Ted.Com

Why are We Happy? Speech given by Dan Gibert. Filmed: Feb 2004, and posted Sep 2006.
This speech was very well approached in all rhetorical areas. Dan surveyed college students to going to hospitals and asking amnesia patients. Using famous people who have went through situations relating to this topic. Describing that we all are human and we all make the choice to be happy or not, no matter the situation. Using very stable credibility due to using the New York Times as a source to all sorts of research graphs and percentages he found on this hot topic. Also very emotional knowing that someone who has health problems that make them not even able to function like a normal person, their just as happy as someone completely healthy. Whom those individuals take life for granite everyday, and are the ones who think their life is over, for something that may have happened that's so small. There were also a ton of statistics on this showing the percentage of people who are living in a world of natural happiness versus synthetic happiness. Overall a very knowledgeable and persuasive speech, it completely shocked me on how many people take life for granite.
Human brains have tripled in mass over the course of the last two million years. When brains triple in size it gains structure. A term called perinatal cortex which is an experience stimulator. This is experiences in a humans head before they actually experience something, they think they know the outcome, or assume it. Dan compares individuals who have won the lottery versus paraplegic, after one year of the outcome of both of these incidents, they were equally happy. Now we can all imagine what really makes us truly happy. Were the only one who can decide the fate of our happiness. Another term used is called the impact bias simulator, is to work badly one assumes. Peolple beleive different outcomes of something than they really are. Major life traumas such as loosing a boyfriend or loosing your job, statictics show that after a period of three months these things have no impact at all. Natural happiness is a term to be described as an individual getting something they want, when in deed this is the enemy to synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness is something we determine due to the fact we are unable to control all that happens in our lives, so were either able to go forward with a smile and make the best of the situation. Or be angry when all this is hurting is yourself.