THE WORLD OF HAPPINESS PART II

Making Happiness a Top Priority

                In Jeffrey Sach’s essay “The World of Happiness Report” (2012), he explores implications that that elaborate on the happiness throughout the general population. Sachs provides multiple subjects that have been shown to have had the largest impact on the human population, and explains how these topics should affect us with proposed changes made to policies. Jeffrey Sachs’s purpose of writing this essay was to stress how and why policies created by the government should be altered, in order to make the general population’s happiness a top priority. Jeffrey Sachs intends to draw in everyone living on our planet to this essay, no matter what their standard of living is.

                Personally, this article was a bit puzzling. Mostly to me, it was challenging to determine what the author’s intent was in writing this essay. There were terms used that I don’t come across every day, which contributed to my inability of entirely grasping the concept of this piece. Eventually, I could pick out bits and pieces of his intent to form a main idea.

                Jeffrey Sachs has highlighted many of the controversial issues we deal with as humans, and compares these issues to what a “sustainable” society should be.  He also mentioned certain components of life that should make a person happy, and explained the negative/ positive outcomes of these factors that will determine someone’s happiness. He describes many priorities to humans that should, but generally don’t, provide us with happiness such as work, values, religion, and education. Sachs mentions that the “happiness agenda” is task that will influence our communities as we go through many experiences in life (109). He uses formal terms and definitions in this article to enlighten his readers about concepts not thought of daily. Overall, the policies made that people have to encounter each day have degraded the happiness of those all around the world. Sachs stresses the fact that before making these policies a top priority, the government should focus on the values of people’s lives just by adjusting some of the policies they’ve created, for the well-being of the human race.