happiness essay discussion

 

A) Although happiness is depicted among most industrialized societies pertaining to a higher income or status, throughout the film there's a recurring theme of happiness being obtained through various factors; in which none relate to wealth or status. Accordingly, happiness is essentially built upon social connections (friends or family), gratitude, compassion, love, and dopamine (which can be obtained through different methods). Given that humans are determined as "social creatures" in the film, it's necessary for people to interact, and these interactions thus promote happiness which results in living longer, satisfactory, or even meaningful lives. However, the film depicts the reality of detachment with humans in more modern societies leading to an unhappy "competent" nonetheless type of life, such as Japan focusing entirely on modernizing until the workers end up overworking themselves to death, as opposed to the nation of Bhutan in which GDP is put aside and gross domestic happiness is the center of focus. Overall the film highlights distinctive forms of happiness or rather the approaches in achieving such a tangible, yet overlooked upon feeling.

B) Intriguingly, it's apparent that extrinsic and intrinsic goals/values both contributed to happiness, however, extrinsic goals opposed that of the intrinsic goals. Despite the extrinsic values of praise, money, status, and image contributing to someone's happiness, it's just a brief occurrence. Whilst intrinsic goals such as, growth, relationship, and community have the long term impact towards happiness. In regard to these ideas, i've noticed some people strive to achieve a high income job to build a "good" life for themselves, however, in Asian cultures there's a confucuis piety that keeps family the main focus. Although everyone on my father's side work for their status or income and don't depend on each other, on my mother's side everyone who has immigrated give most of their income to their family back in  the Philippines and this promotes their happiness as they are aware their family is being supported. Nevertheless, I feel if these values weren't in my family, they would lie on the spectrum of feeling less gratified and therefore remain sad.

D) Back when i was in economics, i recall memories early in the course in which everyone in class was asked the subjective question "can money buy happiness?" During that time, I still thought to myself "no," however, it came to my suprise the amount of students who stated "yes". In response to the film, it appears evident that money can buy materials which bring joy, although this is only a brief excitement. The spectrum of happiness is too vast to be undermined by just materialist means or money, it actually lies within attachment to our mind and feelings through our acts, relationships not for ourselves, but others (as happiness is never prominent among selfishness). -> the neurotransmitters and hormones are on a whole other spectrum to discuss upon...