Happiness conspiracy, or no?

So, first off, the "Happiness?" title of the first post was meant for this post. Sorry.

Anyways, this chapter about the "Happiness Conspiracy" was pretty interesting. I got the idea that Schumaker blames the bulk of our materialistic based happiness on the advertising industry. Well, that along with desire/envy of course. It made me think, alot of people would rather work in an boring office somewhere making millions than doing something they love to do and making enough to get by, but not necessarily earning alot of extras. People want to be important, and prosperous, but in the big picture there are very few who are. Wealthy-wanting people can constantly be busy with their quest to become satisfied wealth, but they never get there. Shumaker states that the "poor" have the best lives because they are not preoccupied with desire of importance/ prosperity. They realize there is virtually no hope for them to achieve this. This lets them hold other things in high value such as honesty, love, and friendship.

It is indeed hard for even "poor" people to do this because everywhere we go we see pictures of paradise and extravagance that entice us to pursue them. These ads are obviously very effective, and needless to say, harmful to Schumaker's idea of "happiness".

happiness?

Hey everybody, I finally worked out the kinks in this blogging thing so my URL actually works. First off, this "blogging thing" I just mentioned to seems like a pretty good idea to encourage participation in discussions and such. As we learned from a news report highligting blogging in school, it in fact does urge everyone to participate. In class, you can sometimes pretend to be thinking about what is being said when you're really just thinking about what your going to do that night. This is not the case with blogging. You either participate and read the posts and have discussions on them, or you don't. There is not really a "halfway" when it comes to being involved, atleast not in my opinion. I'm sure some people will say there is, and that you can simply read a post, not think about it at all and make a mediocre comment on it. A mediocre comment will obviously yield a mediocre grade. After saying that , let me rephrase; there is not really a "halfway" when it comes to being involved that will result in the same grade as someone who is involved. But once again these are just some first thoughts.

Until next time, Justin