Analytic essay 1 - Grade: A PDF

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Loren Hutchinson Professor Koser Expository Writing 101 23 September 2020 Motivation to attain success, wealth, education, fitness, beauty, and power are fueled through the pursuit and expectation of happiness. However, acquisition of these do not guarantee happiness. In Daniel Gilbert’s “Immune to Reality” he discusses the idea of predicting happiness and concludes that its prediction is impossible. Yet, our capitalistic society uses social media, technology, and other advertising gimmicks to convince the public that one can predict happiness, which is contrary to Gilbert’s findings, but profitable. Jia Tolentino corroborates how society sets the parameters for success and subsequent happiness for women in “Always Be Optimizing”. She states that under accelerated capitalism, these pursuits are traps and “satisfaction remains, under the terms of the system, necessarily out of reach” (66). Abandoning these ideals is not an option for several reasons. As Gilbert states “in short, we do not realize that our views will change because we are normally unaware of the processes that change them (144),” and in order to be accepted by society we must engage in optimizing behaviors. However, we do not realize that intense failure engages our psychological immune system which buffers the pain also creating happiness. Therefore, the psychological immune system and optimizing behaviors perpetuate the society’s delusion of contentment.

This delusion of happiness drives people in their pursuit despite Gilbert's discovery that people can not predict emotion. When they are not successful, their defensive systems maintain the status quo so they can acquire happiness and continue in their pursuits. For example, when one

is not aware of why they are doing what they are doing they will come up with an explanation which makes them feel better. Gilbert describes a study when volunteers were not aware that messages on a computer impacted their behavior and came up with alternative explanations (143) The messages society communicates through social media, movies, television, and marketing are similar to the computer messages. Examples of these are the messages that have been communicated about race and beauty creating bias. These influence behavior that we are not aware of, but when needed, an explanation is identified. This “explanation” becomes the truth but is rather an illusion preventing the opportunity to change or address the subliminal messages. Another defense system is the psychological immune system, which, by definition and function works as an illusion. “It is a defensive system and it obeys the same principle. When experiences make us feel sufficiently unhappy, the psychological immune system cooks facts and shifts blame to offer us a more positive view” Gilbert (148). Being cognizant that the truth is being altered helps one feel better in the moment but lacks the authenticity to foster change, healing, resolution, or lead to greater contentment. “The cost of being effective at using this technique makes us strangers to ourselves” (Gilbert144). Being that we can blame others, or change the facts, we continue in the same illusion sustaining behavior towards happiness. If we become strangers to ourselves are we able to attain happiness? Some people of limited means, or inescapable circumstances appear to be happy without meeting the highest expectations society has for happiness. For example, someone who can not afford a luxury car will be happy with a modest car or someone who can not afford top of the line makeup may be happy with drugstore makeup while still valuing the notion that these things lead to happiness. However, the basic tenets of beauty and wealth continue to be held. According to Gilbert this is because the psychological immune system is triggered providing a “silver lining” (150). This is another false

narrative because there is still a comparison to the ideals of society. Gilbert explains that people make decisions they think will increase happiness by engaging in behaviors or situations where they have more freedom of choice. By choosing action over inaction, regret is avoided, and an explanation is given. These behaviors are consistently used when women engage in optimizing behaviors to meet the ideal standard.

The ideal standard of beauty perpetuated by a capitalistic society appears to be attainable but is, in fact unattainable. Meeting these norms is necessary for survival as the world is a woman’s “audience” Jia Tolentino quotes Niami Wolf who explains that in order for women to believe the beauty myth, they have to think that beauty is necessary for an increase in power, hard work is a way to meet the standard, and the beauty standard will increase with personal success and power. These beliefs provide an explanation and certainty support continued efforts to obtain this standard. The feminist movement has attempted to make to redefine the beauty standard from one of fake beauty to one focused on “real”, natural beauty. “Part of what brought Jezebel to the center of online feminist discourse was its outcry against Photoshop use in ads and magazine covers, which on the one hand instantly exposed the artificiality and dishonesty of the contemporary beauty standard, and on the other hand showed enough of a powerful, lingering desire for ‘real’ beauty that it cleared space for ever-heightened expectations,”(Tolentino 79). This has created a new explanation that includes freedom of choice. However, the market provides an infinite amount of choices that women can make regarding the actions toward selfimprovement and furthermore, emphasizes that the choices are made for themselves. This feeds the fallacy that freedom with bring happiness Tolentino describes how optimization has created a $97 billion industry of athleisure that provides endless choices in apparel. The beauty industry

also provides endless choices in makeup, youth enriched formulas, plastic surgeries, injections, extensions, hair dyes and nail designs. Providing women with the freedom to make choices to attain happiness or what they think will make them happy. Optimization provides women the opportunity to avoid regret through action. The fitness industry provides an opportunity for women to have that perfect body through endless choices including barre, hot yoga, cycling, palates, and CrossFit. Therefore, engaging in actions to enhance self or beauty will provide the illusion of attaining perfection and appears to be enough to make one happy. However, what happens when these actions, choices, and explanations lead to failure?

There are so many beauty, weight loss, and lifestyle remedies when one experiences a failure in optimization. There is an alternative explanation, a different action, and another choice that can be made. Gilbert has noted that psychological immunity can explain ambiguity and gives an example of being dismissed or rejected by one judge (ambiguous) verses a whole room of people or jury (less ambiguous). Therefore, if the optimization failure occurs in an ambiguous situation the psychological immunity will explain it and possibly dismiss the failure. For example, if in pursuit of optimization a woman received lip injections that over emphasized her lips and she spoke to a friend about it, she could dismiss the problem by blaming the friend, or the doctor, making her feel happier. However, if she posted a picture of herself on social media and received a number of negative comments this would be more difficult to dismiss, but could still engage her psychological immune system to find a silver lining and ignore the issue of trying to reach an unattainable standard set by society. This is also evident in plastic surgery patients who become addicted to surgery and optimization to their detriment. The psychological immune system and

the pursuit of happiness or the beauty myth create an illusion that never addresses the core issues. The delusion of happiness created by society motivates its members to engage in behaviors they think will help them reach this goal: optimizing their beauty, lifestyle, seeking freedom and action, or certainty. The pursuit of this delusion provides the explanation and action we think will provide us happiness or follow an illusion of happiness. When we fail, the psychological immune system provides us the alternative explanation or illusion needed to reach contentment....