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
6. Machismo bluster (fist pumping)
7. Dionysian ecstasy
8. Excessive wealth (insulation, paranoia, solipsism, insanity)
9. Self-indulgence
10. Self-contented mediocrity and satisfaction with the status quo
11. Blissful ignorance
12. Intellectual pride, believing you're a genius surrounded by a "confederacy of dunces"
Defining Your Terms
Aristotle and the Pursuit of Happiness
Outline of Aristotle's Terms Like Happiness
McMahon’s Happiness Test
(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?”
Support a Claim in an Argument Essay
Using Claims and Warrants Part of Toulmin Argument
Common topics for Toulmin 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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