SESSION 22: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
2. EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION:
2.1 LIFE SATISFACTION: Think about the following points and how they are related to life satisfaction:
- work situation
- financial situation
- personal relationships
- mental well-being
- anxiety
- peacefulness
2.2 DISCUSSION: HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS WHICH YOU CAN THINK ABOUT AND TRY ASKING YOURSELF BEFORE YOU COME TO OUR DISCUSSION ON WEDNESDAY:
- Do you think happinness has to do with the fact that things you do in life are worthwile or not?
- Must there be a balance between time spent on paid work and on other aspects of life? Do you think this contributes to life satisfaction?
- Think about what Lord Layard said: Life satisfaction will fall as the recession hits. Do you agree with this?
- 'More equal societies are happier', do you agree? Does this mean that redistribution of income will produce a happier populace?
- Felicia Huppert has made a study on 'things in life that are worthwile'. Have you ever asked yourself about the things in your life that are worthwile to you?
- What do you know about the Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan and the idea of gross national happiness?
- President Sarkozy asks Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Amartya Sen how to measure happiness. Do you think Presidents and Prime Ministers are or should be worried about the idea of national happiness? Is this an important political issue?
- Professor Jonathan Haidt highlights the importance of relationships and talks about five values in societies that we should consider: care, fairness, loyalty, respect and purity. Do you agree with him? How do these values relate to happiness?
- Do you agree with the fact that a lot of young people think that wealth and celebrity will make them happy? Isn´t this what we have taught them?
- Professor Jonathan Haidt says that it´s not wealth and celebrity what makes you happy but relationships, engagement and feeling that you contribute to the community. Do you agree with him?
- Paul Allen mentions that another big factor in happiness is health. Do you agree with him? To what extend is health important to our happiness?
- Britons associate happiness with being: calm, relaxed and peaceful. Nevertheless, our lifestyle nowadays leads us to being energized and excited. Do you agree with the Britons?
- In what way are the following factors more or less important to feeling happier: money, work, relationships, engagement, health.
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
THIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT IN THE ORAL SESSION.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 22, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions:
- 'More equal societies are happier', express your opinion.
- 'Life satisfaction will fall as the recession hits', how does this statement relate to Spain and its economical situation nowadays.
Nowadays, westernized countries are suffering a hard crisis which is making states to reduce the services they give their population. The fact is that there are differences in the way that some countries live to other ones, so it makes some countries be happier because of the life style they have.
ReplyDeleteSome countries placed in the north of Europe, such as, Sweden, Demark, Finland, Norway, etc, are known that have a high standard life style due to the services they get from their governments and because of that there are not many differences between social circles. For instance, they have a great health care with very good hospital where they are treated immediately when they get ill. Children are also helped from they are born to they are adult. Their families get money from governments so they do not have to pay any money during this period of time. Another important aspect is that, the quality of the services is very high, so they can enjoy their environment properly and besides they are able to spend great moments in their facilities, despite having bad weather conditions lots of months of the year. They can keep this life style because they do not only think in themselves but all of them think about belonging to the same country, so solidarity is very important there and also they do not complain about the high taxes they pay every year.
On the other hand, south European countries are completely different from the previous ones. Although the weather conditions are greater to think about positive thoughts indeed, the reality is very different, since the idea of share money in order to get better services do not exist in these states. It is believed that politicians only work to become rich as soon as possible, and sadly it is right, because if you watch the news on TV or read papers, they all will be about people charged of fraud, bribery, and many other crimes. That is the reason why people do not trust in politician at all, so they avoid paying taxes. So in this way, the less taxes a government get from citizens, the less money they will have to give proper services to them. Many countries in the south of Europe are suffering the crisis deeply, and Spain is a country which is among them. Furthermore, Spain is the country with the highest number of unemployed of all Europe’s community so the differences among social statements is considerably high as well. For that reason, unhappiness is becoming common in many families around the country and what is worse, it will not have easy solution soon.
All in all, if we give attention to my previous comments, I think that countries with no differences between social classes are better organized and get better services than those which do not have the customs of share their incomes in order to do their countries stronger and at the same time concerned about their people’s worries. Hence, in my opinion, happiness depend on the less differences a country has between social classes.
Miguel Ruano.
Happiness, happiness, happiness… oh, where is it? Who Knows? As an abstract concept, it is nearly impossible to define, concrete its features or find out how fulfil it. So all this kind of researches are not very useful and depend on subjective evaluations.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, people is happier when they feel there are more positive things in their lives than negative, or at least existing the latter they assume them and are able to cope with and fight against them.
But it is easy to find some example in which people who are supposed live in very bad conditions feel happier than people who have not very important problems. So, when you travel to a poor country on vacations and you observe people who live there have just a little to survive but at the same time they are always laughing, you deduce they accept their life runs in that way and they do no suffer from depression or psychological problems, how it usually happens in western countries where despite having many material things, a good health system, a lot of food, etc. people are always claiming and feeling dissatisfaction.
Also, when you have no time to think and you spend your time trying to survive and do your best in this life, unhappiness does not have any place in your mind.
Other question it is the attitude of the people when the affront their problems which has a big influential in how happy they feel, because not all the people have the same reactions to them.
To sum up, we can talk for hours and hours about happiness but I am not very optimistic and do not think we find any true solutions about to get it or improve it.