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.)
(Post 1)
Once again, there are lots of familiar ideas here, from books about psychology and human nature, from Stephen Pinker and Jonathan Haidt. That’s the point of the book: to assess modern understanding of topics about happiness and meaning, and contrast them with the ‘traditional wisdom’ about these matter. Three more chapters today. I’ll save my takes and summaries until the last post, but here I occasionally insert [[ personal comments ]].
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Ch4, The Faults of Others
Quotes by Matthew, and Buddha.
Hypocrites are everywhere, especially conservative pundits and politicians (several examples). And yet the evidence is that we are all hypocrites, and there are ways we can become aware of our self-righteousness.
Keeping Up Appearances. More about game playing. Tit for tat is the most effective strategy, but it can be undermined by ‘impression management.’ Life is played in a Machiavellian way. Reputation overrides reality. Experiments with cooperation and flipping coins. People cheat when they know they won’t get caught, and most don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. Most people think they are good people.
Find Your Inner Lawyer. We find reasons to justify our gut feelings; like lawyers, we’re not about the truth. Except that we *believe* those reasons. We look for supporting evidence only for the position we’ve already taken, e.g. mere anecdotes. Beyond that is motivated reasoning: justify what has already been done (e.g. cheating on taxes); we look hard for ways to dismiss counter-evidence. We even believe we’re being objective.
The Rose-Colored Mirror. Everyone is playing the same game. Social life is a game of social comparison. We think we are accurate in our perceptions of others. Yet we live as if in Lake Wobegon, where everyone is above average. And most do believe they are above average. People rate others more accurately than they do themselves. It helps that there are many ways to define various traits; we pick the ones most advantageous to ourselves. In fact such biases make people happier; but of course they can lead to problems of entitlement. Couples both claim to do the majority of the work (that they think is important).
I’m Right; You’re Biased. Thus strikes, disputes, failed peace talks. Ways to avoid these biases mostly don’t work. People are subject to “naïve realism” — we think we see the facts as they are there to see; others are regarded as biased. This extends to entire groups: we’re right, others are biased. Thus the world is full of good and evil. But good and evil to not exist outside of our beliefs about them.
Satan Satisfies. Author recalls letter from a neighbor who was worried that society was going downhill; in fact, in the late 1990s, everything seemed to be getting better. What was she talking about? Americans kept searching for villains: mostly they were invisible, contagious, and subject to defeat only by teamwork. People want to believe they’re on a mission from God. [[ many people always think the world is worse than it ever was ]] This is the problem of evil. How does God allow it? Three answers. P73. Dualism (pick sides); monoism (God created everything and evil is an illusion); or some sort of reconciliation (which most Christians abandon in favor of a Manichaean view — God vs. Satan).
The Myth of Pure Evil. The idea of evil has been explained psychologically, both from victim and perpetrator perspective. Perpetrators rarely think they are doing anything wrong; often they think they are the victims. And victims often share part of the blame. (News programs gain viewers by slanting the story to one of evil stalking the land.) The myth is that evildoers are merely sadistic and greedy, and that victims are pure and blameless. To question this is to be in league with evil. It’s a self-serving bias. Bush on the 9/11 terrorists. But greed and sadism motivate only a small portion of violence (outside of horror films); far more common are high self-esteem and moral idealism. [[ cf. the famous Steven Weinberg quote ]] Thus atrocities committed by those who think they’re creating a utopia, or defending their tribe. And that the ends justify the means. [[ thus the conservative hypocrisy of shirking the rules that they expect others to live by ]]
Finding the Great Way. Is the world an illusion? Consisting only of saints and sinners? Consensual hallucinations? What can we do about it? Realize it’s a game and stop taking it so seriously. Escape the cycle. Don’t judge. Use the techniques in the earlier chapter: meditation, etc. Reconsider “should” thoughts: how you think the world *should* work. Be more empathetic. This can be difficult. Start with yourself. Think about events in which you may have been wrong. Acknowledge your role in conflicts.
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Ch5, The Pursuit of Happiness
Quotes by Buddha and Epictetus
Such a pursuit, e.g. as described in Ecclesiastes, is ultimately pointless. You can achieve much and still be unhappy. The ancients advised reducing emotional attachment, that happiness comes only from within. But perhaps they took it too far: some happiness does come from outside yourself.
The Progress Principle. If success is fleeting, what next? It turns out people are happier before they attain a goal, rather than after it. It’s about the journey, not the destination. Thus the greater happiness comes from making progress toward goals, rather than achieving them.
The Adaptation Principle. Another key: people adapt to good or bad things. Contrast someone who wins the lottery, with someone who becomes a paraplegic: after a time, they ‘adjust’ to a new baseline, within a year, and are about as happy as they ever were. Everyone has a base happiness point, despite fortune. This was the first big finding of modern psychology: that this is determined mostly by genes. To continue to strive for happiness is a “hedonic treadmill.”
An Early Happiness Hypothesis. Is to abandon all attachments. But the second big finding is that environment and demographics make little difference; abandoning such attachments doesn’t make much difference. Rather, connections matter: a good marriage, religion, even money — up to a point. Beyond that no; the wealthy aren’t changed much by more money.
The Happiness Formula. These two big findings in the ‘90s overturned assumptions about parental influence. Yes there are genetic influences — but the genes are sensitive to environment. The combination, where S=biological set point, C=conditions, V=voluntary activities, and H=happiness, is (p91):
H = S + C + V
There *are* external conditions that matter: noise (example of living too close to a traffic intersection), commuting, lack of control (as in a nursing home), shame (the feeling of being ugly), and relationships, their strength and number.
Finding Flow. Changes in wealth and prestige can backfire. Better is to find a state of total immersion in some activity or project: “being in the zone,” “finding flow.” Something that takes full attention, provides immediate feedback, is suitable to your skills. There’s a distinction between pleasures – which are fleeting, like eating or sex – and gratifications, which use your skills. Thus, know your own strengths. And random acts of kindness can achieve the same thing.
Misguided Pursuits. In the 1980s the idea that people were economic rationalists was overturned. It was discovered that experiences bring more happiness than acquisitions; consumption is a kind of arms race (e.g. keeping up with the Joneses), a zero-sum game. Yet the elephant does care about prestige – not happiness!
Other traps: having too many choices; the difference between maximizers (spending time to find the very best option) and satisfiers (those who find something suitable and stop).
The Happiness Hypothesis Reconsidered. So Buddha overreacted? His story… His error, perhaps, is that he observed people suffering, but never got down to talk to them, or he would have discovered that most people are fairly happy, no matter what their circumstances as perceived by others. And Buddha lived through turbulent times; our lives now are much better. Some modern thinkers object to Buddha’s conclusions. The solution is to balance happiness from within and happiness from without.
[[ Here is the key point in the book, I think, where Haidt dismisses an ancient idea of happiness in light of modern research. The world has changed. ]]
[[ General comment: I keep this idea of pursuing goals, being in the zone, in mind every day. This is what I do with my sfadb site, with this blog, with my gradual work on my book. The one thing missing is immediate feedback. I have to trust that I am playing a long game. ]]
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Ch6, Love and Attachments
Quotes from Seneca and Donne (“No man is an island…”)
Author describes how when he was four, his father was diagnosed with polio, at a time when there was no treatment and patients were kept in complete isolation. It was also the era of psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which explained infant behavior in ways that implied children should be raised without adult affection except as conditional upon behaviors. These, and similar ideas by the ancients of the East and West, have been overturned.
To Have and to Hold. Harry Harlow studied monkeys in Wisconsin, did experiments to show that infant monkeys need basic contact with their mothers – even a mother dummy – or become distant and withdrawn.
Love Conquers Fear. And John Bowlby studied children separated from parents and developed ‘attachment theory,’ the idea that infant animals ‘imprint’ on their parent and then deal with two goals: safety and exploration. Play is about developing skills and intelligence needed for adult life, p113b; a child plays while safe, withdraws when threatened.
The Proof Is in the Parting. Both of these ideas overturned Freud and others, because they were demonstrated by experiment. Bowlby noticed three patterns of interact between children and mothers: the secure, the avoidant, and the resistant. Due to bad parenting? Not necessarily; just the interaction of two different personalities, and circumstances.
It’s Not Just for Children. These three patterns carry over to romantic relationships, to how easily an adult trusts and can be dependent on another, p118.
Love and the Swelled Head. The ‘attachment system’ bonding child to mother, and the ‘caregiving system’ bonding mother to child, plus the ‘mating system’ present in all animals, aren’t enough to explain the complexities of adult human behavior, with its lasting love and paternal support and maternal hiding of ovulation. This came about, most likely as a consequence of the enlargement of the human brain, which led to relatively earlier birth, the need for fathers to stick around, and the extended care of a child compared to offspring of other animals.
Two Loves, Two Errors. So does that explain romantic love? Or is that just a social construct, as some claim? Perhaps the notion of ‘true’ lifelong love is; but there are both passionate and compassionate love. The first one peaks then fades; the latter grows slowly over time. (graph p127).
Why Do Philosophers Hate Love? The ancients’ attitudes about love were negative; even the Greeks counseled that love of a person should be generalized to love of beauty in general. Lucretius. And Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Freedom Can Be Hazardous to Your Health. But now we can discuss what people *need*. Love makes philosophers uneasy because it leads to irrationality; to hypocrisy among adults; to fear of death. The evidence (from Durkheim) shows that people in societies with fewer constraints more often commit suicide; those with attachments, social relationships, are happier. So there’s a risk in extending personal freedom.
[[ Worth an immediate comment. Modern psychology recognizes the problem of too many choices at a low level, e.g. too many different kinds of cereal in the supermarket aisle just leads to hesitation and the uncertainty about whether one has chosen correctly. Put too broadly, this issue becomes political: conservatives want to restrict options, would prefer that people conform into existing society; progressives want to allow people to make their own choices about fundamental issues of life. Freedom, right? Let people make their own decisions, even if scolds would argue it’s bad for their health. I strongly suspect the suicide rate is higher among closeted gays, just to take the one example, than among those who come out and happily live as they prefer. ]]
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Four more chapters, but almost half the book, left. Two more posts.
