Michael Stephens

I don’t know if you’ll still count this since I already wrote the essay but I figured I already had most of this blog done anyway so I’ll do it anyway. The first sentence I found was from Dan Gilbert’s “Reporting Live from Tomorrow” and was the one that I wrote my essay on. The sentence is, “We experience our own thoughts and feelings but must infer that other people are experiencing theirs.” I like this sentence a lot because of the way it sounds. Whether you read this sentence out loud or in your head you have to put so much inflection on the italicized words and it sounds and flows nicely. It basically takes the sentence down to the difference between really experiencing something and inferring that same experience but it does it in a way that has a solid feel. The beauty of this sentence is in its simplicity. When I rewrote this same sentence it came out like this, “We can only infer that other people are experiencing similar feelings but we can truly experience our own feelings.” I really kind of just flip-flopped the sentence around. The original is better than the rewrite though because in the rewrite the first time you read experience is before it is italicized and that kind of ruins the inflection that you put on the word. In the first one you feel more of a difference between inferring and experiencing but in the second one that difference isn’t as stressed, because you infer that other people are experiencing things, while you are experiencing things, so it sort of shows off the similarities between the two when the sentence is set up like that.(I hope that all makes sense to you, as it was very difficult to put into words)

The second sentence that I really like is one of Stanley Fish’s, “The ability to see, and therefore to make, an assignment is no less a learned ability than the ability to see, and therefore to make, a poem.” This sentence is really similar to the last one. It is a very simple sentence that has nice repetition and balance and it carefully shows the similarities between two things rather than the difference. Both of these sentences really call out what they are putting into contrast. Gilbert’s did that by using italicized words. This sentence does it by repeating itself and only changing one word. My rewrite of the sentence didn’t really change much, “Being able to recognize, and then create an assignment is a learned skill much like the ability to recognize, and then create a poem.” I think that this rewrite kind of proves that it is the simplicity of this sentence that makes it so good. For the rewrite I only chose to change a couple of words. I decided to change out see and make for recognize and create and pretty much left the rest the same, to see if it would give it a more educated, scholarly feel. It did not give it that feel at all though. I like the original sentence much better than my rewrite. My rewrite still gets the same point across, I just don’t think it sounds as good.

Those two sentences are the sentences that I liked most from the works that we have read this semester but there are quite a few other sentences that I still really liked. One of these sentences, another Stanley Fish original is, “They knew, for example (because they were told by their teachers), that poems are (or are supposed to be) more densely and intricately organized than ordinary communications; and that knowledge translated itself into a willingness—one might even say a determination—to see connections between one word and another and between every word and the poem’s central insight.” Another sentence I liked a lot by Matt Honan, “We go down rabbit holes of special interests until we’re lost in the queen’s garden, cursing everyone above ground.” Dan Gilbert’s had another really good sentence when he wrote, “Because if you are like most people, than like most people, you don’t know you’re like most people.” The last good sentence that I found came from Ariely, “The conclusion: no one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social exchange world and away from market norms.”

Mike Stephens

Good Writing Final

12/11/2014

Professor Messier

Writing Good Sentences

               Creating good sentences can sometimes take a lot of thought and time. Not every sentence that you just tap away on your keyboard and complete in a few seconds is going to be good. Good writing takes more focus than that, more attention to detail. Without this attention to detail good writing just wouldn’t be as good. The small things can really make or break a sentence, such as the way it sounds or sometimes it’s a particular word choice. To make these great sentences there are some tricks that are can be used that will help you feel out the sentence and make it better.

One of these tricks I mentioned is really less of a trick and more just focusing on taking your time. After writing a sentence, an easy way to improve it is, to just go back and analyze it. That is to see what really makes the sentence work and what might be making the sentence a little clumsy. This is probably the simplest and most effective way to improve a sentence. To really write a good sentence one might use all the three other tricks of good writing, and then after each one they would step back and analyze their sentence. This could really improve sentences, because then you are only getting the best from all the little tricks because of the constant analysis.

Analysis of one of Dan Gilbert’s sentences will help to show the benefits of stepping back and taking an extra look at one’s writing. The sentence is from Reporting Live from Tomorrow and reads, “We experience our own thoughts and feelings but must infer that other people are experiencing theirs.” If you read this sentence you put a lot of extra emphasis on the italicized words. The inflection you put on your voice as you say experience and infer makes the sentence have more meaning. Perhaps when Mr. Gilberts first wrote that sentence neither of those words were italicized, but then under further scrutiny he saw the chance to make it better. This sentence of Dan Gilberts is already a really good sentence and I don’t think that further analysis will really help to inspire any bettering of the sentence at this point, probably because Gilberts himself has analyzed it until he wrote the best possible version of that sentence.

Another way to write better sentences is to go back and rewrite the same concept of the sentence in different words, and see if anything better comes out of different wording. This trick might help develop the flow of the sentence, if it was sort of choppy to start. It might just also help the writer by showing them what is right with the sentence they have already written. If the sentence got terrible after the rewrite, then obviously the writer did something more effective the first time they wrote the sentence. They can step back and analyze the difference between the two sentences and see what makes the first sentence good and what makes the second sentence bad. This will help not only with writing a better sentence in the moment, but just writing better in the future on the whole.

Looking at Dan Gilbert’s sentence from before, and one that I was courteous enough to rewrite for him, will show how this technique can help. Here is Dan’s original sentence again, “We experience our own thoughts and feelings but must infer that other people are experiencing theirs.” Now here is my fantastic rewrite, “We know and understand fully what is going on in our heads, while we just have to assume that other people have the same types of things going on in their head.” While I like how mine gets at the fact that we understand our own thoughts, I like how his sentence has the inflection. So if I wanted to improve this sentence I would keep Gilbert’s sentence base and just plug in the words that I like more. So now the sentence would be, “We understand our own thoughts and emotions but must guess that other people understand theirs.” Now seeing and reading that sentence I see that I still like the original more. Changing one word made me need to change other words and then I kind of lost the original flow to the sentence. If I really worked at it I could probably combine the two sentences, but as it is doing the rewrite still helped me. Rewriting it showed me that the most important part of that sentence is its sound and flow, and if I want to keep that sentence good I can’t mess that up.

This next technique is a little more fun than the rest. This technique is to take out key words in a sentence, and turn it into a mad lib. Have a friend provide the verbs and nouns and whatever else you are looking for and then reread the sentence. This way is possibly a little less helpful from the rest, as generally when you do mad libs the person giving the words tries to be as random and funny as possible but still it can help. The idea is that some of the words inserted to the sentence to the mad lib could actually help make the sentence better. Perhaps with a serious partner that could happen, but to me the best use one can get out of mad libbing a sentence is just seeing what the sentence doesn’t work without. Basically what the sentence revolves upon so I can go back and make that part even better.

For an example of mad libbing a sentence I’ll show Dan Gilbert’s sentence missing some of its key words. This will show you that these words are necessary to the sentence and should be broadened upon if anything, not cut out. Here’s the new sentence, “We experience our own (noun) and feelings but must (verb) that other (animal) are experiencing theirs.” Here you can see I only cut out three words but when those words are filled in randomly this sentence goes nowhere. For example, “We experience our own (chairs) and feelings but must (drink) that other (koalas) are experiencing theirs.” Now this sentence is silly and funny but the only thing that helped with was to show us the really important words in the sentence.

The last technique of writing good sentences is sort of the opposite of the second technique I mentioned. That technique had us rewrite the same concept with different words. This technique is to write an homage of the sentence, basically trying to use the same outline of the sentence to get at a different point. I think this technique would be really helpful if your sentence just wasn’t quite what you wanted it to be but it sounded nice or if you were unsure of what the real topic of your sentence should be.

Here is an example of my homage for that sentence of Dan Gilbert’s that you are getting to know so well. In case you need the original again, “We experience our own thoughts and feelings but must infer that other people are experiencing theirs.” Now my homage, “We experience our schooling and training but must trust that other people experience a similar learning process.” Now this sentence is about something else entirely. So if I were trying to change what I was talking about to schooling instead of what is going on in our heads, that would be a good sentence to use. Otherwise it doesn’t really help us improve the original sentence.

These techniques are really helpful for writing descriptive, flowing, quality sentences, which is really important to good writing. This descriptive flow is second only to the connection the writing creates in my opinion. So if using these techniques will really help to improve my writing. Especially the first technique, the analysis is key.

I would like to acknowledge my two classmates, Amir and Sarah for helping me create a half decent essay by posting comments and suggesting revisions on my rough draft. Of course a huge thanks goes out to Professor Messier who was the biggest help with this essay, and coincidentally the reason I was writing this essay. And quite the contrary to any frustration about the early due date, I am actually enthused that you told us it was due on Tuesday. That way I started working on it sooner and even when I thought it was late it actually wasn’t yet lucky for me. Unfortunately, procrastination did get the best of me in the end and I still ended up turning the final in a little late, but it was better than it would have been if it had actually been done on Tuesday.

Money, Time, and Happiness

Everyone goes through their lives pondering many basic questions that they probably won’t ever know a definitive answer to. One specific question that is wondered about by many is whether money can buy happiness. I have looked into this question and found that it should really be made broader. Money affects too many aspects of our lives to look at this topic through such a narrow lens. Instead you need to look at not only money, and happiness, but what people do with their time. So my refined question that I’m looking to answer in this essay is, how can we use what money and time we have in order to be happy, productive people?

To see how time affects money and happiness, first simplify it, and just look at how money and happiness interact. A lot of people just research this correlation between money and happiness. Which does have a correlation, but probably not as much of one as you would think. Money and happiness has its largest correlation right up to the poverty line. When the poor get more money they get reasonably happier, because for poorer people more money means that they can afford more comfort and that makes their lives dramatically happier (Gardner, Gilberts). What is described here are people’s happiness levels rising directly with their income levels. Gilbert’s take on this is slightly drastic, he says, “Economists explain that wealth has ‘declining marginal utility,’ which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired, and scared, but once you’ve bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper.”(Gilberts). I don’t necessarily agree with Gilberts when he says that extra money is useless. Of course it is possible for extra money to go to waste, but there are certainly ways that extra money can be spent that will assuredly result in some happiness.

What Dan Gilbert says is supported by a number of different studies. One such study, conducted by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener addresses the same correlation of money and happiness, mainly happening in poorer nations. As they started to look at the wealthier nations, they saw the correlation and trends drop away (Biswas-Diener, Diener). Again what we are seeing is a rise in happiness as people begin to meet all their basic needs, and then things stall out when they get more money than needed. Why is this? Partially because of the “declining marginal utility” mentioned by Gilbert, but also, as studies have shown, because you aren’t using your money to help other people. This might be a shock to some because most people would think that the more money they spent on themselves, the happier they would be. But scientists Dunn, Atkin, and Norton have proved that thinking to be false. They tested their hypothesis that, “…how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn.” What they found in their experiments was that participants who were given money and told to spend it on themselves reported lower happiness levels than participants who were given the same amount of money and told to spend it on friends and family (Atkin, Dunn, Norton). This is another piece of the puzzle that is our happiness. It shows us that when we make excess money we are less likely to enjoy it because it is likely to end up being spent on yourself instead of loved ones.

There is one deviation that changes the results of the arguments I have already presented. This deviation is when money is gained in a sudden windfall. That is, when someone gains a lot of money really quickly through something like the lottery or inheritance. People who have gotten one of these windfalls have shown a higher mental wellbeing in the following year (Gardner). The question of whether this wears off after that year or not is untested. However, given that this study does show that the windfall amount is directly related to the happiness increase, it might be safe to assume that the amount of happiness will decline proportionally to the money declining. This deviation brings up another important question. Why do people enjoy money in excess when it is given to them but not when they have to work for it? One of my theories on this is that, when it is given to them, they value it less. They didn’t work very hard to get it so they aren’t that sad when they start to spend it. If this is true, than it is likely that much of this windfall spending isn’t actually spent on the person who actually won it. Since they have already had so much good fortune, the person feels the need to share. There it is, people who get windfalls are happier because they are more likely to use it and share the love by spending it on family and friends. Of course there aren’t any experiments to back up these hypothesis, but that’s just what makes sense to me given the information, that was collected through experiments.

Now that we have seen how money and happiness affect each other individually, we need to take a closer look at the time component, which complicates things even further. The way that we view money, has a weird effect on our time. Researchers Julian House, and Stanford DeVoe experimented with the idea that putting a dollar value on one’s time devalues it. In other words, knowing that you can make fifteen dollars an hour makes doing anything besides making fifteen dollars an hour less worth it. So because we understand we could be profiting from our time we would rather not waste it, “Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one’s income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet” (DeVoe, House) This to me, explains more perfectly why people’s happiness levels don’t just continue to rise with their income. It also offers another explanation to why people are happier when they are given a bunch of money as to when they work for the same amount of money. Time complicates everything because it is a fleeting resource that we can’t get back, so we know while we can always make more money we can’t ever get our time back.

So with all the research and the results of all the experiments conducted I believe the easiest way to be happy with ourselves is to worry less about money. As long as you aren’t struggling to get by day in and day out, then a small amount of money isn’t really going to make that much of a difference, in the grand scheme of things. I believe we can be truly happy if we just value our time and the people around us who love and care about us. Money can do a lot, but it won’t be there for you when you’ve had a terrible day and need someone to lean on. So to be happy we need to be less materialistic and more focused on companionship.

References

Biswas-Diener, Robert, (the other other is Ed Diener) “Will Money Increase Subjective Well          Being?” Kluwer Academics Vol. 55 Num 1. (2001): 35-40. Web.

Devoe, S. E., J. House. “Time, money, and happiness” (2011): n. pag. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology. Web. 11 Nov. 2014

Dunn, E. W., L. B. Aknin, and M. I. Norton. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.”     Science 319.5870 (2008): 1687-688. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Gardner, Jonathon. “Does Money Buy Happiness?” A Longitudinal Study Using Data on                    Windfalls Web. 11 Nov. 14.

Gilberts, Daniel. “Reporting Live From Tomorrow.” Stumbling on Happiness. Web. 11 Nov.    2014

Money doesn’t always make people as happy as we think it might. We all have this idea in our heads that more money makes life easier and therefore makes us happier. However many studies have proved this to just be the idea that drives our economy, which doesn’t actually make it true. The correlation between money and happiness isn’t actually as strong as we might think (Biswas-Diener, Diener). On the contrary many researchers have stated that money can’t buy you happiness, at least after you get to the point where you can provide for yourself. Money that you work for gives people way less happiness than money obtained from a “windfall”, which is a large amount of money received at once, so basically either the lottery or inheritance. Researchers say that the money gained from this will actually lower stress and decrease unhappiness (Gardner). The money that you actually work for yourself will not have as good of effects, unless you know how to spend it right. Researchers Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin, and Michael Norton conducted experiments and concluded, “…participants who were randomly assigned to spend money on others experienced greater happiness than those assigned to spend money on themselves” (Dunn, Aknin, Norton). Similarly to spending your money right, if you want to be happy you have to spend your time right too. Specifically, you shouldn’t think about how much money you can earn hourly during your leisure time. Studies have shown that the more you think about this the more impatience you have and the less value you get out of leisure time (DeVoe). This all makes a lot of sense. If you need a certain amount of money to first be happy, why then, after you get that amount does more money not make you happier? Well because, if you start to earn more and become rich, then you see your time as very valuable, and any leisure time isn’t as rewarding as it used to be. Also it makes sense why people who gain huge windfalls are happier than those who are rich on their own. The people who gained huge windfalls didn’t work for it so their time was never valued as much as those who worked for their own money. Happiness is a hard thing to put a finger on because it is so subjective, but I think these facts show you more accurately the true correlation between money and happiness.

After reading some of my classmates blogs, I feel good about where my essay is heading. Before when I was writing the rough draft I thought that it might be a little difficult to do the final draft because of the report like style that we were writing it in. Because of that I made sure to keep my essay on the shorter side so I can add in a good amount of analysis while keeping most of the information about the sources. With that being said, I need to go into a couple of the sources I used more thoroughly to do them justice. Also I need to go back to the original essay that is the whole reason why we are writing this one and include that as a source as well. I slighted Gilbert when he should have been one of my most heavily relied upon source. My classmates essays helped me realize what I was lacking in my essay and that it shouldn’t be hard for us to go from source summaries to slightly smaller source summaries with our own viewpoint sprinkled in as well.

Does Happiness Come With Wealth

               Happiness is a really hard thing to put your finger on. It is hard to say what exactly causes happiness because everybody gets happy for different reasons. The question I am trying to answer has been asked time and time again, does money buy happiness. This question is so frequently asked because our whole economy is set up with the assumption that more money is equivalent to more happiness. Research however has shown that this might actually not be entirely true.

Sometimes money brings more happiness than it does at other times. This is particularly true for money that you don’t have to work for. Studies show that when you either win or inherit a lot of money the amount of stress and unhappiness you have will go down. This study also states that the amount that their stress decreases and their happiness increases is directly dependent on how much money they win, the more they win the better they feel. After conducting these experiments and seeing how each time, each participant is happier once they win money, one might conclude that money does actually by happiness. This is actually the conclusion that that Jonathon Gardner comes to in his journal, “…reported happiness is positively correlated with income”. He does go on to say that more money will not necessarily lead to more happiness. So according to Mr. Gardner a certain amount of money is necessary in order to lead a relatively happy life, but once you have that much money adding more and more won’t necessarily make you happier at all. The experiments discussed in Gardner’s paper all support that a sudden “windfall”, that is something like winning the lottery, will actually increase the persons happiness in the years to come (Gardner, Jonathon).

The idea that a certain amount of money is needed in order to be happy, but more after that base amount won’t really effect much, is discussed in many other articles as well. This idea is that people need a basic amount of money in order to provide for their and their family’s needs. So that amount of money that they earn that allows them to do this makes them happy because they are using that money in order to take care of their loved ones. After that amount of money, however, many studies show that more money doesn’t make people happier. The difference being, that the money that they made was being used to take care of loved ones, but now that they are making extra money, that money is going to other, less satisfying things. Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener talk about these studies and correlations between money and happiness. Their study shows that, “There are mostly small correlations between income and SWB (subjective well being) within nations, although these correlations appear to be larger in poor nations, and the risk of unhappiness is much higher for poor people.” (Diener, Biswas Diener)This basically proves everything that I just stated. Poor people and countries are more likely to be unhappy because they can’t afford to meet their basic needs, which is a travesty. However, once these basic needs are met the correlation between money and happiness pretty much drops off because now that the people’s basics needs are met, that extra amount of money isn’t really doing anything to proactively cause happiness.

This sort of break between money bringing happiness to a degree and then stopping once it gets to a certain point brings about the question of why. Why does this happen? When money buys us the things we need to support ourselves and our family it brings about happiness, but when we get more money and we are no longer spending it on just the essentials happiness doesn’t really increase. This sounds kind of backward. When the money we are making is used to take care of others we are happier and then when we have a surplus and can spend some of that money on ourselves, it no longer really changes our feeling. Scientists Dunn, Atkin, and Norton had an idea on the answer to this question. These scientists hypothesized that, “…how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn.” They then experimented with this idea and found that it is true at least to a degree, “. Providing converging evidence for this hypothesis, we found that spending more of one’s income on others predicted greater happiness both cross-sectionally (in a nationally representative survey study) and longitudinally (in a field study of windfall spending).” So according to both surveys and experiments that they conducted, although money itself may not buy happiness, when you spend money on other people it will bring you more happiness than if you were to have spent that money on yourself. This may not make sense to you because on the whole we see most people are selfish especially when it comes to money. But they tested it by giving participants of an experiment money and having the control group spend it on themselves, and the experimental group spend it on others. They saw that the experimental group reported greater happiness than the control group (Aknin, Dunn, Norton). Perhaps that is why the small amount of money earned in order to take care of someone’s family makes a person happier than spending excess money.

Okay, so if we explained why the money for basic needs makes people happy can we explain why excess money doesn’t increase happiness? We can certainly try. In my opinion, it all has to do with Julian House, and Stanford DeVoe’s research. They together questioned whether putting a price on one’s time inhibits our ability to be happy. Basically, because we all know we could be making a certain amount of money an hour we all are impatient and less happy because of it, “Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one’s income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet” (DeVoe, House). I personally believe that this is why people’s happiness levels don’t just continue to rise with their incomes. As people get richer and richer, their time becomes worth more and more and time is a resource you can never get back. So Bill Gates messing around playing video games would probably have way less fun than you or I playing the same video games. Because in the back of his mind he is thinking about how much money he could be making instead of playing those video games. He is thinking about the opportunity cost of playing those games, and to him it is much larger than it is to people who are less rich, and therefore the game is not going to be as satisfying for him. Making more money is great, except when you think about your opportunity costs of doing other things instead of making that money.

Back to the main question of this whole thing, does more money mean more happiness? My answer to that is that is depends. There is definitely no guarantee that more money will make you more happy, however if you spend it right it just might. If you buy things for yourself with that extra money you might be happy for a little bit, but it is bound to go away relatively quickly. If you spend your extra money on others however, you will probably get a more lasting sense of happiness, well at least if you aren’t a terrible person. One thing is clear from all the research I did to write this essay, and that is that money does make people happier up to the point that they have their basic needs met.

Sources

Biswas-Diener, Ed Diener And Robert. WILL MONEY INCREASE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING? (n.d.): n. pag.   Kluwer Academic Publishers, 14 Sept. 2001. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Devoe, S. E., and J. House. Contents Lists Available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental      Social Psychology (2011): n. pag. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology. Web. 11 Nov.     2014

Dunn, E. W., L. B. Aknin, and M. I. Norton. “Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness.” Science 319.5870 (2008): 1687-688. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Jonathan.gardner@warwick.ac.uk. Does Money Buy Happiness? A Longitudinal Study Using Data on          Windfalls (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 11 Nov. 14.

I didn’t really like where the beginning of my essay was going or the sources I had on the question of what propagates false beliefs and why so many of these false beliefs go unquestioned for so long. I tried to remedy this by looking for better sources, but  even after looking for different sources that more adequately discussed false beliefs I still couldn’t find any that I thought I could build an essay on. Since my sources are a mess and sources are the basis of this essay, I thought it might be better for me to start from scratch. Therefore I am updating these two blog posts with four new sources that apply to a new question that I formulated for Dan Gilbert’s “Reporting Live From Tomorrow”. Since I am getting four brand new sources, I have decided to get all scholarly sources as it isn’t really any extra work and the extra quality will pay off when I actually start to write this essay. This new question that I am going to look into is sort of the science behind money and happiness. What are their correlations. Is it true that money cannot by happiness or is Bill Gates just about the happiest man in the world simply because he can buy whatever he wants.

My new first source is: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/ajoswald/marchwindfallsgo.pdf

This source states that our economy is situated on the idea that money can in fact buy happiness, and that the more money you have the happier you will be. According to this source however, that is not completely true. This source explains that, “While… reported happiness is positively correlated with income, that is not a persuasive reason to believe that more money leads to greater wellbeing. This source looks at people who gain a lot of money all at once for pretty much nothing. For instance, people who win the lottery. It says that in the year after the winnings people report less stress and higher happiness overall. It also shows a correlation of how much the increased happiness is, in relation to how much money the individual won. After winning the lottery or receiving a large inheritance people’s scores went down on both the stress and unhappiness tests.

My second new source is: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=money%27s+relation+to+happiness&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C22&as_sdtp=

This source has a different approach than the first. Again investigation whether or not money can bring us happiness, this cite suggests that how we spend the money we get has as much as an effect on our happiness as how much money we actually have. This cite experimented with the idea that specifically spending money on others bring us more happiness than spending money on ourselves. In the experiment conducted researchers gave one group of participants money and tasked them with spending that money on themselves, they did the same thing but told the people that they gave the money to, to spend the money on other people. As the researchers hypothesized the group that was chosen to spend money on other people reported greater amounts of happiness than the group that got to spend the money on themselves. This source agrees with my first source that once basic needs are met extra earned money doesn’t add much to happiness overall. The explanation offered for this in this source is that people spend their extra earned money in pursuits that aren’t likely to add to happiness at all. People get extra money and buy fancier things but that doesn’t correlate with lasting happiness. Studies that this source is based on show that investing money in others is a much better way to get lasting happiness out of disposable income.

Third source: http://www.langleygroup.com.au/images/Money-Happiness-2002.pdf

According to this source, there are mostly small correlations between happiness and prosperity within nations. The correlation that is there basically just shows that poor countries and therefore poor people, are at greater risk  to be unhappy. This doesn’t mean that poor countries or poor people can’t be happy, it just makes it harder for them to be happy. This makes sense, because if it is tough for you to provide for you and your families basic needs you probably are not going to be as happy as someone whose family is well cared for. This source says that people who are motivated by material goals are substantially less happy, even if they’re rich. So happiness might increase with increased prosperity if it means that they are going to provide for their family, but if a wealthy person is just getting wealthier, then it does little to increase his happiness. This source doesn’t necessarily say that more money will mean more happiness, but it does claim that more happiness can lead to higher incomes. This assertion makes sense because if you are just really happy overall then you will be more productive and thus more successful. So this source sort of flips the question around. Perhaps money doesn’t buy happiness at all and instead happiness buys money.

Fourth source: http://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/DeVoe%20and%20House,%20JESP.pdf

This source is different from all the rest. This source says that putting a dollar value on our time decreases happiness. That is to say that while thinking about how much one can make hourly, happiness levels go down while a subject is leisurely surfing the web. So because we feel like we know what our time is worth it makes us less happy to not be spending it wisely. You might not be happy working for twenty dollars an hour but at the same time you don’t think spending an hour on the internet is worth twenty dollars, so it becomes a waste of your time and you aren’t as happy doing it. Time became measured with money after the industrial revolution and then everything changed, “And the employer must use the time of his labor, and see it is not wasted: not the task but the value of time when reduced to money is dominant. Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent.” Things weren’t so much what needed to be done anymore, but rather things need to be done efficiently so as to not waste time, and therefore money. So this source does not say directly whether or not money buys happiness but it does put into perspective how money changes us. When we think about our time being wasted as money wasted, we are immediately less happy with what we are doing. If you think about this information, it makes sense as the reason why more money doesn’t necessarily buy us more happiness. If one makes a lot of money fast, you could say their time is extremely valuable, therefore when they aren’t on the job making money they are not happy because as far as they are concerned they aren’t spending their time wisely.

I hope its cool that I totally changed up my essay like this without running it by you first. I figured it would be fine because it is just the rough draft due tomorrow so I will still have time to get feedback from you and be able to work it in for the final draft.

The first scholarly article I found didn’t actually have an abstract. It is by Stephen Prothero and is titled American Jesus. Instead of an abstract it has a quite long introduction, so instead of posting the abstract and translating it into a more everyday type of writing I was going to just summarize the first couple pages of the intro. This source basically sounds a lot like one of the non-scholarly ones I gathered the other day. It discusses what religion defines America and talks about how even though presidents such as Bush have claimed that America is under “Judeo-Christian-Islamic God”. This is directly in conflict however with how every year around this type of year many if not most Americans begin to set up lights and mangers and other decorations in their yards to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. That statement from Bush also contradicts the “In God we Trust” on the back of all our bills, and swearing on the bible when we are in court. This all starts to suggest that when you think about it our nations religious independence is actually just one of the larger false beliefs propagated in order to promote a more stable society, in this case a more stable America.

The other source that I have found on google scholar also doesn’t contain an abstract. This source is similar to the one above it in the way that it is discussing the false beliefs of religion, but I plan to make up for that by going back and getting a better source than the one I found the other day, that sort of contradicts all of these other articles I have found. Also I think that I might refine my question so that it has a direct focus on religion as all the better sources that I am finding is dealing with that. Perhaps, why so many false beliefs are allowed to propagate within religions and if they can be stopped. Instead of the more vague question just wondering how any false beliefs can be allowed to continue to propagate. So with all that in mind, my second google scholar source is Christopher Higgin’s  book, “God is Not Great”. I don’t know if I will have time to read all of it, as it is almost 300 pages, but I am sure just from the index alone that I will be able to read a couple of chapters and find some great quotes and information to bring to my essay. This book is definitely better than the two sources that I already have on false religious beliefs because both of the other articles focus mainly on Christianity, where this book delves into all the big faiths. This book asks the big question, “Does religion make people behave better?”. And then it goes farther and asks if religion is child abuse and asserts that religion itself is an original sin. This source is sure to give me a look at many false beliefs that have propagated both through religion and about religion, and I think it will be very useful in my essay.

The question that I decided to investigate based off of Dan Gilbert’s chapter, do we still allow false beliefs to propagate simply because they promote stability within our society?

My first source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/richard-dawkins-memes

This source basically explains Richards Dawkins coining of the word meme, and of course what it means. The word meme is basically anything that goes viral, though the internet uses it to describe pictures that demonstrate an extreme behavior or idea. It isn’t quite wrong from the original definition, as obviously a lot of memes have gone viral. The article goes on to show how Richard Dawkins himself has become the main part of a few different internet memes. One such meme that he is involved in, the one comparing him to Emma Watson, he believes to have been changed to make them look more alike. Memes have become quite popular over the internet and some of them are certainly viral.

These memes show some different beliefs to many different people. People make these memes, normally with humor in mind, and so they are certain to pass around some false beliefs. These beliefs may not always be about society, and when they are, I would say that they aren’t used to propagate a stable society. Memes often criticize and make fun of things, especially political drama. So if these memes are calling out politicians when they make mistakes than they aren’t really propagating a stable society at all. Memes may propagate false belief, however I don’t think that false belief is ever to provide a stable society. Memes are more often trivial things like the one that was most likely changed to make Richard Dawkins and Emma Watson to look the same. However, I think that perhaps some memes actually call out some false beliefs that have been allowed to propagate to promote a stable society.

My second source: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-jonathan-haidt

This post talks a lot about religion. Not only present day religion but it calls into question the religions of dead people’s such as the aztecs and the mayans. Both of these societies and many others practiced sacrifice and even cannibalism. Haidt wonders why these things continued to happen, for so long and in so many different cultures. The article goes on to say that most religious practices are the direct result of what people think are happening in the world. This article also delves into the fact that many religious people don’t always speak of the bible in a literal sense. It says that they have no choice however because the books are self contradictory. This article shows Haidt’s beliefs on religion, and looks into many others beliefs about religion.

This post calls out a lot of false beliefs that have been propagated by religion throughout the years. When it talked about past cultures who had practiced sacrifices for years to appease their Gods lust for flesh, it sort of mocks this belief as one that is clearly false. This source really gets into questioning the ins and outs of religion and will be important in my paper. It talks about how humans have a hive like philosophy. That is that they join together and help each other out even at the same time as they are fighting against and trying to take down their opposition. When this is applied to religions, you can see it all throughout history. The behavior of this is my faith so therefore your faith is wrong. The holy wars show this very literally, with so many people fighting and dying simply because they didn’t agree with the people they were fighting against. I believe that many false beliefs within our society that are propagated by religion and even ones that aren’t are still told to us when we are too young to question them, like religion is in most cases.