Dear Diary,
the other day, I finished reading The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. The book’s subtitle is Putting Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy to the Test of Modern Science. In the book, Haidt goes through different ideas of how to be happy. Those ideas – as the subtitle suggests – come from various ancient religions, philosophers, or just general “wisdoms”. He discusses their origin and what modern scientific studies and experiments can say about the merit of those ideas.
The book is full of beautiful metaphors and interesting ideas. Some of the metaphors break down eventually if you think about them too hard but I guess that’s just the problem with any metaphor. In enjoyed the book a lot and took many interesting ideas away from it. I’ll list a couple of quotes from the book below and discuss them to some extent.
The metaphor that is used throughout the book is that our mind is like a rider that is riding an elephant. The elephant being out body. The rider has some control over where the elephant goes but if the elephant decides to do something different, there’s not much the rider can do about it. I enjoyed the chapter about virtue because it pointed out that virtue is often described (or even prescribed?) as a property of the rider as a tool to tame the elephant. What Haidt concludes is that virtue is useless if it’s a mental “idea” of how to live life properly unless it is lived that way. Because only through habitually training a virtue will it become a part of how the elephant interacts with the world. As such, virtue is a skill that can be learned like any other skill – and like any other skill, it takes time, effort, and conscious deliberation to become good at it.
The book has also changed the way that I think about my work and has made me more aware of how valuable my social ties are. I hope for myself that I can keep this insight alive and nurture both my work and social relationships to allow them to further contribute to my happiness. But I am getting ahead of myself. Here are some section of the book that I highlighted while reading.
Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. It is only because our emotional brains work so well that our reasoning can work at all. (p. 13)
This is also the central claim of Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error which I started reading a while back but haven’t finished. The idea is that most of our decisions are made automatically and without any effort. And they are all made based on emotional reactions to stimuli. There are way too many stimuli at any point: we cannot possibly process them all. Also: there’s a near infinite number of decision we can possibly make at any point in time. (Just think about this: At any second of the day, you could decide to travel to any location on the planet. You wouldn’t, but you could.) Habits and emotion make the vast majority of those decisions for us without us being consciously aware of it. (And yes, I am aware that it’s weird to talk about my habits and emotion and “me” as if they are not the same thing…). Rationality really only comes into play if there are complex decisions that need to be made in a situation where there are two or more options that are equally attractive. Which is relatively rare. The reason we have the (mental) “room” to make those rational decisions is only because our emotionality has already filtered out all the countless other options we’re not even considering. Without that, we’d be overwhelmed and paralyzed by options without a tool to automatically disregard most options. For example: there’s a knife; is it better to cut myself or the onion with it? A strong emotional response will make that decision easy and you wouldn’t even consider your hand as an option which gives you mental space to consider whether the onion or the bell pepper should to into the pan first.
Happiness comes from within, and it cannot be found by making the world conform to your desires. (p. 87)
This is the first version of The Happiness Hypothesis that Haidt proposes. It’s based on the teachings of Buddha and the Stoics (and others, of course). The main idea is that you have (virtually) no control over your life: random things can happen to you at all times. You can wish for certain things but there is not justice in the universe that will grant you wishes just because you stuck to the rules. The only thing that you can control is how you react to what’s happening around you. You can shape your mental environment but not the outside world. Therefore, the Stoics and Buddha preach, you must cut all ties with the world. You should not be attached to your belongings, you should not desire the world to be in a certain way, you should consider your own death to make you appreciate that you’re not dead (yet) and you should look at the bright side of everything. You should not live in a cave, though. It’s not an asocial philosophy, it’s just a framework to keep yourself unaffected by external influences that you cannot control (no matter how hard you wish you can or how deluded you are about your ability to do so) and train your internal reactions to be able to deal with the ever-changing influences of the external world – whatever they might be.
There are some changes you can make in your life that are not fully subject to the adaptation principle, and that might make you lastingly happier. (p. 92)
The adaptation principle is the psychological phenomenon that you will adapt to basically anything. You save for months or years to buy a new car and when you buy it you’ll be very happy with it for anything between two weeks and two months. That you have adapted to it and the previous “high” is your new “standard” and you don’t arrive any (or only very little) additional happiness from it. Research points to some things you can do that will have a lasting effect on your happiness that you do not adapt to as quickly and Haidt lists them. I’ll summarize:
- Noise: People living in noisy environments are generally less happy.
- Commuting: People that have to travel relatively far to work (and back) are, on average, less happy that those that commute shorter distances.
- Lack of control: Living or working in an environment that you cannot exert any control over will (on average) reduce your well-being and happiness.
- Shame: Reducing shame will increase self-confidence and well being. This is true for obese people or women with breasts that are much smaller/larger than their ideal seeking plastic surgery. Such “shallow” changes fundamentally change day-to-day interactions with other people and have a lasting positive impact (on average) on overall happiness.
- Relationships: Having a strong and nurturing social network increases (on average) happiness.
All of these seem kind of obvious but it’s nice to see that they are backed by empirical data. The important part is the last point: relationships. Because here the empirical data (and most people’s intuition, I guess) contradicts Buddha and the Stoics. Some attachments with the external world are worth worrying about. Checking your bank account every day will not make you happier – but staying in touch with your friends and family will.
Therefore, Haidt writes,
I would like to suggest that the happiness hypothesis be extended – for now – into a yin-yang formulation: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without. (p. 105)
He then continues to say,
To live both the yin and the yang we need guidance. Buddha is history’s most perceptive guide to the first half; he is a constant but gentle reminder of the yin of internal work. But I believe that the Western ideal of action, striving, and passionate attachment is not as misguided as Buddhism suggests. We just need some balance (from the East) and some specific guidance (from modern psychology) about what to strive for. (p. 106)
This is just fantastic, in my opinion. I read this section around the time my grandfather died and it gave me a lot of food for thoughts. I have always naturally been drawn to the Stoics and Buddha’s teachings have always resonated with me. I liked the idealistic idea of a mind that is a rock that is fortified in the onslaught of the waves of never-ending external attacks. A mind that is strengthened to detachment from the external world and that cannot be touched by what the world is throwing at it.
But in the last two years (or so) I have gradually developed the understanding that this is only half of the equation. And this section of the book beautifully puts this into perspective. I loved my grandfather dearly and losing him hurt. The reaction to this, however, should not be to shield the mind from such attachments to avoid them in the future. This is the good kind of pain. Because the attachment has brought happiness and positivity to my life that outlives my grandfather. Only through the attachment do I have the fond memories, the positive feelings, and appreciation of how he help shape who I am as a person. It would have been an absolute tragedy if I had never allowed myself to be attached to him.
And the same is obviously true for any other attachment I might have with other people that I love and that love me back. The same is not true, however, for my money. Or other possessions. The happiness I derive from those is short-lived and fleeting. And it’s gone as soon as they are gone. Those are the attachments that we should reject. But not to rejects attachments entirely but to make more space for nurturing attachments.
To use the book’s metaphor: this is something I have slowly been realizing lately. But I think it’s only something that the rider has understood so far. I still have a lot of work to do to make the elephant understand this, too. Because this type of behavior (and thinking) does not come naturally to my elephant-self.
Phew. That was pretty emotional for me. It feels good to put this down in writing.
On to the next topic… morality!
If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving. (p. 164)
Haidt argues that, these days, morality is not taught as a way to live but as a way to think. And that this is a problem. He writes,
Trying to make children behave ethically by teaching them to reason well is like trying to make a dog happy by wagging its tail. It gets the causality wrong. (p. 165)
A good example of this (from my personal life but also one that he uses) is that most people would agree that it is ethically wrong to hurt and kill other sentient beings. Yet most people will eat meat without any problems. The reasoning about the morality of a behavior is purely “mental”, not visceral. Seeing videos of how animals are butchered in mass production farms gives us a gut feeling that is much more influential than a reasoning through the moral ramifications of eating meat. The problem is that these two levels are rarely combined if morality isn’t lived. Therefore, Haidt argues, moral education needs to teach moral behavior, not moral reasoning.
The tricky part, of course, is that it is basically impossible to agree on a set of moral rules. Here, the genius of Kant comes to the rescue. Instead of proposing a set of moral rules that everyone can agree on, he turns the problem inside-out: he says, something is moral if the person would agree that the world would be a better place if everyone acted that way. By that logic, stealing isn’t wrong because people agree it’s wrong. It’s wrong because people agree that they wouldn’t want to live in a world in which stealing is okay. This is an brilliant, of course, because it puts the burden on the person that acts immorally. The goal is not to adhere to rules made by someone else, the goal is to set the highest standards for yourself and adhere to them. Do you want to live in a world in which it is okay to kill other sentient beings? No? Then don’t support the industry that does it! (Just don’t overdo this kind of thinking because you’ll realize how infinitely hypocritical you are – we all are, don’t worry.)
Towards the end of the book, Haidt uses another metaphor that I really, really liked. He writes,
Life is much like a movie we walk into well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before most of the story lines reach their conclusions. We are acutely aware that we need to know a great deal if we are to understand the few confusing minutes that we do watch. (p. 217)
This is just beautiful. It emphasizes how short and confusing our time on this planet is and that we play but a small part in an endless stream of story lines. And most of the time, we are nothing but observers that desperately try to make sense of what we see. And it’s silly to assume that our guess of what we think might go on is right given how little we know.
But it also suggests that there is something you can understand. You can ask people that have seen different part of the movie to explain things to you. Some people give better summaries than others. All summaries will be influenced by that person’s own motivations and interests in the movie we’re all watching. No summary will be a perfect reflection of what actually happens. But that’s all we got and we have to make the most of it.
I love it.
The book ends in a sub-section that is called The Meaning of Life. Very fitting. The idea portrayed in the last chapter of the book is that meaning (and happiness) emerges when different “levels” are aligned. There are multiple layers to who we are as a person and those layers can be expressed differently in different contexts.The goal should be coherence between those layers: If you are a loving husband but have to be a cruel boss, you are not likely to be a coherent (or happy) person. The book ends with,
It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge. (p. 239)
Work is on that list because it’s a way of expressing who we are as a person. Finding work that gives you the framework and room to make a meaningful contribution to something that you care about and develop a skill that you derive pleasure from, is absolutely essential to leading a fulfilling life.
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This is probably one of the longest posts I have written so far. I am not able (and wasn’t trying to) reflect all the ideas in this relatively short book. Of course, none of those are ideas are very special or new in any way. They just resonated with me at a time in my life I was receptive for them. For that I am thankful.
PS: I am kind of tired and didn’t proof-read any of this. I just sat down for an hour and poured out my thoughts. I hope it came out somewhat coherent – forgive me if not.
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