Humanities 112014

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Happiness and Meaning: Project Description

It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy. ~ Lucille Ball
Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

You will never be happy if you

continue to search for what
happiness consists of. You will never
live if you are looking for the

Essential Questions
What is the purpose of your existence?
What is happiness and what makes you happy?
What does it mean to live a meaningful life?
To what extent can literature shape your personal philosophy on happiness and meaning?

Learning Objectives

The Intangible Life Lesson Type Stuf

Develop the reflective tools (questioning, analyzing, discussing, grappling, wallowing) to

help you define happiness and meaning on your own terms.
When faced with existential angst in the future, you will have healthy coping mechanisms
to process that angst and come through stronger and with more clarity of purpose.
Consider what circumstances (school, work, environment, people, activities, lifestyle,
etc) you need in your life to enhance your overall happiness and sense of
meaning/fulfillment.

The Writing/Reading Skills

Develop literature analysis skills

Recognize literature as a way to hone ones own philosophy on life
Apply strategies for the critical reading of a complex literary text
Develop interpretive claims about literature
Support claims with textual evidence
Compose a well-organized 3-5 page literary analysis essay

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Project Overview1
Ambrose Bierce defines life as A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. According to
Bierces pessimistic ways, this is all there is to life. Our job in this project is to examine whether
Bierces suggestion is in fact complete and accurate. If your life amounts to nothing more than
simply pressing the pause button for the decay of your body, then why toil, why strive, why
aspire? In fact, why even continue to preserve the body from decay? That is, why even continue
to live? Because were already doing it, so why change course? Because everyone else is doing
it? Because as trifling, insignificant, miserable, and dismal as life is, death might be even worse?
If Dorothy Parker is correct in saying, Its not true that life is one damned thing after another.
Its the same damned thing over and over!, then it would not be surprising to learn that she is
the author of the following lines in her poem Rsum:
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns arent lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
If Bierce and Parker are right, and lifes pointlessness is matched only by the unpleasantness of
trying out the alternative, this would not be heartening news. Is there reason to hold out hope, or
shall we just throw in the cosmic towel?
Not many people would deny that living a meaningful life is desirable, although they might well
disagree with each other about what it takes to make a life meaningful. Some hold that one
merely needs to be fully engaged in life for it to be meaningful. Others object that a life of games
shows and pork rinds is void of meaning, and that the more fully engaged in such a life, the more
pathetic ones life would be. Others hold that in order for a life to have meaning it must have
some purpose greater than itself, whether that purpose is saving souls, saving the environment,
or saving postage stamps to be donated to a museum. Still others hold that meaningfulness is
meaningless, and talk of it should be abandoned in favor of what makes us happy. But then
happiness comes with its own questions, many of which are similar to those for meaningfulness.
Is happiness a matter of pleasant feelings, or of achieving a life well lived? (Ans: there are
philosophers on both sides of this one.) How does one judge what will make one happy? (Ans:
not very well, psychologists find.) The purpose of this project will be to help students develop
the self-reflective tools necessary to begin defining what happiness and meaning means to them.
We will achieve this goal through a vigorous study of fiction, contemporary media, social
science, Ted Talks and class discussions. Ultimately, each student will craft and share a coherent
stand on happiness and meaning, thereby standing with Bierce and Parker or jumping (joyfully?)
away.

Possible Topics to Explore

Existentialism
Legacy (can leaving a legacy enhance the meaning of your own life?)
Happiness
Success
1 This project description has been gratefully borrowed and slightly modified from the following source (much obliged
Professor Taber): Taber, Michael. "Seminar Description for Happiness & Meaning." St. Mary's College of Maryland, n.d.
Web. 14 Jan. 2014.

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Alienation, Isolation and Social Media (To be determined)
Empathy
Gratitude

Assessments + Grading
First Semester grades (DECEMBER):
Journal: 50 process points
Seminar Prep: 20 process points
The Stranger Seminar: 70 process points
Second Semester grades (JANUARY):
At the end of January, the project will be worth 200 project points and will be comprised of.
Journal: 20%
Final Seminar: 30%
Literary Analysis Essay: 40%
Personal Philosophy Project Proposal: 10%
Example
Journal: 100 % x .2 = 20
Seminar: 80% x .3 = 24 80 x. 3 = 24
Literary Analysis Essay: 85 % x .4 = 34
Personal Philosophy Project Proposal: 90% x .1= 9
Total Project Grade: 87/100 x 2= 174/200 (87%)

Assignment Descriptions
Journal:
You will keep an inspiration journal that you will carry over for our Energy and Place project
beginning in February. This will be a place for you to document starters and other writing
prompts, which may include responses to the assigned readings, thought-provoking quotes, selfreflections and other musings related to our study of happiness and meaning. It can be a
hardcopy journal OR electronic. Just know that if you chose to do these electronically, there will
be some journals you need to do in the great outdoors for our Energy and Place project, so you
may need to write those by hand and turn them in separately.
Seminars:
We will seminar on The Stranger before winter break and then, in preparation for writing your
literary analysis essay at the end of January, we will seminar on all of the readings in the unit.
This will be an opportunity to showcase your comprehension and insights regarding the readings
and synthesize the various readings as you and your classmates help each other compare the
various ideas proposed by our authors.
Literary Analysis Essay:
Choose a perspective from the readings we have read that resonates with or challenges your
own definition of happiness/meaning and analyze how that perspective is expressed in the
piece(s) of literature you chose.
Personal Philosophy Project Draft and Proposal:
Develop a draft of your philosophy on what living a life of meaning and happiness means to you
and a proposal for how youll eventually represent this philosophy. I will provide you with
questions and an outline template to help you think through your perspective on the topics we
studied, including existentialism, what your purpose is, what success means to you, whether is it
important to leave a legacy, whether or not you feel an element of alienation and isolation and to
what extent social media makes you feel connected to others, etc

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The goal here is to begin creating a concrete personal philosophy after our philosophical class
discussions. This will be more of a process assignment rather than a final product as your
philosophy on happiness and meaning will continue to evolve throughout your life AND will
certainly be further fine-tuned throughout Energy and Place project.
**I am open to suggestions for other ways to culminate this project, so let me know as we get
into this project a bit more if you have some ideas!**