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Transcript

Tykeria Mortimer, Tia Deal, Keishla Santiago, and Samantha Fuentes

What is Happiness By Eduardo Porter

Discussion Questions

Organizational Patterns

1. Throughout the essay Porter demonstrates that 'happiness is a slippery concept' by stating different peoples' ideas of happiness. The beginning of this essay was very effective in grabber the readers attention.

3. The quality of someones life is defined by their happiness because when someone is happy they typically feel satisfied. According to Porter people who are happier 'smile more, sleep better, and are satisfied with their life'.

4. The point that Porter is trying to make with the legend of Lincoln and the pig is that everyone experiences happiness in a different way.

The organizational pattern for this essay is according to similarities and differences.

“We often make puzzling choices that do not make us consistently happier. We smoke despite knowing about cancer and

emphysema. We gorge on chocolate despite knowing it will make us unhappy ten pounds down the road.” ( Paragraph 7 lines 1-4)

“Still, it remains true that American citizens-and the citizens of much of the world- expend enormous amounts of time and energy pursuing more money and a bigger GDP because they think it will improve their well-being. And that will make them happier.” (Paragraph 9 lines 4-8)

Patterns of Development

Thesis Statement

This essay is a definition essay; we know this because the author is defining and explaining different concepts of happiness.

“People who say they are happier smile more often, sleep better, report themselves to be in better health, and have happier relatives.” (Paragraph 3 line 6)

“During a experiment in the 1980s people who found a dime on top of a Xerox machine before responding to a happiness survey reported a much higher sense of satisfaction with life than those who didn’t.” (Paragraph 5 line 1)

“Sigmund Freud argued that people “strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so.” (Paragraph 6 line 1)

The thesis statement in this essay is stated and can be found in the entire second paragraph.

“Most psychologists and economists who study happiness agree that what they prefer to call ‘subjective well being’ comprises three parts: satisfaction, meant to capture how people judge their lives measured up by their aspirations; positive feelings like joy; and the absence of negative feelings like anger.” (pg. 457 paragraph 2)

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