Pre-Draft A
Due Thursday, September 8
Stefan Klein is a German physicist turned author, focusing on science and its social implications
in our world. In the chapter Friendship in his latest book The Science of Happiness: How Our
Brains Make Us Happy – and What We Can Do to Get Happier, Klein compares the behaviors of all
animals (from mice to baboons) to develop his ideas about why friendship is necessary for
human beings to live a happy life and, inevitably, survive. In order to do this, Klein uses
several different styles of anecdotes in order to make his points clearer and more direct.
Directions: Below you will find two very different anecdotes, both written in Friendship. Each
of these anecdotes has characteristics that help Klein defend his study in an interesting yet
purposeful way. Read each and then respond to the prompts below, considering how they
might have contributed to the overall text.
Anecdote #1:
“Isaac liked Rachel. They had been friends since childhood. Physical attraction didn’t
seem to play much of a part in their relationship. In any case, during those years they had sex
so infrequently – if at all – that Rachel never got pregnant by him. Not that Isaac, vital as he
was, had no offspring. He had fathered any number of children, though not with Rachel. But he
and Rachel loved spending time together. While the other males indulged in the usual status
struggles, Isaac and Rachel stayed on the sidelines and observed it all as if from another world.
They sat next to one another in the grass, eating fruit and grooming one another for hours. If
you could ever call baboons “happy” then these two were.
For years Robert Sapolsky, a California neuroscientist observed and documented the lives
of a troop of baboons in Africa’s Seregenti…” (150).
Where in the chapter do you think this anecdote was written? Why?
What are the qualities of this anecdote? What makes this anecdote useful to Klein as a writer
(or, how does it serve his larger objective in writing this chapter)?
How does this anecdote transition into the “meat” of the text?
Anecdote #2:
“Our fear of being left alone goes very deep. People who are otherwise cool and detached
respond reflexively to the crying of abandoned children and animals, and even the sadness of a
tiny creature from outerspace who wants to call home pushes our buttons. Whether one is eight
or eighty, we all can sympathize with the sufferings of E.T. It’s no wonder that Spielberg’s
movie was so hugely successful. The neuropsychologist Jaak Pankspp suspects that we seek
contact with others in other to avoid the pain of being lonely: nature doesn’t only draw us to
others, it positively drives us to them. According to Panksepp, this drive for sociability is
rooted in particular circuits in old and deep parts of the brain…
From the point of view of evolution, this is a relatively old behavior that appeared, at the
latest, with the first mammals and that probably serves to increase the survivability of
newborns. A mouse, for example, is born blind and deaf and is unable to walk. Its tiny, hairless
body doesn’t produce enough warmth to stay alive. Without its mother, it would freeze to
death. It’s a profoundly dependent creature whose mother is its entire world, if she’s absent,
the baby mouse shows pain – and rightly so. Like a human baby in a similar situation, it cries in
fear.
Many young mammals and even chicks show this response to abandonment. Because the
cries of the baby rats (a very well-researched phenomenon) are in high-frequency ultrasound,
humans can’t hear them, but it is just these frequencies (about 40 kilohertz) to which the ears
of female rats are most sensitive. As soon as a mother rat hears these sounds, she will do
everything necessary to calm her young. She licks them, carries them in her mouth, and tries to
take them to a safe place where they won’t be afraid.
When rats mature, their fear of being alone disappears, for they’re not particularly
sociable creatures. But those animals that are social respond in panic to isolation throughout
their lives. Many dogs howl, dig desperately into the floor, and scratch at the door when left by
their owners. Parrots develop self-destructive habits, tearing out their feathers with their beak.
The symptoms of grown humans who suffer from loneliness aren’t quite so obvious, but they’re
hardly less drastic: restlessness, feelings of emptiness, tension, loss of sleep and appetite, and
self-doubt can make their lives hellish” (154-55).
Where in the chapter do you think this anecdote was written? Why?
What are the qualities of this anecdote? What makes this anecdote useful to Klein as a writer (or,
how does it serve his larger objective in writing this chapter)?
How does this anecdote transition into the “meat” of the text?