Happiness and Wisdom News!

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Happiness and Wisdom News!

Fall 2023

• Loneliness research and a project. [1]

• Why the Finns are so happy. [2]

• Deaths of despair and American happiness. [3]

• Believe it or not this is happiness news. [4]

• Happiness and “weak ties” [5]

Fall 2021

• On aging. [6]

• Oxford, Michigan school shooting offers insights to “unwise/dysfunctional” family behaviors, but also questions about “wise culture”. Arguably, “neo-liberal individualist culture” makes it hard to intervene, to ask, “Are you alright?”.

• Addio, Rav! [7]

• Rep. Paul Gossar shares an animated video of him killing another congressperson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then turning the weapons toward an animated figure of the president.

• Since vaccine rollout, covid deaths are disproportionately affecting Republicans. [8]

• Inflation spikes to 6.2%. An "unhappiness maker".

• Much happiness in re-opening of US borders to more international visitors.

• Happiness economics gets into Philosophy 301!

• Haiti and market failures, failures of civil society.

• Brief movie report on "After Life" [9]. While we're at it, other "after life" movies: Defending Your Life, A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven). [10]. And, since I'm on a Lubitsch kick, I just came across "Heaven Can Wait" (which does reflect the sexism of its time), but also makes a commentary on a particular path to happiness.

• Addio Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi! ObitCsiksentmihalyi

• The Philosophy Department Undergraduate Committee is trying to increase our social media presence and they think that one of the best ways to do this is through the app TikTok. They are hoping to produce content with our majors and minors that appeal to a broad spectrum of students. To that end, they would appreciate if you could fill out this very short survey: https://forms.gle/4G8u4JuQQgmBPLB38

• Socratic Club Event tonight.

• Addio ”The Happiest Man on Earth” [11]

• H&W movie suggestion from figlio mio. [12]

• How does a whistleblower or hacker determine whether it is wise to do so? Thinking of facebook whistleblower and hack of right wing media records.

• Algorithms for wisdom? [13]

• A potential wisdom story about an outhouse.

• Some research from Ethics class on our bias toward confirmatory thought. Perkins research on IQ and ability to generate “my-side” arguments.

• Cambridge Handbook on Wisdom.

• Happiness thought for the day. Do we "perform happiness" in social media?

• Unhappy, unwise. The Gabby Petito's murder.

• Eccentric happiness practices - The guy who rides through campus on a bike with a boom box.

• Pope’s response to abortion/communion issue may be wisdom. Or, permissiveness?

• An example of a school concept that tries to incorporate wisdom

• Happiness impacted by the pandemic. [14]

• This weekend's 9/11 memorials might be thought of as a kind of cultural wisdom practice which seeks understanding for difficult events.

• Wisdom 2.0 is a group making a particular kind of wisdom initiative. See the file share directory for an example. [15]

• Popular short video about some happiness research [16]

• Child tax credit may cut child poverty in half. [17]

• Momento Mori from Sister Aletheia (Sister Truth). [18]
• Pandemic surge in drug overdoses. [19]