Jon Gertner, "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness"

Questions for Making Connections within the Reading:  

1. By choosing the title "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" has Jon Gertner misunderstood or misrepresented the views of the psychologists whose work he describes? On the basis of the evidence and analysis presented by these psychologists, would you say that happiness is fundamentally an illusion? Or is it the pursuit of happiness that deserves to be reconsidered? If happiness is not something that we can pursue actively, then how might it be achieved? Would you conclude from Gertner's article that people should pursue something other than happiness?  

2. In the course of his article, Gertner introduces a number of terms of art-that is, terms used by specialists in a particular branch of learning. These terms include "maximizing utility," "affective forecasting," "impact bias," "miswanting," "adaptation," "psychological immune system," "hot state," "cold state," and "informed consent." Explain in your own words the meaning of one of these terms, and discuss its connection to the other key terms. In what ways do these terms help to challenge our commonsense ideas about freedom, choice, and the good life? In what ways do the terms help to support common sense?  

3. When Gertner describes the research of Gilbert and Loewenstein, he also tells us something about their lives. Gilbert, for example, once intended to be a writer and registered for a class in psychology only after he was closed out of the creative writing class he really wanted. Loewenstein is an avid outdoorsman who runs rapids and climbs mountains. Do you see any connections between the lives of these two men and the research they have done? If you regard these connections as significant, what conclusions might we reach about the linkages between ideas and life experience? Would you say, on the basis of Gertner's report, that psychological research is less creative than the writing of fiction?  

Questions for Writing:  

1. The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "all men" are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," among them "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." What are the political implications of the research indicating that the pursuit of happiness is often misdirected because people typically fail to recognize the conditions that will really make them happy? Does the work of Gilbert and the other psychologists suggest that Thomas Jefferson's claim, when he drafted the Declaration, was based on a false assumption? Do you believe that the pursuit of happiness deserves to be recognized as an "unalienable" right along with the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution-the right of free speech and assembly, trial by jury, and so on? Were the drafters of the Constitution mistaken in omitting any references to happiness?  

2. According to Gertner, traditional economists assume that people are "good at maximizing [their] utility-are good, that is, at recognizing what they want and increasing their sense of well-being." But if we are, as the psychologists suggest, strongly prone to "miswanting," then what conclusions might we reach about our market-driven system? If people were better at "affective forecasting," would the consumer economy survive? Would it be fair to say that the consumer society traps modern people in a cycle of craving and disappointment? Given the research of Gilbert and the others, is it possible for us to make a sharper distinction between what we want and what we really need? Should people try harder to like what they already have? Is contentment a better life strategy than perpetual craving, or might it be the case, as Gilbert suspects, that our "forecasting errors" might serve "a larger functional purpose?" What purpose might that be?  

Questions for Making Connections Between Readings:  

1. In "The Enhanced and the Unenhanced," Gregory Stock argues for a free market in what he calls "advanced germinal choice." Essentially, Stock means that people in the near future should have the freedom to provide their children with the genetic enhancements they deem to be most desirable. When we stop to consider Gertner's argument, however, it may influence our response to Stock. Even if genetic technology can deliver on its bright promises, are the results likely to be as rewarding as Stock seems to believe? Is the idea of progress in general a collective expression of the same miswanting that psychologists find in single individuals? Or, conversely, does the potential of genetic technology show that the quest for happiness is not futile at all but at last within our reach?  

2. What are the connections between the quest for happiness as psychologists and economists represent it and the cultivation of "wisdom" described in the chapter by that name from Robert Thurman's book Infinite Life. Do you see any connection, for example, between what Thurman calls the "pseudo-self" and the errors in "affective forecasting" that human beings typically make? Does the state of "alienation" that Thurman describes have anything to do with "impact bias"? Is the Buddhist experience of "nothingness" a way of freeing people from the hot states in which they overestimate their own capacity to find satisfaction by changing their external circumstances? What might the psychologists say about Thurman's description of consciousness as a "system"?

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