Concept 1: Self-actualization can give you genuine happiness but in the journey of achieving it,

you are already experiencing happiness. That’s what matters. It is because they have the
freedom to express themselves and explore their capabilities without the fear of being judged as
the bad person or the fear of being a bad person itself.

 "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be
ultimately happy. What a man can be, he must be. This needs, we can call self-
actualization.” – Abraham Maslow

 Accdg to Maslow, self-actualization is referring to a person's desire for fulfilled and the
desire to achieve everything within their potential and thus, will give genuine happiness.

 But Maslow also said that it does not necessitate perfection or a fair world. Even if you
achieve self-actualization, you will confront challenges and mistakes.

 According to the Center for Self-Actualization, self-actualization has no end, it is just a

constant movement to expand and become and express more of oneself in order to be
genuinely happy.

So, self-actualization is an unending journey and as long as a person is trying to achieve it,
he/she will face different challenges and do mistakes.

Concept 2: Moreover, human are born to be sinners (citations from sacred books). So, human
will always have a hard time to resist desires and self-interest (ipakita na nagiging masaya yung
tao pag nakukuha yung desires and self interest ++++ disregard na yung results). As time goes
by, humans will start to learn from their own mistakes and have their own sense of justice or the
characteristics of being an ethical person but our house is trying to say that, before the unethical
person become an ethical person, he/ she experienced happiness and that's what matters.

 Humanity is totally depraved (morally corrupted); that is, all of us have a sinful nature
that affects every part of us.
o Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned—every one—to
his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
o Romans 7:14 (ESV) For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh,
sold under sin.
o Quran (Surah An-Nahl, Verse 61) If Allah were to punish men for their wrong-
doing, He would not leave, on the (earth), a single living creature.

Desire and self-interest can be a two-edged sword. It can be a good thing or a bad thing
depending upon the intention of a doer. Despite of the possible results, these two, desire
and self-interest will surely give happiness on a person.

 Pleasure Based Theories of Desire

o a person moved by a desire always enjoys what is desired, or eagerly
anticipates the desire's satisfaction
 o desires only contingently move us to action, but necessarily give rise to
certain feelings

o Accdg to Galen Strawson, it is conceivable that there be creatures who would

lack dispositions to act but who would have dispositions to feelings of
pleasure and displeasure, and that these creatures would seem to have
desires for the things that would please them. These creatures might include
actual human beings suffering from neurological injuries removing their
dispositions to act, and they might include purely imaginary beings never
born with capacities to act, just capacities to feel.

o Accdg to the neuroscience journal, Neuron, at the Universitat Jaume I of

Castellón, "It was believed that dopamine regulated pleasure and reward and
that we release it when we obtain something that satisfies us”. Studies had
shown that dopamine is released by pleasurable sensations.

People are learning from their own mistakes and have done a better job on their next tries. It
makes them an ethical person because it is always the endpoint of everyone. But, before the
unethical person be an ethical person, he experienced happiness even though it resulted to an
inappropriate one. Moreover, being an ethical person will not assure your happiness.

Concept 3: Ethical person are less happy because of societal pressure and they have the
tendencies to do bad things.

 Glaucon (older brother of Socrates) insists that people's good behavior actually only
exists for self-interest: People only do the right thing because they fear being
punished if they get caught. If human actions were invisible to others, Glaucon says,
even the most "just" man would act purely for himself and not care if he harmed
anyone in the process.
 Ethical people who expect everyone to live up to their standards or who follow ethics
solely due to societal pressure may be unhappy. With this, they have tendencies to
do the ff:
o Concern with honest reputation increases lying
 People’s desire to appear honest often keeps them from lying — but
sometimes it does the opposite. The business world is rife with
instances in which telling the truth might make one appear dishonest.
Imagine that you are a manager at a consulting firm who has a
contract with a client for no more than 500 hours of billable work. Your
team works as diligently and efficiently as possible to get the
deliverable completed on time, and — lo and behold — the total hours
worked equals exactly 500. Would you honestly report that number to
the client? Surely some managers would, but in a series of 7 studies
involving 1167 participants, we have found that up to 35% of people
will underreport such outcomes. We have found that, in cases when
the actual outcome is highly favorable, Israeli lawyers underreport to
their clients the number of hours worked, students underreport their
 performance on an academic test, and British and American workers
under report the amount of company reimbursement they are owed. In
such instances people choose not only to lie, but also to receive less
material reward for themselves — all in the service of protecting their
honest reputation.

o Concern with appearing impartial leads to bias against friends

 Imagine you are a leader who is trying to determine which of your
employees should receive a prestigious award at your firm’s annual
meeting. Traditionally, the employees nominate candidates via secret
ballot, and then you (as leader) have the discretion in choosing the
ultimate winner. This year, Jane and Noah received far more votes
than anyone else, with Jane receiving just a few more than Noah. It’s
no secret in the office that Jane is one of your very best friends, and
that you are not particularly close to Noah. To whom do you give the
award — your slightly-more-deserving friend Jane, or your slightly-
less-deserving acquaintance Noah?
 Decisions like this one highlight a common clash between a leader’s
concern with being equitable (by rewarding the most deserving
employee) and their concern with appearing impartial in the eyes of
others (by avoiding seemingly favorable treatment of their friends and
allies). In a series of eight experiments modeled after decisions like
these, we have shown that bosses normally award bonuses to the
more deserving of two employees when neither employee is their
friend. However, bosses routinely decline to award the bonus to the
more deserving employee if they are their friend in the office. In one
study with 216 participants, only 27% of participants gave a bonus to
their slightly more deserving friend, whereas 61% gave a bonus to a
slightly more deserving stranger. By trying to appear unbiased on one
dimension (appearing impartial), people actually introduce bias on
another dimension (allocating resources inequitably). We know that
one reason for this choice is to signal one’s impartiality to the entire
office; when we changed the situation slightly to ensure that no one in
the office knew what the leader’s decision was, people showed a
strong preference for awarding the more deserving candidate — even
when that candidate was a friend.

 
o Concern with appearing unfair leads to wasting resources
 In a related line of inquiry, we explored in six experiments with 2506
participants how concern with appearing partial or unfair might lead
managers to waste resources. In one experiment, 69 participants
played the role of a manager who was faced with a decision on how to
allocate a new computer to one of two equally deserving employees.
Nearly half (45%) of the participants in the role of managers chose to
let the computer sit idle on a shelf rather than give it to just one of the
two employees. Even though they reported that this choice was highly
wasteful — thereby violating a standard of “waste not” — they were
willing to waste this company resource so that they could maintain the
appearance of being impartial in the eyes of their employees.