Jacob+Tyles+RP+Post+3

(1). What are the dangers of being consumed in passion? (2). The Happiest Day, [The Happiest Hour] (3). Edgar Allen Poe (4). [] (5). Sunday, May 25 (6). SOAPSTone  **S:** Edgar Allen Poe  **O:** Poe’s had recently dropped out of highschool to pursue writing  **A:** Critics, naysayers, readers  **P:** The high of power and pride, through happiness, can turn into poison and leave one falling to the ground.  **S:** Power and Pride  **Tone:** Initially dark, nascent, liberating (7). Poe’s “The Happiest Day” describes following passion and experiencing the high of power and pride as one ascends his or her passion. Poe wrote this soon after dropping after high school, recognizing that the road he had chose would be difficult and perhaps even unyielding for most of his life. (8). One can take away from this poem the caution Poe seems to sow into each stanza that as power and pride fly higher, one finds oneself at a greater potential to fall to the ground-the power to destroy a soul. (9). I am mostly convinced as to what Poe is claiming in his poem “The Happiest Day;” anyone has the potential to fall after climbing too high among one’s passion. Yet while an initial read of Poe’s poem offers a dark tone of caution, there are various allusions to hope and success, as long as one keeps his or her soul in check. Perhaps I give credit to Poe’s words because he himself is a testament to his claims, that being able to drop out of high school in order to pursue writing requires a certain unyielding passion. I could never drop out of high school, even for music. So I give Poe credit for this. I don’t see anything false in his words of caution. (10). “And, pride, what have I now with thee?/ Another brow may ev’n inherit/ The venom thou hast pour’d on me–/ Be still my spirit.” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">“For on its wing wall dark allow/ And as it flutter’d–fell/ An essence–powerful to destroy/ A soul that knew it well.”


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Part ii... **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(1). How do we perceive situations to be as “good” or “bad?” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(2). The Futile Pursuit of Happiness <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(3). Jon Gertner <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(4).http://www.tamdistrict.org/cms/lib/CA01000875/Centricity/Domain/545/The%20futile%20Pursuit%20of%20Happiness.pdf <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(5). Saturday, May 24 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(6). SOAPSTone <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **S:** John Gertner, Daniel Gilbert, Tim Wilson, George Loewenstein <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **O:** The pursuit of “affective forecasting” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **A:** Readers, students <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **P:** To dig into the layers of happiness, as well as pursue how we make decisions from anticipating something big to come. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **S:** Happiness, predictions, and reasoning. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> **Tone:** Assertive, empirical, thorough <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(7). Gertner’s “Futile Pursuit of Happiness” peels the layers of functional happiness and attempts to unite competing circumstances of happiness, particularly central to that of how we predict our state of happiness to be after a certain event, and how bad of a predictor we are. Impact bias and adaptation towards certain events center on the brain and how it regulates us. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(8). We are terrible anticipators of our own emotional state, as Gertner thoughtfully purports. Earning a new car or smartphone may seem life changing, but the impactful bliss only lasts for a brief moment, only to be regulated to a normal state by the brain. The same goes for negative states of emotion. A tragic loss in a family is inwardly painful, yet with time all things become resolute and sound. Time mends the broken spirit, picking up the pieces ever so slowly. Over time, our feelings return to equilibrium, as our brains dictate. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(9). This was a really well done essay, and I trust in a lot of what was said. Data is irrefutable, and the data presented seems to suggest our own cognitive biases towards hypothetical circumstances, and just how inaccurate we seem to make them. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">(10). “Happiness is a signal that our brains use to motivate us to do certain things. And in the same way that our eye adapts to different levels of illumination, we're designed to kind of go back to the Happiness set point. Our brains are not trying to be happy. Our brains are trying to regulate us.''