Unit 9 What Is Happiness
Section One Pre-reading Activities
II. Cultural information
1. Quote
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
— Franklin Roosevelt
2. The Pursuit of Happiness
The Pursuit of Happiness is a 2006 American biographical film directed by Gabriele Muccino about the on-and-off-homeless salesman-turned stockbroker Chris Gardner. The screenplay by Steven Conrad is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name written by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe. The film was released on December 15, 2006, by Columbia Pic
tures.
Chris Gardner is a bright and talented, but marginally employed salesman. Struggling to make ends meet, Gardner finds himself and his five-year-old son evicted from their San Francisco apartment with nowhere to go. When Gardner lands an internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm, he and his son endure many hardships, including living in shelters, in pursuit of his dream of a better life for the two of them.
Section Two Global Reading
I Text analysis
1. What’s the author’s answer to the question “What is happiness”?
According to the author, happiness lies in the idea of becoming, in the meaningful pursuit of what is life-engaging and life-revealing.
2. What’s the author’s purpose of writing?
To attempt a definition of happiness by setting some extremes to the idea and then working in toward the middle.
II Structural analysis
Divide the text into parts by completing the table.
Paragraphs
Main idea
1-2
The author points out that when we are not sure what happiness is, we tend to be misled by the idea that we can buy our way to it.
3-7
The author offers a number of examples to show how this misconception of happiness gives rise to the “happiness-market” in a highly commercialized society (the United States).swift中文教程
8-9
The author suggests striking a balance between what Thoreau called the low levels and the high levels.
10
The author gives his understanding of happiness, in the light of the Founding Fathers’ belief that it is “in the idea of becoming”.
Section Three Detailed Reading
Text I
What Is Happiness?
John Ciardi
(abridged)
1     The right to pursue happiness is issued to Americans with their birth certificates, but no one seems quite sure which way it runs. It may be we are issued a hunting license but offered no game.1 Jonathan Swift seemed to think so when he attacked the idea of happiness as “the possession of being well-deceived,” the felicity of being “a fool among knaves.” For Swift saw society as Vanity Fair, the land of false goals.
2     It is, of course, un-American to think in terms of fools and knaves.2 We do, however, seem to be dedicated to the idea of buying our way to happiness. We shall all have made it
to Heaven when we possess enough.3
3     And at the same time the forces of American commercialism are hugely dedicated to making us deliberately unhappy. Advertising is one of our major industries, and advertising exists not to satisfy desires but to create them — and to create them faster than any man’s budget can satisfy them. For that matter, our whole economy is based on a dedicated insatiability. We are taught that to possess is to be happy, and then we are made to want. We are even told it is our duty to want. It was only a few years ago, to cite a single example, that car dealers across the country were flying banners that read "You Auto Buy Now." They were calling upon Americans, as an act approaching patriotism, to buy at once, with money they did not have, automobiles they did not really need, and which they would be required to grow tired of by the time the next year’s models were released.
4     Or look at any of the women’s magazines. There, as Bernard DeVoto once pointed out, advertising begins as poetry in the front pages and ends as pharmacopoeia and therapy in the back pages. The poetry of the front matter is the dream of perfect beauty. This is the ba
by skin that must be hers. These, the flawless teeth. This, the perfumed breath she must exhale. This, the sixteen-year-old figure she must display at forty, at fifty, at sixty, and forever.
5     Once past the vaguely uplifting fiction and feature articles, the reader finds the other face of the dream in the back matter. This is the harness into which Mother must strap herself in order to display that perfect figure. These, the chin straps she must sleep in. This is the salve that restores all, this is her laxative, these are the tablets that melt away fat, these are the hormones of perpetual youth, these are the stockings that hide varicose veins.
6     Obviously no half-sane person can be completely persuaded4 either by such poetry or by such pharmacopoeia and orthopedics. Yet someone is obviously trying to buy the dream as offered and spending billions every year in the attempt. Clearly the happiness-market is not running out of customers, but what are they trying to buy?
7     The idea "happiness," to be sure, will not sit still for easy definitions: the best one can d
o is to try to set some extremes to the idea and then work in toward the middle.5 To think of happiness as acquisitive and competitive will do to set the materialistic extreme.6 To think of it as the idea one senses in, say, a holy man of India will do to set the spiritual extreme. That holy man’s ideal of happiness is in needing nothing from outside himself. In wanting nothing, he lacks nothing. He sits immobile, rapt in contemplation, free even of his own body.7 Or nearly free of it. If devout admirers bring him food, he eats it; if not, he starves indifferently. Why be concerned? What is physical is an illusion to him. Contemplation is his joy and he achieves it through a fantastically demanding discipline, the accomplishment of which is itself a joy within him.8

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