91-Word Response

Don’t Expect Stuff To Satisfy Excerpt from an article in The Federalist

Read the monologue’s punch line again: “Everything is amazing and nobody’s happy.” What does Louis mean by “everything”? He talks exclusively about material innovations that make our lives more convenient. Every advantage of modernity he cites is something that money can buy.Consumable goods and services are amazing, but nobody’s happy! When it’s stated that way, the conclusion hardly sounds revelatory. Did anyone really expect that electronics and easy travel were sure paths to deep contentment?

If anyone did, he was fooling himself. A substantial social science literature demonstrates that self-centered materialism is far less relevant for happiness than we might imagine.

First, the “self-centered” part. Psychologists from the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School have persuasively demonstrated that spending money on othersbringssubstantially more happinessthan treating ourselves to new purchases. If you have a pile of cash and you’re in the market for long-lasting satisfaction, “X” out of your Amazon.com tabs and select a charitable cause.

But the most significant determinants of life satisfaction have nothing to do with money at all. We can see this on aninternational scale, as academics continue to puzzle overthe findingthat countries that get richer do not tend to get happier. This phenomenon is linked to“hedonic adaptation,”the concept that humans are quick to adjust our expectations upwards. Today’s delightful surprise becomes tomorrow’s baseline. Louis C.K. encapsulates this in the man who becomes outraged when the brand-new in-flight WiFi crashes: “How quickly the world owes him something that he knew existed only ten seconds ago!”

The same trend holds at the individual level. Once abject poverty is taken off the table, the data clearly show that one’s level of material prosperity is not a major determinant of life satisfaction. It just isn’t. Arthur Brooks, a behavioral economist and my boss at the American Enterprise Institute, uses survey data to construct men who are identical in every aspect, including income, except the depth of their involvement with faith, family, community, and work. Their happinessvaries wildly. If Louis is right that nobody’s happy, we can blame our underinvestment in those age-old institutions, not our failure to be grateful for gadgetry. The materialistic premise that cool stuff should mollify men’s restless hearts falls flat in the face of the evidence.

Quinn, Andrew. “Beware of Materialism: Louis C.K.’s Lesson for Liberals and Conservatives.” The Federalist. N.p., 18June 2014. Web. 22 Jan. 2016.

Instructions:

Read the excerpt fromThe Federalistarticleabove, in which Andrew Quinn is sharing his thoughts about materialism and the state of human existence in modern day life.

Write an eloquent response to this prompt: Is modern-day materialism a result of society’s influence or a product of our own self-centeredness?

Requirements:

1.91 words (no more or less)

2.Written neatly in blue or black ink

3.MLA format

4.Grammatically flawless

5.Minimum one PROPERLY EMBEDDED quote from Quinn’s article above included in your response (The PROPERLY EMBEDDED quote should have no more than 20 words from the text.)

6.Due by end of class on Wednesday, February 15. LAST DAY TO SUBMIT A FLAWLESS RESPONSE IS TUESDAY, MARCH 21. THE RESPONSE IS LATE IF IT IS HANDED IN AFTER THIS DATE.

Value: Major Grade