Clara Wolf

The Truth of Happiness

Humanities
Section 2
Annotated Bibliography

Site One: Happy

Happy. Dir. Roko Belic. Perf. Ed Diener, Sonja Lyubomirsky, 14th Dalai Lama, Mihly
Cskszentmihlyi, Richard Davidson, Daniel Gilbert, Michael Pritchard, Gregory Berns, Tim
Kasser, Read Montague, Matthieu Ricard, Marci Shimoff. N.p., n.d. Web. 2011.

Summary: This movie was mostly about how different people access and experience
happiness. The director wanted to focus on how happiness can be approached by many
different ways and many different people. For example, one person that the movie
interviewed talked about how he finds happiness through his family and getting to come
home every night to his son. Another man talked about how he feels and finds happiness
through surfing, and being able to feel the flow. Happiness is different for everybody, this
movie is evidence that it can come in many different shapes and forms.

Assessment: I think that this is a very reliable source because when making a movie, all of
your facts and information has to be true. The director of this film has a lot of other
experience in the movie world. Belic has directed other films such as Dreams, Genghis
Blues, and The Batmobile. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for best
documentary feature.

Reflection: This source helps me answer the essential question, by letting me further my
understanding of what happiness is. Once I understand happiness from a deeper
perspective, I will be able to decipher the actual meaning of HAPPINESS.

Site two: Theres More to Life than Being Happy

Smith, Emily E. "There's More to Life Than Being Happy." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media
Company, n.d. Web.

Summary: This article was about happiness vs. meaning in your life. One of the main
people referenced in this article, Viktor Frankl, was a psychiatrist and bueologist in Vienna.
He talks mostly about how he was imprisoned at a concentration camp in WWII. He survived
this harsh way of living and help many people along the way. After he was let out, he went
back to his career and went to medical school. Frankl was a very intelligent man and had a
lot of knowledge about the difference between happiness and meaning in life. He talks about
how meaning in your life is gained through learning from experiences and bouncing back
from rough times. Meaningful life teaches us more about how to gain happiness and how to
live happy. Whereas a happy life is avoiding hard obstacles and always getting what you
want.

Assessment: I think that this source is very reliable because it always has evidence to back
up its statements. Although it might a reliable and trustworthy source, I dont agree with
 some of the statements it makes. For example it talks about how a happy life consists of
taking the easy way out and getting what you want. I disagree with this statement because
most of my happiness comes from being successful and working hard.

Reflection: This source will help me answer the final question because it has given me a
different perspective on happiness and has helped me find something to have a different
opinion about. Throughout this article I have learned where to draw the line between
happiness and meaning. Before I read this article, I didnt even know that the two were
different from each other.

Quotes:
Page 1, Pgph 3- Like many others in the camps, these two men were hopeless and thought
that there was nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for.

Page 2, Pgph 1- But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason
to be happy.

Page 2 Pgph 2- the researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in
certain ways, but are ultimately very different.

Page 3 Pgph 4- The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with
happiness but not at all with meaning.

Site Three: The New Era of Positive Psychology

The New Era of Positive Psychology. Perf. Martin Seligman. TED. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb.
2017.

Summary: Martin Seligman is a counselor and therapist who has been studying the
different ways to live your life for the past 30 years. He started to explain how there are three
different types of lives that all contain happiness. The first thing he talks about is THE
PLEASANT LIFE. The pleasant life is having as much pleasure as you can in life. However
there are a couple drawbacks to this ways of living, one is heritability and the second is
habituating. Along with the pleasant life, Seligman also talks about the good life and the
meaningful life.

Assessment: I do believe that this source is reliable and also not reliable. Even though
Seligman has been studying this concept for over 30 years, it seemed to me that he was
talking about his opinions about this topic. He was teaching us true facts and what he
thought of them. He was an expert, so he had a positive bias on the information.

Reflection: This source will help me answer the essential question because it gave me a
different perspective on how happiness in handled and helped. I mostly thought about
happiness as an emotion, now I can think about it as something physiological, something
that you cant control, and something that happens subconsciously.
 Quotes:
2:40- And now when I tell people what I do, they move toward me.

5:16- This is the most venerable of the happinesses, traditionally.

20:11- Is productivity a function of positive emotion, engagement and meaning?

Site Four: Does Technology Affect Happiness?

Richtel, Matt. "Does Technology Affect Happiness." The New York Times. Bits, n.d. Web. 13
Feb. 2017.

Summary: This article is focusing on how technology affects girls ability to communicate
face-to-face with people. About 3,000 girls took an 80 question test and the results showed
that the average amount of time the girls were on and technology were outstanding. The test
showed that the average girl was on her device approximately 7 hours a day, leaving
face-to-face time, only 2 hours. One mom has a whole different perspective on social media,
she talks about how if her daughter didnt experience any of this, she would be missing out.
With spending so much time on your device, you forget how to interact with people in real
life. It gets harder and harder to recognize facial expressions.

Assessment: This source is reliable because it is on a website that has a good repetition
and has true facts, however I feel like the test that they took isnt accurate. Even though over
3,000 girls took it, they cant draw any conclusions because they only tested girls. So how
can they have an answer when they have only asked half of the people in our population?

Reflection: This source and evidence will help me answer the essential question because
I have a hard time with getting addicted to technology. I usually spend a lot of time on it, that
could be used with visiting with my family or reading. If I am aware of the side effects I can
help myself by using my time more wisely.

Quotes:
It may well be, she said, that girls who seek out online relationships are girls who otherwise
might not feel social at all.

If Im not with you face to face, I dont get these things. Or, if Im face to face with you and
Im also texting, Im not going to notice them. Said Clifford Nass

Among the crucial questions that the researchers were not able to answer is whether the
heavy use of media was the cause for the relative unhappiness or whether girls who are less happy
to begin with are drawn to heavy use of media, in effect retreating to a virtual world.
Site Five: OECD Better Life Index-Sweden
"Sweden." OECD Better Life Index. OECD Better Life Index, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2017.

Summary: While reading this article, I learned many different facts about Sweden. Since I
was focusing on the happiness and general satisfaction of its population, I thought it was
interesting that most Swedes would rate their satisfaction a 7.3 on a scale of 0 to 10. The
people that live in Sweden mostly value environment and health. It is interesting that they
value environment because your environment can possibly be a factor of their happiness. I
would be happier if I was in an environment where I felt safe and comfortable. So if Swedes
feel safe and free, it will most likely boost their happiness.

Assessment: I do believe that this is a reliable source because the OECD is an

organization where 34 government democracies from market companies all work together to
promote growth within the country. I can trust this source because groups are working
together to make sure that their work is the best it can be along with being part of the
government, in where only smart and determined people can be a part of.

Reflection: This source will help me answer the essential question because I have new
knowledge on a different place in the worlds happiness. I can then take this info and
compare and contrast to America or other places. After I do that, I can see what traits of a
community and location make people the happiest and least happy.

Quotes:
Sweden ranks above the average in almost all dimensions: environmental quality, civic
engagement, education and skills, work-life balance, health status, subjective well-being, jobs and
earnings, housing, personal safety, and social connections.

In Sweden, 82% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, higher
than the OECD average of 76%.

Living in satisfactory housing conditions is one of the most important aspects of people's
lives.

Higher economic wealth may also improve access to quality education, health care and
housing.

Site Six: Steps to Happiness: Environmental Quality

Kenning, Sara. "Steps to Happiness: Environmental Quality." Sustainablespu.
Sustainablespu, 08 May 2013. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.

Summary: People mostly think about how we will impact the environment and how it will
keep getting worse. But often times people never think about how the environment affects us
as people and our happiness. In this article, it informs you that if the environment you live in
cannot not support its population and is struggling to catch up, quality of life would be
 miniscule and negative. Quality and happiness from environment are based on how you live,
if you have easy access to green grass and fresh water, you will be happier. Even though
our environment might be the best in the world, the population's mindset and attitude matter
just as much as the environment itself.

Assessment: I do trust this source because it has evidence of the 2011 Happiness Report
Card, I looked at this piece of evidence and it looked trustworthy along with correct
information. This source is also reliable because instead of just stating the problem, they also
gave information on how to help it.

Reflection: This knowledge will help me answer the essential question because to know
what the truth of happiness is, you have to have information and knowledge from all different
types of perspectives. To study and compare how different factors of life impact personal
happiness and how that all funnels down to the truth of happiness.

Quotes:
If an area of land cannot support the populace living on it, then everyones quality of life
would be quite low there.

The environmental happiness indicators include access to green areas and system of waste
management and transportation.

This suggests that our mindset about the environment may be just as powerful as the actual
state of it.

Site Seven: The Secret of Happiness- Family, Friends, and your Environment

Shields, Rachel. "The Secret of Happiness: Family, Friends and Your Environment."The
Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 14 Aug. 2010. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.

Summary: This article is shedding light on how people in the UK are starting to learn from
their mistakes. In the last couple of years, the British people started to notice that their
happiness had started to decrease because of the economic sorrow. After the UK had
noticed this, they also noticed how much happiness, family, friends, and opportunities meant
to them. When they went through this rough patch, they realized how much all of this meant
to them. Now they can appreciate all of these things way more because they know what it
feels like to go without it. This affected their happiness because people are more vulnerable
and they like to volunteer more. The volunteering has helped their community and
environment

Assessment: I think that this is a reliable source, however it does not show anything with
the USA. So this information might be correct and trustworthy, but it doesnt show any effect
 on the United States. This is not bad, but it is hard for us to connect and understand what is
happening when we have not experienced it.

Reflection: This knowledge will help me answer the essential question because knowing
what motivated people into doing kind things to the environment is just as important as what
affects the environment has on you.

Quotes:

And yet, a growing school of thought believes that we have actually gained something from
the last few years of economic gloom; that we are starting to value the things that matter: our friends,
homes and the world we live in.

the number of people mentoring young people in care doubled from 2007 to 2009, while the
number of people taking part in environmental volunteering through the charity rose from 17,195 in
2008 to 20,333 in 2009.

Increased interest in caring for the environment and spending more time outside are also an
important part of the "new happiness".

Although experts in the new science seem unified on the subject of what can help boost
happiness spending more time with friends and family, in pleasant natural environments, for
example some believe this change has yet to hit Britain.

Site Eight: How to Make Yourself Happier;The Affect Our Environment has on Us.
Hudson, Paul. "How To Make Yourself Happier; The Effect Our Environment Has On Us."
Elite Daily. Elite Daily, 06 Aug. 2015. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

Summary: In this article, the author talks about how the environment of our house affects
our happiness. He mentions Feng Shui and how it is not proven to boost your happiness but
things such as paint color, smell of the air, and patterns that occur. These are the things that
affects us the most in the long run. Depending on if you call you messy and gross apartment
home, or a nice organized and clean house, home. These are the little factors that we dont
notice that change our mood and happiness. This article also talks about how some people
work better in a messy and cluttered environment. However, if the environment around you is
cluttered, your head starts to get cluttered leading to stress. In a clean and organized space,
your thought can come more freely and you will be able to feel accomplished and happy.

Assessment: I do not believe that this is a credible and trustworthy source because I
researched the provider and one of the workers there, who has since stopped working there,
said that this wasn an unprofessional and unreliable source. I agree with this opinion
because one of my first impressions of this website was that it was cheap. Although the
information might be correct, I would not trust or depend on this source.
 Reflection: This article will help me answer the essential question because if I can help
myself define what the truth of happiness is, with the information I learned from this, I can
change my life in a positive way. It will also help me by understanding how the different types
of environment affect your happiness. Such as your room cleanliness affects your mental
stress and creativity. If I know more about how this is affecting us, I can draw a better
conclusion on what the truth of happiness really is.

Quotes:
The source is not invisible; on the contrary, it is very conspicuous it is everything that you
see, hear, smell, taste and feel around you.

When our minds are overwhelmed by what life throws our way, we can find ourselves in
desperate need of calming our environment can be a haven away from our own inner workings.

Everything and everyone that we come into contact with affects us in one way or another
regardless of whether or not we are conscious of the effect.

I do know for a fact that other, subtler factors in our environment do have an impact on the
way that we feel.