-Riya Israni, Vanshita Purwar
The assembly started by watching a short film by Satyajit Ray called ' Two'. The film portrayed two kids with different economic backgrounds displaying their toys in an attempt to show their idea of happiness to each other. Despite being a simple tale involving two young boys, it deals with such complex subjects as loneliness, the human capital, the socio-economic divide, the philosophy of happiness and contentment, the evils of consumerism, the futility of war, mankind’s resistance to oppression and the true meaning of freedom.
Along with this, the idea of happiness was understood using different theories by some great philosophers like Adler, Aristotle, Socrates where they expand their ideas upon materialistic happiness and how one should deal with them.
The discussions throughout the assembly primarily revolved around the questions of what is happiness for an individual. How is it related to power? How is it related to materialistic possession? And how happiness is a personal idea or an idea presented to us.
Happiness is a very subjective idea. Through the discussion, it can be inferred that it depends on one’s own decisions and the way a person perceives a certain situation. For example, buying an iPhone can be a situation that can make someone happy or for some it can be just spending some good time with their friends and family. Even though in some situations it may seem to have been presented to us, it depends on the person.
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