Harriet Sidford
Scope: I want to examine our definitions of happiness and success and how they are both related to our obsession with materialism in America. Happiness is acknowledged when it is associated with concrete objects. Materialism is often mistaken for happiness because we think it can be achieved through the acquisition of things. People strive for happiness but these goals usually stem from greed, selfishness, or desperation. Similarly, success is measured in wealth or power, which we promote yet we ignore the fact that some are succeeding while others are suffering. We see this success as positive and use it to overshadow the issues festering in our world today such as poverty, racial tensions, and global warming. This is another extension of the materialistic idea of happiness: success measured in power whether it be political, economical, or social.
Value: Can you have success without happiness or vice versa? Does one depend on the other? Which comes first? When you think of happiness what do you picture? When you say you want to succeed in life what do you mean? Can anyone achieve happiness and success or is it limited to a certain type of person? Where does happiness and success originate? These questions are difficult to answer because our concepts of success and happiness are constantly evolving and adapting to our changing values. Further, materialism taints our beliefs because it shifts our focus and limits our thinking. Once we see the hypocrisy in our perspectives we can adjust our priorities and improve the standards of our world. After all, how can we claim that happiness or success when a large part of the world is suffering?
Originality: I think that happiness and success have always been difficult to define as singular emotion or one idea. Everyone sees things differently and considers certain things more important than others. However the variety in people’s thinking is not the issue but rather our evaluation of what is important in life. Our values have shifted and we have lost sight of what it means to truly be happy and that’s assuming that we ever actually had it in sight. Work relating to this subject usually focuses on either happiness or success but not both and does not focus on materialism as a connecting factor between the two. If we can divert our attention from materialism we may able to have a more pure and wholesome understanding of happiness.
Practicality: There are many sources that will support and expand on my research. The two books that were most useful so far were The Happiness Industry and The Happiness Hypothesis because they look at happiness in two different ways. The first suggests taking a scientific approach to happiness because it will make the idea more universal. The second focuses on the origin of happiness and why unhappiness exists. Both of these books and the rest of my sources are available in the library or online. I am also going to look at “how to” books that discuss success because I can use the tips in there as evidence to support my idea that success is measured in money and power. These will give me concrete examples of what people view success as. Finally, recent articles from newspapers and journals would also be useful because they are current and deal with the issues of today.
Bibliography:
Davies, William. The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being. London: Verso, 2015.
Demott, Benjamin. “Beyond the Dream of Success.” Change 8, no. 7 (1976): 32-37.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Saveth, Edward N. “Apostles of the Self-Made Man: Changing Concepts of Success in America.” Civil War History 13, no. 2 (1976): 184-186.
Schafer, Roy. “The Pursuit of Failure and the Idealization of Unhappiness.” American Psychologist 39, no. 4 (1984): 398-405.
Harriet, I really liked how you set your research apart from others’ on happiness and success. Linking these two concepts to materialism makes a lot of sense and is extremely relevant to today’s society. I thought your thesis was pretty strong and liked that you put it in the “scope” paragraph so the reader can understand your focus straight-away. Something that might help set your research apart even more is bringing in the other side of the argument (those who say that materialism is a good thing, that happiness and success aren’t related to it, etc.). I found it really interesting that you’ll include “how-to” books in your research; these definitely will provide evidence for some of your claims and aren’t the typical sources everyone uses for their research. You seem to have found a few useful and scholarly sources already and naming them specifically in your “practicality” section clearly showed that your research has been successful thus far. Just one other suggestion I have would be to maybe include some of those specific sources in earlier parts of the proposal to back up your claims. The questions you asked delved into your topic even more and I could clearly see the evolution of your ideas as I read them.
I think your idea about happiness is really interesting. I agree that modern US society focuses too much on materialistic goals. What is your definition of happiness going to be in the essay? You might want to add in your proposal more about why this is the biggest issue of the twenty first century. What problems specifically does our definition of happiness create? Also I was unclear about whether you were going to focus on just the United States or compare different countries, because I think there are cultural differences as to how people define happiness. The idea of using self-help books as primary sources is really interesting, I think those will be great sources. Overall, it is a really good proposal, but maybe you could be a little more specific at some points.
Harriet, I think you have a very developed idea of what you want, with a very specific and clear goals. However I noticed that in your originality paragraph, you didn’t mention what you were going to do differently from prior research on this topic. Furthermore just being picky here, but in scope you mention “the acquisition of things” what things? I love this topic I also believe people are so focused on making money, that they forget to pursue happiness. But how is this relevant to the 21st century? I think you should expand on how the pursuit of wealth is hindering our happiness in the 21st century. Furthermore I think you could maybe relate this topic with Marx as the topics of wealth and capitalism are very prevalent throughout his readings.
I think this is a really cool idea for a paper and I agree that happiness has always been difficult to define because it means so many different things to different people. I think it would be interesting to compare America’s idea that wealth equals happiness to another country’s whose definition of happiness/success is something else other than wealth. Are countries who value things other than wealth as a mean of happiness actually happier, and why? Overall, I think your idea is well put together and a very relevant topic to today.