This project helped us to find what happiness means, what happiness is, and if it is really the most important thing. First we saw examples of fake happiness, consumerism, money, drugs and alcohol, and ignorance. Then we learned about happiness being a sense of accomplishment and hard work. We saw that a meaningful life, where you are a giver instead of a taker, might be better than a happy life.
Ethan Petitt Annotated Bibliography Class Research:
The movie Happy is a documentary that covers the psychology and circumstances of satisfied and happy people. This movie shows that happiness is not just the amount of money you have or the amount of popularity you have, that is called extrinsic happiness, but instead from personal fulfillment, growth, a purpose bigger than yourself, and close family and friends, or intrinsic happiness. In this movie they studied some of the happiest people and places in the world, one shocking discovery is that almost none of them had very much money, yet every one of them had close family and friends. They found that happiness is only 10% money and the place you are, 50% genetic, and 40% whatever choices you make to become happier.
This source appears to be very strong, they had many experts on the topic and many real people living these lives that they interviewed.
This source is very related to our main question, this has a scientific and everyday person approach to what the truth of happiness is.
“:Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not the events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be.” “Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” - groucho marx “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same”- Anne Frank
2. There’s More to Life Than Being Happy Smith, Emily Esfahani. “There's More to Life Than Being Happy.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 Jan. 2013, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/. In this article we look into a man by the name of Viktor Frankl, he was a psychologist during world war 2 and wrote a book about his experience as a therapist inside of the concentration camp. This article explains happiness as always being satisfied and having what you want when you want it, they also concur that a life with meaning, in place of happiness, will make you more resilient to whatever life throws at you. This article delves into the meaning of leading a meaningful life, for some it may be their child, for others their life’s work, whatever the case may be, living a meaningful life leads to contentedness and resilience. They describe happy lives as having what you want, or being a “taker” but meaningful lives as making sacrifices to better the rest of the people or make others happy, or a “giver”. They claim that animals are on the pursuit of happiness but looking for meaning is unique to humans, wanting to serve something larger than ourselves for the betterment of the world or population.
I believe this is a strong and verifiable source, they quote many psychologists. Though the author may be biased towards not being able to experience very happy and meaningful lives due to some statements made about how different happy and meaningful lives are.
This source shows me that being happy isn’t everything, it isn’t what everyone makes it to be, meaningful lives are also a valid option, this answers the question by revealing that being happy is being a taker. It shows that the truth of happiness according to these people is just filling the void with what you want when you want it.
“He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.”
“The single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. “It is the very pursuit of happiness,” Frankl knew, “that thwarts happiness.””
“Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a “taker” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver”.” “”If there is meaning at all,” Frankl wrote, “ then there must be meaning in suffering.””
3. The New Era of Positive Psychology Seligman, Martin. “The New Era of Positive Psychology.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Ted Talk, www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.
This Ted Talk by Martin Seligman delved into the certain kinds of happiness and gave incredible insights into psychology today. It shows several ways how psychology is good and improving, not good, and not good enough.
This source is written and spoken by someone who was the president of the psychologists of america, he knows what he is talking about and has years upon years of experience
This source helps me answer the essential question by giving close insights into psychology today and telling us that happiness can be accomplished in three different ways.
"Not good enough."
“I want to say why psychology was good, why it was not good, and how it may become, in the next 10 years, good enough.”
“I've spent my life working on extremely miserable people, and I've asked the question: How do extremely miserable people differ from the rest of you? And starting about six years ago, we asked about extremely happy people. How do they differ from the rest of us? “
4. The Moral Bucket List Brooks, David. “The Moral Bucket List.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2017, mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0&referrer=.
The article Opinion| The Moral Bucket List is about the things you need to be a person with a sort of inner light that radiates with them wherever they go. This article tells you the virtues you require to be a person living a truly meaningful and somewhat happy life. The author also explained that people aren't just born this way they have to make the choices to transform them into that kind of person. This article also told life stories from people who went through the transformations of the values they explained, which gave a real sense to the whole piece.
This source is fairly strong but there is a margin of error because the information comes from peoples stories.
This source helped me identify what exactly it is to lead a meaningful life, which is correlated with happy lives.
“The stumbler doesn’t build her life by being better than others, but by being better than she used to be.”
“But eventually, at moments of rare joy, career ambitions pause, the ego rests, the stumbler looks out at a picnic or dinner or a valley and is overwhelmed by a feeling of limitless gratitude, and an acceptance of the fact that life has treated her much better than she deserves.”
“Those are the people we want to be.”
“eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light.”
Research Question: How does leading a happy life and leading a meaningful life coincide?
Individual Research:
Why a Meaningful Life Might Matter More Than Happiness
In this article they explained the four elements you need to live a life that is meaningful. It gave the four elements of belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. They covered what these elements do and how to use them as well.
The persons work this article is based off of also had a Ted Talk on this subject, I believe this source is credible.
This source answered my research question by providing the exact qualities you need to obtain to live a meaningful, and therefore somewhat happy life.
"Whatever good or bad fortune may come our way, we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value." Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
“What we choose to focus on, from our past, is what we become.”
"Creating a unified sense of who we are, based on what we have done in the past, or what we choose to focus on, can give our lives meaning," Esfahi Smith
2. Do a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life go Hand in Hand?
“Do a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life Go Hand-In-Hand?” Ibz Life Coaching, 20 June 2017, ibzlifecoaching.com/2017/06/happy-life-meaningful-life/.
This article first defines the difference between happiness and meaningfulness, happiness typically comes from what we receive from others, while meaningfulness is typically what we give to others. This article then continues to show how meaningful lives and happy lives are different yet similar. The author continues to show the contrasts and overlaps between happy and meaningful lives throughout the article until the end.
This source sighted several of its own credible sources that the article was based off of. This was a strong source with many strong sources, they quoted many reliable people with PhDs.
This article helps me answer my research question by comparing happy and meaningful live. This source shows their differences and similarities, aiding the process of answering my question.
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstance, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
“It is a human need to strive toward a sense of purpose, to renew our purpose, and to feel that we make a difference.”
“The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness.”
3. A Meaningful Happy Life
Sphilbeck. “256 A Meaningful Happy Life.” Florida Tech ECurrent, Florida Tech, 15 June 2017, ecurrent.fit.edu/blog/academics/psychology/scienceminute/256-meaningful-happy-life/#!page_id=15105748a8a44c82b,all.
This article asks what we need for a happy life, what we need for a meaningful life, and if we can have both a meaningful and happy life at the same time. They studied roughly 400 american adults relationship between happiness and meaning. They conclude that meaningful and happy lives are different but they do tend to overlap.
This article is a strong and reliable source, written by a psychologist with references from other psychologists research.
This source shows that happy and meaningful lives do overlap, therefore answering my question perfectly, happy lives and meaningful lives do coincide together and can even be possible at the same time.
“What choices lead to a life full of happiness, one full of meaning? Can we have both?”
“Consider what gives your life meaning. Do your choices promote a sense of purpose, happiness, or both?”
“Results indicated that while a meaningful life and a happy one tend to overlap, they exhibit some key differences.”
The Truth of Happiness Reflection
1. What have you discovered your truth of happiness is? The truth of happiness is different for every person, mine is hazy and wide spanning. When I first took the Oxford happiness questionnaire I got a happiness level of 2.4 out of six, I started creating music every day for a week and at the end of that week I took the same questionnaire and got 3 out of six. Creativity and socializing often help me to improve my happiness. My truth of happiness is difficult to articulate into words, but what I believe is do what you like and make friends that like you for who you are and what you are. Make your passion into a career and have a social group that supports you and cares about you equally as much as you care for them. 2. What was the greatest challenge you faced in this project and how did you work through it? My greatest challenge in this project was stop motion. I had 543 pictures ready to upload, when I attempted to upload said pictures it wasnt working, I spent an hour figuring out how to export the pictures from my phone to the computer. After that it turns out all of the pictures were the wrong size so we had to reshoot our entire stop motion video. When we redid the video and finished the stop motion we couldn't convert the .avi file into a .mov file so it could be edited on a mac, our teacher ended up having to drive home to get her mac while we put the .avi file on a flash drive. Finally after 2 full days of problems on top of problems we finished it completely. 3. How have you grown as a group worker in this project? My communication skills improved drastically during this project. Any time a problem came up all of our group members talked it out and collaborated to problem solve. All of our jobs were talked out and made clear and agreed on. In previous projects we each just did our thing and hoped it worked out, but in this project we thoroughly communicated everything very well. 4. If you could refine any part of this project, what would you refine, and how would you refine it? If I could refine anything it would be the book annotations and pre reading assignments. I never found any initiative or motivation to do those things and it affected my grade very heavily.
Socialization and Mask Project
This project was an essay and a mask about how we have been socialized. It was a 3 to 5 paragraph essay in which we had to explain how we have been socialized by the world around us. we also had to produce a mask. the purpose of this mask was to visually represent the things we have to do every day to be accepted in society. These can consist of gender stereotypes class stereotypes and much more.
My Essay
Ethan Petitt Socialization Project Section 2 The Forces of Socialization Acting Upon Me
Socialization is all around us everyday, you just have to open up your eyes to see it, we have all been socialized, whether it be as a teenager, a low class person, or by gender. We are all constantly being socialized by the media and world around us. Socialization shows us who we “need to be” to fit into today’s society, there is some positive socialization such as the manners you practice while in public, but much of this socialization has a negative effect on us. Socialization is teaching us teenagers they need to be moody or telling the upper class that they are better than the rest of us, and showing men how we need to act and look to be accepted in the world, this type of socialization should most definitely decrease before it goes too far.
Teenagers are portrayed on the media as moody and obsessive people who are always up to no good, this has become the stereotype and even a norm for us. I believe the majority of these things have been socialized. In the documentary Inside the Teenage Brain they claim that some of these things are nature, such as some mood swings and being more likely to do things that would endanger their health, but they also say that a lot of this is nurture, socialization. This ensures that we are all going to have some difficulties, but this also is clear evidence that we as teenagers have been socialized to believe we should dislike our parents or be obsessed with the way we look or act and who likes us. I was holding a skateboard walking down the sidewalk once when a police officer stopped me and started almost interrogating me as if I had done something wrong and asking me questions like what I had been doing for the last hour and if I had been following the law when all I was doing was walking down the street. This to me is proof that we all have been socialized to believe that teenagers will always be doing something they’re not supposed to. This experience made me really notice how everyone else sees me and what they think of me, they have been socialized to believe all skaters are on drugs and inconsiderate of others. The media has morphed and twisted teenagers into monsters who we then believe we have to become, perpetuating the cycle of socialization.
Every class has a different life is socialized differently, the rich have always been encouraged to do what they want and they have a straight guaranteed shot to that goal. The middle class has opportunities but they have to work hard to get there, the poor can work hard their whole life and still stay in the same class. As a person who has lived in more than one class in his lifetime I have a lot of first hand experience with this type of socialization. When I was very small and in the upper middle class I could ask for anything I wanted and I would receive it no questions asked, everyone told me I could do whatever I wanted and could be whatever I wanted. When I was 6-7 I was in the lower class, I had to ask for food and couldn’t have much, sometimes the answer was no. We had very little leisures, but what we did have we cherished. I was always told to have good grades so one day I might be able to get a pretty good job. In the middle class we aren’t struggling but we most definitely have to work hard to get where we want. The chances of a lower class person getting to the upper class before they die is absolutely abysmal. If you are born with a silver spoon you are constantly socialized to believe that your family is somehow superior than other because you have a higher income. If you are born poor you are told that you need to graduate high school with ok grades so you can maybe get by in the world, schools in poor districts are regulated much less and have a much worse curriculum. I believe we should all be taught and encouraged the same regardless of our own financial situation, schools should ignore the financial aspect of your household and focus on your grades and work ethic.
As a man in today’s society I have been socialized to think that I can’t show any emotion, I have to look a certain way, be the provider of a family, and like certain things, this is a perfect example of socialization in action. I have been told several times by many people to cut my hair because I look too feminine, or that I need to work out more so I look like a man, I have been told time and time again not to show emotion and “man up” all of these things I am bombarded with every day have never phased me because I know that none of that really matters to me, and that’s all that should matter. In the Ted Talk “A call to men” Tony Porter explains “Growing up as a boy, we were taught that men had to be tough, had to be strong, had to be courageous, dominating, no pain, no emotions, with the exception of anger, and definitely no fear. That men are in charge” This really struck me as true because in my own life I had always seen the women in the kitchen and the men working, my mother in fact was told hundreds of times to marry a doctor or lawyer instead of going to school to be an RN. The men we are supposed to be in today’s society are flawed, the transgender suicide rate is too high, the socialization of genders must decrease soon. I am being told to suppress all of my emotions, that will trigger an explosion of anger, the acceptable emotion for us. We need to accept people for who they are.
As a teenaged middle class male I have been socialized very heavily with whom I have to be to fit in. The media has been bombarding us with messages for our entire lives, how we should act, dress, and look. Socialization has affected me very negatively and positively throughout my lifetime, I have been told to be something I’m not, yet told I could be whatever I wanted, if that was true why isn’t everyone accepted for who they are? We can group together and take a stand against the norms of today’s society, show the country that acceptance is key to a functioning society. Diversity is necessary. The expectations in today’s society can kick rocks because I won’t change myself to fit in, we all need to take a stand against the negative socialization of the american people and teach the moral value of acceptance.
Mask Paragraph My mask has a white background which is meant to represent the bland plainness of my mind under the influence of society. I wrote the japanese symbol for happiness in red on the forehead, I do not like the color red nor do I like faking happiness to be accepted. In purple I wrote fake in japanese to represent the mask of happiness I put on every day, in blue I wrote external, also representing the happiness mask I put on everyday. On my left eye I put the symbol for life, on the right eye is the symbol for death, all I see is life slowly descending into death around me, and like a story you read it left to right. I put japanese style banners down the sides of my face, the paper drying my tears before the world can see. I covered my mouth to represent the lack of freedom I have to say what I really feel.
My Mask
Ethan Petitt Project Reflection Section 2
Project Reflection
In doing this essay my writing ability grew, not by much in all honesty, but there is a difference. My ability to analyze the evidence I used most definitely grew in writing this essay. “This experience made me really notice how everyone else sees me and what they think of me, they have been socialized to believe all skaters are on drugs and inconsiderate of others.” I took an example from my life as evidence, and analyzed it to make an assumption and a statement about how the world sees me. My largest takeaway is how much being in this school and doing this project has actually changed my will to do any work. Before coming here I would never really think to take initiative and help the community, but now I want to go out and help as much as possible. I feel as if I have grown an incredible amount as a project learner. My ability to stay on task and manage my time has greatly increased since the beginning of this school year. The first few days of this project were a struggle for me because my organization skills and time management skills have never been good. I have always struggled with that sort of thing, but once I realized the significance of the project something sort of clicked in my brain that helped me understand how important those things are. I was lagging behind with my first draft due that day I had half of it done, I started working harder and finished the project on time with a very strong essay. As a group member I contributed by drilling all the holes in masks, finding and testing can lights, hanging curtains, finding and moving tables, making a large mask out of several essays, and stapling quotes to the walls. When my group was working on the exhibition I took initiative to do certain things to better our section, something that before coming to this school I probably would never have even considered. If I could change something I would go back and help my group out more instead of helping the other groups as much. I would also spend more time on my mask to make it looks as good as possible.