Subtitled “Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”
With second subtitle “Why the Meaningful Life is Closer than You Think”
(Basic Books, 2006, xiii + 297pp, including 54pp acknowledgements, notes, references, and index. Hardcover with no dust jacket.)
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Ch7, The Uses of Adversity
Quotes from Meng Tzu and Nietszche (“what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”)
Most societies have an idea of fate, or predestination, and the notion that people need adversity to fully develop. If you could edit your child’s future history to remove adversity, would you? Today we think stress is bad.
There are no simple answers.
Posttraumatic growth. Author tells story of an acquaintance whose wife left him for a fraud and eventually returned, but it changed his life. He came to change his perspectives, found more joy in life. This is ‘post-traumatic growth’, which entails the discovery of hidden abilities (we are stronger than we’d have thought), shifts in relationships, with those who support us or don’t; and changes in priorities, as in India, or Scrooge.
Must We Suffer? So does suffering sometimes help, or *must* we suffer to thrive? These are the weak and strong adversity hypotheses, p141. The evidence is weak. We can consider the five basic personality traits – neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness — and beyond these, two levels of personality, the topmost being the ‘life story’. The middle, ‘characteristic adaptations’, can be sorted into work and achievement, relationships and intimacy, religion and spirituality, and generativity (leaving a legacy and contributing to society). People update their life story as they live, but an interesting life story requires interesting material. There are commitment stories and contamination stories. Happy people are better at aligning new experiences into those stories.
Blessed Are the Sense Makers. So why do bad things happen to good people? Most people see life as about reciprocity: karma, the victim had it coming. Differences in the way people cope are about whether they are optimists – better able to consider silver linings, etc. – or pessimists. Experiments show disclosures help recovering from traumatic events; it’s not about letting off steam, it’s about reflection to *make sense of things*. People who can do this get less sick in future months.
For Everything There Is a Season. And so, what to do about adversity? Get over being a pessimist; build a social support network; religious faith can help; write it down and try to come to an understanding. And so does adversity help? Conclusion: perhaps, but only at a certain time of life. Not young children; not settled adults. Perhaps teens and young adults from ages 15-25, when they are still figuring life out and can better rebound.
Error and Wisdom. And elders can’t ‘teach’ wisdom to their children; children always have to learn for themselves. Children learn explicit knowledge, but not tacit knowledge, which comes from experience; no life lessons apply to everyone. P152b: “Ignorant people see everything in black and white — they rely heavily on the myth of pure evil — and they are strongly influenced by their own self-interest. The wise are able to see things from others’ points of view, appreciate shades of gray, and then choose or advise a course of action that works about better for everyone in the long run.” And wise people are able to balance three responses: adaptation, shaping, and selection. Like the famous serenity prayer.
[[ Perhaps this is where I got my repeated metaphor about people who see in black and white vs those who see shades of gray. ]]
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Ch8, The Felicity of Virtue
Quotes from Epicurus and Buddha.
Does virtue make one happy? Kids never listen. Benjamin Franklin is a good example: he deliberately set out to make himself more virtuous, along the lines of the ancient Greek concept of ‘arete’ – developing strengths, realizing potential. Franklin developed a list of 13 virtues, and tracked himself by week to improve himself.
The Virtues of the Ancients. So does virtue make one happier? Or only, in the Machiavellian way, does the appearance of virtue make one successful, and therefore happy? The ancients all show evidence of moral instruction, based on maxims and role models, with much practice. The Egyptian Amenemope is echoed in Proverbs.
How the West Was Lost. Author claims that ideas in the West about morality have changed in the past 200 years — based on wrong ideas. Western ideas of morality came to be based on two principles, developed out of the Enlightenment – that a minimal, parsimonious principle should apply, and that it should apply via reason. Thus Kant, and his universal ideal of his categorical imperative. Benthem countered with his idea of maximizing the total good; utilitarianism. This has led to the notion that Western morality is about solving problems, with the absence of basic principles, to the extent of teaching children that they should decide for themselves what to think.
This is a mistake, on two grounds: it’s too narrow, and it’s bad psychology, because it appeals only the rider; it doesn’t convince the elephant, the beast swayed only by emotion. Example of watching videos of slaughter of animals, and the author’s reaction to eating meat.
The Virtues of Positive Psychology. Has the US lost its way? The ideas of the ‘60s and ‘70s have led to conservative reaction in the ‘80s about teaching traditional values. Psychology has become focused on pathology; the DSM. A new movement, positive psychology, tries to expand on the idea of various virtues, in six groups (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence) with many components, listed p168-169. See — Authentic Happiness —
Hard Question, Easy Answers. So, is altruism really good for you? Religion and science have simplistic answers. Experiments show that children have an early sense of ‘immanent justice’, that bad events are the result of past behavior; and the myth of pure evil. Science understands how kinds of altruism promote survival, but that doesn’t address happiness.
Hard Question, Hard Answers. Does altruism make people happier, or are happier people kinder and more generous? Studies about blood donors. The effect is stronger among the elderly; altruism provides a sense of purpose.
The Future of Virtue. So are cultural conservatives right, and we should return to a virtue-based morality? Films of the ‘30s and ‘40s seem old and stuffy, because of constraints; a lack of constraints leads to anomie. The 20th century saw the rise of consumerism, and of inclusiveness, 176b. But with inclusiveness came a relaxing of the certainty behind social constraints. [[ a legitimate quandary here! Are most people more fulfilled and happier if a few people are disadvantaged? ]]. Thus we now have a more humane society. Our society is more diverse, but there are two kinds of diversity: demographic, and moral. Most people support the former — but not the latter; thus conservatives want to enforce a particular moral stance on society as a whole. Is there a solution? Perhaps a focus on Franklin-style virtues through youth charter movements that involve entire communities in the raising of children.
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Ch9, Divinity With or Without God
Quotes from Meng Tzu and Muhammad.
We think of everything in terms of metaphor. The metaphor the author likes concerning morality, religion, and meaning is Abbot’s book Flatland (1884), in which residents of a 2-dimensional world encounter a 3D sphere that passes through it, changing size and moving about. A flatland resident finds the notion of a third dimension absurd, until the circle yanks it up outside Flatland to see his world from above — a horrific experience, but an enlightening one. The 2D resident returns to preach the truth, in vain.
In human cultures, there are two clear social dimensions: closeness, and hierarchy. You see this in the languages, in how certain words are marked. But humans also seem to perceive a vertical axis author chooses to call ‘divinity’ without any presumption about the existence of a god; author has concluded that humans do perceive such a thing. Thus the ancients see our actions and thoughts we move up and down on this vertical dimension, 184.
Are We Not Animals? The logic of disgust is explained by natural selection: we evolved behaviors to protect us from dangerous products of other animals, etc. Humanity’s development into closer social groups extended this idea from protection of the mouth to protection of the body in general. We are animals, but society tries to hide the evidence of our biological processes. Thus ideas about rising above such things; cleanliness next to Godliness.
The Ethic of Divinity. In an area of India there are three groups of moral concepts, and the range of temples restricts more and more by purity. What author saw there was echoed by Emerson: deeds can ennoble a man… 191.
Sacred Intrusions. Returning the US felt like returning to a single dimension. The ethic of divinity faded after World War I –- and along with it segregation with its motives of racial purity. Science shook off such notions as the West became completely profane, 193t – even as, on a personal level, many people value places where special things happened in their life, e.g. their birthplace, scenes of a first love, etc.: “holy places” in one’s private universe.
Elevation and Agape. Author investigated this emotion of what he came to call ‘elevation’, the feeling of uplift or transcendence. Franklin, in recommending books, included fiction, for the same reasons: insight, elevation of sentiments, 195. Elevation is the opposite of disgust. Oddly, the feeling makes a person want to be better, though they never actually do good deeds; rather the feeling releases oxytocin and is thus related to bonding, not altruism. Church brings about a collective elevation, with some understanding that this internal feeling is a sense in which ‘God resides inside each person’.
Awe and Transcendence. Not just virtue, but awe also moves us up this third dimension –- the beauty of nature, as Emerson wrote –- and of great art, or the similar sensations induced by certain drugs. Science hasn’t had much to say about awe, an its meaning has become diluted. A prototype of the original is like the Flatland story –- The Bhagavad Gita, in which a vision of cosmic reality results in ecstasy, and joy — and prostration to service. [[ the description here recalls Bowman’s trip in 2001 – though he had little apparent reaction ]]
William James wrote the book on similarities in the varieties of religious experience; how such moments can bring about conversation, or a new outlook on life. And of course secular experiences can have similar effects, perceptions of vastness and unity… Maslow attacked science as being too sterile, for cataloguing the world but not stressing the wonderful… (this was in the ‘60s) and founded humanistic psychology to address reforming education. [[ this section anticipates more recent discussions of awe, as in that book, and of transcendence. ]]
The Satanic Self. The human self is a paradox; to the extent that people think about themselves it is a problem for religion, because the self is greedy and doesn’t want submission to divinity. This is a theme in the culture wars.
Flatland and the Culture War. These culture wars reacted very differently to the 2004 election. Author contrasts statements by Gloria Steinem and by Rich Warren (The Purpose Driven Life); the latter is about rejecting individual desires in favor of community life, the way Jesus intended. Thus the battles of the culture wars – prayer in schools, 10 commandments; abortion, birth control; etc. Liberals want to maximize autonomy; the religious right want to enforce a society that separates the sacred and the profane.
Author is a Jewish atheist, but entertains a couple treasonous thoughts, p211: science should accept religiosity as normal and healthy; and maybe the nonreligious among us can learn something from the religious.
[[ this leads as always to my central theme: human nature is optimized to enable survival of the species, not accurate perception of the real world; and further, the indulgence of some misperceptions, and acceptance of some beliefs, may actually be healthy. This means living a delusion! And this is why society as a whole will never give up religion – but why individuals can understand that community values and certain shared practices are built on fictions. Delusion is good for you! And the smart ones know this, know what the delusions are, while the vast majority, incurious about the vaster world, believe them implicitly. ]]
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One more chapter for next post.
