TED lecture response

Daniel Kahneman in his lecture about happiness talks about a connection between people's experience of happiness and the they remember it. This topic should be of an interest to everybody as we all pursue happiness in life. Even though Kahneman's speech does not provide us with any advice on how to increase the notion of happiness in one's life, it does make us more aware of the complexity of this phenomenon.

We tend to think about being happy as a cause - effect process. There are some values, either material or emotional, which we consider essential part of happiness: money, friendship, love. Those kinds of things are supposed to automatically improve quality of our satisfaction in life. The more of it we have, the greater our happiness is. We pursue them, at the same time trying to avoid experiences associated with pain. At this point David Kahneman tries to make his audience realize that experience and memory of happy and sad moments are two different things. How we feel about the moements in our lives that we remember depends mainly on the duration and the ending of the particular experience. The speaker says people rather than being happy more often just think they are because they experience the situation associated with this feeling.

It is hard not to believe in words of David Kahneman. His point is supported by solid examples, such as study of two patients going through a painful treatment or hypothetical Ohio family moving to Los Angeles. Yet there is an uncountable amount of people who have are wealthy, yet unhappy and vice versa. Apparently being happy is not such an easy things as we think. 

"2001: A Space Odyssey" - long story, longer movie

"2001: A Space Odyssey" by Stanely Kubrick is considered to be one of the best movies in the western world. Being aware of such a rank it is no doubt that encountering this movie for the first time one has high expectations. Needless to say that those are often followed by great disappointments. 

In this short post I will not write about the message of the movie or any underlying ideas and techniques used in order to transfer them. I just want to express the first impressions I had and as can be imagined, they are connected with the technical aspects of Kubrick's creation. 

Let me begin with my main concern. I will not hide that the storyline has literally put me to sleep. Even though great ideas are standing behind, that kind of movies are usually not driven by an exciting and attention-drawing action. However, watching it made me feel uneasy and I simply could not understand, why the realization of the plot was so slow. With a pace of the snail, the story was revealed and the worst part is that in order to fully understand the movie, one has to be aware of all the small details pictured on the screen. This requires constant attention and - to say the truth - it is extremely hard to maintain it during the never-ending scenes of spaceships floating around to the tune of Strauss' waltz.

One may argue that capturing millions of years of evolution could not be transferred into tense action. It is a valid point, nevertheless - going to the other side of the spectrum is also not a good idea.

What is mentioned above is in my eyes the biggest vice of with the "2001" movie. However, there is a bright side and actually a thing which made the greatest impression on me. It is a pure technological aspect. "A Space Odyssey" had its premiere in 1968. Watching the images of the space, spaceships, the Moon - I could not resist repeating to myself the same question: "How did they do it?". The visual side of Kubrick's film is simply amazing. Even though for people living in XXI century the vision of future developed in the late 60's can seem funny, it is still a great achievement in terms of creating a science-fiction reality.

To conclude, those were the first thoughts which accompanied me through the whole "2001: A Space Odyssey". There are always positive and negative impressions and for me it were a purely visual side and the development of storyline. As for the message which comes with the movie - this is a topic for separate essay and I will definitely spare you the doubtful pleasure of reading it.

Have a great weekend!