PSY211 City Colleges of Chicago Happiness Discussion Hello, I need help to develop 5-7 sentences discussion for 5 posts about happiness. Please find attach

PSY211 City Colleges of Chicago Happiness Discussion Hello, I need help to develop 5-7 sentences discussion for 5 posts about happiness. Please find attached the detailed information with the required documents. ‘RING OF GYGES’ from PLATO’s REPUBLIC, Book II
I am delighted, he replied, to hear you say so, and shall begin by speaking, as I proposed, of the
nature and origin of justice. They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice,
evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered
injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other,
they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws
and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This
they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; –it is a mean or compromise, between the best
of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer
injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is
tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to
do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an
agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account,
Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.
Now that those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to
be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and
the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we
shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road,
following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the
path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely
given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the
ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service
of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at
the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening,
where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he
stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and
having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now
the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about
the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was
sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he
became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no
longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet
outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared.
Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where
as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and
slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just
put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature
that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when
he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his
pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among
men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at
last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not
willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for
wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in
their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues
as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this
power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he
would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him
to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might
suffer injustice. Enough of this.
Now, if we are to form a real judgment of the life of the just and unjust, we must isolate them;
there is no other way; and how is the isolation to be effected? I answer: Let the unjust man be
entirely unjust, and the just man entirely just; nothing is to be taken away from either of them,
and both are to be perfectly furnished for the work of their respective lives. First, let the unjust be
like other distinguished masters of craft; like the skilful pilot or physician, who knows intuitively
his own powers and keeps within their limits, and who, if he fails at any point, is able to recover
himself. So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to
be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to
be deemed just when you are not. Therefore I say that in the perfectly unjust man we must
assume the most perfect injustice; there is to be no deduction, but we must allow him, while
doing the most unjust acts, to have acquired the greatest reputation for justice. If he have taken a
false step he must be able to recover himself; he must be one who can speak with effect, if any of
his deeds come to light, and who can force his way where force is required his courage and
strength, and command of money and friends. And at his side let us place the just man in his
nobleness and simplicity, wishing, as Aeschylus says, to be and not to seem good. There must be
no seeming, for if he seem to be just he will be honoured and rewarded, and then we shall not
know whether he is just for the sake of justice or for the sake of honours and rewards; therefore,
let him be clothed in justice only, and have no other covering; and he must be imagined in a state
of life the opposite of the former. Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst;
then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear
of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and
seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the
other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.
Heavens! my dear Glaucon, I said, how energetically you polish them up for the decision, first
one and then the other, as if they were two statues. . . . . .
Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and
injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of
mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome;
and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law
and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and
they are quite ready to call
wicked men happy, and to honour them both in public and private when they are rich or in any
other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even
though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of all is their
mode of speaking about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and
misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked.
Read Plato Myth of Gyges (attached)
CONVERSATION # 1: Self-Interest and Happiness (5-7 sentences)
A. If you became invisible, What would you do with your invisibility? What would you do
knowing that no-one can see you and you won’t get caught? Do you think we always act
in our own self-interest — and that we would be foolish not to do so? Is this the key to
happiness? Do you think we sometimes suspend doing the right thing in the interests of
our own happiness? Do we ever sacrifice happiness in the interests of doing the right
thing?
B. What if you found $20 in a classroom? No-one else in the classroom, no security
cameras. What would you do? Remember, you’re pretty much invisible 😉 (3-5
sentences)
CONVERSATION # 2: The Greatest Happiness for the Greatest Number of People (5-7
sentences)
Read Tobias Wolff’s short story, the Night In Question (attached)
And watch this vedio:

Should we always act according to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people?
CONVERSATION 3: PREFERENCE UTILITARIANISM, (5-7 sentences/ case)
What do you think?
Consider these two moral dilemmas from Singer:
A- Bob’s Bughatti and (5-7 sentences)
Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and
valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his
pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car,
Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and
live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the
Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does
so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway
track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to
be killed by the runaway train. He can’t stop the train and the child is too far away to
warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the
siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed —but the train will
destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it
represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to
come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.
Singer, Peter, ‘The Singer Solution to World Poverty’ in New York Times (this is a paraphrase of
an example given by Unger, Peter K., Living High and Letting Die (1996). For the whole article

B- The Drowning Child (5-7 sentences)

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The Night in Question
The Night in Question
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rances had come to her brother’s apartment to hold
his hand over a disappointment in love, but Frank ate
his way through half the cherry pie she’dbrought him and
barely mentioned the woman. He was jn an exalted state
over a sermon he’d heard that afternoon. Pro Violet had
outdone himself, Frank said. This was his best; this was the
gold standard. Frank wanted to repeat it to Frances, the
way he used to act out movie scenes for her when they
were young.
“Gotta run, Franky.”
“It’s not that long,” Frank said. “Five minutes. Ten-at
the outside.”
.
Three years earlier he had driven Frances; car into a
highway abutment and almost died, then almost died
again, in detox, of a grand mal seizure. Now he wanted to
preach sermons at her. She supposed she was grateful. She
said she’d give him ten minutes.
It was a muggy night, but as always Frank wore a longsleeved shirt to hide the weird tattoos he woke up with one
morning when he was stationed in Manila. The shirt was
white, starched and crisply ironed. The tie he’d worn to
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church was still cinched up hard under his prominent
Adam’s apple. A big man in a small room, he paced in front
of the couch as he gathered himself to speak. He favored
his left leg, whose knee had been shattered in the crash;
every time his right foot came down, the dishes clinked in
the cupboards .
“Okay, here goes,” he said. “I’ll have to fill in here and
there, but I’ve got most of it.” He continued to walk, slowly,
deliberately, hands behind his back, head bent at an angle
that suggested meditation. “My dear friends,” he said,
“you may have read in the paper not long ago of a man
of our state, a parent like many of yourselves here today … but a parent with a terrible choice to make. His
name is Mike Bolling. He’s a railroad man, Mike, aswitchman, been with the railroad ever since he finished high
school, same as his father and grandfather before him. He
and Janice’ve been married ten years now. They were hoping for a whole houseful of kids, but the Lord decided to
give them one instead, a very special one. That was nine
years ago. Benny, they named him-after Janice’s father.
He died when she was just a youngster, but she remembered his big lopsided grin and the way he threw back his
head when he laughed, and she was hoping some of her
dad’s spirit would rub off on his name. Well, it turned out
she got all the spirit she could handle, and then some.
“Benny. He came out in high gear and never shifted
down. Mike liked to say you could run a train off him, the
energy he had. Good student, natural athlete, but his big
thing was mechanics. One of those boys, you put him in the
same room witha clock and he’s got it in pieces before you
can turn around. By the time he was in second grade he
could put the clocks back together, not to mention the vacuum cleaner and the TV and the engine of Mike’s old lawn
mower.”
This didn’t sound like Frank. Frank was plain in his
:,
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THE
NIGHT
IN
QUESTION
speech, neither formal nor folksy, so spare and sometimes
harsh that his jokes sounded like challenges, or insults.
Frances was about the only one who got them. This tone
was putting her on edge. Something terrible was going tel’
happen in the story, something Frances would regret having heard. She knew that. But she didn’t stop him. Frank
was her little brother, and she would deny him nothing.
When Frank was still a baby, not even walking yet,
Frank Senior, their father, had set out to teach his son the
meaning of the word no. At dinner he’d dangle his wristwatch before Frank’s eyes, then say no! and jerk it back just
as Frank grabbed for it. When Frank persisted, Frank Senior would slap his handuntil he was howling with fury
and desire. Thi~ happened night after night. Frank would
not take the lesson to heart; as soon as the watch was offered, he snatched at it. Prancesfollowed her mother’s example and said nothing. She was eight years old, and while
she feared her father’s attention she also missed it, and resented Frank’s obstinacy and the disturbance it caused.
Why couldn’t he learn? Then her father slapped Frank’s
face. This was on New Year’s Eve. Frances still remembered the stupid tasseled hats they were all wearing when
her father slapped her baby brother. In the void of time
after the slap there was no sound but the long rush of air
into Frank’s lungs as, red-faced, twisting in his chair, he
gathered himself to scream. Frank Senior lowered his head.
Frances saw that he’d surprised himself and was afraid of
what would follow. She looked at her mother, whose eyes
were closed. In later years Frances tried to think of a moment when their lives might have turned by even a degree,
turned and gone some other way, and she always came
back to this instant when her father knew the wrong he had
done, was shaken and open to rebuke. What might have
happened if her mother had come flying out of.her.chair
and stood over him and told him to stop, now and forever?
[ 176
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The Night in Question
Or if she had only looked at him, confirming his shame?
But her eyes were closed, and stayed closed until Frank
blasted them with his despair and Frank Senior left the
room. As Frances knew even then, her. mother could not
allow herself to see what she had no strength JQ
oppose. H~r heart was bad. Three years later she reached
for a bottle of ammonia, said “011,” sat down on the floor
and died.
Frances did oppose her father. In defiance of his orders,
she brought food to Frank’s room when he was banished,
stood up for him and told him he was right to stand up for
himself. Frank Senior had decided that his son needed to be
broken, and Frank would not break. He went after everything his father said no to, with Frances egging him on and
mothering him when he got caught. In time their father
ceased
to give, reasons for his displeasure. As his silence
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grew heavier, so did his hand. One night Frances grabbed
her father’s belt as he started after Frank, and when he
flung her aside Frank head-rammed him in the stomach.
Frances jumped on her father’s back and the three of them
crashed around the room. When it was over Frances was
flat on the floor with a split lip and a ringing sound in her
ears, )aughing like a madwoman. Frank was crying. That
was the first time.
Frank Senior said no to his son in everything, and
Frances would say no to him in nothing. Frank was aware
of her reluctance and learned to exploit it, most shamelessly in the months before his accident. He’d invaded her
home, caused her trouble at work, nearly destroyed her
marriage. To this day her husband had not forgiven
Frances for what he called her complicity in that nightmare. But her husband had never been thrown across a
room, or kicked, or slammed headfirst into a door. No one
had ever spoken to him as her father had spoken to Frank.
He did not understand what it was to be helpless and
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THE
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alone” No one should b~ alone in this world. Everyone
should have someone who kept faith, no matter what, all
the way.
“On the night in question,” Frank said, “Mike’s foreman
called up and asked him to take another fellow’s shift at the
drawbridge station where he’d been working. A Monday
night it was, mid-January, bitter cold. Janice was at a PTA
meeting when Mike got the call, so he had no choice but to
bring Benny along with him. It was against the rules,
strictly speaking, but he needed the’ overtime and he’d
done it before, more than once. Nobody ever said anything.
Benny always behaved himself, and it was a good chance
for him and Mike to buddy up, batch it a little. They’d talk
and kid around, heat up some franks, then Mike would set ‘
Benny up with a sleeping bag and air mattress. A regular
adventure.
“A bitter night, like I said. There was a furnace at the
station, but it wasn’t working. The guy Mike relieved had
on his parka and a pair of mittens. Mike ribbed him about
it, but pretty soon he and Benny put their own hats and
gloves back on. Mike brewed up some hot chocolate, and
they played gin rummy, or tried to-it’s not that easy with
gloves on. But they weren’.t thinking about winning or losing. It was good enough just being together, the two of
them, with the cold wind blowing up against the windows.
Father and son: what could be better than that? Then Mike
had to raise the bridge for a couple of boats, and things got
pretty tense because one of them steered too close to the
bank and almost ran aground. The skipper had to reverse
engines and go back downriver and take another turn at it.
The whole business went on a lot longer than it should
have, and by the time the second boat got clear Mike was
running way behind schedule and under pressure to get
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The Night in Question
the,bridge down for the express train out of Portland. That
was when he noticed Benny was missing.”
Frank stopped by the window and looked out in an unseeing way. He seemed to be contemplating whether to go
on. But then he turned away from the window and started
in again, and Frances understood that this little moment of
reflection…
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