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“Happiness, the scientist says, is not a reward for virtue. Happiness is the virtue.” (321)
August 11, 2021. Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence. Generosity tells the story of Thassadit “Thassa” Amzwer, an Algerian refugee who seemingly has overwhelming happiness (hyperthymia) written in her genes, and the confounding effects she has on those around her, both sincere and exploitive. Characters in the novel include Russell Stone, a minor magazine editor, moonlighting as a writing instructor, Thomas Kurton, a charismatic entrepreneur behind Truecyte, a genetics lab, Candace Weld, a school psychologist and Tonia Schiff, the host of a popular science show called “Over The Limit”.
Plot summary: Thassa is taking a class in creative non-fiction writing taught by Russell Stone. Her boundless happiness leads the class to dub her “Miss Generosity”, but puzzles and disturbs Stone, who discusses Thassa with a college counselor Candace Weld.
1. “I want you to think and feel, not sell. Your writing should be an intimate meal not dinner theater.” (10) Do you write your down your thoughts and feelings? What journal techniques have you discovered to be helpful in your life? I wrote a “Top Ten Reasons I Journal” and it is posted on my blog under “journal resources” in “categories”, if you are interested.
2. “Happiness is probably the most highly heritable component of personality. From 50-80 percent of the variation in people’s average happiness may be accounted for by genes. People display an affective set point in infancy that doesn’t change much over a lifetime. For true contentment, the trick is to choose your parents wisely.” (49). How did you do in the birth lottery? Did you have a happy childhood?
3. “Yet the conflicted book insists on a role for nurture. Joyousness, it says, is like perfect pitch: a little early training in elation can bring out a trait that might otherwise wither.” (49). What is the difference between happiness and joy? Can you share a story of one or the other?
4. “The book says happiness is a moving target, a trick of evolution, a bait and switch to keep us running. The doses must keep increasing, just to break even. True contentment demands that we wean ourselves from all desire. The pursuit of happiness will make us miserable. Our only hope is to break the habit.” (71) Buddhism teaches that the pursuit of happiness adds to our unhappiness. Would you agree? Why was “the pursuit of happiness” included in our nation’s founding documents?
5. “Hyperthymia, a rare condition that programs a person for unusual levels of elation.” (117). Do you anyone who has this condition? What is it like to be around this person?
6. “The novelist’s argument is clear enough: a genetic enhancement represents the end of human nature. Take control of fate, and you destroy everything that joins us to one another and dignifies life.” (149). Do you agree that without an unknown future life would be lessened? Is mystery and the unknown part of what makes human life exciting and an adventure?
7. “The Alzheimer’s gene, that alcoholism gene, the homosexuality gene, the aggressive gene, the novelty gene, the fear gene, the stress gene, the xenophobia gene, the criminal-impulse gene, and the fidelity gene have all come and gone. Bu the time the happiness gene rolls around, even journalists should have long ago learned to hedge their bets. But traits are hard to shake, and writers have been waiting for this particular secret to come to market since Sumer.” (197). Would you be open to the idea of selecting and rejecting certain genes for your offspring? How would you make the choice?
8. “In the last lines of the profile, the scientist says, ‘I don’t believe in God, but I do believe that it’s humanity’s job to bring God about.’” (206) What does that mean to you?
9. “If Jen truly is without sadness, then she’s missing out on something profound, mysterious, and essentially human.” (212) Share your thoughts about sadness as profound, mysterious, and essentially human. Can you share a time of sadness that is important to you?
10. “The day may come when we will choose our children as carefully as we now choose our mates. We may select our natures the way we screen for a career. All the larger, qualifying, problematical follow-up had been clipped away.” (279) We now have lots of dating sites on the web. Can you imagine the day we can pick and choose the traits we want in our children? Create in your imagination the child you would like to parent.
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