Lesson #1: Essay Assignment, Introduction and Chapter 1: Netherlands
Sample essay question from last semester:
George Washington famously wrote, “Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” Develop a thesis that argues that The Geography of Bliss contains implicit, sometimes explicit, links between happiness and moral development and likewise links between misery and moral decay. In other words, there is a correlation between happiness and moral development.
Typed Essay Assignment
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.
For your first typed essay, you will be asked to use no fewer than 3 sources and show the ability to use signal phrases and in-text quotations for your MLA Works Cited page.
Some Mythologies of Happiness
Some Common Fallacies About Happiness We'll Explore
1. You can't try to be happy because happiness is the byproduct of a meaningful, purpose-filled life. If your "purpose" is to have happy, meaning a life of pleasure and vanity, that shallow purpose will doom you to misery.
2. Related to the above, you must have a mature definition of happiness. If you seek to be happy and by that you mean ego gratification, power, drunken giggling, teenage sensuality fantasies, hedonistic pleasure and material wealth, you'll find yourself on a treadmill that leads to despair. A mature definition is based on connection with others and self-interested altruism.
3. Happiness cannot be found in isolation. You need to connect to others.It's a sad fact. Other people are hell. We can't live with them, but we can't live without them. Rich people tend to be unhappy because they're isolated and they're surrounded by sycophants and suffer from The Sycophant Effect.
4. The search for happiness is intrinsically a selfish, immature impulse and therefore doomed to fail from the very start.Look back at Rule #1.
5. Getting a "free ride" will never make you happy. Instead, you will rely on the source of your income, become an emotional cripple, and suffer from learned helplessness. And yet many of us fantasize about getting a "free ride."
6. Even though all of us, or most of us, know intellectually that money is not a source of happiness, most of us say, "Screw it" and go for the money anyway, committing ourselves to a life of greed, avarice, and rapacity and thus sealing ourselves into a life of unhappiness.
7. Happiness should never be looked at as an absolute. Rather it is relative to our specific situation. For example, if you're starving a cup of lima beans is a source of joy. If you're rich, a cup of lima beans is not a source of joy.
8. If happiness can be found at all, it cannot materialize unless we have, as Freud said, love and work.
9. We need a massive re-evaluation of our lives. Often times when we think we're miserable, we're actually working toward being happy; and when we think we're happy, we're actually working toward being miserable. Or put another way: When we think we're falling in life, we're really rising; and when we think we're rising, we're actually falling.
This means you suffer from some massive failure, humiliation, or rejection that forces you to re-evaluate who you are and in the process you change your life, for better or worse, forever.
A girl dumps you, gets a new boyfriend and brags that her life is better. She looks better, she has a better job, the air that she breathes is better, food tastes better. Everything is better AFTER YOU, her time of misery. Then she marries this dude. Then she divorces him. So everything she said, even though she herself believed it, was BS and you wanted to kill yourself. You have been humiliated, but now you realize people talk a lot of BS and now you're slow to believe things; you're skeptical. Now whenever anyone says something, about how bad or good you are, your response is "Is that so?"
10. Some people have lower standards for happiness than others. The dumber you are, the easier it is to be happy. The smarter you are, the more difficult it is. Dumb people lack the imagination to see the possibility of a "better world" to aspire to; in contrast, the smart person can imagine this "better world" and the longing for this improved existence, this understanding that such an existence has not materialized, leads to unhappiness.
Dumb people are ignorant and ignorance breeds bliss.
In contrast, smart people think a lot and the more you think, the more unhappy you will be. Over-thinking leads to unhappiness.
Dumb people don't suffer from over-thinking so they tend to be happier than smart people.
11. Know where happy people go. Don't go to Angry People Places like clubs where fights ensue. The bar of anger is too low because clubbers tend to be immature. A shoulder clip could result in death.
Different cultures in America have different attitude toward anger. I'm from San Francisco where a shoulder clip would result in ice. My friend is from New Jersey where a shoulder clip is "disrespect."
12. Don't confuse real happiness with a dopamine buzz. Show the students the concentric circles of dopamine pleasure. Show the inner circle, the golden nugget, where things get dangerous with food, cars, watches, alcohol, etc.
A dopamine buzz is your experience but it's inside the prison of yourself. Happiness, we read in Iceland and other chapters, is connecting with others.
13. The more you think about your life, especially where you're heading and "what it all means," the more miserable you will become. All my life I have been pensive, which means I think a lot.
Writing an Effective Introduction
One. Should transition to your thesis statement.
Two. Should establish your passion for your subject.
Three. Should show your ability to connect abstract ideas to real life situations.
Four. Should pique your reader's interest.
Five. Should show someone in an extreme situation.
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 __________________.
Happiness Test
- 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 they're special and unique. If you can't see that your problems are everyone else's and thus are universal, you're doomed to be a miserable narcissist.
Study Questions from Chapter One.
1. Why is happiness a moral imperative?
We’re so programmed to have the drive to“be happy,” whatever that means, and we suffer “the unhappiness of not being happy,” says Darrin McMahon. We seem to be hardwired with the nagging sense that “something isn’t quite right” and we want to make things right.
Sometimes our efforts to make us happy are misguided and backfire. Like we obsess over things we don't really need and once we get it we don't even like it. The writer Jim Harrison put it this way: "We piss away our lives on nonsense."
That is a serious danger. It seems, then, that our attempts to get rid of the nagging sense that things are not right makes things MORE WRONG. That's the nature of the human beast. For example, a rich woman in Argentina died of heat exhaustion while showing off her body-length mink coat in the bloom of summer.
2. What is solipsism and why can’t we define happiness in terms of solipsism?
Happiness is not solipsism or something “inside.” Solipsism is an extreme form of self-centeredness in which you are the only universe. A universe of one. Happiness is the intersection between the inside and the outside; hence the geographical and cultural location is a huge factor. “You can’t have what’s in here unless you have what is out there.” Solipsism is the idea of happiness born from the juvenile and the adolescent who thinks, "I will retire on an island with a crate of Corona and lots of whatever."
For Weiner, happiness isn't found in solitude but in culture, family, etc.
3. Why does the author travel the world in search of happiness?
Because one idea of happiness is about the search for Paradise on Earth. Happiness is not just on the inside. It’s a function of place. The cultural values influence the degree of happiness. The more selfish a culture, we learn, the less happy that culture is.
4. What is the paradox of seeking happiness according to Eric Hoffer?
The search for happiness leads to unhappiness. And we might add that Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search for Meaning that it is absurd to look for happiness. Happiness is the natural byproduct of a meaningful life. In other words, people who are engaged with their work and the love of their life are not centered on the self (remember solipsism) and they experience a certain degree of liberation.
5. Is hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good, a legitimate way to find happiness? Or put it this way: Is pleasure the same as happiness?
You might want to watch an episode of The Twilight Zone in which a robber dies and thinks he goes to heaven, a place that indulges all his fleshly caprices.
You might also consider Tennessee Williams after he became famous and lived in a luxury hotel. Hedonism always dissolves into solipsism.
You will find that Weiner did not find one culture that was happy based on the principle of wealth and pleasure.
6. Must hedonism (the pursuit of pleasure) always end in concupiscence, the blind pursuit of pleasure leading to insatiable desires, or can we be moderate in our hedonistic drive?
Some people are more capable of moderation than others. Some of us are more prone to addictive, obsessive, excessive behavior and relate to food, alcohol, TV, to name a few examples, in an all or nothing fashion. Hedonism always traps us on the hedonic treadmill. We adapt to pleasure and increase the spike but adapt to it again and again. The end result in numbing.
7. Can and should we measure happiness with brain activity?
At the end of the chapter, Weiner shows the absurdity of this and the lack of humanity. You could dip your head into a "happy box," increase your brain's happy chemicals, and not be happy in any real sense, just a chemical one. Why? Because happiness is about connection with others, with Life, with Spirit.
8. What are the shortcomings of using interviews and surveys to measure people’s happiness?
People lie, they are confused and can’t answer accurately, or they are self-deceived. See page 12.
9. How would Schopenhauer define happiness?
(not in book) The absence of misery and suffering.
10. What’s a better definition of happiness, pleasure or flourishing?
We become numb to pleasure; therefore, pleasure disappoints us. Flourishing means to blossom in an area we're meant to flourish in. We find belonging and purpose and those two things give us a deeper happiness.
A better approach to happiness is to forget about happiness and focus on flourishing. We must flourish in life. How do we flourish? What is the connection, if any, between flourishing and virtue? To flourish is to focus on a meaningful passion. One of the great benefits of being focused on a meaningful passion is that you can forget yourself and in turn forget the foolish quest for happiness, which invariably leads to unhappiness. The short definition of flourishing means to find work that is meaningful to you as opposed to being a passive consumer of "happiness." Freud knew this. He said the only thing you can do to mitigate the inherent insanity and misery of life is to find love and work.
11. What is Darwinian happiness?
(not in book) The pleasure and wellbeing of knowing that we look better, feel better, and act smarter than others, resulting in our making more money, living longer, and having better things. Consider the studies that show we prefer relative good looks and wealth for ourselves more than absolute good looks and wealth. For example, we'd reject a salary of 300K a year if EVERYONE made 300K. Rather, we'd take a salary of 60K a year if EVERYONE ELSE only made 20K a year.
12. What are some universal guidelines for happiness?
See page 14: Extroverts happier than introverts.
Married people happier than single.
People with college degrees are happier than those without. People with advanced degrees are LESS happy than those with just a BA.
Homogeneous societies like Denmark and Iceland are more happy than heterogeneous societies. I question this. Maybe people are happy with their insulated world but such cultures are too limiting. For example, I’ve been exposed to a lot of diverse food in LA. I couldn’t move to some homogenous society where food diversity is lacking. I’d be miserable.
Income is not a predictor for happiness except in extreme poverty.
13. What is a striking contradiction about happiness?
Many of the world’s happiest countries have the highest suicide rates. Perhaps countries that offer the highest potential for happiness create a standard that makes depressed people feel their unhappiness even greater.
14. How do countries fare in happiness rankings?
Many African nations are at the bottom of the Happiness Index but not Ghana, which is in the middle. Former Soviet Union republics are at the bottom of the Happiness Index, including Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Moldova. Fiji, Bahamas, and Tahiti are in the middle of the Happiness Index.
15. What is Chapter One’s central idea?
The Experience Machine, which asks the question: Is hedonism true happiness? If you could plug your brain into the Machine and experience nonstop pure pleasure, would you? Would this be happiness and if not what are the fallacies of such thinking? What would you be missing out on?
Life’s richness is far beyond pleasure. Pleasure is an achievement, not a consumer passive experience. You would no longer have the possibility of unhappiness.
Happiness as Flourishing or Thriving
1. Finding a noble passion outside yourself and free yourself from the private hell of self-centeredness.
2. Finding a passion that makes demands on your intellect and imagination so you’re always pushing yourself and never capitulating to stagnation and complacency.
3. Developing the discipline to pursue your passion.
4. Cultivating a passion that gives you both distinction and belonging to your community.
5. Cultivating a passion that earns you a livelihood, that is money to live.
6. Cultivating a passion that gives back to the community. Studies show that people with “helping” professions rank the happiest. Nurses are at the top. Bankers are at the bottom.
Part Five. The Consequences of Not Thriving
1. You’ll feebly seek to fill the void through addiction and hedonism. As such you will be the eternal adolescent with no understanding of what it means to grow up and flourish. Sadly, you'll become like Snooky or her band of lost souls from Jersey Shore.
2. You’ll try to distract yourself from not thriving or flourishing by watching lots of TV, compulsively going on the Internet and text-messaging people—all of these activities are directed by anxious, desperate energy.
3. You’ll suffer from lethargy, depression, and acedia (lost in a fog from having no focus)
4. You’ll seek other people who aren’t flourishing because of course misery needs company. The problem is you and your associates (I can’t use the word “friends”) will reinforce each other’s behavior.
5. You’ll eventually succumb to nihilism, the belief that life is all B.S. and means nothing, so it doesn’t matter what you do. Of course, this is a pathetic rationalization for having never flourished.
6. Perhaps you’ll make money but in the absence of flourishing you’ll find meaning through Darwinian fantasies of domination over others.
Depending on your approach to Essay 1, your thesis could be analytical, breaking down the causes and effects, of morality or its lack thereof, on happiness, or argumentative, making the claim that there is, or not, a strong connection between morality and happiness.
These distinctions are made clear in this Purdue Owl link.
Analytical or Cause and Effect Thesis
There are several compelling reasons that unhappy married couples are at high risk for severe health problems and a high mortality rate.
Once you develop a strong relationship with your smartphone and enjoy easy access to social media, your relationship with others will change radically, mostly for the worst.
Argumentative Thesis
Because marriage is such a difficult enterprise, there should be mandatory one-year marriage counseling before a couple can be eligible for a marriage license.
You would be well served to shut down your smartphone at least once a week and limit your social media time to a half-hour a day.
The common definition of altruism is that it is kindness and charity toward others with no expectation of getting anything in return. This definition is a false one because in fact altruism, exacting kindness and compassion on others, comes with expectations of self-interest. First, having compassion for others delivers us from the hell of self-centeredness, creates a social contract of reciprocity (I help you and you help me), and delivers higher levels of happiness based on empirical evidence (countries high in altruism are happy like Iceland while countries with no altruism at all are abjectly miserable such as Moldova).
Four Pillars of Argument Lesson (from Practical Argument, second edition)
Types of Argument
Informal argument is a quarrel, or a spin or BS on a subject; or there is propaganda. In contrast, formal or academic argument takes a stand, presents evidence, and uses logic to convince an audience of the writer’s position or claim.
In a formal argument, we are taking a stand on which intelligent people can disagree, so we don’t “prove” anything; at best we persuade or convince people that our position is the best of all the positions available.
Therefore, in formal argument the topic has compelling evidence on both sides.
The thesis or claim, the main point of our essay, must therefore be debatable. There must be substantial evidence and logic to support opposing views and it is our task to weigh the evidence and come to a claim that sides with one position over another. Our position may not be absolute; it may be a matter of degree and based on contingency.
For example, I may write an argumentative essay designed to assert America’s First Amendment rights for free speech, but my support of the First Amendment is not absolute. I would argue that there are cases where people can cross the line. Groups that spread racial hatred should not be able to gather in a public space. Nor should groups committed to abusing children be able to spread their newsletters and other information to each other. While I believe in the First Amendment, I’m saying there is a line that cannot be crossed.
We cannot write a thesis that is a statement of fact. For example, online college classes are becoming more and more available is a fact, not an argument.
We cannot write a thesis that is an expression of personal taste or preference. If we prefer working out at home rather than the gym, our preference is beyond dispute. However, if we make the case that there are advantages to home exercise that make gym memberships a bad idea, we have entered the realm of argumentation.
It is an over simplification to reduce all arguments to just two sides.
Should torture be banned? It’s not an either/or question. The ban depends on the circumstances described and the definition of torture. And then there is the matter of who decides who gets tortured and who does the torturing? There are so many questions, qualifications, edicts, provisos, clauses, condition, etc., that it is impossible to make a general for/against stand on this topic.
Why Argumentation Is Relevant
You make arguments for daily life problems all the time:
Should I go on Diet X or is this diet just another futile fad like all the other diets I’ve gone on?
Should I buy a new car or is my old car fine but I’m looking for attention and a way to alleviate my boredom, so I’m looking for the drama of a colossal purchase, which will be the source of conversations with others? In other words, am I looking for false connection through my rampant consumerism?
Should I break up with my girlfriend to give me more time to study and give me the “alone time” I need, or continue navigating that precarious balance between the demands of my job, my academic load, and my capricious, rapacious, overbearing, manipulative, emotionally needy girlfriend? (here the answer is embedded in the question)
Should I upgrade my phone to the latest generation to get all the new apps or am I just jealous that all my friends are upgrading and I fear they’ll leave me out of their social circle if I’m languishing with an outdated smartphone?
Should I go to Cal State and graduate with 20K debt or go to that prestigious private college that gives my résumé more punch on one hand but leaves me with over 100K in debt on the other?
Do I really want to get married under the age of thirty or am I just jealous of all the expensive presents my brother got after he got married?
Whether you are defining an argument for your personal life or for an academic paper, you are using the same skills: critical analysis, defining the problem, weighing different types of evidence against each other; learning to respond to a problem intellectually rather than emotionally; learning to identify possible fallacies and biases in your thinking that might lead you down the wrong path, etc.
We live in a win-lose culture that emphasizes the glory of winning and the shame of defeat. In politics, we speak of winning or losing behind our political leaders and their political agendas. But this position is doltish, barbaric, and often self-destructive.
Many times, we argue or I should say we should argue because we want to reach a common understanding. “Sometimes the goal of an argument is to identify a problem and suggest solutions that could satisfy those who hold a number of different positions on an issue” (8) Sometimes the solution for a problem is to make a compromise. For example, let's say students want more organic food in the college cafeteria but the price is triple for these organic foods and only one percent of the student body can afford these organic foods. Perhaps a compromise is to provide less processed, sugar-laden foods with fresh fruits and vegetables, which are not organic but at least provide more healthy choices.
Your aim is not to win or lose in your argument but be effective in your ability to persuade. Persuasion refers to how a speaker or writer influences an audience to adopt a belief or to follow a course of action.
According to Aristotle, there are three means of persuasion that a speaker or writer can use to persuade his audience:
The appeal of reason and logic: logos
The appeal of emotions: pathos
The appeal of authority: ethos
Smoking will compromise your immune system and make you more at risk for cancer; therefore, logic, or logos, dictates that you should quit smoking.
If you die of cancer, you will be abandoning your family when they need you most; therefore an emotional appeal, or pathos, dictates that you quit smoking.
The surgeon general has warned you of the hazards of smoking; therefore the credibility of an authority or expert dictates that you quit smoking. If the writer lacks authority or credibility, he is often well served to draw upon the authority of someone else to support his argument.
The Rhetorical Triangle Connects All the Persuasive Methods
Logos, reason and logic, focuses on the text or the substance of the argument.
Ethos, the credibility or expertise from the writer, focuses on the writer.
Pathos, the emotional appeal, focuses on the emotional reaction of the audience.
The Elements of Argument
Thesis Statement (single sentence that states your position or claim)
Evidence (usually about 75% of your body paragraphs)
Refutation of opposing arguments or objections to your claim (usually about 25% of your body paragraphs)
Concluding statement (dramatic restatement of your thesis, which often also shows the broader implications of your important message).
Thesis
Thesis is one sentence that states your position about an issue.
Thesis example: Increasing the minimum wage to eighteen dollars an hour, contrary to “expert” economists, will boost the economy.
The above assertion is an effective thesis because it is debatable; it has at least two sides.
Thesis: We should increase the minimum wage to boost the economy.
Antithesis: Increasing the minimum wage will slow down the economy.
Evidence
Evidence is the material you use to make your thesis persuasive: facts, observations, expert opinion, examples, statistics, reasons, logic, and refutation.
Refutation
Your argument is only as strong as your understanding of your opponents and your ability to refute your opponents’ objections.
If while examining your opponents’ objections, you find their side is more compelling, you have to CHANGE YOUR SIDE AND YOUR THESIS because you must have integrity when you write. There is no shame in this. Changing your position through research and studying both sides is natural.
Conclusion
Your concluding statement reinforces your thesis and emphasizes the emotional appeal of your argument.
Learn to Identify the Elements of Argument in an Essay by Using Critical Thinking Skills
To read critically, we have to do the following:
One. Comprehend the author's purpose and meaning, which is expressed in the claim or thesis
Two. Examine the evidence, if any, that is used
Three. Find emotional appeals, if any, that are used
Four. Identify analogies and comparisons and analyze their legitimacy
Five. Look at the topic sentences to see how the author is building his or her claim
Six. Look for the appeals the author uses be they logic (logos), emotions (pathos), or authority (ethos).
Seven. Is the author's argument diminished by logical fallacies?
Eight. Do you recognize any bias in the essay that diminishes the author's argument?
Nine. Do we bring any prejudice that may compromise our ability to evaluate the argument fairly?
Grammar Review (what should have been covered in 1A)
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.
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