not look at a great enough age range or detailed enough into these people’s lives to determine what they claim to be true.

7. Come Around

Background: The song is about Davids friend who had just recently got out a bad relationship. His friend had moved in with his significant other when they were homeless. David says that they were better on their own before they lived there. David tells us that when were happy with our situation we won’t get much done. Not to live for the bad times in life but to do it all the time. He chorus of the song explains how his friend would come around just to better when they were sad. The overall message of the song is to do things for ourselves.

How I Intend to Use It: The lyrics “when you’re happy with yourself you’ll never get much done” are very useful to me. They describe how when we are happy we don’t go out of our way to do things that will improve our quality of life. We are fixated on our current situation and don’t want to change things for the better or maybe worse. Taking that chance is something we don’t want to do because we are happy.

8. “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy

Background: How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. Happiness is about drive reduction. When we get what we want we are happy. Humans are not the only ones who feel this way. Animals also have drive reduction as well which they feel happy after receiving what they want also.

 How I Intend to Use It: Happiness is based off primal selfish instinct. This article supports Happiness bringing selfishness and the “everything is fine” state of mind. This is shown in thinking life is easy, being able to do the things they want and being in good health. This is all due to the selfishness that happiness brings. Shown also through the drive reduction getting what we want making us happy.

9. Finding Happiness in Angry Music

Background: Heavy metal music is known to be angry and violent. Although heavy music is loud it can be calming to some and create even constructive anger. Constructive anger is anger that is aimed at fixing problems. This would be like listening to Judas Priest’s Hell Patrol then asking your boss for the raise you deserve. Heavy metal music can also calm people down. It gives a release of aggressive energy that can sooth minds and make us happy. It can range from listening in our cubical or standing next to a speaker letting the music shake our bones.

How I Intend to Use It: When we go to heavy metal shows what makes us happy is the music and the adrenalin pumping through our veins.  Only a certain amount of us become happy from going to heavy metal shows. We only become happy when we get to listen to our music. We would not get the same adrenalin rush seeing the Dave Mathews band if we really wanted to see Slayer. The roots of our happiness are from our selfish wants and needs.

10. Happiness and Your Health

Background: When we are happier we: have younger hearts, younger arteries, recover faster from surgery, cope better with pain, have lower blood pressure, and have a longer life span. Happiness can come from a number of factors partly our genes. As much as 40% to 50% of a person’s capacity for happiness may be genetically predetermined. Health is also something that’s a major factor to our happiness. Bad health from anything ranging from Sickness, chronic pain, multiple disabilities or even mood disorders can diminish happiness.

How I Intend to Use It: Health being linked to happiness is the biggest counter argument to my thesis. This article provides information how bad health depletes happiness. This helps me prove that happiness does not cause great health but if only from great health.