The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
Other Website: http://herculodge.typepad.com/
Write a personal narrative that shows how food defines us and is linked to shame and belonging (a theme evident in LK's book)
Sample Intro and Thesis
I was six years old and trying to tell myself that everything was okay as I walked with three boys to KR Smith Elementary in San Jose, CA. Normally, a Hostess apple pie or cupcake created anticipation for lunch, but not today because the smell of rotten tuna wafting from my Captain Kangaroo lunch box was so strong my companions kept nagging me to explain what the hell the horrible smell was. Finally, I relented and stopped in a field and to appease their curiosity I opened the lunch box and the rotten tuna sandwich, slimy and mixed with the mayonnaise, had escaped its plastic baggie and had splattered throughout the insides of the tin pail. The boys and I gaped at the impossibly malodorous, black tuna juices, black ink streaks and odious chunks smeared all over the pail's lining like an exploded brain. The rancid tuna had splattered over my apple, my orange, my Hostess pie, and whatever else Mother had put inside for me that day.
"How could you eat that?" one of the boys asked and I shrugged. I assumed I had no choice. It was my lunch after all. So I closed the lunch box and we continued our way to school where I put my lunch box alongside everyone else’s in the designated coat closet.
During class, Mrs. Corey sniffed along with the other students as everyone tried to detect the source of a hellish stench. Crinkling her forehead and flaring her nostrils, she demanded to know if someone had soiled their pants or if someone had brought a dead creature into her classroom. All of the students were squeezing their noses and making mock gagging noises. It was clear Mrs. Corey could not teach until the matter of the rancid fish smell had been solved.
The boys I had walked to school with pointed at my offending lunch box upon which Mrs. Corey walked cautiously toward it, as if approaching a landmine. She slowly opened the box and stared at its contents as if witnessing an abomination from the bowels of hell. Then looking at me, she said, “Did your mom pack this?”
I nodded and Mrs. Corey winced in a way that seemed to castigate my parents, my extended family, and my ancient ancestors. With a sour expression, she then closed the lunch box, gave it to the teacher aid to place outside, and announced to the class that my food was unfit for eating and that she needed volunteers to take one thing out of their lunch and give it to me so that I would have something to eat during lunchtime.
During the lunch break, I was too mortified and ashamed to have an appetite and I remained on my blanket while avoiding the odd stares from my classmates.
This was my first lesson in the power of food to bring shame when that food is deemed rotten or immoral or unhealthy. Indeed, author Lierre Keith has a lot of experience with shame, which she has tried to work out as a vegan ideologue and now as a champion of Paleo carnivore eating. Unfortunately, her emotions have misguided her in many ways, for while Lierre Keith is correct that many aspects of veganism can be unhealthy and harmful to the environment, her overall thesis that vegetarianism is a "myth" and is inferior to a Paleo-style meat-eating diet is too mired in egregious flaws and logical fallacies to be a worthy "meat-eating manifesto." Her first flaw is that she takes the very worst vegan habits and uses these misguided vegans as being representative of veganism as a whole. Another flaw is the book's over simplification in which Keith promotes the Paleo diet as the greatest in achieving health benefits when in fact any diet, either meat-eating or vegetarian, makes people mindful of what they eat, generating less calorie consumption, less processed food consumption, and, inevitably, healthy results. A related flaw is Keith's assumption that any diet can be a One Size Fits All Panacea that can be imposed on the entire human race. Some may flourish on a vegan diet; others may not and the same applies to the Paleo diet. Yet another flaw that makes Keith's book unworthy of manifesto status is the laughable impracticality of her wanting to feed our overpopulated planet in the primitive way of hunters and gatherers. While organic, farm-raised meat might be good for the rich and privileged, it is not realistic to think we can distribute this kind of boutique-style, "all-organic" animal protein world-wide, rendering her half-baked Paleo "vision" naive, starry-eyed and utterly preposterous.
Paleo Research Links: Studies About Its Effects on Human Health
Common Arguments in Support of the Vegetarian’s Position
1. Meat eating diet is based on backward cultural traditions that some vegetarians equate with slavery. This is controversial. Many are offended by the analogy.
2. We’re not obligate carnivores like some animals. We can choose to eat in ways that don’t result in cruelty to animals. This is controversial. Many argue that our evolution and optimum health are based on killing and eating meat.
3. Animals are sentient, which means they feel and suffer. It’s our moral duty to minimize suffering in the world. The controversy here is that plants may be conscious. Where do we draw the line? Can’t we kill a rat that is in our baby’s room?
4. Raising plant protein is more efficient than raising animal protein. This is controversial. Some studies show that plowing fields for agriculture result in killing the native wildlife.
5. Raising animal protein creates far more pollution and devastation to the environment than does raising plant protein. I haven’t seen any arguments to refute this.
Part Three. Common Arguments Against the Vegetarian Position
1. Humans have a biological, evolutionary, nutritional dependence on some animal protein and fat according to many, including Nina Plank, author of "Death by Veganism."
3. Bovine animals are often still alive while jungle cats eat their entrails. Eating and being eaten are part of the necessary cycle of nature, cruelty not withstanding. This is controversial. The jungle cat acts on instinct. We have choices to not be cruel and two wrongs don’t make a right.
4. Agriculture devastates the environment more than hunting, but not factory farming. The problem is that hunting can not feed the world population, only factory farming can.
5. We’re dependent on animal products beyond food: glue, gel capsules, leather clothes, furniture, etc. Where do we draw the line?
Part Four. Another Argument in Favor of Vegetarianism: The Preservation of Our Soul.
1. Brutality against animals coarsens (toughens) our soul and in some ways encourages sadism.
2. Greed affects our ill treatment of animals: To cheapen production costs, we torture and mutilate animals. Vegetarianism isn't the exclusive realm of some liberal fringe, some Southern California "lifestyle elitists." See the essay“Fear Factories” by Matthew Scully. And see George F. Will’s essay “What We Owe What We Eat.”
3. To treat animals as we do for our benefit, we kill our empathy through willed ignorance and this kills the core of our humanity.
Sample Thesis That Counter-argues common arguments in favor of vegetarianism.
While the vegetarian argument is built on noble aspirations and makes a convincing case for reforming the cruelties and abominations that take place on factory farms, the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. First, we must consider we have evolved into omnivores and as such we have a biological/evolutionary need for some animal protein; second, we must consider that there is an abundance of evidence that points to malnutrition and even death that infants suffer who are forced by their parents to eat a vegan diet; third, we must consider there is a strong link between the vegetarian diet and obesity and related metabolic syndrome as a result of relying too much on agricultural, carbohydrate-laden foods.
Sample Thesis That Counter-argues an Anti-Vegetarian Position
While I concede that there are many advantages to a meat-eating diet, these advantages are off-set by several factors, which include the inevitable cruelty that animals suffer as we try to feed a world of billions of people; the environmental devastation that occurs when we reserve the Earth’s land for grazing livestock animals; the environmental damage that occurs from the animal waste that cannot be adequately refined at factory farms; and the myriad of diseases that are spread from farm factory animals.
A Third Example
The brilliant lecturer Jeff McMahon has apprised us of the intractable conflict between the dangers of the vegetarian diet and indiscriminate meat eating as he successfully shows that the only solution to this conflict is to eat organic, sustainable animal protein. Such an eating program is the only viable way to eat because _____________, _________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Thesis 4
Is McMahon "brilliant"? Balderdash. His argument for killing animals in an "organic setting" rests on so many illusions that he has been stripped of any intellectual credibility. His illusions are too numerous to cover in their entirety, but we can begin by focusing on McMahon's most egregious critical thinking lapses, which include the fact that it is impossible to feed the world with the organic process; _________________, ______________, _________________, and _____________________.
Part Two: Common Ground and Differences for Vegetarians and Caveman (Paleo) Dieters Alike:
A processed food diet, especially one consisting of the Evil White Five, white sugar, white flour, white potatoes, white pasta, and white rice, leads to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health ailments.
The disagreement is over the eating of meat for optimum health.
Caveman Dieters would further agree with vegetarians that factory meat is high in disease and if one is to eat meat it should be organic and prepared in a way that meats the higher standards of cleanliness, presumably, from the organic methods.
Caveman Dieters would also agree that the treatment of animals in mass factory slaughterhouses is unethical and morally reprehensible. They would argue, however, that organic, quick killing is humane and a natural part of the Food Chain.
However, caveman dieters, such as followers of Weston A. Price, would argue that animal protein results in optimum nutrition while a vegetarian, especially vegan, diet results in malnourishment.
Lierre Keith, author of The Vegetarian Myth, is a former vegan who argues the health risks of a vegan diet and for the superior nutrition from an organic-based animal protein diet.
Vegans who were once her friend and ally look at her as a betrayer, a Judas, and she has had death threats and other hostility come her way since leaving the Vegan Tribe.
Part Three. Study Questions, Part One
One. What were Keith’s motivations to become a vegan and how did her good intentions blind her? She wanted eating to sustain, not kill. She warred against patriarchy, dominance, oppression, sexism, imperialism, industrialization, sadism.
Keith makes it clear she does not want to mock animal rights.
But she says the Vegetarian Pied Piper led her and her vegetarian brothers and sisters off the cliff with good, honest intentions.
She makes it clear that her meat eating argument is not a defense of industrialized meat business.
She is against factory farming, which feeds grain to animals and animals are not supposed to eat grain.
Two. Keith claims that vegetarians, like others, are ignorant of our food origins. Explain.
She argues that agriculture, the source of the vegetarian diet, is destructive.
To explore the Vegetarian Myth, we must, she argues, explore the devastation of agriculture.
There is as much death, perhaps more, in a serving of fruit salad or soybeans, than a steak. Why? Because the killing of topsoil to harvest fruits and soy kills natural living things, including animals.
The hunter-gatherers, pre-agriculture peoples, were healthy while post-agricultural peoples fell to all sorts of disease brought on my agriculture.
Agriculture creates binge foods like cereals. We binge on carbs. We don’t binge on meats. Grains give us a “happy chemical hit.”
Agriculture creates monocrops, which destroy topsoil, wetlands, riparian systems resulting in landslides and extinction of wetland animals.
Rice, wheat, corn are so “thirsty” they drain us of water and can “drink whole rivers,” not good in an age of drought.
Agriculture cannot be sustained on two-thirds of the earth’s land.
Three. To awaken people out of the Vegetarian Myth, Keith summons the Mayan term kas-limaal, the pursuit of adult knowledge, which is our interdependence and inevitable sacrifice: some die that others live. We need the grazers, the bovine creatures, to eat the grass and level earth so earth doesn’t become a desert but we need carnivores to control the bovine creatures.
“We need to be eaten as much as we need to eat.”
For Keith, her first bite of meat after twenty years of being a vegan, was her awakening to the kas-limaal or adult knowledge.
In Japan there is a saying, Itadakimasu, meaning “We receive lives from others” or “We humbly receive this food, which comes from other life.” It acknowledges the life-death cycle.
Four. What absurdities does Keith point out in the vegan community?
Carnivores don’t need to be carnivores. Make your dog a veggie and he will die, or your cat.
Separate carnivores from bovine creatures. Really? How?
Vegans deny the nature of animals, that they kill and eat and that their actions are amoral. Vegans try to impose, erroneously, morality on the act of survival and the cycle of nature.
“I realized then that people so deeply ignorant of the nature of life, with its mineral cycle and carbon trade, its balance points around an ancient circle of producers . . . weren’t going to be able to guide me. . .
They remained ignorant and in their cute, anthropomorphic world of cuddly animals and could never have adult knowledge.
Vegans rely on over simplistic sound bites: “Meat is murder.”
“I won’t eat anything that has a mother or a face.”
Let’s not kill anything by becoming breatharians.
Five. What does Keith say to support the claim that humans are designed for meat? Like lions and hyenas, we don’t have a ruminant’s digestive system to gain nutrients from grass. “We have no mechanism to digest cellulose.”
She’s very blunt in saying that a vegan diet will damage you. And this must be at the heart of your research paper. Is this a true claim?
Keith suffered from spine damage, hypoglycemia, exhaustion, dry skin, gastroparesis, depression, anxiety.
She wasn’t getting serotonin from the amino acid tryptophan, which comes from animal protein.
She wasn’t getting saturated fat, which helps in assimilation of nutrients.
Six. What’s the myth of the apple? That it’s a natural sweet fruit. But it wasn’t originally. It was domesticated. They’re grafted, not sprouted.
“Natural” food doesn’t exist in nature, as some vegans would tell you.
An apple is not vegetarian. It grows with soil fertilized by animal blood, bone meal.
In other words, plants eat animals. This is part of kas-limaal.
Seven. What flaw is veganism and the AR movement based on? That we can eat without killing. This is the groundwork of the “vegetarian myth.” Every living thing kills in order to survive. She points out that chickens eat everything, including baby chicks.
Ironically, it’s only when we accept death as part of the eating cycle that we truly respect other creatures. A culture of denial, denying the necessity of death for life, cannot respect the living.
She writes, “Nature provides many things, but a clear-cut moral code for human concourse is not one of them.”
LK is not defending mass slaughterhouses and the inhumane treatment of animals that exists in factory farming; she herself eats her own slaughtered animals from farms, not a practical way to eat meat for the masses, to be sure.
Eight. What is the arbitrariness of the Sentience Argument? Vegans argue we shouldn’t kill sentient beings, creatures who can feel pain. But where do we stop? Rats, snails, cockroaches? What about plants? How do we prove what can feel?
I personally feel less remorse from eating a fish than eating a cow or a dog. My sentiments are arbitrary perhaps?
Nine. Where does LK agree with vegans? “Factory farming is a nightmare, from every angle: ethically, ecologically, nutritionally.” The animals are tortured.
She also agrees with vegans that grain-feeding cattle is a waste of resources; however, she believes in grass-feeding.
Ten. What is the vegetarian myth?
It’s a collection of myths.
One, that we can have life without death.
Two, that we can have “vegetarian” crops without death (fossil manure).
Three, that plants show no sentience.
Four, that the eating cycle is moral when in fact it is amoral.
Five, that monocrops that yield vegetarian foods like soy are good for the planet when in fact they devastate wetland and other animals.
Six, that a vegan diet is healthy when in fact it kills most people.
Seven, that humans are not meant for meat eating.
Eight, that grains are healthy and natural when in fact they are processed and man-made and addictive, harsh on the intestines, and cause diabetes. Read Wheat Belly by William Davis.
Nine. She dismantles the Lipid Hypothesis, that heart disease is from eating animal fats and we should eat a low-fat diet. See Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
The healthiest diets in the world are the Japanese and Mediterranean diets neither of which are vegetarian.
Ten. That “whole grain” is healthy. It’s really pulverized, processed grain.
Eleven. That soy is a healthier substitute for protein than animal sources.
These claims, their validity or lack thereof, should be addressed in your essay.
Eleven. What specific damage results from eating grain?
Grain is starch and sugars, which overload the intestines. These sugars arrive undigested in the colon, creating a “bacterial picnic.” This results in inflammation and impairs proper digestion and absorption. She further explains the role of lectins and celiac disease.
Twelve. What are the dangers of soy? (LK used Kaayla Davis’s The Whole Soy Story as a major source)
Bloating
Gas
Goitrogon, change of thyroid, thyroid disease
Hormonal disruption
Women’s menstrual cycle disruption
Endometrioses
Low sperm count
Accelerated aging
Loss of memory
Baby hormone development damaged
Birth defects
Soy is an industrial waste product with an 80 million dollar ad campaign behind it.
In Okinawa, the people eat fermented soy that is not processed by Dupont and it is not as dangerous.
A Thesis and Essay Outline in Opposition to the Vegetarian Diet
While I concede that there is way too much mindless cruelty in the factory farming of animals, we must not obfuscate the truth, namely, that the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. The omnivore diet, which includes meat eating, is defensible from an evolutionary, biological, and nutritional point of view.
Essay’s First Page
Summarize the book’s major arguments
Essay’s Second Page
If after reading the book, you are not convinced that you should “convert” to vegetarianism or veganism, you may want to defend an omnivore diet. To write a defense of the omnivore diet (which includes meat eating), one would have to concede that the current system of factory farming needs reform and that the system is changed. Also one would concede that people eat too much meat but that the solution is not the elimination of meat eating but the reduction of it. One will cut down from the national average of meat consumption (200 pounds) to approximately one-third of that (70 pounds). One would concede that that 70 pounds of meat would be as organic and sustainable as much as possible even at the higher costs. This section would take about a page.
Essay’s Final Four Pages In Which You Support Your Thesis Mapping Statements
You would have to argue that the vegan diet is not optimum nutrition and may even be dangerous, especially for pregnant woman and newborns. You might look to Nina Planck in her New York Times article or her book Real Food. Or you might look to Lierre Keith’s book The Vegetarian Myth or her book excerpt from her website.
Other Sources That Challenge the Vegan/Vegetarian Diet
Applying Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer to Frank Meeink’s conversion to a racist ideology.
Option #1: In a 5-page research paper, analyze the conditions that made Frank Meeink ripe for racist brainwashing and the forces that unshackled him from the chains of his racist ideology.
One approach: The psychological conditions of Frank Meeink could be framed as the qualities of "The True Believer"
Part One. The Qualities of the True Believer
1. The true believer is someone who suffers protracted (ongoing) frustration and is seeking mass change through joining a radical, extremist movement. He is so desperate to belong and find personal change that he questions nothing about the group's doctrine. Instead, he embraces everything with enthusiasm. As such, the TB is often called a "Kool-Aid Drinker," a colloquial term that comes from the Jim Jones mass suicide, which entailed the drinking of Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
2. The true believer hungers for revolutionary and spectacular change; gradual change will not do; sadly, of course, real change in life is gradual.
3. The movement must allow opportunity for self-advancement since the true believer is someone who constantly strains for significance.
4. The true believer is too cowardly to look inward to locate his problems so instead he looks outside himself, at the world, and proclaims all is wrong with the world and he is going to change it—radically.
5. The true believer is not intimidated by external forces because he believes he possesses colossal power and he is entitled to exercise power to change the world he sees fit. The TB’s power must come from a potent doctrine, an infallible leader or some new technique.
6. The true believer has strong faith in the future that embodies his version of a future paradise.
7. The true believer suffers from “extravagant” or excessive hope and this results in reckless behavior.
8. The TB must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties and complexities involved in his vast undertaking.
9. The TB loses himself in a vast undertaking because a huge part of his motive is to lose or erase himself. Why? Because he hates who he is and the only way he can relieve himself of this self-loathing is through self-erasure. The more he loses himself in his radical movement, the more he can run away from who he is. The TB must have an unlimited capacity for self-renunciation.
10. The TB joins an extreme group because he hopes that in doing so he will get a new life, rebirth, the chance to acquire pride, confidence, purpose, and identity, things that he life has been woefully lacking in.
11. The TB needs to find faith in a “holy cause” because he has lost faith in himself. In other words, his intensity for his cause is in proportion to his low self-esteem.
12. The less a TB has reason to claim excellence for himself, the more he will find reason to claim excellence for his cause or ideology.
13. The TB is fed up with himself and wishes to distract himself from his self-loathing by snooping and nosing and butting-in to the business of others. He is therefore a meddler and an obnoxious do-gooder.
14. The TB’s conviction that he has found a higher calling that emancipates him from the Self and makes him selfless afflicts him with a most noxious and unbearable vanity.
15. The more the TB’s life is full of despair and self-loathing, the more fanatical and passionate he is in our backing his ideology.
16. TBs are society’s least worthy members. They are the undesirables and, sadly, because they join extremist groups, they often afford more change than stable, productive people who are content with being inert.
17. TBs tend to be failures, misfits, outcast, criminals, and all manner of throwaways and undesirables.
18. The TB is NOT motivated by altruism but by selfishness: the need to make his hated self disappear by becoming obsessed and fanatical about his ideology.
Part Two. Looking at the Imbecilities of Meeink’s Racist Ideology
1. The question is never asked: Is race biological or a social invention, objective or subjective? There is a scene where some guy talks about how Italians aren’t “really white.” Meeink, who is half Italian, and whose daughter is mostly Italian, has a confrontation with the skinhead. Questions of racial purity are arbitrary, subjective and unscientific. Look at the scientific community and they’ll tell you THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION OF RACE. RACE IS A MATTER OF PERCEPTION AND CHANGES FROM CULTURE TO CULTURE.
2. Skinhead theology is just that, a theology that explains the world by breaking it into two simple racial groups, the pure and the impure. Such an absurd over simplification is rooted in an infantile fantasy.
3. Skinhead theology attracts failures and the discontented who are too cowardly to blame themselves for their own failings. Unable to take responsibility for their own failings, they create scapegoats, the “racially impure” to “explain” their problems.
4. Skinhead theology is little more than a façade for a violent gang that needs to justify its existence by relying on pseudo intellectual claptrap.
5. A lot of people “grow out” of their skinhead phase. They get a job, get married, grow up, have children, and looking back they see their skinhead phase as a bad dream, a passing fever, an embarrassment to their existence. Thousands of young men go to laser surgery tables to have their skinhead tattoos removed so they can get their old life behind them.
6. The place where skinhead ideology thrives the most is in prison because belonging to this gang is a business; it makes money for its top gang leaders and it provides protection for inmates.
7. Meeink later said in an interview that his view of the people he hated was based on theories, not reality. When he met blacks and Latinos in prison, they were not at all like the representations he had read about them. Much to his chagrin, blacks and Latinos accepted this guy with a swastika tattoo in their athletic games and religious prayer meetings. Then a Jew was kind to him when he got a job and he was shocked that the Jew was so generous, contrary to all the propaganda he had read.
Part Three: Reviewing the Causes of Meeink’s Conversion to a Racist Ideology
1. Looking to substitute basic needs with a fanatical adherence to a perverse ideology
2. Looking for an easy explanation for one’s misery: finding a scapegoat
3. Misguided search for love
4. Misguided search for power
5. Nihilism
6. Having the psychological profile of a True Believer, as defined by Eric Hoffer
Terms to Define in Groups for Your Paper
Learn to write one-sentence definitions of important words for your paper. Sometimes you need to use a word or phrase for your reader that requires a definition.
A formal definition for an essay should include the following:
1. the term
2. the classification
3. distinguishing characteristics
Examples:
Debauchery is a condition of moral collapse.
Acedia is a form of depression caused from a prolonged lack of focus and purpose in life.
Gossip is a ritual that feeds our appetite for feeling morally superior to those who are the subject of our salacious whispers.
Impoverishment through substitution”:
Impoverishment through substitution is a trap in which the person tries feebly to replace basic human needs like love and belonging with grotesque counterfeits such as consumerism, fanatical ideologies, gluttony, text messaging addiction, etc.
Redemption is the process in which you turn your life around to atone for past sins and misdeeds.
The Fall is part of one's life journey in which one confuses false success with "the good life" resulting in a precipitous descent into blindness, delusion, and moral dissolution.
In one complete sentence, define ONE OF the following terms in ways that can be used in your research paper:
Part One. The Basic Human Needs, All of Which Are Absent in Frank Meeink
One. Basic trust, the foundation of human development according to Erik Erikson, which gives a child a sense of unconditional love so that he or she can explore the world without a fear of condemnation. There is no substitute for basic trust. People who don't have it spend all their lives looking feebly for compensation and these searches are often misguided. There is a film about this tragic quest for unconditional love called Citizen Kane. More recently, the film Boogie Nights is also about a boy's quest for basic trust, family, unconditional love.
Two. To love and to be loved. Again, Meeink feels hated by his parents; he feels like an inconvenience to everyone in his family. His parents treat him like a disease, an affliction, a piece of rubbish that should be tossed away. This translates into self-loathing, which results in self-destructive behavior.
Three. Belonging. Meeink feels like a misfit, a loser; he belongs nowhere. People who feel like rejects are vulnerable to joining extreme groups because fanatical groups always offer lost and lonely souls a sense of belonging. The most tragic case of this in recent history is the mass suicide at the compound headed by the Reverend Jim Jones. The more desperate one is for belonging, the more one is likely to join a fringe group.
Four. Distinction. Meeink has never found himself as he is lost in an abyss of drinking and drugs. Languishing with a sense of being a nobody, Meeink at 14 years of age becomes a skinhead and on page 58 he writes: “I was fourteen, and I was a neo-Nazi skinhead. For the first time in my life, I felt like I mattered.” Straining for a sense of significance and belonging often makes people lose themselves in a movement that promises to help them forget who they are. When you hate yourself, forgetting who you are is a gift. Forgetting who you are becomes a addiction because you constantly need to keep the demons of self-hate at a distance.
Part Two. Having never learned how to love, Meeink is fated to follow misguided paths to love, for which there are many, including:
1. Find love by shopping, honing a shopping an addiction, and becoming in essence a consumer philistine. Another example: One of my students wrote about his uncle, an obsessed hard worker who became a millionaire and died at an early age in his fifties. On his death bed he said, "My life has been a farce. I've been lonely and for all my money, I never found what I was looking for." And then he died.
This first misguided way of finding love is not Meeink’s problem, but the does suffer from the rest that follow.
2. Become an automaton or conformist, one who finds “love” by being molded by the herd, by the authority, by the clique. In Meeink’s case, he conforms to the Skinhead Orthodoxy and becomes a proselytizer (preacher) for racism and all divers forms of crackpot theories.
3. Become a perennial child; become dependent on an adult or authority figure to feel safe and provided for. The obedient child of skinhead doctrine, Meeink becomes mired deeper and deeper in ignorance and irrationality. He is emotionally a child who accepts without question the doctrine of his authority. This belief and obedience gives him a sense of comfort and reinforces his sense of belonging within the group.
4. Become a power-monger: use your talents and brute force to lord over others and become intoxicated by a sense of power. Meeink becomes a sort of skinhead warlord celebrity; he even has his own TV show that he pays for on local cable. With low self-esteem, he becomes a leader, a larger-than-life figure who rules over his disciples. Often it is those who preach with the greatest passion who are lost and use their preaching to conceal their self-doubt and self-hatred.
5. Become a vain narcissist. In an interview, Frank Meeink confessed to being a narcissist, someone with “a big ego and low self-esteem.” The lower your self-esteem, the more compelled you are to flap your wings and draw attention to yourself in order to convince the world that you are successful, happy, and powerful; however, the truth is you are the opposite of all these things: You are eaten away by a sense of failure, misery, and powerlessness.
6. Popularity is based on fashion and imitation. And Meeink does this well. In his sick social circle, his uniform and theories are considered admirable. In other circles, something is deemed cool or desirable in the marketplace of fashion for a time and then it cycles out. Therefore, popularity is like the stock market. What makes you popular today might make a nobody tomorrow. A popular red-head actress from the 1980s is now homeless in Torrance. I saw her at Penguins buying a frozen yogurt with pennies and she spilled her frozen yogurt all over my shoes while I was buying mine. Where’s all her friends now? In Meeink’s case, his popularity doesn’t last long. As soon as he wants out of the skinhead movement, his “friends” try to beat and kill him.
7. Become an addict and seek oblivion to escape the unbearable separateness and alienation that results from not being able to love. Meeink’s drug addiction is so bad that by the time we get to the book’s end, we still see him struggling with it. But let us not look at drugs as his only addiction. His overall orientation is that of addiction so that ALL of his relationships with people and things and even ideas are addictive, including his obsession with Nazi ideology.
Part Three. The Foundation of Meeink’s Conversion to Skinhead: Nihilism and the Death of Meaning
1. Frank is rejected by his parents who care about drugs more than they care about him.
2. Frank’s father, divorced from his mother, cynically and recklessly tells his son Frank that Frank’s mother will choose her new boyfriend over Frank and his father turns out to be right, so in essence Frank is rejected a second time. The constant rejection afflicts Frank with a burning hunger for acceptance, belonging, and approval.
3. Frank has sublimated rage, anger so deep he doesn’t know what to do with it and not seeing his rage with crystal clear vision, the rage goes into two different directions: inward killing him and outward in his false ideology of Nazism.
The worst kind of rage and the worst kind of despair and, yes, the worst kind of insanity are the types in which YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF THEM. When you are not aware of your psychological afflictions, you are at the highest risk of being destroyed by them.
For example, the DMV tells you not to drive a car after having a fight or an argument. You get in your car and you find yourself less patient and more easily annoyed by other drivers and not connecting your annoyance and volatility to your recent argument, you have a meltdown on the road and you end up doing something stupid that could result in an accident or even a fatality. However, if you're aware that your anger is the result of the argument, and not the other drivers, you are in a better position to calm yourself down.
Another example: Your girlfriend breaks up with you because you're needy, neurotic, and a bit of a nut. If you know this, you can be a good sport about the rejection and say to yourself: "Of course, she broke up with me. I'm crazy."
On the other hand, if you can't acknowledge that you're crazy and your girlfriend breaks up with you, you become a bad sport about it and you say to yourself: "How dare she break up with me. A man of my greatness. There must be another man, someone she's been seeing behind my back. I had better spy on her and get to the truth of the matter. I may even have to stalk her. And then of course, once I get rid of her secret lover, I can prove to her that I'm not crazy, that I am a great man and represent the best thing that could ever happen to her."
Which reaction is crazier, reaction 1 or reaction 2? You decide.
4. Frank is desperate to be loved and to enjoy a sense of belonging even if it means being cradled in the brutish arms of Nazi Skinheads and its “Identity Theology” (see page 54). You know you're desperate when you seek love from Nazis. That's profoundly sad and that Frank is blind to this sadness shows just how crazy he is.
5. Frank is desperate to find an easy to answer to the misery, rejection, and worthlessness that he feels and rather than tackle the realistic complexities behind his rage and general sense of depression he looks to a fantasy: a scapegoat (blaming innocent targets) and racist ideologies always fixate on scapegoats.
6. Being “called into God’s army [of racist degenerates]” gives Meeink a sense of mission and purpose that he never had before. See page 54.
7. To feel unified, Meeink and his fellow racist cohorts must rally against a common enemy, ZOG.
8. Sadly, we learn that thousands of young men, treated like rubbish from their parents, look for answers to explain their situation as marginalized unloved throwaways and they find these wrong pseudo answers in these racist ideologies.
9. Nihilism, the belief that life has no value or meaning, is so painful and creates a void so unbearable that gullible misguided youth will glom onto the most odious hate-filled ideology just to wipe away their nihilism.
10. The “believers” tend to come from similar backgrounds, hated or ignored by parents, and they are able to share a similar vein of rage and create a sense of togetherness and unity. No longer do they feel alone.
Part Four. The Ideology Must Fulfill Basic Needs for the Throwaways of Society
1. The hate ideology must contain an easy-to-follow narrative about the “pure” race becoming “contaminated” by the impurities of other races.
2. There must be specific groups that are hated in order to serve as scapegoats.
3. There must be members of “your tribe” who compromise their behavior by not adhering to racist ideology and as such are “traitors.”
4. There must be clear rites of passages to be initiated into the group. Cut your hair, wear a uniform, join a violent wilding spree, etc., to prove your “street cred.”
5. You must possess doctrine or teachings that present an alternative “true” teaching to the “propaganda that mainstream society teaches you.”
6. The hate group must serve as a surrogate family and provide parental figures as replacements for the ones you never had.
7. There has to be a chain of command so that everyone knows their place and can aspire to ascend the ranks.
8. There has to be a radical lifestyle change so that you can see your behavior as righteous and healthy, in contrast with the contaminated behavior of The Other.
9. There has to be a renunciation of past ties to family and friends as you become reborn in the new hate group.
10. There must be constant proof of one’s fidelity, loyalty, and allegiance to the group often evidenced by crimes, killings, or any errand given by your superiors.
Part Five. Essay Options
Option #1: In a 5-page research paper, analyze the conditions that made Frank Meeink ripe for racist brainwashing and the forces that unshackled him from the chains of his racist ideology.
Option #2: In a 5-page research paper, analyze Frank Meeink's descent into the Skinhead movement in terms of Erich Fromm's "Escape from Freedom." How, in other words, is Meeink's conversion an escape from freedom?
Option #3: In a 5-page research paper, compare the Fall and Redemption of Frank Meeink and Jeff Henderson.
1. In Iceland ambition is tempered by a sense of humor. Humor is the antidote to many human ills:
excessive self-regard or self-importance
pretentiousness
Humor gives us a sense of irony, which creates wisdom in the face of suffering
In contrast, we lose humor when we worship the God of Ambition, the main God of America. We don't realize this truth until it’s too late: He is a false god. (end of Chapter 4)
In contrast to the God of Ambition, Iceland values connection with fellow human beings more than money and power and ambition.
2. Colder climates are happier. Why? There’s the Get-Along-or-Die Theory. In warm climates we can be isolated if we want. In harsh climates, we need each other. We call this social cooperation and reciprocity.
Society's built on cooperation must evolve a moral code such as "Don't do to others what you want done to yourself."
3. “Interdependence is the mother of affection.”
4. A society built on reciprocity develops trust and love.
In contrast, a lot of college students, moving from another country away from family and friends, live a life of isolation. They take classes alone, go home alone and study. The amount of isolation that afflicts a lot of college students is mind-boggling.
5. Iceland is so small, there are no strangers in Iceland. This adds to a key ingredient to happiness: Having a sense of community and belonging.
6. Iceland shares the pain of inflation. Unemployment is far worse because it’s experiences individually.
Unemployment is so crushing to the soul and mind that it's regarded as an official mental disease in the United States. Unemployment is a disease from which many never recover.
Studies show after 3 years of unemployment, people "go off the grid" and disappear.
7. Icelanders don’t suffer delusions of grandeur or immortality about their cities. They feel insignificant in the best, humble sense of the word. And this sense of humility results in happiness.
8. They accept the wonder and harsh doom of nature. As a result, they feel close to nature and this is a spiritual orientation that results in happiness.
9. Icelanders love their language and their greetings are benevolent such as “Go happy,” vertu saell,” and “come happy,” komdu saell.”
10. Their language is “egalitarian and utterly free of pretense.” In contrast, America is a niche elitist society where the upper classes, doctors, lawyers, computer nerds, etc., all have their own "speak," which no one else can understand. Doctors and lawyers use language you can't understand so you feel helpless and feeling helpless makes you feel dependent on them and feeling hopelessly dependent on them is good for their business.
11. They feel connected to the land and receive creative energy from it. In spiritual terms, this is called Pantheism, the idea that you can experience spirit or God through nature.
12. They have a sense of style, which is always connected to glamour. See Virginia Postrel in Atlantic article. Glamour elevates us from the banality of everyday reality.
13. Icelanders suppress envy by sharing things, in contrast with the Swiss who hide things.
14. Failure doesn’t carry a stigma in Iceland. It’s okay to fail with the best intentions. It’s okay to try and fail. This is a nurturing society, not a society of haters. In contrast, failure in America results in shame, stigma, a permanent mark of ignominy and disgrace.
15. Naïveté serves them well. There’s a certain innocence, a goodness, about them. They’re not so “sophisticated” in an arrogant stuffy sense of the word.
16. The collective culture encourages creativity, which allows you to lose yourself in something larger than yourself, called “flow.”
17. Icelandic people thrive on being sad and happy at the same time, a natural part of the human condition.
Why Is Encouraging Failure an Essential Moral Component for a Thriving Society?
Encouraging failure acknowledges that to grow and succeed in life we must go through trial and error.
To encourage growth and success is to lay down the groundwork for a nurturing society.
A nurturing society, based on mutual cooperation and reciprocity, is a moral society.
Encouraging failure is allowing people to stretch their arms and not be squeezed in a box in terms of their life roles.
Too often we pigeonhole people into their roles and identities. Because Iceland doesn’t do this, the country has the highest number of artists per capita.
Encouraging failure evidences a community exacting cooperation, not ruthless competition.
Encouraging failure gives people freedom to try new things without suffering mockery and ridicule.
Encouraging failure as a natural byproduct of trial and errors spares people from the lifelong stigma of “being a failure.”
Encouraging failure emphasizes good intentions over results.
Encouraging failure frees us to explore new things and emphasize the journey over the end result.
Encouraging failure allows us to be rewarded for the hard effort over the result.
Developing Your Thesis
A thesis statement is one sentence that articulates the central idea of your essay.
A thesis statement is one sentence that tells readers your position or argument.
A thesis statement often outlines your essay’s body paragraphs with mapping components.
A thesis statement is born out of your assigned topic.
A thesis statement can never be merely a statement of your topic. Rather, it must be the point you are making about your topic.
Example
Topic
Standardized testing is part of the No Child Left Behind program.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
Standardized testing is a profit-driven sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes.
Standardized testing is a money-grabbing sham that we need to replace with more reliable measures of student learning outcomes because the evidence shows that _______________, ___________________, ________________, and _________________.
Topic
In high numbers, upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children from measles and other diseases.
Cause and Effect Thesis Statement
Many upper class educated Anglos are not vaccinating their children because their pride, paranoia, and pseudo-science have intoxicated them into embracing all the myths de jour of the anti-vaccine movement.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
There should be harsh penalties incurred against parents who don’t vaccinate their children because ________________, ________________, _______________, and _______________________.
Topic
Unlike other first-world countries, the United States spends close to 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare while other countries spend closer to 10 percent.
Cause and Effect Thesis Statement
The United States is resigned to spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare because __________________, __________________, _________________, and _______________________.
Argumentative Thesis Statement
The United States needs to get its healthcare GDP down to about 10 percent because _______________, _______________, ______________, and ___________________.
Topic
The link between morality and happiness is the focus of our writing assignment.
Definition Thesis
Reading The Geography of Bliss, we learn that happiness is not pleasure or wealth but strong moral cultural norms, which are characterized by ____________, _____________, _____________, and _______________.
Cause and Effect Thesis
Reading The Geography of Bliss, we discover that strong moral cultural norms nurture happiness by ________________, __________________, ______________, and ___________________.
It is imperative, we learn through The Geography of Bliss, that we embrace strong moral cultural norms to facilitate happiness evidenced by _______________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
As The Geography of Bliss teaches us however implicitly, it is imperative that we embrace strong moral cultural norms to create happiness evidenced by _________________, __________________, ________________, and ____________________.
Happiness in Thailand:
Chapter 7: Thailand: Happiness Is Not Thinking
1. The “sexpat” is not happy. He’s a farang, a foreigner with a lot of money, who is disheveled. “As long as his wallet is in reasonably good shape, the rest of him can fall to pieces.” He’s looked at as pathetic, mush, unhappy. Why? Because his hedonism has pushed him into a condition of moral dissolution.
2. Thais are happy and one of their beliefs is that too much thinking will make you unhappy: “Thinking is like running. Just because your legs are moving doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere. You might even be running into a headwind. You might even be running backward.”
3. Thais do not read self-help books, go to therapy, or talk endlessly about their problems. Their wisdom lets them know that this type of naval-gazing makes your problems worse. You go backward.
4. Another saying against thinking: “Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.”
5. Conclusion: Thinking about happiness makes us less happy. So reading Weiner’s book, which makes you think about happiness, must be depressing.
6. There are only 3 ways to increase our happiness: You can increase the amount of good feelings; you can decrease the amount of bad feelings; or you can change the subject. Take a tormented relationship, for example. Thais don’t trust words. To change the subject, they say, “Mai pen lai.” It means “never mind” or “pay not attention.” Wise guys in mafia films say, “Forget about it.” In America, we have a saying, “Water under the bridge” and “Let sleeping dogs lie (stay asleep).” Here are some tormenting questions: How come Person X doesn’t like me after all I did for her? Why is there suffering in the world? How can I enjoy this chocolate cake if just one baby is starving in Ethiopia? How can I focus on my homework when there is the possibility that the sun will explode and destroy our universe as we know it? How can I look forward to going to Heaven when so many people are doomed to spend eternity in Hell?
7. Thais believe in keeping a “cool heart,” keeping bad feelings inside, but Weiner points out that Thailand has a very high incidence of wives castrating their cheating husbands.
8. Unlike Americans, Thais are free from the egotism that makes everything so serious. When they trip and fall, it’s funny to everyone, not a huge embarrassment. You can call your fat friend, “hippo,” and it’s cool. Not so in America.
9. The Thais hold a higher value of sanuk—happiness—over money and ego.
10. Thais are solaced that if things don’t work out well in this life, they might be better in the next one.
Happiness Review
Causes of Happiness in Iceland, Bhutan, and Thailand
One. Cooperation and social reciprocity
Two. Empathy ("we're all in this together" mentality)
Three. Wisdom to understand self-interested altruism
Four. Humor, being able to laugh at the human condition
Five. Moral code of integrity and social reciprocity
Qatar
1. Weiner’s big question upon visiting Qatar, the richest per capita country in the world: What happens to your soul when you indulge in excess, craven luxury? You hit the hedonic treadmill; your pleasure sensors acclimate to stimulation so you need greater and greater stimulation until you short-circuit. See page 100. You might see the film A Simple Plan.
2. Can all their wealth lead to the good life and happiness and Weiner, relying Betrand Russell, defines it on page 110 as connecting with something larger than yourself? The answer is no because self-indulgence disconnects you from the outside. Self-indulgence results in solipsism, which is the opposite of connected happiness. Self-indulgence kills empathy, which kills connection to human race.
3. Qataris are the nouveau riche and as such they possess arrogance and insecurity. When we become suddenly rich, we become a parvenu, a person who is insecure with his new role. He never feels he measures up, so he over-compensates. See page 102.
4. Wealth makes us unhappy because we instinctively use wealth to isolate and insulate ourselves from the outside world whom we see as vultures eager to steal our treasures. Happiness is fear and loathing of the human race; it is connection with others. Wealthy people tend to be unconnected. See page 114. I’m reminded of Citizen Kane.
5. Qataris have no taxation or representation so they feel disconnected from their own society. See pages 118 and 119.
6. Weiner equates Qataris’ sudden wealth to winning the lottery. Winning the lottery historically is connected with unhappiness and ruin. See pages 122-125: We adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure and then we have adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure again. It’s like a cycle of addiction with nihilism, emptiness, and ruin being our final destination. I see this with my love of cars. We call this the “hedonic treadmill.”
7. We learn on pages 126 and 127 that there’s a gap between our rational intellect and our brain’s hard-wiring or “software.” Sadly, we’re programmed to chase after chimeras (BMWs, wealth, etc.) that don’t make us happy and we can’t even learn from our disappointment but continue to chase chimeras anyway. We are sadly at war with ourselves. We are at war with our Darwin Gene and our Empathy Gene. We need both but too much of one over the other results in ruin.
8. Some of us are addicted to sadness as it is suggest to Eric Weiner on page 127.
9. Qataris rely on foreign labor so they feel disconnected from their country. They are dependent on cheap foreign labor and are in a way helpless. Rich but helpless. No rules, no laws, no taxes, no work. Just unhappiness. A life with no boundaries always leads to despair and self-destruction. Ironically, a life with no boundaries is many Americans' definition of freedom. This is a perverted definition. Real freedom is based on boundaries. As a 13-year-old kid, I learned the joy of having a clean room, a condition that didn't materialize until my father issued threats toward me. Life became easier and full of well-being.
10. We know nothing. We think we’ll be happy from achievements and wealth (Hindu word is maya, which means illusion) and we feel pained by setbacks (Hindu word is mushkala, which means illusory loss). See page 139.
Part Two. What We Learn from Qatar: Excessive Wealth Makes Even Decent, Well-Intentioned People Become Unhappy
1. When we become wealthy, we understandably become distrustful of others who may feel tempted to take advantage of us, to use us for their gain. As a result, we close our circle and we become more and more disconnected from the world. Think of the film Citizen Kane.
2. This disconnectedness from the world and constant protectiveness makes us feel embattled, which in turn creates a permanent mask of skepticism. Without checks and balances, this skepticism of others’ motives can easily turn to paranoia, an obvious condition of unhappiness.
3. When we’re filthy rich, people no longer relate to us as people. They relate to us as sycophants. Other people’s compulsion to lavish us with praise and be generally obsequious gives us a false sense of grandiosity. We begin to believe we’re as great as people treat us resulting in an obnoxious, undeserved sense of entitlement. When we're surrounded by sycophants, we live in a bubble of our own unchallenged illusions and as a result we will go crazy.
4. When we’re filthy rich, it’s tempting to use our money and power to clean up our messes. We become more reckless in our behavior since we know our money can take care of our errant ways. Think of the recklessness and misery of Bill Murray playing Phil Connors in the classic film Groundhog Day. Or we can take a page from the news and look at Justin Bieber.
5. When we’re filthy rich, we’re compelled by normal human nature to experience “the best” and what we find is that our brains adapt to pleasure and excitement requiring more and more stimulation. The researchers calls this constant adaptation the “hedonic treadmill.” We constantly have to spike our pleasure before we adapt to it and then spike it forever and ever in a an endless cycle with us always losing the pleasure game, resulting in disappointment and frustration. And yes, unhappiness.
6. Like it or not, wealth is a drug both for the wealthy person and others who are intoxicated by the wealthy person’s aura of living on a superior, elevated plane. People who are infatuated by the This mutual wealthy and kiss their butt are called sycophants or toadies. Intoxication between the wealthy person and his or her admirers creates a sick symbiotic relationship based on fantasy, greed, and envy, components for miserable relationships.
7. It is human nature when we are rich to hire others to do everything for us. Over time we become helpless cripples dependent on our “help.” This, alas, is yet another cause of our unhappiness.
8. As human beings, we have a rational brain that knows wealth is dangerous and most often results in unhappiness but we also are hard-wired to pursue wealth no matter what our rational brain tells us. Understanding this conflict in ourselves and seeing our rational intellect being helpless to curb our irrational appetites, again, is another cause of our unhappiness.
Part Three. Unhappiness in Moldova
1. Envy: To resent others for having a better situation than yours. The unhappy cannot bear the sight of the happy. I only suffer from half-envy. I wish I could be like some people, but I don't hate them.
2. The human condition is one of contrast: Hot means nothing without cold. Mozart is enhanced by Barry Manilow. Happy places are more interesting because of unhappy ones. The darkest part of the planet is Moldovia. It is the least happy nation on the planet.
3. The body language is sour and bitter and this in turn makes people feel sour and bitter.
4. Natasha says “We have no money for life.” That is her reason, but Weiner doesn’t buy it because he’s visited other countries who in poverty don’t hold that attitude.
5. The male citizens are skinny; the male cops are fat and thuggish, a bad sign.
6. They’ve been beaten down into learned helplessness (see other lectures on this topic) The Moldovans say, “This is Moldova.” Or “What can I do?”
7. Moldovans compare themselves to the richer countries, not the poorer ones. So of course the glass is half empty.
8. The service industry is rude and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of misery because you're turning off tourists, among other people.
9. There is no trust of anything, including their own people, and this results in nihilism.
10. The people are neither Russian nor Moldovan. They exist in a nether world of no identity or culture. “How can you feel good about yourself if you don’t know who you are?”
11. Their new “freedom” means nothing without jobs. They cannot afford to eat at McDonald’s.
12. Corruption and nepotism is rampant.
13. Men don’t care about their appearance because they’re outnumbered by the woman who wear raccoon makeup.
14. They are consumed by selfishness: “No este problema mea.” They can’t even recognize selfish altruism, which encourages reciprocity.
15. The Moldovans are fueled by schadenfreude; “They derive more pleasure from their neighbor’s failure than their own success.”
16. Scapegoat everything on “Perestroika.” When you scapegoat other source for your problems, your proclaiming your helplessness.
17. Envy accumulates like toxic waste.
18. There is no queuing, a sure sign of nihilism, anomie, and chaos.
19. They trust nothing: doctors under thirty-five, their own friends.
20. The once cheery American Peace Corps workers are becoming gloomy and depressed.
21. No one wants to be in Moldova, including Moldovans.
22. Helping professions score the highest in happiness surveys.
23. The Moldovans have thrown politeness and civility out the window. They say, “Give me that.” No please. In contrast, Japan emphasizes politeness. A common expression: “Gomen nasai.” I’m sorry.
24. Freedom has been reduced to a small number of people who have enough money to consume the growing selection of goods.
25. Moldovans haven’t used the golden rule of positive psychology: hedonic adaptation: No matter how severe our misfortune, we adapt. But this adaptation cannot occur in the absence of culture, living in a shadow of moral rot. They have never learned that social reciprocity results in happiness more than bitter selfishness, a condition they cling to with all their defiant strength. Moldova is a “fabricated nation.” It really does not exist.
26. Weiner concludes with “lessons gleaned from Moldova’s unhappiness”:
27. Lesson One: “Not my problem” is a mental illness, a condition of no empathy.
28. Lesson Two: Poverty is too often used as an excuse for unhappiness. Their reaction to poverty is worse than the poverty.
29. Lesson Three: A culture that belittles the value of trust and friendship and rewards mean-spiritedness and deceit cannot be happy.
Part Four.America Ranks Low on the Happiness Index. Why?
1. America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world but ranks low on happiness index. (23rd). Why? Some say we suffer from the “paradox of choice.” The more choices, the more we become anxious about making the “wrong choice”. Also more choices results in inflated expectations.
2. Abundance leads to restlessness. Again, think of the hedonic treadmill.
3. While Americans have enjoyed more abundance in general, they also work longer hours and have longer commute times, which result in unhappiness.
4. “The More Factor” is in many ways a curse. As we read in McMahon’s blog the Breakthrough Writer, the hunger for more generates a delusional fallacy, what McMahon calls “Either/Or.”
5. The hunger for More is in many ways instinctual. But as Tim Kasser observes in “Mixed Messages,” these instincts can go haywire, become inflated and actually work against us.
6. According to Laurence Shames’ essay “The More Factor,” Americans are misguided by the “presumption that America would keep on booming—if not forever, then at least longer than it made sense to worry about.” But for all of our innovation and economic greatness, Laurence Shames laments that our materialistic excess has retarded our moral growth. As he writes. He opines that “Americans have been somewhat backward in adopting values, hopes, ambitions that have to do with things other than more.”
7. America encourages Darwinian competition, which results in isolation and paranoia. Our appetites for Darwinian competition are evidenced in the onslaught of “reality” TV shows like Survivor.
8. Darwinian competition has created a nation where pleasure has been reduced to schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other people’s failures.
9. The American Dream is living apart from the rest in a gated community, insulated with satellite TV, wireless Internet, techno-gadgets that keep us “connected” in the most unreal way. America is a good place to be lonely. People are not as lonely in other countries. Weiner points out that Latino cultures bring their family unity from other countries to America and that they rank higher than other Americans on the happiness index.
10. American consumerism is a religion that possessed most Americans and makes the shopping mall America’s Holy Temple. Of course, such worship traps consumers in the hedonic treadmill, leading to numbness and ennui.
Part Five. Write a thesis for your essay.
Consider four major fallacies that destroy happiness as your mapping components.
One. Pleasure Fallacy; hedonic treadmill
Two. Rich Fallacy; the rich lose empathy, isolate themselves, and live in a bubble of sycophants.
Three. Service Fallacy; the rich hire service workers to micromanage their lives and as a result they become helpless and over-dependent on the service.
Four. Selfish Fallacy; we become blind to law of reciprocity and self-interested altruism.
Morality is simply a matter of self-preversation combined with doing no harm to others.
Morality is a value system that puts the virtues, moderation, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility, over the vices, sloth, envy, pride, gluttony, lust, and greed.
An A paragraph contains the following: Structurally, it contains a topic sentence, either explicit or implicit; it has supporting concrete details; its supporting details logically follow the other, which give the paragraph coherence; it contains transitions (avoid, if you can, elementary transitions such as first, second, third, and so on), which give the paragraph cohesiveness. Rhetorically speaking, an A paragraph should be written in a passionate, distinctive voice. The language should be precise, lively, and colorful, reflecting the writer’s passion for the subject.
A successful paragraph has the following:
1. topic sentence (mini thesis)
2. supporting details
3. unity: all the supporting details are relevant to the topic sentence
4. cohesiveness: all the supporting details logically follow the other with the help of transitions. Advanced writers attempt to use transitions other than the familiar “first . . . second . . . third . . . Finally”
5. concluding sentence (optional)
Sample Paragraph
The innovation of the iPod and its marriage partner, iTunes, have seemingly created Listening Paradise for the music lover. Now you can have thousands of songs at your fingertips and customize your own playlists, make ratings, burn your own CDs and in essence believe that it's you--not the recording artists--who is the “creative genius” for all your music. But in fact, you will most likely face the sad truth that as you amass thousands upon thousands of songs, you will reach a point in which your ability to appreciate music will actually diminish, not deepen, because having tens of thousands of songs and hundreds of playlists will degrade your music listening pleasure. The first thing you’ll notice is that you won’t even remember what songs you have and the treasures that used to give you so much joy become buried under a pile of newer and newer songs that muddle your memory. The second thing that will happen is that in your determination to listen to as much of your music as possible, you will create huge playlists and the music will play all day and night as you multi-task at your computer so that you’re not really focusing on music the way you used to. Your relationship with music has changed drastically to the point that it is now a form of “wallpaper,” a droning in the distance that swaths you with a feeling of security. But whatever security you gain from cocooning yourself in your music, you will lose from becoming more and more self-conscious about what kind of songs you own because you’ll become aware that you live in a culture in which your identity is judged largely on your playlists and “brand identity” as determined by your music tastes will become more important than actually enjoying music. Finally, when you have hundreds and hundreds of playlists, you will suffer from “choice anxiety.” Fretting over what to play and always worrying that you’re neglecting a huge chunk of your music will become a distraction that compromises your music-listening experience. Thus we are a culture with the technology capable of fitting 40,000 songs on an iPod, but our brains cannot embrace that much music without suffering some kind of permanent meltdown.
Another Paragraph Example
A paragraph that explains why Octo-Mom stirs the hostility of so many (transitions underlined) :
The California woman who relied on the dubious practices of a fertility doctor to give birth to 14 children, has become a national demon who stirs our most primitive fears and hostilities and compels us to gather our pitchforks and torches and to chase her from our midst. Her demonic reputation exists in part because she has become a metaphor for the malignant parasite whose ravenous, pathological appetite to bear bus loads of children with legal and government sanction stirs the general public’s greatest Malthusian nightmare: Paying the hefty tax tab to cater to the wild irresponsible desire of an emotionally-arrested woman whose sole passions in life are to bear more children than she can take care of and to liken her image to celebrity goddess Angelina Jolie. Her reputation as a monster is reinforced by her very title, Octo-Mom, which suggests a malevolent invader who bears similarities to the pod creatures in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Finally, our resentment is vindicated when it is reported that she and her litter will live in luxury paid for by the generosity of others, thus making us feel like it is the grossly irresponsible in this world who are rewarded while the rest of us who play by the rules having nothing to look forward to in this life except for getting punked.
Essay: A Personal Story About How You Became Disenchanted with the Idea of Happiness, Which Ties in to an Alternative Approach to Writing Your Essay
There once was a man in his early twenties. Socially awkward, he had never even been on a date. Instead, he withdrew into his college studies, found companionship in books, and grew an unruly beard. Untouched by human warmth, his demeanor was a bit crazed and unsettling. His eyes were cavernous and penetrating.
One day this young man was on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach and he passed a popular hangout, Patrick Malloy’s. It was crowded inside. The young man pressed his bearded face against the glass and looked with longing at the attractive people. They looked so life-affirming and at ease with self-abandonment, laughing, slapping each other’s backs, kissing one another, and sloshing their beers over their glasses’ rims.
In contrast, the young man was a tightly-wound ball of repressed emotions, in turns angry and melancholy. He felt like a man of 85 trapped in the body of a 21-year old.
Watching the attractive people enjoying themselves and embracing life with an admirable, insatiable appetite, the young man was convinced he would remain on life’s sidelines, a depressed witness to a life passing him by.
Convinced of his own futility and fated to a life of loneliness, he went home, curled up into a ball and cried himself to sleep.
We now travel 25 years into the future and focus on this same man, now in his mid-forties. He has a good job. He has developed social skills, he is well groomed, insouciant, and can conceal his cynicism behind a veil of witty repartee. He’s been married, divorced, remarried. He sits in Patrick Malloy’s with his lovely wife and her lovely friends. Beer is sloshing all around him. He doesn’t drink, save a diet Coke since he’s the designated driver. The music is loud and people are shouting over the music. His ears can’t take much more of this. Worse, an unrelenting boredom has set in and he is no longer listening to any of the several conversations blaring around him.
He feels it both strange and cruel that earlier in his life he felt excluded from this club of beautiful people and now he is inside its very center, its most inner core, and rather than bathing in the warmth of belonging and popularity he stares at his watch.
While squirming in his seat with utter boredom, he sees a young man outside the club. The man is bearded with the same cavernous eyes and the same look of despair the middle-aged man remembers seeing in his reflection. The young man, a mirror image of the middle-aged one, presses his face against the window and looks into the eyes of his older doppelgänger.
Feeling helpless to give wisdom to the misguided youth, the older aspiring mentor shakes his head as if to say: "The presumed happiness you see in this night club is all in your head, little brother. It's all in your head."
Indeed, the chasing of happiness is a sure way to NOT find happiness, as well chronicled in Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss. We see that the quest for happiness is doomed to fail because _____________________, __________________, and ___________________, and that happiness is the natural byproduct of moral cultural conditions, which, we learn from Iceland, Thailand, and others, consists of _____________________, _______________________, __________________, ____________________, and _______________________.
Essay Assignment About the Link Between Morality and Happiness:
Support, refute, or complicate the notion that The Geography of Bliss evidences a strong connection between morality and happiness. Use Toulmin or Rogerian model. The essay should be 1,000 words with a Works Cited page of no fewer than three sources.
Linking Happiness and Morality
One. Living in a society that promotes social reciprocity results in a happier society.
Two. Living a society that promotes self-interested altruism results in a happier society.
Three. Living in a society that encourages self-control and discipline results in a happier society (no one is successful without discipline and self-control).
Four. Living in a society where love of compassion and disdain for cruelty results in a happier society.
Five. Living in a society that promotes social bonds through humor is a happier society.
Notice, none of the "happy forces" have anything to do with self-gratification, pleasure, hedonism, luxury, etc.
Seeing the Links Between Immorality and Unhappiness in Qatar and Moldova
Healthy selfishness, which is self-preservation, becomes excessive and backfires.
Excessive selfishness kills empathy and destroy social cooperation and reciprocity, factors that lead to happiness.
Excessive selfishness leads to pride, which impedes adaptation and change.
Excessive selfishness kills joy of human interaction, sharing, giving, celebrating, etc.
Excessive selfishness creates an entitlement orientation. "Life owes me!" Entitlement is a worm that eats away at us. It is the opposite of Viktor Frankl's message to say, "I owe life something. I need to make myself useful to the world."
Excessive selfishness creates unrealistic expectations, which inevitably lead to disappointment and sadness.
Excessive selfishness is an impediment to a higher ideal.
Sample Thesis Templates
Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss makes the case, however implicitly, that there is a strong link between happiness and morality evidenced by ____________, _____________, ______________, and __________________.
Eric Weiner’s masterful travel book shows us that we live an immoral life at our own peril, creating our own misery evidenced by _________________, _______________, _________________, and _____________________.
The Geography of Bliss teaches us that moral societies create happy societies because moral societies succeed at providing the essential foundation for happiness, which includes ________________, _______________, ________________, and ___________________.
In our Professor McMahon’s zeal to interpret The Geography of Bliss as a manual for moral behavior, McMahon has offered us the dogma that there is some link between morality and happiness. However, even if we agree to McMahon’s definitions of happiness and morality, a close examination of his argument reveals it to be grossly flawed evidenced by _________________, ___________________, _________________, and _____________________.
McMahon’s dogma that there is a link between happiness and morality collapses under the weight of logical fallacies, flimsy evidence, and inaccurate, twisted interpretations of Weiner’s book.
Since I do not believe in morality, I reject McMahon’s notion that there is an essential link between morality and happiness. In fact, the very notion of morality or its lack thereof in Weiner’s book is a sham evidenced by _____________, ___________, ___________, and ________________.
Immorality is not the happiness killer in The Geography of Bliss, as McMahon would have us believe. Rather, the happiness killers in Weiner’s book consist of _______________, _________________, ____________, and ___________________.
Morality is not the Mother of happiness, as McMahon is so earnest to argue. Rather, a close study of Weiner’s book reveals that morality is irrelevant in the creation of happiness. The kind of bliss McMahon wishes we would all possess is not caused by morality but by ________________, ______________, ______________, and __________________.
The kind of conventional morality McMahon encourages us to embrace is not for an intellectual like myself. Conventional morality is for the herd, the masses, the peasants, and the sheep. I am no sheep. I am an artist and a philosopher. Following McMahon’s moralistic prescription for happiness will only cause me misery because my conforming to society’s conventional notions of morality will strip me of my individuality, force me to cohort with the bovine masses, pressure me to aspire to mediocrity, and push me into a life of convention that will destroy my spirit and soul.
We Can't Convince Unless We Have Clearly Defined Terms
Define a term that is essential to understanding your essay such as morality and happiness
Are You Meta-Fighting with Your Partner? If So, Stop It Immediately
If you’re simply fighting with your girlfriend or wife, you don’t know what real fighting is. The type of fight when you are focused on the original source of your argument is a lightweight argument, one which can be resolved with relative ease. But when you and your partner elevate the fighting to a new level, in which the original subject of the argument deviates into newer, more toxic, more hostile territories, it’s called meta-fighting.
Meta-fighting is when you begin to argue about how you are arguing about the argument. You are bickering about style, tone, and methodology. And this argument, this meta-fight, about how you deliver your argument also spawns an argument about how you are scrutinizing and judging the analysis of the style of the argument over a topic that you most likely have forgotten, the original topic being obscured by layers and layers of analysis about the analysis about the analysis about the methodology of your arguing. By this time, the subject behind the original argument is beside the point. It’s as if the original controversy or hot-button was simply a springboard to vent deeper issues about your relationship.
Perhaps the next point is obvious: When you recognize that you are in the middle of a meta-fight, it’s important to stop it as soon as possible because the damage to your relationship can be beyond your understanding and control. So let us be clear. When you catch yourself in the middle of a meta-fight, you need to go into Damage Control Mode. Here’s what you do:
Abruptly stop arguing, clear your throat, and say you don’t feel well. Then disappear into the bathroom for at least a half hour and be resolved not to bring up the fight upon exiting your “cool-off cubicle.” Apologize for “getting carried away” and start cooking a meal, preferably comfort food. Start chopping onions, dicing carrots, peeling potatoes, and in general keep busy and pretend to be absorbed by your new task so that you don’t get sucked back into the meta-fight.
If you do not know how to cook, take on a outdoor or indoor project you’ve been putting off. Wash windows, clean the garage, vacuum, anything to distract both of you from the meta-argument.
Be adamant about not getting sucked back into the meta-argument. Remember this: A meta-argument is a black hole, a bottomless pit of pain, hurt, and suffering from which sometimes there is no return. So be warned. If you must fight with you’re partner, that is fine. But no meta-fighting, not ever.
Happy cooking.
Ways of Developing Your Distinguishing Characteristics
1. Cause: A chimera is born from unconscious needs that aren't being met in one's life
2. Effect: A chimera always results in obsession that is both elevating and self-destructive
3. Negation: A chimera is NOT a casual hobby.
4. Argumentation: While some dismiss all chimeras as destructive, I am of the school of thought that says a chimera is a double-edged sword, pushing us to greater heights while at the same time endangering us with its demonic elements.
5. Analysis: A chimera begins as an innocent flutter of interest but insidiously grows until it consumes us and afflicts us with demonic possession.
Defining "Redemption"
One. Focus on the word redemption as a universal quality not confined to a specific religion. If you focus too much on a specific religion, your essay will be more of a religious sermon than it will be an exposition about the universal journey we all seek.
Two. Consider, for example, the religious term repentance is often can be replaced with the idea of acknowledgment and accepting responsibility for one's actions.
Three. Consider these elements of the redemption journey: Descending down into the demonic level of being through denial and concupiscence (insatiable appetites); hitting "rock bottom," a state of despair in which one must make a choice: surrender to self-pity or re-invent oneself in such a way as to redeem oneself of one's past mistakes; starting at the bottom in a state of humility with a vision of a better future; a sense of mastery and self-worth, not based on preying on others but on personal excellence and a desire to pass on that personal excellence to others; a condition of emotional adolescence to an adult.
Example for Defining Happiness:
When we talk about happiness, we are not referring to pleasure, hedonism, or endorphins (the brain's "happy" chemicals). Rather we are talking about the condition of flourishing in the face of challenges and suffering and the awareness that our flourishing is maximizing our sense of purpose and who we really are.
Happiness in Bhutan
1. In Bhutan, Buddhism is seamlessly integrated in the culture in ways that produces happiness. For example, in Buddhism there is nothing greater than compassion and compassion creates happiness.
Compassion is part of a society built on reciprocity.
Compassion is part of a society built on cooperation.
Compassion is a form of self-interested altruism.
Compassion builds trust.
In contrast, in America compassion is replaced with infantile self-centered, selfish greed so that Walgreen shoppers fight and riot so that the police have to close the store. Or people fight in line at Lowes or swing squeegees at each for cutting in line at a gas station. The cashiers at Costco say they witness fights for parking spaces almost every day (Costco is the inspiration for a young adult dystopian novel).
A compassionate society is always happier than a dog-eat-dog society. "I got mine. Get yours."
You can go on YouTube and find dozens of videos of Americans being trampled on Black Friday store sales.
But let's be clear: Compassion isn't the law; it's deeper than that: It's a cultural norm. Cultural norms, which get inside the soul, always have a stronger influence than laws.
2. In Bhutan crime is kept at a minimum because the people believe they could be punished during reincarnation, returning to Earth as the very creature they harmed. They really believe this. They don't just say they believe in it. In America, the religious are often only "religious" one day a week. But in Bhutan they believe in punishment in the after life. Result: Country’s low murder rate is linked to happiness.
3. In Bhutan, the people have “realistic expectations” unlike Americans who feel compelled to achieve “great things”?
In contrast, Americans too often have unrealistic expectations resulting from a lack of moral focus. This is something to consider for your mapping components.
Americans have an all or nothing definition of success in which you must be a movie star, the focus of the movie which is your life with everyone's eyes on you. Americans are a bunch of drama queens.
In contrast, Buddhism diminishes human excitement as foolish excitement for illusion. A lot of Americans would say they refuse to accept "realistic expectations," which are for them "low expectations," resulting in mediocrity.
4. In Bhutan, the people have a healthy attitude toward the reality of death and they do not deny death. This contributes to their happiness. In contrast, Americans sanitize death. The funeral, with embalming, designer outfit, deluxe coffin (usually $9,000 in today's market) and is a huge consumer experience that makes a ton of money for the funeral home and insulates the consumer from the reality of death.
5. The people of Bhutan revere solitude. But later on we read there is no introspection, “no self-help books.” No one tries to be happy but everyone has a strong degree of happiness. Why does this lead to happiness?
There is a difference between naval-gazing, angst-ridden self-centeredness and solitude. Solitude can entail personal reading (as opposed to doing reading for homework), painting, drawing, writing, any act of creativity.
6. They won’t sell timber to rich countries for money; they won’t sell their soul to the devil of greed. They have integrity which results in a clear conscience, a form of happiness.
A few pages later, the author explains how the rising GDP (Iraq, growing prison population, oil spill) doesn’t correspond to a rising happiness index or the Gross National Happiness. He writes that an old person in a care home contributes to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) but an old person cared for by family does not. Who is happier? Jeff Johnson writes about this in the Gross National Happiness and Development compendium. We can conclude that you should not strive for happiness, but strive for integrity and creative solitude. Happiness is the byproduct of those qualities.
7. Happiness is a collective endeavor, not an individual one. (author criticizes them for being “too sincere.” What does he mean? Perhaps "too sincere" means lacking a sense of humor and irony?) We read “happiness is relational.” What does that mean? This is the opposite of solipsism, the extreme form of self-centeredness.
8. GNH (Gross National Happiness), according to Sanjay Penjor, “means knowing your limitations; knowing how much is enough.”
The Greeks had the same idea when they talked about moderation and temperance as being virtues, but in American society, built on consumer spending, we discourage moderation and temperance and encourage hype, extremes, pushing your limits and we come up with atrocities like HomeTown Buffet. The buffet is all about the lie that there are no limitations.
Between you and (I, me), the fat cats have all the cheese while the rest of us fight for the crumbs.
Subject-pronoun agreement
A person who doesn't plan ahead finds they cannot go to the big party.
Consistent point of view
When one ponders the state of education, we can't help wonder why you are lagging in critical thinking skills.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hold of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
Iceland: Happiness Is Failure
1. In Iceland ambition is tempered by a sense of humor. The God of Ambition, the main God of America, is discussed as a truth we don’t realize until it’s too late: He is a false god. (end of Chapter 4) Iceland values connection with fellow human beings more than money, power and ambition.
2. Colder climates are happier. Why? There’s the Get-Along-or-Die Theory. In warm climates we can be isolated if we want. In harsh climates, we need each other.
3. “Interdependence is the mother of affection.”
4. A society built on reciprocity develops love. In contrast, a lot of college students, moving from another country away from family and friends, live a life of isolation. They take classes alone, go home alone and study. The amount of isolation that afflicts a lot of college students is mind-boggling.
5. Iceland is so small, there are no strangers in Iceland. This adds to a key ingredient to happiness: Having a sense of community and belonging.
6. Iceland shares the pain of inflation. Unemployment is far worse because it’s experiences individually.
7. Icelanders don’t suffer delusions of grandeur or immortality about their cities. They feel insignificant in the best, humble sense of the word. And this sense of humility results in happiness.
8. They accept the wonder and harsh doom of nature. As a result, they feel close to nature and this is a spiritual orientation that results in happiness.
9. Icelanders love their language and their greetings are benevolent such as “Go happy,” vertu saell,” and “come happy,” komdu saell.”
10. Their language is “egalitarian and utterly free of pretense.” In contrast, America is a niche elitist society where the upper classes, doctors, lawyers, computer nerds, etc., all have their own "speak," which no one else can understand. Doctors and lawyers use language you can't understand so you feel helpless and feeling helpless makes you feel dependent on them and feeling hopelessly dependent on them is good for their business.
11. They feel connected to the land and receive creative energy from it. In spiritual terms, this is called Pantheism, the idea that you can experience spirit or God through nature.
12. They have a sense of style, which is always connected to glamour. See Virginia Postrel in Atlantic article. Glamour elevates us from the banality of everyday reality.
13. Icelanders suppress envy by sharing things, in contrast with the Swiss who hide things.
14. Failure doesn’t carry a stigma in Iceland. It’s okay to fail with the best intentions. It’s okay to try and fail. This is a nurturing society, not a society of haters. In contrast, failure in America results in shame, stigma, a permanent mark of ignominy and disgrace.
15. Naïveté serves them well. There’s a certain innocence, a goodness, about them. They’re not so “sophisticated” in an arrogant stuffy sense of the word.
16. The collective culture encourages creativity, which allows you to lose yourself in something larger than yourself, called “flow.”
17. Icelandic people thrive on being sad and happy at the same time, a natural part of the human condition.
Happiness in Thailand:
Chapter 7: Thailand: Happiness Is Not Thinking
1. The “sexpat” is not happy. He’s a farang, a foreigner with a lot of money, who is disheveled. “As long as his wallet is in reasonably good shape, the rest of him can fall to pieces.” He’s looked at as pathetic, mush, unhappy. Why? Because his hedonism has pushed him into a condition of moral dissolution.
2. Thais are happy and one of their beliefs is that too much thinking will make you unhappy: “Thinking is like running. Just because your legs are moving doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere. You might even be running into a headwind. You might even be running backward.”
3. Thais do not read self-help books, go to therapy, or talk endlessly about their problems. Their wisdom lets them know that this type of naval-gazing makes your problems worse. You go backward.
4. Another saying against thinking: “Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.”
5. Conclusion: Thinking about happiness makes us less happy. So reading Weiner’s book, which makes you think about happiness, must be depressing.
6. There are only 3 ways to increase our happiness: You can increase the amount of good feelings; you can decrease the amount of bad feelings; or you can change the subject. Take a tormented relationship, for example. Thais don’t trust words. To change the subject, they say, “Mai pen lai.” It means “never mind” or “pay not attention.” Wise guys in mafia films say, “Forget about it.” In America, we have a saying, “Water under the bridge” and “Let sleeping dogs lie (stay asleep).” Here are some tormenting questions: How come Person X doesn’t like me after all I did for her? Why is there suffering in the world? How can I enjoy this chocolate cake if just one baby is starving in Ethiopia? How can I focus on my homework when there is the possibility that the sun will explode and destroy our universe as we know it? How can I look forward to going to Heaven when so many people are doomed to spend eternity in Hell?
7. Thais believe in keeping a “cool heart,” keeping bad feelings inside, but Weiner points out that Thailand has a very high incidence of wives castrating their cheating husbands.
8. Unlike Americans, Thais are free from the egotism that makes everything so serious. When they trip and fall, it’s funny to everyone, not a huge embarrassment. You can call your fat friend, “hippo,” and it’s cool. Not so in America.
9. The Thais hold a higher value of sanuk—happiness—over money and ego.
10. Thais are solaced that if things don’t work out well in this life, they might be better in the next one.
Happiness Review
Causes of Happiness in Iceland, Bhutan, and Thailand
One. Cooperation and social reciprocity
Two. Empathy ("we're all in this together" mentality)
Three. Wisdom to understand self-interested altruism
Four. Humor, being able to laugh at the human condition
Five. Moral code of integrity and social reciprocity
Part Four. Another A Example Introduction to Your
Part One. Qatar
1. Weiner’s big question upon visiting Qatar, the richest per capita country in the world: What happens to your soul when you indulge in excess, craven luxury? You hit the hedonic treadmill; your pleasure sensors acclimate to stimulation so you need greater and greater stimulation until you short-circuit. See page 100. You might see the film A Simple Plan.
2. Can all their wealth lead to the good life and happiness and Weiner, relying Betrand Russell, defines it on page 110 as connecting with something larger than yourself? The answer is no because self-indulgence disconnects you from the outside. Self-indulgence results in solipsism, which is the opposite of connected happiness. Self-indulgence kills empathy, which kills connection to human race.
3. Qataris are the nouveau riche and as such they possess arrogance and insecurity. When we become suddenly rich, we become a parvenu, a person who is insecure with his new role. He never feels he measures up, so he over-compensates. See page 102.
4. Wealth makes us unhappy because we instinctively use wealth to isolate and insulate ourselves from the outside world whom we see as vultures eager to steal our treasures. Happiness is fear and loathing of the human race; it is connection with others. Wealthy people tend to be unconnected. See page 114. I’m reminded of Citizen Kane.
5. Qataris have no taxation or representation so they feel disconnected from their own society. See pages 118 and 119.
6. Weiner equates Qataris’ sudden wealth to winning the lottery. Winning the lottery historically is connected with unhappiness and ruin. See pages 122-125: We adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure and then we have adapt to pleasure so that we have to spike the pleasure again. It’s like a cycle of addiction with nihilism, emptiness, and ruin being our final destination. I see this with my love of cars. We call this the “hedonic treadmill.”
7. We learn on pages 126 and 127 that there’s a gap between our rational intellect and our brain’s hard-wiring or “software.” Sadly, we’re programmed to chase after chimeras (BMWs, wealth, etc.) that don’t make us happy and we can’t even learn from our disappointment but continue to chase chimeras anyway. We are sadly at war with ourselves. We are at war with our Darwin Gene and our Empathy Gene. We need both but too much of one over the other results in ruin.
8. Some of us are addicted to sadness as it is suggest to Eric Weiner on page 127.
9. Qataris rely on foreign labor so they feel disconnected from their country. They are dependent on cheap foreign labor and are in a way helpless. Rich but helpless. No rules, no laws, no taxes, no work. Just unhappiness. A life with no boundaries always leads to despair and self-destruction. Ironically, a life with no boundaries is many Americans' definition of freedom. This is a perverted definition. Real freedom is based on boundaries. As a 13-year-old kid, I learned the joy of having a clean room, a condition that didn't materialize until my father issued threats toward me. Life became easier and full of well-being.
10. We know nothing. We think we’ll be happy from achievements and wealth (Hindu word is maya, which means illusion) and we feel pained by setbacks (Hindu word is mushkala, which means illusory loss). See page 139.
Part Two. What We Learn from Qatar: Excessive Wealth Makes Even Decent, Well-Intentioned People Become Unhappy
1. When we become wealthy, we understandably become distrustful of others who may feel tempted to take advantage of us, to use us for their gain. As a result, we close our circle and we become more and more disconnected from the world. Think of the film Citizen Kane.
2. This disconnectedness from the world and constant protectiveness makes us feel embattled, which in turn creates a permanent mask of skepticism. Without checks and balances, this skepticism of others’ motives can easily turn to paranoia, an obvious condition of unhappiness.
3. When we’re filthy rich, people no longer relate to us as people. They relate to us as sycophants. Other people’s compulsion to lavish us with praise and be generally obsequious gives us a false sense of grandiosity. We begin to believe we’re as great as people treat us resulting in an obnoxious, undeserved sense of entitlement. When we're surrounded by sycophants, we live in a bubble of our own unchallenged illusions and as a result we will go crazy.
4. When we’re filthy rich, it’s tempting to use our money and power to clean up our messes. We become more reckless in our behavior since we know our money can take care of our errant ways. Think of the recklessness and misery of Bill Murray playing Phil Connors in the classic film Groundhog Day. Or we can take a page from the news and look at Justin Bieber.
5. When we’re filthy rich, we’re compelled by normal human nature to experience “the best” and what we find is that our brains adapt to pleasure and excitement requiring more and more stimulation. The researchers calls this constant adaptation the “hedonic treadmill.” We constantly have to spike our pleasure before we adapt to it and then spike it forever and ever in a an endless cycle with us always losing the pleasure game, resulting in disappointment and frustration. And yes, unhappiness.
6. Like it or not, wealth is a drug both for the wealthy person and others who are intoxicated by the wealthy person’s aura of living on a superior, elevated plane. People who are infatuated by the This mutual wealthy and kiss their butt are called sycophants or toadies. Intoxication between the wealthy person and his or her admirers creates a sick symbiotic relationship based on fantasy, greed, and envy, components for miserable relationships.
7. It is human nature when we are rich to hire others to do everything for us. Over time we become helpless cripples dependent on our “help.” This, alas, is yet another cause of our unhappiness.
8. As human beings, we have a rational brain that knows wealth is dangerous and most often results in unhappiness but we also are hard-wired to pursue wealth no matter what our rational brain tells us. Understanding this conflict in ourselves and seeing our rational intellect being helpless to curb our irrational appetites, again, is another cause of our unhappiness.
Part Three. Unhappiness in Moldova
1. Envy: To resent others for having a better situation than yours. The unhappy cannot bear the sight of the happy. I only suffer from half-envy. I wish I could be like some people, but I don't hate them.
2. The human condition is one of contrast: Hot means nothing without cold. Mozart is enhanced by Barry Manilow. Happy places are more interesting because of unhappy ones. The darkest part of the planet is Moldovia. It is the least happy nation on the planet.
3. The body language is sour and bitter and this in turn makes people feel sour and bitter.
4. Natasha says “We have no money for life.” That is her reason, but Weiner doesn’t buy it because he’s visited other countries who in poverty don’t hold that attitude.
5. The male citizens are skinny; the male cops are fat and thuggish, a bad sign.
6. They’ve been beaten down into learned helplessness (see other lectures on this topic) The Moldovans say, “This is Moldova.” Or “What can I do?”
7. Moldovans compare themselves to the richer countries, not the poorer ones. So of course the glass is half empty.
8. The service industry is rude and this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of misery because you're turning off tourists, among other people.
9. There is no trust of anything, including their own people, and this results in nihilism.
10. The people are neither Russian nor Moldovan. They exist in a nether world of no identity or culture. “How can you feel good about yourself if you don’t know who you are?”
11. Their new “freedom” means nothing without jobs. They cannot afford to eat at McDonald’s.
12. Corruption and nepotism is rampant.
13. Men don’t care about their appearance because they’re outnumbered by the woman who wear raccoon makeup.
14. They are consumed by selfishness: “No este problema mea.” They can’t even recognize selfish altruism, which encourages reciprocity.
15. The Moldovans are fueled by schadenfreude; “They derive more pleasure from their neighbor’s failure than their own success.”
16. Scapegoat everything on “Perestroika.” When you scapegoat other source for your problems, your proclaiming your helplessness.
17. Envy accumulates like toxic waste.
18. There is no queuing, a sure sign of nihilism, anomie, and chaos.
19. They trust nothing: doctors under thirty-five, their own friends.
20. The once cheery American Peace Corps workers are becoming gloomy and depressed.
21. No one wants to be in Moldova, including Moldovans.
22. Helping professions score the highest in happiness surveys.
23. The Moldovans have thrown politeness and civility out the window. They say, “Give me that.” No please. In contrast, Japan emphasizes politeness. A common expression: “Gomen nasai.” I’m sorry.
24. Freedom has been reduced to a small number of people who have enough money to consume the growing selection of goods.
25. Moldovans haven’t used the golden rule of positive psychology: hedonic adaptation: No matter how severe our misfortune, we adapt. But this adaptation cannot occur in the absence of culture, living in a shadow of moral rot. They have never learned that social reciprocity results in happiness more than bitter selfishness, a condition they cling to with all their defiant strength. Moldova is a “fabricated nation.” It really does not exist.
26. Weiner concludes with “lessons gleaned from Moldova’s unhappiness”:
27. Lesson One: “Not my problem” is a mental illness, a condition of no empathy.
28. Lesson Two: Poverty is too often used as an excuse for unhappiness. Their reaction to poverty is worse than the poverty.
29. Lesson Three: A culture that belittles the value of trust and friendship and rewards mean-spiritedness and deceit cannot be happy.
Part Four.America Ranks Low on the Happiness Index. Why?
1. America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world but ranks low on happiness index. (23rd). Why? Some say we suffer from the “paradox of choice.” The more choices, the more we become anxious about making the “wrong choice”. Also more choices results in inflated expectations.
2. Abundance leads to restlessness. Again, think of the hedonic treadmill.
3. While Americans have enjoyed more abundance in general, they also work longer hours and have longer commute times, which result in unhappiness.
4. “The More Factor” is in many ways a curse. As we read in McMahon’s blog the Breakthrough Writer, the hunger for more generates a delusional fallacy, what McMahon calls “Either/Or.”
5. The hunger for More is in many ways instinctual. But as Tim Kasser observes in “Mixed Messages,” these instincts can go haywire, become inflated and actually work against us.
6. According to Laurence Shames’ essay “The More Factor,” Americans are misguided by the “presumption that America wouldkeep on booming—if not forever, then at least longer than it made sense to worry about.” But for all of our innovation and economic greatness, Laurence Shames laments that our materialistic excess has retarded our moral growth. As he writes. He opines that “Americans have been somewhat backward in adopting values, hopes, ambitions that have to do with things other than more.”
7. America encourages Darwinian competition, which results in isolation and paranoia. Our appetites for Darwinian competition are evidenced in the onslaught of “reality” TV shows like Survivor.
8. Darwinian competition has created a nation where pleasure has been reduced to schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other people’s failures.
9. The American Dream is living apart from the rest in a gated community, insulated with satellite TV, wireless Internet, techno-gadgets that keep us “connected” in the most unreal way. America is a good place to be lonely. People are not as lonely in other countries. Weiner points out that Latino cultures bring their family unity from other countries to America and that they rank higher than other Americans on the happiness index.
10. American consumerism is a religion that possessed most Americans and makes the shopping mall America’s Holy Temple. Of course, such worship traps consumers in the hedonic treadmill, leading to numbness and ennui.
Lesson on Logic and Logical Fallacies (adapted from Chapter 5 of Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Logic comes from the Greek word logos, meaning, word, thought, principle, or reason. Logic is concerned with the principles of correct reasoning.
Deductive reasoning starts with general premises and ends in specific conclusions. This process is expressed in a syllogism: major premise, minor premise, and conclusion.
Major Premise: All bald men should wear extra sunscreen on their bald head.
Minor Premise: Mr. X is a bald man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Mr. X should apply extra sunscreen.
A sound syllogism, one that is valid and true, must follow logically from the facts and be based on premises that are based on facts.
Major Premise: All state universities must accommodate disabled students.
Minor Premise: UCLA is a state university.
Conclusion: Therefore, UCLA must accommodate disabled students.
A syllogism can be valid without being true as we see in this example from Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War:
Bailey earns straight A’s.
Straight A’s are a sign of perfection.
But only God is perfect.
Can Bailey be God? Of course not.
Therefore, Bailey is a cheater and a liar.
In the above example it’s not true that the perfection of God is equivalent to the perfection of a straight-A student (faulty comparison, a logical fallacy). So while the syllogism is valid, following logically from one point to the next, it’s based on a deception or a falsehood; therefore, it is not true.
Syllogism with an Illogical Middle Term Is Invalid
Flawed logic occurs when the middle term has the same term in the major and minor premise but not in the conclusion.
Major Premise: All dogs are mammals.
Minor Premise: Some mammals are porpoises.
Conclusion: Therefore, some porpoises are dogs.
Syllogism with a Key Term Whose Meaning Shifts Cannot be Valid
Major Premise: Only man is capable of analytical reasoning.
Minor Premise: Anna is not a man.
Conclusion: Therefore, Anna is not capable of analytical reasoning.
The key term shift is “man,” which refers to “mankind,” not the male gender.
Syllogism with a Negative Premise
If either premise in a syllogism is negative, then the conclusion must also be negative. The following syllogism is not valid:
Major Premise: Only the Toyota Prius can go in the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW can drive in the fast-track lane.
If both premises are negative, the syllogism cannot have a valid conclusion:
Major Premise: The Toyota Prius cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Minor Premise: The BMW 4 series is not a Toyota Prius.
Conclusion: Therefore, the BMW cannot be denied entrance into the fast-track lane.
Enthymemes
An enthymeme is a syllogism with one or two parts of its argument—usually, the major premise—missing.
Robert has lied, so he cannot be trusted.
We’re missing the major premise:
Major Premise: People who lie cannot be trusted.
Minor Premise: Robert has lied.
Conclusion: Therefore, Robert cannot be trusted.
When writers or speakers use enthymemes, they are sometimes trying to hide the flaw of the first premise:
Major Premise: All countries governed by dictators should be invaded.
Minor Premise: North Korea is a country governed by a dictator.
Conclusion: Therefore, North Korea should be invaded.
The premise that all countries governed by dictators should be invaded is a gross generalization and can easily be shot down under close scrutiny.
Inductive Reasoning
Inductive reasoning begins with specific observations or evidence and moves to a general conclusion.
My Volvo was always in the shop. My neighbor’s Mini Cooper and BMW are always in the shop. My other neighbor’s Audi is in the shop.
Now my wife and I own a Honda and Nissan and those cars are never in the shop.
European cars cost more to maintain than Japanese cars and the empirical evidence and data support my claim.
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like a cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is every day foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
In a 500-word paragraph, explain in the context of Weiner's book how a misguided love of money results in unhappiness and how a healthy disdain for money results in integrity and a healthier, happier soul.
I will grade your paragraph on the quality and clarity of your topic sentence and your ability to draw information from no fewer than three chapters in the book.
In a 500-word paragraph, defend or refute the assertion that in many ways Jeff Henderson's struggle after he got out of prison was more difficult than the obstacles he faced while serving his prison sentence.
Your quiz will be graded on the clarity of your paragraph's topic sentence and your paragraph's supporting details. Also, your paragraph can only be successful as an argument, not as a summary.
Introduction: You might write a narrative about someone who suffered the rising/falling motif.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "Winter Dreams" is about the false hope and false rising of a man whose winter dreams descend him into a wasted, futile existence. You can can use the story for your intro (summarizing its major themes) if you don't have a personal interview.
Part of Redemption Is the Journey to the Dark Side or the Fall.
A common part of this darkness is a form of insanity called concupiscence.
We can define concupiscence as limitless, selfish desires that don't sate our appetites. To the contrary, the process of feeding our concupiscence only serves to make our desires greater than before. The result of concupiscence is insanity. For a recent example, we can look at Tiger Woods who is an example of concupiscence, which is the sum of temptation plus opportunity.
Some of us don't go completely insane in our quest to feed our desires. We mature, grow up, and join the adult world. Part of being an adult is knowing our limits in eating, spending, pleasure-seeking, etc.
In other words, being an adult is about conquering concupiscence.
When we mature and realize we must assert limits on ourselves, we often have an awakening to Existential Ache, the realization of two things:
One, we are not, as we once believed in childhood, the center of the universe.
Two, we come to realize that our desires will ALWAYS outstrip our capacity to satisfy them.
Failure to realize the latter principle of Existential Ache results in concupiscence, the futile struggle to appease our ever-growing appetites.
Concupiscence is stimulated by opportunity and imagination. We have the money to sate our appetites and we imagine the satisfaction of increasing our appetites while finding the necessary resources to satisfy those freshly honed desires.
Example of concupiscence:
A businessman travels frequently to Miami where he frequents a swanky club. The club's outer rim terrace is cluttered with women of the most exquistite beauty and pulchritude. But inside, it is rumored, in the VIP suite, the women are even more beautiful than the one's visible on the outside plaza. So the businessman pays the handsome fee to become a VIP and comforts himself with the thought that he, as an exclusive club member, has access to Miami's most lovely women.
Wrong. Rumors abound that there is an inner chamber, requiring a surreptious descent down a trap door, where the women are even more outrageously beautiful than in the VIP room. Our troubled businessman pays the bouncer $500 and is escorted through the trapdoor where, once again, he is comforted with the belief that he has access to Miami's most beautiful women.
Wrong. Rumors abound about another trapdoor leading to a chamber of even more rarified beauties and another and another until the businessman collapses with the despair that Miami's most beautiful women will elude him forever. He shrinks with anguish, forgoes all interests and passions, and spends the rest of his life languishing in self-pity.
This is the story of concupiscence.
And it is the story of Jeff Henderson before he "falls" in prison where his opportunities to fuel his concupiscence have all but ended.
One. Concupiscence and Its Causes
1. Concupiscence is the search for happiness based on gratifying pleasure and ego without a moral compass. The result is moral dissolution, a fancy term for the loss of morality and sanity. Tennessee Williams became famous after writing the play A Streetcar Named Desire and lived in a fancy hotel where he had room service and escorts visit him every day. One evening he poured gravy over his banana split and realized he had become insane. He left the hotel, went to Mexico and resumed with his writing career.
2. Concupiscence is the pursuit of happiness without a moral compass; in other words, you have no vision of anything beyond gratifying your base appetites and therefore have a misguided definition of happiness.
3. When you have no vision beyond your base appetites, you are what we call “Bread and Circus,” which means all you desire is food and entertainment.
4. Concupiscence compels you to feed your irrational appetites, which wage war against your powers of reason. For example, one of my students knows a guy who lives in expensive Brentwood and drives a BMW but he has to eat his sister’s government cheese and other handouts because he has no money for food. That’s not a reasonable situation.
5. Concupiscence grows inside us when we have role models without a moral compass. In Jeff Henderson’s case, he sees all the major “players,” like T-Row, glory in the life of concupiscence.
6. Concupiscence grows inside us from the anger that is born from having a sense of deprivation: “I’m gonna get mine.”
7. The writer Jonathan Franzen gives concupiscence another name, Ache: Being overwhelmed by desires that always outrun our capacity to fulfill them.
8. Another cause behind concupiscence is vanity, also called the libido ostentandi: The need to show off. A rich woman in Argentina, a landlady, wears a body length mink coat at an outdoor bazaar where the temperature is 105 degrees. She wants everyone to know she is of a higher stature. She passes out and dies of heat stroke.
Another example: A student wrote an essay about his friend who, buying a BMW 5 series, had to work 2 jobs and drop out of El Camino College. The misguided young man’s didn’t know how depressed he was when he realized all his friends, the people who would be impressed with his BMW, could not see it since they were attending college. One day this BMW owner made a special trip to the college and yelled to his buddies to come look at his car but they had to go to his class and my student’s final vision of his friend was screaming from his BMW on the Crenshaw parking lot for someone to check out his car. No one cared.
9. As I said before, concupiscence is the result of temptation plus opportunity. Jeff Henderson had both.
Two. Concupiscence and Its Effects: Moral Dissolution
1. If concupiscence goes its full course, we arrive at a condition of moral dissolution like Tennessee Williams mentioned above. Here’s another example: A man cheats on his girlfriend or wife once and feels the searing pain from his conscience. He cheats on her 1,000 times and feels nothing because his conscience has decomposed into what we call moral dissolution. In other words, he’s lost his soul.
2. Another word for moral dissolution is debauchery, which means the moral pillars that hold up your morality have fallen and your morality has fallen with them.
3. Ennui; you’ve filled your senses with so much pleasure that you can no longer feel anything. You have become incurably numb to life and now must suffer the desperation of needing to feel anything, no matter what the cost. This process is also called the “hedonic treadmill” in which you constantly have to spike the pleasure quotient before you adapt to the pleasure, become numb to it and have to spike the pleasure again. This cycle goes on and on with you always losing.
4. Nihilism; the death of meaning. There is no right or wrong. Life has no meaning. The world is merely a playground for your desires. The world is a giant margarita glass and you suck on the straw, slurp every last drop and then die. Hedonism always ends in nihilism.
Three. In addition to concupiscence, Jeff Henderson becomes a victim of his own success. One of the memoir’s major themes is that misguided success can be a great misfortune leading to insanity.
1. One of the major themes in Cooked is that in life when we think we’re rising, we’re actually falling. Henderson's redemption is not born from his rise to wealth but during his fall in prison.
2. The problem with success is that most of us have a misguided definition of it. If success is based on concupiscence, then the “success” we achieve will drive us insane.
3. Another problem with success is that it creates the illusion of invincibility. The more successful Henderson’s drug operation becomes, for example, the more safe he feels. He believes he is “untouchable.”
4. When we feel invincible we go into denial. For example, Henderson minimizes, to his detriment, his drug dealer associations, some of whom will be kidnapped and killed. He also underestimates the stupidity and back-stabbing nature of another one, which will result in his demise. Finally, Henderson is in denial about the feds’ suspicions regarding Henderson’s covert drug operations. The feds arrest him without even catching Henderson with any drugs at all because they have a long list of records, phone conversations, ancillary transactions, witness testimony, etc.
5. Another form of denial is moral denial. Henderson rationalizes that he is a drug dealer but he does so “strictly as a businessman.” He’s not about violence, taking drugs, or hanging out with gang bangers. But the fact of the matter is his operations are harmful, a painful fact he doesn’t realize until he’s in prison.
6. When our success generates easy money, we go insane because suddenly we lose our sense of value and hard work and our sense of goals. We live in Another Universe, one that most people don’t live in. The films City of God and Goodfellas illustrate this point.
7. When money is easy for us and we see the rest of the world “getting punked,” being forced to do real work to make their money, we start to feel so superior to the rest of humanity that we think we’re gods. We think this to our own detriment.
Review of when we think we're rising we're really falling:
One. Concupiscence
Two. Moral dissolution
Three. Misguided definition of success divorced from a moral code
Four. Denial
Five. Illusion of invincibility
Six. Insanity resulting from living a bubble of sycophants
Common Grammar Errors: Pronouns
Types of Pronoun Errors
Indefinite Pronoun is singular
Everyone with a ticket can take their passport to the front of the train.
Because "everyone" is singular, we can't use the pronoun "their."
Pronoun Number Error
The student without an MLA format on their paper will lose two grades.
"Student" is singular and does not agree with "their."
Pronoun Should be Object, Not Subject
Between you and I, there is too much sugar in this peanut butter pie.
The object of the preposition "between" must be just that, an object, so "I" must be changed to "me."
She gave the BMW to my wife and I.
The object of "gave" must be just that, an object, so "I" should be "me."
Pronoun Point of View Consistency
we, you, one, he/she/ they
We must wonder if we are on the right subject when you find a different thesis in the third paragraph.
The pronoun "we" cannot change randomly to "you" or any other pronoun shift.
Vague Pronoun Reference
Although the BMW hit the telephone pole, it was not damaged.
Rewrite each sentence below so that you’ve corrected the pronoun errors.
One. Between you and I, there are too many all-you-can-eat buffets mushrooming over southern California because a person thinks they’re getting a good deal when we can eat endless plates food for a mere ten dollars.
Two. When children grow up eating at buffets, they expand their bellies and sometimes you find you cannot get “full” no matter how much we eat.
Three. As thousands of children gorged on pastrami at HomeTown Buffet, you could tell we would have to address the needs of a lot of sick children.
Four. Although I like the idea of eating all I want, you can sense that there is danger in this unlimited eating mentality that can escort us down the path of gluttony and predispose you to diabetes.
Five. When a customer feels he’s getting all the food they want, you know we can increase your business.
Six. If a student studies the correct MLA format, you can expect academic success.
Seven. It’s not easy for instructors to keep their students’ attention for a three-hour lecture. He or she must mix up the class-time with lecture, discussion, and in-class exercises.
Eight. It is good for a student to read the assigned text at least three times. When they do, they develop better reading comprehension.
Nine. The instructor gave the essays back to Bob and I.
Ten. We must find meaning to overcome the existential vacuum. Otherwise, you will descend into a rabbit hole of despair and they will find themselves behaving in all manners of self-destruction.
A Student Who Disagrees with McMahon About the Alleged Connection Between Happiness and Morality
McMahon has asked us to write an argument in favor for or against the idea that there is an inextricable connection between happiness and morality. I find Professor McMahon’s question evidence that he is a fossil from that musty Dinosaur Age, who has come to class eager to lecture us young folk on the inevitable happiness that will result from a life of virtue and we should heed his wisdom unless we want to fall into the abyss of self-indulgence and moral dissolution.
In fact, though, to preach to the young generation about the link between happiness and morality is to be grossly out of touch with the struggles we young people face, for we are a people who must struggle with more basic human life questions than luxuriate in the inquiries of happiness and morality. We must focus, not on happiness and morality, but on Darwinian survival in a world where college costs are two thousand percent higher than when McMahon went to college. We are a people who must face the prospect of getting out of college mired in college debts of tens of thousands of dollars with job prospects that are mostly the kind that don’t require a college degree at all and that are so under-paying as to provide feeble fare to pay off our colossal debts.
Our generation is not a people concerned with happiness and morality. Rather we are a people focused on inevitable sacrifice of our future funds for the slim hope of getting a decent job; we are a people focused on living in an economy that makes home buying impossible but also doubles the insult by making rentals more expensive than home ownership; we are a people whose earnings and tax revenues are not accruing for our benefit but for baby boomers like McMahon who will enjoy their lavish retirements on our hard-fought dollars. In other words, discussions about happiness and morality make for entertaining diversions for middle-aged suburbanites like McMahon and his ilk; however, these intellectual forays for college students are both absurd and insulting. Next writing assignment, please.
Definition Through Negation: What Happiness Is Not
1. Gloating
2. Vindication
3. Hedonism
4. Spite (the best revenge is happiness)
5. Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the failure and misery of others
(only discuss if there wasn't time to do this in Lesson 1)
Are you a nihilist, that is to say, do you believe that happiness and meaning are impossible? Rodney Dangerfield, centripetal, centrifugal motion, movies rely on centrifugal narrative.
Do you believe in meaning (there is a connection between people who have meaning and who say they are happy) and if so what is your meaning?
Is your happiness the byproduct of having meaning or something else such as vanity, wealth, popularity?
Is your life full of false or real necessities?
Do you have a sense of belonging? Explain.
Are your pursuits the result of inner choices or are you bowing down to parental and societal pressure and in essence being a conformist?
Do you have a passion that takes you out of yourself or are you constantly self-centered?
Do you respond to suffering and loss with courage and dignity or are you a sniveling whiner?
Are you waiting around for people to love you? Here's the news: No one will EVER love you. You have to get off your duff and love others first. Only then will they love you.
You can't be enthralled by your personal problems, believing your problems are special and unique. If you can't see that your problems are the same as everyone else's and thus are universal, you're doomed to be a miserable narcissist.
Happiness in Switzerland
1. The Swiss rank high on the HI. They rank higher than their neighbors, the French and the Italians. They are more reserved, less volatile. Less volatility always contributes to more happiness. Volatility is a form of emotional drama and the inevitable end of emotional drama is the great crash. Your emotions burn out and you've got nowhere to go but down.
2. Some words used to describe the Swiss: Punctual, efficient, wealthy, clean, humorless, laconic, circumspect, civil, clean (some of the cleanest toilets in the world), austere. Taciturn (quiet), reticent (reserved), demure (shy), insouciant (doing something difficult without a fuss with a nonchalant flair). This is called the quality of insouciance.
3. One cause of Swiss happiness: They quell the impulse for envy. This means there are rules: No bragging, especially about how much money you make. Flashing your money in Switzerland is a sign of poverty. One trait is frowned upon in Swiss culture: braggadocio, the compulsion for self-aggrandizement, flapping your wings like the alpha condor and letting the world know you're the Apex Predator. That's an American trait.
4. The Swiss are even keeled. Eric Weiner calls this boredom. But research supports the Swiss: Better to live in the middle range than to have highs and lows. Volatility does not lead to happiness. Having a steely reserve is far better in the long-run. My daughter Natalie is willful, stubborn, and prone to grouchiness but overall she is emotionally steady. Her sister Julia has higher outbursts of joy but she also has more ear-crushing hissy fits. My wife and I live in fear of Julia's tantrums.
5. In the seventeenth century in Basel, there was a prohibition against public laughter. Now there is no need for such a law because the people have internalized the desire to repress their emotions and this has led to increased happiness. Again, this is very un-American. Americans are for huge emotional displays to the point of exhibitionism of their emotional dramas on reality TV shows.
6. For the Swiss, joy comes from nature, the Pastoral, the Alps. For Americans, joy comes from gadgets.
7. Slovenly hedonists, those who seek self-indulgent pleasures, would prefer Denmark; anal-retentive prudes would prefer Switzerland. I know which country I would prefer. I would feel more comfortable living in a culture that helps me impede my indulgent behavior. That would be Switzerland.
8. The Swiss are fond of rules: For example, it’s illegal to flush your toilet after 10 P.M.
9. Switzerland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. One possible reason: Being around happy people makes our own unhappiness even more unbearable.
10. The Swiss have a high degree of trust for one another.
11. The Swiss have a lot of patience. And they are affluent.
12. The Swiss consume high quantities of high-quality chocolate and there is a connection between chocolate and happy brain chemicals.
What is envy and why is it dangerous?
Envy is the resentment and bitterness we have when we perceive that others have a better situation than ours.
Or perhaps we could define envy this way:
Envy is when we're addicted to the belief that others have better, more exciting, more fulfilling lives than our own because, firstly, we want to believe that such a better life exists and, secondly, feeling we suffer more than others gives us ample opportunity for indulging in the narcissistic deliciousness of self-pity.
The causes of envy are the following:
1. a sense of entitlement; we see others bathing in the glory of their sick materialistic muscle flexing like the TV show Cribs and we feel resentful if we can't have the same things.
2. the Darwinian competition gene; it's in our DNA to dominate others. That's why we like to be the first car at a stop light and we will swerve into the empty lane even at a red light. This is why fights break out at Costco and Christmas sales.
3. narcissism, which compels us to seek more glory and attention than others
4. immaturity; having nothing to define ourselves other than our things.
5. empty life, void of love, friendship, and meaningful work
6. Also some cultures breed envy more than others. A culture, like the United States’, that encourages bragging, ostentation, and bling will stir envy. A culture like Switzerland’s, that encourages modesty and privacy will discourage envy.
The effects of envy are the following:
1. growing obsession with those we perceive to enjoy life more than us resulting in our conniving plots to accelerate their demise
2. all-consuming bitterness, which leads to self-loathing
3. self-pity
4. in extreme cases criminality. “I’m gonna get mine” becomes the impetus for doing "whatever it takes."
Twelve Common Fallacies or Misguided Notions About Happiness
1. Happiness Quest Fallacy: Happiness can be attained by searching for it. In fact, the search for happiness is usually a self-centered, selfish enterprise and is therefore doomed to create even more unhappiness. Most people who seek gurus, psychotherapists, life coaches, self-help books will inevitably find their lives in more ruin and despair than before.
2. Dominance Fallacy: Happiness can be achieved through Darwinian dominance over others, such as making yourself better looking than others and accruing “better” things, will make you happy. In fact, exercising your impulse for Darwinian dominance, focusing on self-aggrandizement and ostentation, and turning your life into one big boasting session, and animating all your talk with “look-what-I-got” braggadocio makes you obnoxious and therefore lonely and loneliness is a clear indicator for unhappiness.
3. Chimera Fallacy: Most of your cravings and longings are for what you believe will make you happy are not focused on reality at all but on a chimera, an idealized phantasmagoric representation of life that entices and tantalizes you, but at the same time always eludes your acquisition. In other words, you are often in love with the idea of life more than life itself. You are more in love with the idea of certain car, or the idea of marriage, the idea of home ownership, or the “perfect” body than the realities, which in comparison are always banal, corrupt, grotesque version of the ideal that animates your imagination. Related to the Chimera Fallacy is the Pulchritudinous Fallacy, which states you can not be happy and worthy of love until your body is stunning, beautiful, perfect and embodies the word pulchritude.
4. Perfection Fallacy (perfection is a chimera, see above): The fallacy of perfection says you cannot be happy unless you have the perfect body, the perfect car, the perfect job, the perfect spouse, the perfect house, the perfect wardrobe, etc. No perfection can be obtained and the process of trying to attain this perfection makes your anal-retentive (or is it the other way around?) and therefore obnoxious and repellant. Further, this perfection quest makes you afraid to live because you fear subjecting your perfect things to real life will ruin them. Thus you cover your furniture in plastic and keep your cars garaged. Your house is more like a mausoleums or museum than it is a real house. Your life is a stage to others and yourself.
5. Pulchritudinous Fallacy: I won’t be happy unless people love me and no one will love me unless I am the embodiment of pulchritude, exquisite, rarified beauty. Please see Jon Hamm in episode of 30 Rock in which he plays someone of pulchritude and tell me if he’s happy.
6. Hedonistic Fallacy: The fallacy of hedonism states you cannot be happy unless you are always augmenting your pleasure. To live is to experience pleasure, or so says the hedonist, until he finds that his pleasure quest becomes an obsession and an addiction and that his numbness to stimulation compels him to inflate his hedonistic stimulators to greater and more dangerous levels. The final outcome of hedonism is always nihilism, the sense that life means nothing, addiction, emptiness, numbness, and boredom.
7. Effortless Fallacy. This fallacy says you cannot be happy unless your life is completely absent of conflict. You no longer have problems, conflicts or crises to deal with. Life with all its responsibilities can be such an inconvenience, after all, and therefore you cannot be happy until you relieve yourselves of these inconveniences. Of course, in doing so we retreat from life itself and regress back to the Womb, the state of Unconscious Slumber (through drugs, alcohol, TV?) and find that we have become spiritually dead.
8. Narcissistic Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you persuade the whole world that you’re not only right about things but that your lifestyle (the way you eat, dress, your musical tastes, etc) is so superior to everyone else’s that the whole world should conform to your ways or at the very least aspire to be like you.
9. Spiteful Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you have exacted revenge. Someone has wronged you and you cannot find satisfaction in your soul until you spite this offender. Your desire to spite the person is so obsessive that you’re willing to “bite your nose to spite their face.” Your spite will blacken your heart and eventually kill you.
10. Vindication Fallacy: You cannot be happy unless you prove to your ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend that you are “a winner” and “were the one” and that they “blew it” by dumping you. Or you must prove to a parent or an authority figure that they were egregiously mistaken to predict that you would fail in life. Your whole existence is centered around going back to your ex or your parent and rubbing their nose in your “success.” Of course, you’re acting like a petty egotist and petty egotism evidences woeful unhappiness.
11. Intellectual Fallacy: This chimera (see above) states that you cannot be happy until you’re worthy of others’ admiration and love through intellectual prowess. Through your extensive research, you become the “highest authority” on some subject or other or you are simply plain smart and you therefore deserve the admiration, love, and respect of others. You may feel that your happiness is contingent on a PhD or the publication of a book or a guest spot on CNN or some such nonsense. In fact, intellectual pride will only make you obnoxious, lonely, and therefore unhappy.
12. Melancholy Fallacy: You can’t be “deep” and “soulful” unless you’re sad, melancholy, constantly afflicted with Weltschmerz (sadness for the world). This fallacy speaks to a certain type of self-aggrandizement which compels you to take yourself too seriously and as such see yourself as “deeper” than others.
Important Chapter Notes:
Most important chapters for unhappiness are the following:
Chapter 6. Moldova
Chapter 4. Qatar
Most important chapters for happiness are the following:
5. Iceland
7. Thailand
3. Bhutan
2. Switzerland
Example of an "A" Introduction
I was sixteen in the summer of 1978. The past few months had been tough. My parents separated, and eventually divorced, and my grandmother had just died of leukemia at the age of sixty-four. It was decided I’d spend the summer with my grandfather in San Pedro. He was working for his friend, Forbes, in Carson. Forbes owned a machine shop and my grandfather and I would load and deliver parts in a flatbed truck to industrial centers and ports around Los Angeles. I hated the work. Long back-busting days starting at six and ending around four after which I’d drag myself to the YMCA to workout. I’d come home and go straight to sleep, knowing the monotony would be repeated all over again.
I remember one night in particular as I tossed and turned on the pull-out couch, I thought to myself: “So this is what’s it’s going to be like after I get out of school. A full-time job. Misery day in and day out. And for what? So I can go home, catch a workout, steal a little dinner before bedtime, and then go to sleep so I’ll have enough energy to drag myself through the same drudgery the next day? And for what? Nothing, that’s what. Life is shit.” In my mind, all jobs were the same, more or less. You had to show up, you had responsibilities, and you were essentially doing something you didn’t want to do. So at the age of sixteen I had found the truth of existence: Life is shit.
And here I am many years later trying to teach The Geography of Bliss, while tossing pearls of wisdom to my students so that they can find happiness, but I am hardly worthy of teaching a book about happiness because at my very core I am, and always have been, a cynic and a nihilist. Even more disturbing, I am a married man with twin girls. A man entrenched in such a cynical attitude is not a pleasant personality for his wife and two daughters to wake up to every day. What’s the cure for such an attitude? Hopefully, in addition to teaching the students, I can learn something myself about the wisdom of the world's happiest cultures, a wisdom that rejects the fallacies of happiness. These fallacies include ___________, ______________, ______________, and __________________.
Lesson for Rhetorical Analysis (Chapter 4 from Practical Argument, Second Edition)
Rhetoric refers to “how various elements work together to form a convincing and persuasive argument” (90).
“When you write a rhetorical analysis, you examine the strategies a writer employs to achieve his or her purpose. In the process, you explain how these strategies work together to create an effective (or ineffective) argument.”
To write a rhetorical analysis, you must consider the following:
The argument’s rhetorical situation
The writer’s means of persuasion
The writer’s rhetorical strategies
The rhetorical situation is the writer, the writer’s purpose, the writer’s audience, the topic, and the context.
We analyze the rhetorical situation by doing the following:
Read the title’s subtitle, if there is one.
Look at the essay’s headnote for information about the writer, the issue being discussed, and the essay structure.
Look for clues within the essay such as words or phrases that provide information about the writer’s preconceptions. Historical or cultural references can indicate what ideas or information the writer expects readers to have.
Do a Web search to get information about the writer.
Example of How the Rhetorical Situation Gives Us Greater Understanding About the Text
I came across a book about the alleged limitations of alternative energy only to find that the author is paid by the oil industry to write his books.
I came across a book by an author who writes about nutrition and I learned that his findings were contradicted by new research, which the writer did not address because the research refuted his book’s main premise and the publisher had already paid him a .75 million-dollar advance.
I came across a book that refuted the health claims of veganism only to find that the author blamed her severe health problems on a twenty-year vegan diet. This last example could hurt or help the argument depending on how the argument is documented. Was the author showing a strong causal relationship between her illness and her vegan diet? Or was her connection correlational?
When we examine the writer, we ask the following:
What is the writer’s background? Does he work for a think tank that is of a particular political persuasion? Is he being paid by a lobbyist or corporation to regurgitate their opinions?
How does the writer’s background affect the argument’s content?
What preconceptions about the subject does the writer seem to have?
When we analyze the writer’s purpose, we ask the following:
Does the writer state his or her purpose directly or is the purpose implied?
Is the writer’s purpose simply to convince or to encourage action?
Does the writer rely primarily on logic or on emotion?
Does the writer have a hidden agenda?
How does the author use logos, pathos, and ethos to put the argument together?
When we analyze the writer’s audience, we ask the following:
Who is the writer’s intended audience?
Does the writer see the audience as informed or uninformed?
Does the writer see the audience as hostile, friendly, or neutral?
What values does the writer think the audience holds?
On what points do the writer and the audience agree? On what points do they disagree?
Consider the Author’s Stylistic Techniques
Simile: A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.
Example: “We must not educate the masses because education is like a great flame and the hordes of people are like moths that will fly into the flames at their own peril.”
In the above example “like a great flame” is a simile.
“Gorging on plate after plate of chicken fried steak at HomeTown Buffet, I felt like Jonah lost in the belly of a giant, dyspeptic whale on the verge of spitting me back into the throng of angry people.”
Metaphor: A metaphor is a comparison in which two dissimilar things are compared without the word like or as. “We must educate the masses to protect them from the disease of ignorance.”
Allusion: An allusion (not to be confused with illusion) is a reference within a work to a person, literary or biblical text, or historical event in order to enlarge the context of the situation being written about.
“Even though I am not a religious man, I would agree with Jesus who said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven, which is why rich people are in general against the minimum wage and the social and economic justice a healthy minimum wage exacts upon our society.”
Parallelism: Parallelism is the use of similar grammatical structures to emphasize related ideas and make passages easier to follow.
“Failure to get your college education will make you languish in the abyss of ignorance, weep in the chasm of unemployment, and wallow in the crater of self-abnegation.”
Repetition: Intentional repetition involves repeating a word or phrase for emphasis, clarity, or emotional impact (pathos).
“Are you able to accept the blows of not having a college education? Are you able to accept the shock of a low-paying job? Are you able to accept the disgrace of living on life’s margins?”
Rhetorical questions: A rhetorical question is a question that is asked to encourage readers to reflect on an issue, not to elicit a reply.
“How can you remain on the outside of college when all that remains is for you to walk through those open gates? How can you let an opportunity as golden as a college education pass you by when the consequences are so devastating?”
McMahon Grammar Exercise: Identifying Phrases, Independent Clauses, and Dependent Clauses
Identify the group of words in bold type as phrase, independent clause, or dependent clause.
One. Toward the monster’s palace, we see a white marble fountain jettisoning chocolate fudge all over the other giants.
Two. Before going to school, Gerard likes to make sure he’s packed his chocolate chip cookies and bagels.
Three. Because Jack’s love of eating pizza every night cannot be stopped, he finds his cardio workouts to be rather worthless.
Four. Maria finds the Lexus preferable to the BMW because of the Lexus’ lower repair costs.
Five. Greg does not drive at night because he suffers from poor nocturnal eyesight.
Six. Whenever Greg drives past HomeTown Buffet, he is overcome with depression and nausea.
Seven. People who eat at Cinnabon, according to Louis C.K., always look miserable over their poor life decisions.
Eight. After eating at Cinnabon and HomeTown Buffet, Gary has to eat a bottle of antacids.
Nine. Towards the end of the date, Gary decided to ask Maria if she’d care for another visit to HomeTown Buffet.
Ten. Whenever Maria is in the presence of a gluttonous gentleman, she withdraws into her shell.
Eleven. Greg watched Maria recoil into her shell while biting her nails.
Twelve. Greg watched Maria recoil into her private universe while she bit her nails.
Thirteen. Eating at all-you-can-eat buffets will expand the circumference of your waistline.
Fourteen. Larding your essay with grammatical errors will result in a low grade.
Fifteen. My favorite pastime is larding my essay with grammatical errors.
Sixteen. Larding my body with chocolate chunk peanut butter cookies followed by several gallons of milk, I wondered if I should skip dinner that evening.
Seventeen. After contemplating the benefits of going on a variation of the Paleo diet, I decided I was at peace being a fat man with a strong resemblance to the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
Eighteen. In the 1970s few people would consider eating bugs as their main source of protein although today world-wide food shortages have compelled a far greater percentage of the human race to entertain this unpleasant possibility.
Nineteen. Because of increased shortages in worldwide animal protein, more and more people are looking to crickets, grasshoppers, and grubs as possible complete protein amino acid alternatives.
Twenty. The percentage of people getting married in recent years has significantly declined as an economic malaise has deflated confidence in the viability of sustaining a long-term marriage.
Twenty-one. Before you decide to marry someone, consider two things: your temperament and your economic prospects.
Twenty-two. To understand the pitfalls of getting married prematurely is to embark on the road to greater wisdom.
Twenty-three. To know me is to love me.
Twenty-four. To languish in the malignant juices of self-pity after breaking up with your girlfriend is to fall down the rabbit hole of moral dissolution and narcissism.
Twenty-five. Having considered the inevitable disappointment of being rich, I decided not to rob a bank.
Twenty-six. Watching TV on a sticky vinyl sofa all day, I noticed I was developing bedsores.
Twenty-seven. While I watched TV for twenty consecutive hours, I began to wonder if life was passing me by.
Twenty-eight. Under the bridge where a swarm of mosquitos gathered, the giant belched.
