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Project Space Essay Final
Project Space Essay Final
Andrew Richtertal
Professor Ditch
English 115
21 September 2020
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
Through the use of ethos, logos, and pathos, they are able to present personal stories and
arguments that further explain their own meaning of happiness. 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 who someone looks at their living
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
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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
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.
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:
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.
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
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
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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
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
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not the most effective because it does not elaborate on one’s own spiritual alignment of inner
Comments:
“Dear Andrew, You’ve created a thoughtful introduction! Please revise according to the
following points: -Add much more detail to your thesis. How does the author specifically use
ethos, pathos, and logos and why is it effective? -Revise the organization so that the analysis of
all three articles is thoroughly and consistently connected back to your thesis. -Add transitions
from one paragraph to the next. Keep up the hard work! Prof D”
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Works Cited
Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less...” Pursuing Happiness, by Matthew Parfitt and
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.