True Happiness in The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut...

True Happiness in The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut and Hans Weingartners The Eduakators A large parcel of the population has as their ultimate goal in life achieving well-being. Unfortunately many try to achieve it through the wrong means. For instance, in The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Malachi Constant thinks he is truly happy, but what he really does is fulfill his hedonism, satisfy his shallow needs, without truly searching for a higher form of well-being. Not only does a life focused on hedonic satisfaction not achieve true happiness, it also leads, along with the urge to accumulate, egocentrism, and greed, to an unethical life. The Sirens of Titans depicts this kind of life, which is also represented throughout†¦show more content†¦(†¦) Further, because achieving money, fame, and image is often contingent on engaging in nonautonomous activities, emphasizing such goals may detract from a sense of authenticity and result in lower well-being. (13) That is exactly the lifestyle that both Malachi and Hardenberg had. Even though Malachi was financially the luckiest man on Earth, he did not focus on other important factors to improve his well-being, such as solid relationships and virtue. That is explicit when he searched his memory and found only an â€Å"exposed snapshot of all the women he had had, with preposterous enterprises, with testimonials that attributed to him virtues and strengths that only three billion dollars could have† (Voggenut 16). Nothing of value was found, only shallow achievements. Also whenever Malachi would indulge in hedonic pleasures it was not happiness he would find. On the contrary, it would be â€Å"depression that always followed his taking of alcohol, narcotics and women† (Voggenut 12). Hardenberg, who was also millionaire, did not live a truly happy life. The price he had to pay to be a millionaire was taken upon his personal relationships. In The Edukators, when Hardenberg is asked by Jule how many hours he worked a day he answered, â€Å"thirteen, fourteen easy.† Jule then proceeded to make an important observation, â€Å"What do you do with all that money? (†¦) You don’t even have