We'll catch up on last week too. Dr. Hale's recorded lecture, Part 1... Part 2 (If you have questions/comments for him, please post those below.)
*Being in Time
The duration of felt experience is between two and three seconds—about as long as it takes, the psychologist Marc Wittmann points out, for Paul McCartney to sing the words “Hey Jude.” Everything before belongs to memory; everything after is anticipation. It’s a strange, barely fathomable fact that our lives are lived through this small, moving window. Practitioners of mindfulness meditation often strive to rest their consciousness within it. The rest of us might encounter something similar during certain present-tense moments—perhaps while rock climbing, improvising music, making love. Being in the moment is said to be a perk of sadomasochism; as a devotee of B.D.S.M. once explained, “A whip is a great way to get someone to be here now. They can’t look away from it, and they can’t think about anything else!”
In 1971, the book “Be Here Now,” by the spiritual leader Ram Dass, helped introduce yoga to the West. Much of the time, we are elsewhere. In 2010, the psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a study in which they used an iPhone app to ask volunteers, at random points throughout the day, what they were doing, what they were thinking, and how happy they were. The researchers found that, in about half of their samples, people’s minds were wandering, often remembering the past or contemplating the future. These periods were, on average, less pleasant than ones spent being in the moment. Thoughts of the future are often associated with anxiety and dread, and thoughts of the past can be colored by regret, embarrassment, and shame.
Still, mental time travel is essential. In one of Aesop’s fables, ants chastise a grasshopper for not collecting food for the winter; the grasshopper, who lives in the moment, admits, “I was so busy singing that I hadn’t the time.” It’s important to find a proper balance between being in the moment and stepping out of it. We all know people who live too much in the past or worry too much about the future. At the end of their lives, people often regret most their failures to act, stemming from unrealistic worries about consequences. Others, indifferent to the future or disdainful of the past, become unwise risk-takers or jerks. Any functioning person has to live, to some extent, out of the moment. We might also think that it’s right for our consciousnesses to shift to other times—such inner mobility is part of a rich and meaningful life.
On a group level, too, we struggle to strike a balance. It’s a common complaint that, as societies, we are too fixated on the present and the immediate future. In 2019, in a speech to the United Nations about climate change, the young activist Greta Thunberg inveighed against the inaction of policymakers: “Young people are starting to understand your betrayal,” she said. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you.” But, if their inaction is a betrayal, it’s most likely not a malicious one; it’s just that our current pleasures and predicaments are much more salient in our minds than the fates of our descendants. And there are also those who worry that we are too future-biased. A typical reaction to long-range programs, such as John F. Kennedy’s Apollo program or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is that the money would be better spent on those who need it right now. Others complain that we are too focussed on the past, or with the sentimental reconstruction of it. Past, present, future; history, this year, the decades to come. How should we balance them in our minds? (Paul Bloom, continues)
- Have you personally experienced the Hedonic Treadmill? 263
- Do economists have as much to tell us about happiness as poets, essayists, and philosophers?264
- Is happiness possible in the absence of freedom and choice? 265
- Does your evaluation of the quality of your life detract from, or enhance, your subjective experience of it? 266
- Is Aristotle's eudaimonia a better goal than happiness per see?
- COMMENT?: "Happy people live in the present; those with meaningful lives have a narrative about their past and a plan for the future." 267
- "Past, present, future; history, this year, the decades to come. How should we balance them in our minds?" (See *Being in Time below)
- Do you agree that "the goal of progress cannot be to increase happiness indefinitely" and that there is "no limit as to how meaningful our lives can become"? 268
- Was Thoreau wrong to say "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"? ("The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.")
- Do you experience an Optimism Gap ("the 'I'm OK, they're not' illusion")?
- Would winning the lottery make you happier? Are there any more probable events you can envision having that effect? Is there anything you can actively do for yourself, to become happier?
- Are you pretty happy, very happy, or what? On what rung of the ten-step ladder are you? Are you climbing or descending? 271
- COMMENT? "younger Americans have in fact been getting happier" 273
- COMMENT? "social media can be neither credited nor blamed" for loneliness 276
- COMMENT?: "Social media users care too much, not too little,about other people" 277
- Do we over-medicalize, over-treat, and mislabel as "mental illness" too many conditions that are merely reflective of the ordinary challenges of daily living? 282
- COMMENT?" "none of us are as happy as we ought to be" 284
- Do you relate more to MICKEY or FATHER? 285
- What do you think of George Bernard Shaw's analogy between believers and drunks? 287
- Should "an adult's appreciation of life" make us less happy but more mature? 289
- Do you think you've achieved "a proper [and happy] balance between being in the moment and stepping out of it"? (See "Being in Time" below*)
- In light of what the basketball star Giannis says (below,) do you think pride or humility is the better emotional state for success in sports and/or life?
- [Existential threats]
- [The future of progress]
*Being in Time
How much should we value the past, present, and future?
The duration of felt experience is between two and three seconds—about as long as it takes, the psychologist Marc Wittmann points out, for Paul McCartney to sing the words “Hey Jude.” Everything before belongs to memory; everything after is anticipation. It’s a strange, barely fathomable fact that our lives are lived through this small, moving window. Practitioners of mindfulness meditation often strive to rest their consciousness within it. The rest of us might encounter something similar during certain present-tense moments—perhaps while rock climbing, improvising music, making love. Being in the moment is said to be a perk of sadomasochism; as a devotee of B.D.S.M. once explained, “A whip is a great way to get someone to be here now. They can’t look away from it, and they can’t think about anything else!”
In 1971, the book “Be Here Now,” by the spiritual leader Ram Dass, helped introduce yoga to the West. Much of the time, we are elsewhere. In 2010, the psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a study in which they used an iPhone app to ask volunteers, at random points throughout the day, what they were doing, what they were thinking, and how happy they were. The researchers found that, in about half of their samples, people’s minds were wandering, often remembering the past or contemplating the future. These periods were, on average, less pleasant than ones spent being in the moment. Thoughts of the future are often associated with anxiety and dread, and thoughts of the past can be colored by regret, embarrassment, and shame.
Still, mental time travel is essential. In one of Aesop’s fables, ants chastise a grasshopper for not collecting food for the winter; the grasshopper, who lives in the moment, admits, “I was so busy singing that I hadn’t the time.” It’s important to find a proper balance between being in the moment and stepping out of it. We all know people who live too much in the past or worry too much about the future. At the end of their lives, people often regret most their failures to act, stemming from unrealistic worries about consequences. Others, indifferent to the future or disdainful of the past, become unwise risk-takers or jerks. Any functioning person has to live, to some extent, out of the moment. We might also think that it’s right for our consciousnesses to shift to other times—such inner mobility is part of a rich and meaningful life.
On a group level, too, we struggle to strike a balance. It’s a common complaint that, as societies, we are too fixated on the present and the immediate future. In 2019, in a speech to the United Nations about climate change, the young activist Greta Thunberg inveighed against the inaction of policymakers: “Young people are starting to understand your betrayal,” she said. “The eyes of all future generations are upon you.” But, if their inaction is a betrayal, it’s most likely not a malicious one; it’s just that our current pleasures and predicaments are much more salient in our minds than the fates of our descendants. And there are also those who worry that we are too future-biased. A typical reaction to long-range programs, such as John F. Kennedy’s Apollo program or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is that the money would be better spent on those who need it right now. Others complain that we are too focussed on the past, or with the sentimental reconstruction of it. Past, present, future; history, this year, the decades to come. How should we balance them in our minds? (Paul Bloom, continues)
==
The Specious Present. The only fact of our immediate experience is what Mr. E. R. Clay has well called 'the specious present.' His words deserve to be quoted in full:[4]
"The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied. Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the conterminous of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past -- a recent past -- delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past, be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the specious present, it consists of three . . . nonentities -- the past, which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their conterminous, the present; the faculty from which it proceeds lies to us in the fiction of the specious present." William James, Principles of Psychology
==
Just seeing this Giannis answer. This is so intensely valuable. For anyone. pic.twitter.com/bD829l42JR
— Chris Vernon (@ChrisVernonShow) July 17, 2021
Some thoughts that stuck with me this week...
ReplyDelete1) Do you think that the pandemic has increased the desperation to be happy? (268)
2) Do you think that the boredom crisis will remain solved or become a problem again with the upcoming generation due to not knowing how to use imagination, socialize, the internet, and instant gratification? (288)
1. Many will re-prioritize happiness (flourishing, fulfillment, "self-actualization"...), and that's a good thing. Desperation would not be. "It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things"-HDT
Delete2. I've never understood boredom as a phenomenon of adult life. A mature person understands that the world is full overflows with things to do, to learn, to contribute. But if the "infantilized age" persists, it will recur. I don't wat to blame the Internet for that, though. A lack of imagination is ultimately a character flaw, for which we must accept personal responsibility and which we must repair.
Do you think that the pandemic has increased the desperation to be happy?
DeleteFor myself, the pandemic did not cause me to become happy out of desperation. If anything, I was able to actually find some happiness. Even though I was still working throughout, it allowed to me to realize to be grateful since there were some that were out of jobs. There were aspects such as being able to stay in and spend time with my parents. I was also able to focus more on school since I was not distracted with going out with friends to events or restaurants. One of the things that allowed me to actually become happy was being able to go to parks and waterfalls and hike. I think that this idea may be different for others. Some could have been bored or miserable during the pandemic causing them to be unhappy.
Nat-
DeleteI agree, I was able to find clarity and happiness during the pandemic with not being so busy and having the ability to focus on family and putting down distractions.
I would say that I am pretty happy. I would gauge my rung to be the 6th because there is always room for improvement. I am ascending by working toward my goals educationally and employment-wise. I also continually pursue the things that make me happy.
ReplyDeleteIf we're being honest, I think most of us will admit that good days find us somewhere in the upper rungs of the ladder... but that we're always liable to go in the other direction. Happiness, as Bertrand Russell said, is a conquest. A climb. But it's not like reaching a summit and then being over and done with the climb for all time. It's an up-and-down-and-up again affair. ("Up again, old heart," Emerson urged himself...)
DeleteSpeaking of Emerson... I was too busy prepping for my presentation in Kansas to take note of an important anniversary last week. Thursday was the anniversary of his classic Divinity School Address in 1838, the one that begins
Delete"In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world, in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty of man!"
I think of this oration as one of the great documents in the history of philosophical reflection on happiness, as well as a milestone in modern western enlightenment.
I like Maria Popova's thoughts about it...
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/15/emerson-divinity-school-address/
Dr. Oliver,
DeleteI love that you mentioned the good days!
There are good days where I feel like a strong 8 and others where I sell myself short obviously and feel like a 6. But the habit and practice of self reflection seems to be a very helpful tool for me in self growth.
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. Pinker says on page 322 that “the poor may not always be with us.” Do you think that is true? I feel like the poor are constants, but that society has gotten much better at taking care of them and providing resources and aid.
2. Do you agree with economist Robert Gordon who stated that “the most transformative inventions may have already been invented?” (p. 329) I do think the bar moves as we become more enlightened over time, but I feel there is still room for some life-changing inventions. Curing cancer, space travel for “normal” people, etc.
1. Interesting that he says that, given his earlier remarks about poverty being the default state in an entropic universe. But there's nothing in physics to prevent humans' carving out a bubble of prosperity for all, if they're willing to pay the redistributionist cost. Other societies have effectively ended the most dire forms of impoverishment, with no one forced to live on the streets or neglect health crises. We'll see. I'm not predicting Star Trek's egalitarian 24th century, but I'm still dreaming of it.
Delete2. I think Robert Gordon is foolish to say that. I do get that bidets and warm toilet seats are less transformative than indoor plumbing, but surely the best is still yet to come... if we just don't destroy ourselves and the potentially-transformed future in the meantime. The rapidity with which we concocted COVID vaccines, for instance, suggests medical marvels we can't yet imagine in our future.
In light of what the basketball star Giannis says (below,) do you think pride or humility is the better emotional state for success in sports and/or life?
ReplyDeleteMy response:
In recent years I’ve come to realize the importance and benefits of living in the present moment, where Giannis places humility. Mindfulness meditation has helped immensely with staying grounded and “being here now.” So much anxiety is taken away by focusing on what you can control in this instant. Regrets are of no advantage and "pre-worry" is not helpful (Pre-worry being different from reasonable planning).
The past is done and nothing is made better by dwelling in it—except to draw lessons from past experiences—because you certainly cannot change what has already occurred. You can plan for the future, but even in that space, you only have a certain amount of control in shaping what is to come.
What you DO have is right now, this present moment. I can control how I react and think about things that are happening right now. For that reason, I think humility is the better place to land.
'Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.' Albert Camus
Delete1. Do you agree with Martin Rees when he states "humankind is potentially the maker of its own demise?" pg. 290
ReplyDelete2. Are we too far past the possibility of a world government? pg. 309
3. How would nations be held accountable if a No First Use policy were implemented? Would it be based mainly on self accountability? pg. 320
1. Potentially, yes. The happy flipside: we are potentially our own saviors.
ReplyDelete2. We're not even close yet. But let's find a euphemism for that, too many people are freaked out by the terminology. I prefer to think of a United Federation.
3. They'd have to hold themselves accountable. As Yoko Ono always reminds us, peace is ours "if we want it."
My two questions from Chapters 18-20:
ReplyDelete1. "Happy people live in the present; those with meaningful lives have a narrative about their past and a plan for the future" (pg. 267). Based on the quote above, would you consider yourself a happy person or rather having a meaningful life? Would you want to develop one over the other?
2. "Man plans and God laughs" (pg. 267). Thoughts or comments on this quote from the book?
1. I refuse to accept that false dichotomy. I want happiness and meaning, and see no reason why they should be mutually exclusive.
Delete2. The more familiar formulation: “Man proposes, God disposes.” Or in other words, which unfortunately I had occasion to deploy last week when we failed to connect with Dr. Hale, “the best laid plans” etc. But that’s no reason to forego planning. The enlightened approach is to plan, and then try to learn from our failures as much as from our successes.
"Everything is amazing. Are we really so unhappy? Mostly we are not. Developed countries are actually pretty happy, a majority of all countries have gotten happier, and as long as countries get richer they should get happier still." (p. 283)
ReplyDelete1. If we are mostly happy, why are the rates of depression higher than ever before?
2. Do you agree with the latter part of this quote stating, "as countries get richer they should get happier still"?
1. I’m reminded of the song “ if you’re happy and you know it“… maybe we’re just not clapping our hands enough. If we reflected more on our relative good fortune, maybe we’d “know it.”
ReplyDelete2., My problem with this quote is that “countries” aren’t rich or poor or happy etc., people are. But if it just means the countries with more rich individuals should have more happy individuals, then it’s only literally true. As the gap widens between the relatively-few rich and the vastly greater number of not-rich persons, the gross national happiness is bound to plummet.
But even so, the alleged correlation between rich and happy at the level of individuals is problematic. The whole issue is a lot more complicated than the quote acknowledges.
DeleteAll of that aside, though, I would agree with the general proposition that we ought to be happier then we are. Most of us generally buy in to a falsely-bleak story of our circumstances and prospects, based on breathless attention to headlines and corresponding inattention to history and the progress we’ve made and are likely to continue making.
Would winning the lottery make you happier? Are there any more probable events you can envision having that effect? Is there anything you can actively do for yourself, to become happier?
ReplyDeleteHappiness is typically an emotion based off of circumstances, so in essence, I do believe winning the lottery would make one happier...at least temporarily. Looking at the aftermath of those who win the lottery, we see that the money is often quickly spent and that the overall happiness of the person who acquired it is not consistent. Their happiness is dependent upon what they do or do not have. Though our emotions, such as happiness, are indicators we shouldn't allow them to be dictators.
For me, I can see several more probable instances where my happiness would increase like that. I love children, especially babies, and my sister is due with her first baby (the first grandbaby in our family) this Thursday. When he first makes his appearance, we're all going to be in this euphoria. However, when he's crying nonstop at four in the morning, our emotions and sleep deprivation might get the best of us if we are relying on that same emotion of happiness to carry us through the raising of this baby. Thank goodness we know better! Of course, through raising children, there are several happy moments- moments that will be unforgettable and worth the lack of sleep- but it's not always rainbows and butterflies.
Personally, if I want to be noticeably happier, I can do so by verbally expressing gratitude for things in my life. I find that there is always something to be thankful for, and the more I acknowledge those things, the happier I am with what I have been entrusted with. Anything else given or shared with me is then just an additional blessing. When we are content with what we have, we learn the secret of life is not getting, doing, achieving more, but being content and grateful for all we already have.
Maybe I was just a weird outlier, but those four in the morning disruptions of sleep did not lower the euphoria I felt when our daughters were first born. This was the paradigm case, for me, of the convergence of happiness and meaningfulness. You’re right, the ecstatic emotion is just an indicator of something more profound and enduring. Real happiness is, as Aristotle said, a state of flourishing. It’s “eudaimonia”-a virtuous state of mind and heart not to be confused with 😊 superficial and fleeting moods. And you’re also right, it’s inseparable from deep gratitude and contentment.
ReplyDeleteBut I would like to experience a lottery win, nonetheless. 😉
DeleteMy dad shared the same sentiment you did above! I, too, would like to experience the lotto win....for personal clarification, just to have had the experience ;) Ha!
Delete• Do we over-medicalize, over-treat, and mislabel as "mental illness" too many conditions that are merely reflective of the ordinary challenges of daily living? 282
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who has to take care of his uncle who has this serious disease. My friend went to see the doctor and the doctor commented that he might need to seek therapy for his state of mind. The first thought that my friend had was I'm dealing with my relative who is slowly dying and unable to care for himself. Of course I feel depressed he felt like there was no need for medicine when he could see it was obvious that the situation that he was in was causing his depression so, so far he has opted out of therapy or drugs.
I have another friend who seems accident prone and has recently gone through treatment for addiction to addictive painkillers. This person I feel like He does need the drugs to an extent if he's in pain but it can be just as easily creating the addiction that goes along with these types of painkillers. in this case I am less inclined to blame him for his addictive behavior when I feel like we have enough of an understanding of addiction especially in the medical field to understand the necessity of not creating another epidemic.
And at the same time I feel like the overuse of computers and digital media on some people is an addictive behavior very powerful and sometimes even more powerful than drugs in some cases in creating a manic or a state of anxiety that can lead to socially disruptive behavior.
Mental illness has many forms and although being a millionaire can help with some of these it can accentuate the problem in others I don't know that drugs are necessarily going to create a better situation when added to mental illness in many cases when I have visited mental hospitals before it's an eerie feeling to walk into a room full of people that are semi cognizant but alive and aware to an extent but mostly just walking zombies.
For me the best way to treat most forms of mental illness that have to do with anxiety or depression is to include ritualistic exercise in your daily routine. It seems that no matter how much money you make or how busy you are if you put time into yourself and realizing that you are building a better person when you put in daily exercise it changes your mental attitude and helps. Even this can be susceptible to over use or over exertion and people can force themselves to do more than they need to but some is good and helps from my personal experience.
• What do you think of George Bernard Shaw's analogy between believers and drunks? 287
For me understanding what being a drunk is is someone that is hiding from reality being a drunk yes is addictive behavior but it's also finding happiness in something that does not last or is not real and can kill you I don't know if the same can be said for religion. Believers do not have a solid thing to believe in but at the same time I don't know that it's not killing them as they are doing it I do understand that people can rely on not believing in one thing and believing in another thing and say that they are right without a basis just as well as they can say that they do believe in something. Saying that you understand what's real without the understanding of a continuous path towards understanding gives a person the ability to say I don't have to know just as drinking gifts one the ability to say I don't have to care I don't have to feel it's easier to just drink so I kind of get it but at the same time I don't think that they are exactly the same.
Why does someone like Jim Morrison who is rich and successful choose to take their own life?
Is happiness possible in the absence of freedom and choice? 265
ReplyDeleteI believe the answer to this question would vary greatly based on who was answering. Therefore, I will answer this question based on my personal beliefs.
I would personally find it difficult to find happiness in the absence of freedom and choice. I tend to be a very independent person and it is overwhelming to me when I am unable to make a decision for myself. This obviously causes unhappiness in my life.
Thankfully, I do feel that I have the opportunity to make many decisions for myself. I could not imagine losing the opportunity to make these decisions. This type of oppression makes it seem as though happiness would be impossible.