Happiness to me means a feeling of comfort in my
environment. This is a vague definition, but simply it means that wherever I am
and whatever I am doing I feel secure, content, and involved. This week we
studied Harriet Martineau, she is known as “sociology’s founding mother”
according to the article we read for class. It’s nice to learn about a female
social thinker, honestly this is the first woman sociologist I have studied
thus far in my classes at UWSP. She overcame many challenges in life such as,
deafness, oppression, and inequalities due to being a female.
Martineau had a different approach
to studying sociology than many of the other male sociologist’s we have
discussed thus far. She felt that the law of social life-human happiness, was
the most important component to studying sociology. Although Martineau’s
definition of happiness was never truly explained she provided a few methods of
how to study this idea. Through this she described morals and manners that help
us achieve happiness. Martineau defined morals as shared norms or values of a
society and manners were the actions a person displays based on these morals.
One example we discussed in class was the topic of money. Does money really
provide happiness or not? Personally, I don’t think so. Yes, money helps to pay
the bills and provide for luxuries, but at the end of the day it’s not the
amount in my bank account which makes me truly happy.
An example, I enjoy to help
describe happiness is the move Little Miss Sunshine. This movie helps to
show that even though life can be rough in a lot of ways, the bond of family can
overcome anything. The characters in this movie are all going through very
different life obstacles such as, financial success, depression, and trying to
win a beauty pageant. They all unite together to help the youngest daughter
succeed in a state beauty pageant, in doing so they have to take a road trip in
their not-so-reliable Volkswagen van. In the end it comes down to the fact that
money or success don’t really guarantee happiness, but feeling the love and
support of a caring family can really truly make you feel happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWyH_twcMl0
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