Chiara_Neyman

Working Title

The

Pursuit

Chiara Neyman

1

Content: Foreword...4 Entering Heaven...8 Happiness is a Block Tower...12 Grotesque Dominant Policy (GDP)...19 Internal Torture...22 The Caged Bird...26 Works Cited...30 Dedication...31 2

Shanna Polley 3

Foreword

Chauncey and Craig Neyman

Happiness has never been, nor will it ever be a quantifiable structure. It cannot be rationed or mass produced, it is not a place or product to be bottled or exploited, no ticket can take you there... But if a ticket could take you there, your transfer would not be the same as the ticket in my hand, or the bus pass of your neighbor.

If happiness were a place, some would arrive in lavish limousines, others saddled on the backs of camels, and many more by way of rubber tire. Unfortunately, happiness is not a nightclub, temple, arcade, or any sort of establishment to which you can ride your bike--if I pretend it were, my grade might be better but this is a documentary--a piece meant to document fact, to expose truth--and the truth is that the only place happiness ever existed was in the head. Don’t crack any skulls because it can’t be touched.

Happiness is not tangible, it is a notion. I knew from the start that producing a documentary which orbits around such a lofty concept would have its challenges and that my project could turn out to be an unfortunate scrap of poorly articulated garbage. However this risk also presented the opportunity to participate in the proper execution of something mind-expanding for myself and for those who choose to experience the final product. Whichever category I have landed myself in is for you to judge but my intention is to achieve the latter. I may have strayed from the expected product for the project assigned, but just as there are infinite ways to arrive at happiness, there are infinite ways to arrive in the land of educated individuals. This is the ticket I’ve 4 purchased and now all that’s left to do is pray I don’t wind up in Omaha.

Chauncey Neyman 5

6

Chauncey Neyman

Craig Neyman 7

Entering Heaven

“You have to sacrifice entering heaven in order for heaven to come down on you. ‘Cause if you’re still grasping and desiring even heaven, then you’re still stuck grasping and desiring!” (Ginsberg).

Desire is present from the day we enter this world to the day we leave; our craving is constant, but that which we covet isn’t. In infancy all one longs for is nourishment and some place safe and warm, but as time passes we develop into complex creatures with needs greater in number and sophistication. As children we seek gratification through affection and social acceptance from authority figures and our peers. Adolescence and adulthood bring our lust to new heights as we chase knowledge, experience, and luxury in order to find happiness. As the days roll on desire swells, as do our individual complacency caches with victories realized, until we reach the extremity of secure elation.

How does one arrive at such a place? Which ambitions must see manifestation? Which aches must be satiated to bring long lasting euphoria? What do people need in life to keep them happy? This is not a self-help piece on how to be jolly, but rather an artifact intended to document the polarity, similarity, failure, and success of 8 three individuals who pine for one thing: happiness.

Shanna Polley in her bedroom

Shanna Polley

9

10

Chauncey Neyman in his bedroom 11

Happiness is

a

Block Tower

When I was a kid my brother and I shared a box full of wooden blocks, which we used to generate towns where plush heroes lived extravagantly and brandished plastic cutlery fiercely at the first sign of evil. When I was a little older, I learned of a psychologist who, like my brother and I, built happiness with blocks. His name was Abraham Maslow and his block tower was a hierarchy of human needs. Maslow organized his tower so that the base was constructed of all physiological (basic) human needs—food, water, sex, shelter, et cetera—the next level was composed of security needs, followed by social, then esteem needs, with self-actualizing needs at the tower’s apex. According to Maslow, happiness can be found in the scaling of this block tower (the fulfillment of these needs) and that the higher you climb, the happier you become until you reach the summit of self-actualization.

Maslow believed all of the blocks leading up to self-actualization to be deficiency needs (D-needs) or needs which when left unmet lead to troublesome feelings. He saw the tallest spire (self-actualization) as needs that stem not from a lack of something but from the desire to grow as a person (B-needs) 12 (Cherry).

Bodhisattva

Many people see the merit of Maslow’s blocks of needs but disagree with the order he’s stacked them in. Skeptics argue, “an important departure from Maslow’s theory is that we found that a person can report having good social relationships and self-actualization even if their basic needs and safety needs are not completely fulfilled” (Cherry). In my interviews, I challenged the structure of Maslow’s hierarchy by encouraging my interviewees to build their own towers. Upon receiving his blocks, Craig Neyman built a tower similar to Maslow’s, with B-needs at the top. Neyman values personal growth—when asked for the main ingredient of his happiness, Neyman claimed, “I try to make some attempt at realizing my essential nature--for me that is really a pursuit of awareness and consciousness and the expansion of awareness and consciousness as much as possible, so I can comprehend things--comprehend the true nature of a situation in order to act appropriately in whatever circumstances that arise.” Chauncey Neyman on the other hand advocated for the validity of D-needs, stating, “If I have solid relationships, I could probably be happy anywhere in any kind of circumstance. And that would be the main thing I would hold onto and be grateful for.” Surveys conducted in more than one hundred countries over the course of five years sug-13

gest that the fulfillment of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a great contributor to happiness, but that, “the order in which ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ needs are met has little bearing on how much they contribute to life satisfaction and enjoyment” (Yates). So if we have all of these blocks that can be stacked in any of a thousand ways, how do we decide on the blueprints?

14 Alex Hair and Chauncey Neyman

Chauncey Neyman 15

16

Shanna Polley on the roof 17

18 Craig Neyman

Grotesque Dominant Policy (GDP)

Happiness--though often elusive and ambiguous--is agreed by most people to be priceless. The people in rapport must mean priceless in essence, because the imperious world practice supports the collection of currency rather than contentment--our world measures the success of a country based on its gross domestic product (GDP). While the recording and comparison of affluence in the world is not the gun that shot bliss, it is symbolic of society’s outstanding structure of values which places monetary stability over the well being of humanity. This is the society we are a part of--it’s not the only one.

Over the river and through the woods there is a little land called Bhutan, which measures progress not by gross domestic product, but by gross national happiness (GNH). Bhutan emphasizes the importance of fair rule, environmental conservation, social development, and culture preservation. Bhutan’s minister of education, Thakur Singh Powdyel, comments, “It’s easy to mine the land and fish the seas and get rich... yet we believe you cannot have a prosperous nation in the long run that does not conserve its natural environment or take care of the wellbeing of its people, which is being borne out by what is happening to the outside world” (Kelly). How does a country move to ensure its people something so abstract? Bhutan’s pursuit of happiness operates in nine core domains: psychological well-being, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards, (Centre For Bhutan Studies). GNH policies include daily meditation in schools, intense recycle programs, and soothing music as a replacement for the rattle of a rusty schoolbell. Students are taught about environmental protection and basic agriculture techniques in addition to math and science classes. In the words of a Bhutanese teacher, “An education doesn’t just mean getting good grades, it means preparing [the youth] to be good people” (Kelly).

Since the inauguration of GNH procedure, Bhutan has seen an increase in happiness, (measured by the GNH index,) yet 25% of it’s people live on less than $1.25 a day, and 70% of it’s people live without electricity.

In the eyes of society, these conditions are representative of physical (D-needs) not being fulfilled--needs that according to Maslow’s hierarchy must be satisfied in order to attain a state of well being or happiness. Relationships are located on the third tier of Maslow’s hierarchy, in the social needs category. Social needs, while more advanced than security or physiological needs are still considered D-needs which begs the question; if humans can be happy without the realization of D-needs which require cash money, shouldn’t we be capable of achieving happiness in the absence of other D-needs as well?

19

20

“ I feel that happiness is not measured. It’s experienced and interpreted and twisted. It’s like trying to determine the value of being told “I love you” by someone who you have no doubt in your mind loves you very much.” Shanna Polley Shanna Polley 21

Internal Torture

Almost two centuries ago, in 1829, a prison was built in the state of Philadelphia. Now this was no ordinary penitentiary--no, this prison was constructed with the intention of doing more than simply detaining bad guys--its purpose was to reform criminals by bringing them closer to god. Designed by Quakers, this center for captivity was clean and quiet with cells whose walls stretched thirty feet high and whose ceiling was a glass skylight, the “eye of god.” Inmates were deprived human contact and stored in their respective cells for upwards of 23 hours per day in the name of rehabilitation.

Today there are numerous facilities identical to this one called “Supermaxes” which specialize in solitary confinement. While the practice was initiated with good intention, the longer it exists, the more we find evidence that it shouldn’t. While in solitary confinement, detainees become so desperate for human interaction that they attempt to recreate it through relationships with small creatures such as spiders they find in their closet-sized cells. One inmate was so transfixed by his moth cellmate that when he saw its broken wing he tried to sew it back together with a strand of his own hair. Making six-legged friends is less of a concern however than the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), hysteria, and psychosis suffered by ex-cons returning to the real world. The psychological damage lasts much longer than the sentence. Once inmates are released, they are often struck by sensory overload as they resume life in a place inhabited by more than themselves and a couple of bugs. Ex-detainees often attempt to recreate the environment in which they were isolated for so long and they usually struggle with social interaction. Many victims of the cerebral torture which is solitary confinement commit or attempt to commit suicide during or after incarceration. Psychiatrist Terry Kupers, testifies, “Everyone who is in a supermax has some kind of psychological damage as a result... I’ve never found anyone not damaged by the experience” (Tietz).

If a lack of human interaction is enough to cause one to take their life, isolation cannot be productive toward the end of happiness--social stimulus must be a necessity. With so many theories on what humans need to be happy--with everyone so certainly uncertain--what is missing? Brian Nelson was sixteen years into a twenty-six year sentence when he was transferred to a solitary confinement facility where he spent a total of ten years in reclusion. Nelson nearly went mad in the absence of stimuli, but he kept insanity at bay, claiming

22 “what saves your life is a routine” (Tietz). Everyday, Nelson followed a strict regimen to keep his wits about

Chauncey Neyman 23

24

Craig Neyman in his meditation garden 25

him which included obsessive counting of his cell objects, producing artwork with paint fashioned out of water and pigment from the shells of chocolate candy, copying scripture, and performing various physical exercises.

Nelson found comfort in this routine--it gave him a sense of purpose, a reason to be happy even under such unfortunate circumstances.

The Caged Bird

If anyone knows about unfortunate circumstances, it is Viktor Emil Frankl. Frankl, an Austrian-born existential analyst, was a prisoner of the Nazis, who in the company of so many others suffered the merciless horrors of concentration camps until the day he was liberated by American soldiers. After regaining freedom, Frankl found he had suffered a loss far greater than his time spent captive--near everyone in his family had been executed by Nazis--he was all alone. Instead of accepting his loss as an excuse to suffer, Frankl turned turned to the bright side and exclaimed, “I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment” (Frankl). While possessions, relationships, experience, and so many other things are all great conductors of happiness, true satisfaction comes when a sense of purpose arises. Happiness can be measured by the meaning we find in life as individuals--whatever that meaning 26 may be.

Shanna Polley in her bedroom 27

28 Shanna Polley at the Red Rock

29

Works Cited Cherry, Kendra. “Hierarchy of Needs.” About.com Psychology. About.com, 5 July 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

---. “Putting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the Test.” About.com Psychology. About.com, 5 July 2011. Web. 19

Mar. 2013.

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon, 2006. Print.

Ginsberg, Allen, and Gordon Ball. Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1974. Print.

“GNH INDEX.” Gross National Happiness RSS. The Centre for Bhutan Studies, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.

Kelly, Annie. “Gross National Happiness in Bhutan: The Big Idea from a Tiny State That Could Change the

World.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 12 Jan. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.

Neyman, Chauncey J. Personal interview. 11 Mar. 2013.

Neyman, Craig T. Personal interview. 7 Mar. 2013.

Polley, Shanna. Personal interview. 19 Mar. 2013.

Tietz, Jeff. “Slow Motion Torture.” The Rolling Stone 6 Dec. 2012: 58-66. Print.

Yates, Diana. “Researchers Look for Ingredients of Happiness around the World.” Researchers Look for Ingredi

30

ents of Happiness around the World. News Bureau Illinois, 29 June 2011. Web. 19 Mar. 2013.

Dedicated to Shanna Polley, Chauncey Neyman, and Craig Neyman 31

32