Happiness Hypothesis People are constantly looking for ways to be happy. They may try looking deep inside themselves or find ways to distract themselves from the unhappiness that they are feeling. Jonathan Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom reveals to us how he believes the mind works in eleven chapters. He proposes his opinions as well as science to back up his “hypothesis”.…
123 words Response: Compassion is something that a lot of people must force themselves to learn to do. It does…
Sometimes, in situations of great danger, one must abandon their compassion towards others to survive. This is a human instinct, abandoning a usually vital part of their lives to secure the rest of it. So yes, sometimes people have to abandon compassion to survive a horrible situation. In the book, on page 26, multiple people on the train car to Birkenau abandon their compassion to make their situations better and more peaceful.…
Carry On My Wayward Son The name the British gave the First World War speaks for itself; the Great War, it sounds like a title to an epic where battle is romanticized. Many men who enlisted expected the war to be great indeed, it would be quick and they would return as heroes. The reason the British men expected a great war was partly due to the fact that Britain had not been involved in a full-scale war since 1871, and ever since the idea of war had become a mythical journey, where boys became men. This idealization of a fast and easy war combined with the mechanization of war meant the soldiers received a sudden realization of the cruelties modernized warfare entailed.…
This is why accepting others helps people get through life. An example of when there was acceptance was when the old woman let Salva stay in her barn before he had to go walk to the refugee camp. This is an example…
In every young person’s life, there comes a moment in which they transform from fantasy dwelling, wild teenagers into adults. For many, it is a slow, steady process which can take many years; however, for many others, it happens in an instant. Such a transformation is experienced by the narrator of the short story “Greasy Lake" by Thomas Coraghessan Boyle. During a time when it was good to be bad, the narrator and his two friends felt they were the very definition of bad; however, these three teens, desperate for treacherous adventure and new experiences, ended up getting more than they bargained for after a prank goes awfully wrong. This incident causes them to run into some people more “bad” than themselves and to the see the uncensored reality…
From the beginning of time, parents have laid beside their children reading them a fairy tale every night before the child falls asleep and enters the land of milk and honey. However, many of these children never fully grasp the concepts and the lessons that these fairy tales are trying to teach. The story of the three little pigs isn’t just a story about how three pigs escaped from a hungry wolf; instead, it is a message saying that by using one’s own wit and knowledge, they are able to overcome the horrific fangs that the world is trying to bite with. Many of these lessons are very applicable to our everyday lives, as seen through author and doctor Valerie Gribben. The title of her passage, “Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work,” uses a…
Is Compassion Necessary to Human Survival? Compassion is necessary to allow humans to live and not just to survive. The human race allows the human race to feel sympathy and empathy. Without it, people will turn against one another, creating situations like genocide and the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel describes this in his backstory of Night, about growing up as a Jew during the Holocaust and the situations that he was put in.…
But that isn’t the right thing to do. The right thing to do is treat people the way that you want to be treated. The last quote that really stuck out to me in this narrative is “It is easy to make mistakes, hard to apologize and even harder to show grace, but I believe showing grace shows love.” Even though doing the right thing can be hard sometimes, we have to try and do the right thing.…
Societies’ morals is composed of benevolent visions and inadequate wills. Though we view humanitarian efforts as beneficial, we are often reluctant to participate and provide support to the humanitarian field. At times, many of us even choose to subdue our sympathetic willingness to aid by distancing ourselves and ignoring new information. This is not to say that we become entirely insensitive to global crisis and people’s suffering, but rather that we are so occupied with the convenience of our lifestyles that we would prefer to neglect the moral obligations we have to others in order to maintain our comfort. As such, even though we understand the essentiality of humanitarian aid and generally would like to see dire global and domestic problems…
In Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, Boyle highlights illustriously the unfortunate consequences faced by the “colored race” due to the Jim Crow system. He simultaneously places emphasis on the reaction that developed as a result of this system. His major premise focuses on the development of segregation in the Northern part of America is a heavily ignored aspect of American society, which still exists today. Boyle tells the sad tale about the struggle faced by an African American family who refused to remain in the status quo black family portrait.…
A Manifesto of the Civically Just by Evangeline Booth From a very young age, I felt not only compelled by my inner self, but also encouraged by the initiative displayed by my mother and father to stand strongly behind the causes I knew in my heart to be just. However, from years of focusing my efforts on accomplishing this, I slowly came to the realization that it was no longer sufficient to merely stand behind my passive, yet well-intentioned words. One is now required to take willful action to change a situation in favor of the morally correct.…
There is a proverb that demonstrates this statement much clearly: “Out of sight, out of mind”. This quote is usually applied to a situation where people cannot meet each other, and they gradually reflect less or forget about each other. People tend to care less about an object or situation that occurs far away both from physically and psychologically; it is a human nature phenomenon. For instance, most of the teenagers learn that there are many refugees, orphans, and people die of hunger in the world in school. However, even though they understand and feel a tiny compassion towards those people, only a few, maybe none of, teenagers would actually practice or take an action to help those poor people.…
The short story “The Champ” written by T.C. Boyle is about a young man that has been the champion and set multiple records. As strange as competitive eating may sound there are people that actually enjoy watching and/ or be apart of the contest. In “ The Champ” Boyle gives the reader an insight from the main character’s perspective. The story is about Angelo D., the main character, and how he starts the short story off as the champ. Although he begins as the champ with a variety of records set, Kid Gullet (Angelo’s challenger) is swiftly coming to snatch the crown from Angelo.…
In Chapter 1, “Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It’s Not),” of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, author Thomas C. Foster claims that a quest can be defined structurally using 5 elements: (1) a quester, (2) a place to go, (3) a stated reason to go there, (4) challenges and trials en route, and (5) a real reason to go there (Paragraph 1.8). Foster’s claim allows me to view literature with a new perspective, thus improving my understanding of various works. I can assume that improving his readers’ grasp on literature was Foster’s purpose, because he ends the chapter with the statement: “Once you figure out quests, the rest is easy.” With the knowledge that even trips to the grocery store can be considered quests, as exemplified, though hypothetically, in paragraphs 1-6 of the chapter, I can predict what will occur in a story without any sort of blatant foreshadowing by applying the structural elements of a quest. Foster’s hypothetical example, which was stated earlier, follows a sixteen-year-old named Kip to the store for a loaf of bread.…