Honors College Art & Science of Emotions Fall 2017 (12:00 p.m.) Happiness Group Completed Project | Page 6

about material wealth. As a society,
though, we have lost the sense of
what is truly important and have put
a considerable amount of stress on
what is trending or popular.
In order to draw attention to
the issues of society and the poten-
tial that we have as individuals to
make a difference, we wanted to jux-
tapose what is real and what is ideal.
We hoped to make the difference
even more stark by altering the
roads between paragraphs, showing
the immense chasm between the na-
ture and material roads. We hoped
that portraying our message in this
way can truly inspire a change in the
world, increasing the happiness of all
people and their relationship with our
world. We hope that through this
compilation, we can draw attention
to social issues such as a decreasing
number of interpersonal relation-
ships, in-person communication, and
a focus on material possessions in-
stead of real people. The environ-
mental issues we hope to discuss
cover pollution, deforestation, indus-
trialization, and global warming. We
hope to make the change today, so
that everyone can have a better,
cleaner, healthier, and happier to-
morrow.
Inspiration
A
s part of a collaborative project
showcasing the emotion of
happiness, our editorial board
has constructed our own philosophi-
cal, artistic vision of happiness. This
vision depicts the paradox of joy in
our society. We chose a split path-
way to criticize the role that materi-
alism plays in our determination of
happiness and success, and con-
versely, the lack of philia in our com-
munity today. Our project discusses
two paths, one of which leads to an
exaggerated form of materialism and
self-indulgence. In contrast, the oth-
er path leads to an utopia where
technology is no longer the pinnacle
of success. It is replaced with the
unyielding beauty of nature and the
world’s wonders. While both paths
exhibit the extremes of human na-
ture, they also reveal the dangers of
materialism and the quiet peace and
happiness that can be found within
nature.
Our inspiration for taking this
route lies in the worsening conditions
of humanity. People are seeming to
fall further into the pit of material-
ism, leading to an over-
industrialization of our planet and
lack of concern for nature. As nature
becomes less available, people rely
more on objects for their happiness,
encouraging a cycle of sickness that
will inevitably result in emptiness.
This can be seen most clearly with
events such as Black Friday, where
people will, quite literally, hurt oth-
ers in order to possess an object of
unknown importance. To make mat-
ters worse, these sales technically
start on Thanksgiving evening, a day
which is supposed to be spent in
gratitude and appreciation for your
loved ones rather than thinking
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