Richtertal 1

Andrew Richtertal

Professor Ditch

English 115

9 December 2020

Project Space Essay

Pursuing happiness can feel like a coming to contentment, but happiness is not just one

feeling. The Dalai Lama, Howard Cutler, Graham Hill, and Sonja Lyubomirsky all explore the

meaning of happiness, in their own interpretations, to show an audience a different perspective.

In this essay we will explore how The Dalai Lama, Howard Cutler, Graham Hill, and Sonja

Lyubomirsky use ethos, logos, and pathos, to interpret their meaning of happiness. Although

Sonja Lyubomirsky and Graham Hill create different views on happiness, The Dalai Lama and

Howard Cutler maintain the strongest argument because they use someone’s experiences through

pathos, spiritual knowledge thorough ethos, and credible evidence to back up their argument

through logos.

The theme throughout the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler’s interpretation of happiness is

that happiness can be changed, depending on what you compare your life towards. Through

experiments done at the University of Milwaukee, it was discovered that by changing someone’s

perspective, their sense of life satisfaction decreases or increases. The authors states, through

logos: “These experiments, which show that we can increase or decrease our sense of life

satisfaction by changing our perspective, clearly point to the supremacy of one’s mental outlook

in living a happy life” (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 18). The authors try to further their argument

by connecting to people’s personal lives. The authors are able to use pathos through the story of

Christopher Reeves. (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 22) He was an actor that was thrown from a
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horse in 1994 and suffered from injurys that left him paralyzed from the neck down. When he

was questioned about his injuries, he said that he was depressed for a while, but he realized that

he was a lucky person to have lived. The author was informed: “I realized that the only way to go

through life is to look at your assets, to see what you can still do...Reeve has elected to use his

mind to increase awareness” (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 20). This furthers the author’s point,

that happiness cannot only be changed from wealth or physical health, but it can also be changed

from inner worth. Throughout the Dalai Lama’s explanation of inner worth, he begins to develop

his idea that people need sources of worth and dignity because that’s how someone is able to

develop human affection. This is able to effectively persuade the reader because the Dalai Lama

states: “If the person’s source of dignity and sense of worth is only material, then so long his

fortune remains, maybe that person can sustain a sense of security. But the moment the fortune

wanes, the person will suffer because there is no other refuge” (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 22).

This benefits their argument, in that happiness is also based on your inner worth and your inner

worth is where you get these sources of worth and dignity. The Dalai Lama explains that human

beings are the same as other human beings, and because they have that connection, someone is

able to raise or lower their own sense of worth. The argument that the Dalai Lama and Howard

Cutler create is on a basis of mentality and how one perceives their own life based on others.

They are able to effectively communicate their claim by providing credible evidence, personal

enlightenment stories and making a connection between inner worth and happiness. While the

Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler use more of a spiritual connection to understand their own worth,

Graham Hill may agree, stripping back his own lifestyle to find inner peace.

Graham Hill’s, Living with Less. A Lot Less., demonstrates his own interpretation of

happiness as not needing material things to be happy. Hill furthers his argument by stating that
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happiness is created by the time someone spends with another person and how that time is spent.

“For me, it took me 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things

I had collected and live a bigger, better, richer life with less” (Hill 254). The author’s use of

pathos is apparent, being that his article is a self-reflection of his own experiences. Hill begins

his article by providing details into his new lifestyle with expensive luxuries. He notices that his

lifestyle does not bring him joy and the items that he surrounds himself with are inessential. Hill

provides a study done to notice the global human consumption and the consequences of it:

“Professor Bodenhausen found that “irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a

consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in well-being, including

negative affect and social disengagement.” Though American consumer activity has increased

sustainability since the 1950’s, happiness levels have flatlined” (Hill 254). Human consumption

is ultimately rising without ever fully increasing someone’s happiness level constantly. The

author states: “I’m still a serial entrepreneur, and my latest venture is to design thoughtfully

constructed small homes that support our lives, not the other way around…I sleep better

knowing I’m not using more resources than I need. I have less – and enjoy more. My space is

small. My life is big” (Hill 254). Hill’s argument is weakened and not as effective as the first

article because it is based on a majority of pathos. His argument is also weakened because it is

too opinionated and does not provide enough credible evidence to further his argument.

Although Graham Hill’s lifestyle led him to his own happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky may argue

that happiness is determined from experiences through childhood and states that sudden changes

to find happiness won’t lead to ultimate happiness.

In Sonja Lyubomirsky article, How Happy Are You and Why? Lyubomirky analyzes how

a few people grew up and their levels of happiness, concluding that people from worse
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backgrounds and that have had to endure more trauma and challenges, are often happier and

content with their life. While the author is able to show her own research and data, she provides

her own background that gives her own data credibility. Throughout the author’s article, she

explains a myth that it wildly accepted, that happiness can’t occur when we change our own

circumstances. This is because it creates a mindset that they were eventually happy at one point

in their life and the experience of being happy was real. The author explains: “The primary

reason, as I have argued, is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial

changes. I would furthermore be remiss if I failed to point out other reasons why circumstantial

changes may prove unsuccessful in making us permanently happier: because they can be very

costly, often practical, and sometimes even impossible” (Lyubomirsky 156). Through pathos and

logos, the author explains that people who rush into wanting a new life are not ready for the

changes, thus failing in becoming permanently happier. The author further clarifies by stating:

“Any major life-changing endeavor must be accompanied by considerable sustained effort, and I

would speculate that the majority of people do not or cannot continue putting out that kind of

effort” (Lyubomirsky 157). Although the author provided credible evidence and developed

reasoning, her argument is weakened because she does not further her argument by providing an

inner worth aspect that is argued in the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutlers article.

The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler are able to effectively demonstrate through ethos,

logos, and pathos that happiness is changed depending on our own view of our life. Dalai Lama

and Cutler provide credible data from other resources as well as elaborate on the meaning of

one’s own self-worth. This is able to create a sense of trust and logic throughout the article with

the reader. Graham Hill’s article uses a majority of pathos and elaborates on his own experiences

with short evidence from the credible sources, this weakens his article against the Dalai Lama
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and Cutler’s making his article not as effectively persuading. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s article starts

off with pathos leading into why the people feel the way they do about happiness and provides a

great deal of credible sources to back up her statements. Although her article was persuasive, it is

not the most effective because it does not elaborate on one’s own spiritual alignment of inner

worth, which is shown in Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler’s article.

Graham Hill’s article uses a majority of pathos. The Dalai Lama, Howard Cutler and

Sonja Lyubomirsky use pathos, logos, and ethos effectively throughout their articles. They all

show their own accounts of happiness through data and personal stories, by providing credible

data and personal examples. The Dalai Lama and Cutler are able to maintain the strongest

argument because they effectively argue that happiness can easily be changed and influenced

depending on how someone looks at their living situations against another’s.

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Works Cited

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less...” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt and

Dawn Skorczewski, p. 254.

Lama, Dalai, and Howard Cutler. “The Sources of Happiness: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and

Howard Cutler.” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, pp.

18–22.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt

and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford Spotlight, pp. 156–57. Accessed 27 Sept. 2020.