*This is a pretty rough draft, so Im mainly looking for big picture feedback.

Things like

content, structure, flow (in both the entire essay and in the individual paragraphs). Whether or

not you think Im missing anything important, or areas that could be taken out, or expanded

upon. Anything along those lines would be helpful. Thank you!

Jessie Haas

Professor Lisa Fitzgerald

English 1

8 November 2017

Essay Three Draft

The field of psychology is strikingly new, not even one hundred and fifty years old. In

the fields short lifespan, psychologists have tended to focus on abnormal psychology, or

what is wrong or defective about individual humans. However, in the last couple of decades,

a new approach to psychology has emerged: positive psychology, or the focus on positive

human emotions and human flourishment. New ideas about the value of happiness have

emerged from the rise of positive psychology, and via pop psychology, have entered the

public consciousness. The effects of this infiltration today can be seen all over social media.

The idea that happiness is the end-all be-all of human life seems to go without saying to

many people, but is this organic? Or is it an idea that has been manufactured by the recent

trend of positive psychology and reinforced by social media? In academia and in everyday

life, such as in the field of psychology and in social media, great importance is placed on

happiness, creating an enormous pressure to be happy. But this myopic view on human well-

being overlooks the psychological and philosophical value of suffering and sadness.

Positive psychologists are of the mind that the field of psychology has been for too

long focused on pathology; the goal of positive psychology, therefore, is to show what actions

lead to well-being (Csikszentmihalyi), but positive psychologists often overlook the value of
suffering, or place emotions into neat good or bad categories, which does not reflect reality

(Lomis). Proponents of positive psychology argue that happiness and fulfilment should be the

main goal for humans (Csikszentmihalyi), and on the surface this seems reasonable, but a

closer look shows not only the dangers of undervaluing so-called negative emotions, but also

the problem of a false dichotomy of positive and negative emotions in the first place

(Lomis). The tendency for positive psychologists to focus on emotions, such as optimism,

forgiveness, gratitude, contentment, and tolerance (Csikszentmihalyi), glosses over the value

of suffering: many people consider their struggles to be what have caused them to grow and

cultivate depth (Brooks, D.). Additionally, the very classification of an emotion as positive

leads to problems: are happy emotions black and white enough that they can be objectively

thought of as always being happy? For example, take the idea that optimism is a positive

human emotion that should be encouraged over pessimism. Is this always the case? What if

you are assessing a very real risk, such as whether or not you should walk home at night

through a bad neighbourhood, or whether or not impulsively quitting your job to start a

candle making business is a good idea or not (Lomis)? Unchecked optimism is not always

positive. It sometimes is, but then that is why positive psychology can be facile and

simplistic, diminishing complicated emotions down into categories of bad emotions and

good emotions. Pessimism can be grounding; optimism can be unrealistic.

Even though positive psychologists have begun to move in the direction of a new,

more nuanced understanding of human emotion with what is called second wave positive

psychology (Lomis), the overvaluing of supposedly positive emotions has entered the public

consciousness, and there is no better illustration of this than social media. The overvaluing of

happiness and its subcategories are constantly present on most social media websites such as

Facebook and Instagram, and as a result, the use of social media can create an enormous

pressure to be happy. Social media ultimately is about marketing yourself. Because you are
able to show your life in snapshots, you have a massive amount of control over the image you

portray to the people in your life (Brooks, J.). Since our society values happiness so much, it

is no surprise that many people choose to market themselves as continuously happy people.

But it is a vicious cycle, because the more that the idea of the good life being a continuously

happy life is pushed on social media, the more we value it, and the more we market ourselves

to reflect that. But social media shows a distorted, two-dimensional view of peoples lives,

virtually unobtainable because human beings have a range of complicated emotions.

Everyone has their ups and downs, but you might not be able to tell from their social media

accounts. This unrealistic goal sets people up to fail. The pressure to be happy all of the time

like the people on your Facebook feed, and the inevitable failure to accomplish that,

ironically causes more sadness than happiness.

Suffering is an integral and unavoidable part of life, and should not be ignored, swept

under the rug, or made shameful. It has been a part of nature since the beginning of time, and

will continue to be a part of nature until our star explodes and kills us all. While there may

not be any inherent benefits of suffering (although some Ascetics, that is, people who abstain

from comfort for spiritual reasons, would argue there is), it is important to understand that it

is inevitable and that there are lessons to be learned from suffering. Suffering can show you

that something is wrong that you need to fix (Fitzpatrick). If you are unhappy every day, then

you know you need to reassess and make a change. Moreover, experiencing a wide range of

emotions adds depth to a person. Suffering is possibly the deepest emotion a human can feel,

and exploring those deep dark parts of yourself is something that everyone needs to do to

understand themselves and to grow and flourish (Brooks, D.). Suffering is also the great

equalizer: all people and animals suffer, no one is above sadness. Ignoring this integral part of

our world trying or belittle its value can disconnect you from your humanity.
 But there are benefits to negative moods and emotions that go past vague

philosophical ideas about the nature of suffering. There are also tangible benefits, and those

benefits are starting to be explored by psychologists. We have evolved to be capable of

feeling a wide range of emotions for a reason; bad emotions or moods would not be so

integral and prevalent if they did not have a purpose. Anxiety can keep you alert; pessimism

creates caution. But there are other, less intuitive benefits to negative emotions. Studies have

shown that sadness can contribute to a better attention to detail, and can also improve a

persons memory recall. Perhaps most interestingly, people who report feeling sad are less

judgemental than others in that moment. When shown pictures of people in a controlled

study, those who were sad were less likely to stereotype them based on their appearance

(Bower). It is important to distinguish from fleeting bad feelings and moods however, and

chronic mood disorders, such as depression or anxiety disorders. All moods, including

happiness and sadness, are best in moderation.

The shift from the first wave of positive psychology to the second wave, where

positive and negative emotions are considered to be more nuanced than originally thought,

and the idea that people need a mixture of both, reflects an important idea about synthesis and

the importance of balance, and this is something that can be applied to human fulfilment. As

the field of positive psychology needs to value both positive and negative emotions, so do

we. It is important to remember that we need a range of emotions to be balanced and

therefore full persons; being overwhelmingly sad or overwhelmingly happy is not conductive

to personal growth. Moreover, there should be less emphasis on happiness in general, as

thinking about happiness is what creates the pressure to be happy, and the sadness that comes

along with not achieving the unrealistic goal of a happy life.

In conclusion, while positive psychology may have had good intentions, the first wave

of positive psychology created a simplistic, unnatural view of human emotions, that may
have contributed to an overvaluing of happiness in our society. This overvaluing was only

reinforced by the sudden explosion of popularity of social media, and it has been a vicious

cycle ever since. The way to break free from this cycle is to understand the value of suffering,

the benefits of sadness, and live a more balanced life, with a mature understanding of human

fulfilment that encompasses a wide range of perfectly valid human emotions.

 Works Cited

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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Seligman, Martin E. P. Positive Psychology: An

Introduction. American Psychologist.

Brooks, David. Opinion | What Suffering Does. The New York Times, The New York

Times, 7 Apr. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-

does.html?_r=0

Brooks, Jon. Facebook And Mortality: Why Your Incessant Joy Gives Me The Blues.

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Fitzpatrick, Scott, et al. "Religious Perspectives on Human Suffering: Implications for

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