Who is Happy and Why?

Some people are cheerful, optimistic, loving and sociable. Others are they dour, critical, pessimistic and unsociable. We each have a genetic set point usually somewhere between these extremes. We know this because identical twins will report remarkably similar feelings of happiness even if raised in separate environments. Obviously our life circumstances and our choices can make a difference in our happiness. But what does research say about the factors that will make that difference?

Most people immediately think “if only I had twenty percent more income then I would be happy.” Income is increasingly either the most desired goal in life or one of the most important goals. Well, real personal income doubled from 1957 to 1990 and there was no difference at all in happiness as surveyed by the National Opinion Research Center. What happens when people do get that twenty percent increase? It does make a difference – for a few weeks. We quickly become acclimated to the new income level and then we want to get the next twenty percent increase.

The same thing happens to big lottery winners. They might be vastly richer than they were before but it seldom makes any difference in long term happiness. Money makes a difference to happiness primarily if there a lack of critical life resources such as food, clothing, shelter and required medical care. This does not mean that we should not try to get more money. This just means that we should not expect additional money to create greater happiness.

What factors do create happiness? In my reading of the research there are three factors that seem most important.

Happy people almost universally have a rich network of personal relationships and they spend a large proportion of their time with other people. This makes a lot of sense when we consider the evolutionary history of humanity. Humanity evolved in a life with small tribal groupings of hunter/gatherers. Food gathering, preparation and child rearing worked better within a band that was working together. Hunting had a greater chance of success if it were done with a band of men working together. The tribal group was critical to survival and the vast majority of one’s time was spent with group members.

Modern society is a bit different. Our extended families are vanishing and when we go hunting for filet mignon we don’t need six of our best buddies to help out.

Martin Seligman is the leader of a Positive Psychology group and a very visible advocate for my second important factor. He and his colleagues say one of the most important things to do is to find what your strengths are and spend much of your time using those strengths. There is a deep gratification that comes from being totally engrossed in some task that demands our focused attention. This makes sense. When our ancestors did this in our evolutionary history the results were typically quite good for those ancestors and their immediate group.

Meditation seems to be a specialized example of this focused attention. If one has such focused attention there is no room for the internal critic that seems central to the creation of depression. The focused attention itself implicitly places a positive value on the self that engages in that focused attention.

The research also seems to indicate that everyone should include our capacity for vigorous physical activity in our list of strengths to be utilized. Those that do that will substantially increase the likelihood of a positive sense of well being.

Modern society does not design jobs based on what would optimally engage our unique strengths. Companies have their tasks to accomplish and they have no reason to care about what tasks would be gratifying for us. And then when people get home what do they do? Most of our free time is spent in front of the boob tube.

A third important factor is to do something to make the world better for others. Many researchers presume that being generous toward others by definition will reduce the fitness of the generous person. A reduction in resources to them translates into a reduced ability to provide for oneself and one’s immediate family. They see a big problem in understanding how a spirit of generosity will evolve. Why would it be important to have this generosity of spirit?

In a tribal group there was no money. If you are wealthy in the sense that you had excess meat from a hunt, the best place to store your surplus would be the stomachs of others. The meat would spoil if you did not do this. Your wealth then becomes your enhanced status within the group and the expectation that people will reciprocate when you were in need.

It is a bit more complex than just that. Death by violence was extremely frequent in human prehistory. It was so common that during much of human evolution there were not enough men for the women. Polygamy became very common. Who got the additional women? The high status men that gained that status because they found pleasure in being generous. The higher status within the group gave the man with a generous spirit a significant advantage in the competition for the women. It makes sense that this generosity of spirit would become hard wired into our genes.

Seligman claims that there is a tenfold increase in clinical depression compared with our grandparents generation and that rampant individualism is responsible. An important part of this is the lack of wider meaning when there is no attachment to something that is larger than we are. Without wider meaning a personal failure of any form has greater impact.

In conclusion, it is my position that we are hard wired to be happy. However, we have to live a life that is consistent with that wiring. We must nurture a rich network of personal relationships. We must find ways to use our strengths in activities that are deeply engaging and we must find meaning in life by finding some way to work for the wider good.

The Closed Book of Judges

As noted previously in "Rex Regnant Sed Non Gubernat" and "What Would Jesus Prescribe?," abuses of conscious clauses have enabled the denial of healthcare and pharmaceutical services on religious grounds. Now comes a story from the New York Times on Sunday, 4 September 2005 titled "On Moral Grounds, Some Judges Are Opting Out of Abortion Cases."

A pregnant teenager went to the grand and imposing county courthouse here early in the summer, saying she wanted an abortion. The circuit court judge refused to hear the case, and he announced that he would recuse himself from any others like it.

"Taking the life of an innocent human being is contrary to the moral order," the judge, John R. McCarroll of Shelby County Circuit Court, wrote in June. "I could not in good conscience make a finding that would allow the minor to proceed with the abortion."

Tennessee, where this case arose, is one of 19 states requiring parental notification and consent for abortion services; however, in this state the law provides minors the right to seek judicial permission for an abortion if they choose not to involve their parents.

Good and valid arguments can be made in support of parental notification laws, but prerequisite to their enactment is a viable judicial appeal process. Minors subject to abuse, retribution or abandonment on the basis of their decision to seek an abortion must have recourse to the courts. If judges frequently recuse themselves from hearing such pleas, the system becomes untenable.

The Pledge of Allegiance: The Next Generation

CNN on-line reports ("Appeals Court Upholds Pledge Law") that a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a suit filed against a public school system requiring daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

"Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words 'under God' contain no religious significance," Judge Karen Williams wrote. "The inclusion of those two words, however, does not alter the nature of the pledge as a patriotic activity."

Look for this case in a Supreme Court near you.

A Rushdie Judgment

A column in today's Times of London by Salman Rushdie (titled "Muslims Unite! A New Reformation Will Bring Your Faith Into the Modern Era") calls for a reformation of Islam, to "combat not only the jihadi ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows of the closed communities to let in much-needed fresh air."

It would be good to see governments and community leaders inside the Muslim world as well as outside it throwing their weight behind this idea, because creating and sustaining such a reform movement will require, above all, a new educational impetus whose results may take a generation to be felt, a new scholarship to replace the literalist diktats and narrow dogmatisms that plague present-day Muslim thinking.

It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.

Humanists should applaud Rushdie's call for scholarly reassessment of Islam, and its potential to wrest control of this major world faith from the hands of the Islamofascists who now hold it hostage and threaten world peace.

Scientific Support, By Design

Paul Krugman has an excellent op-ed in today's New York Times ("Design for Confusion") discussing the continued use of pseudo-scientific "theories" to support an ideological agenda.

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.

The question, of course, is what can be done about this situation. Clearly it is unproductive (and even counter-productive) to debate the merits of evolutionary theory, and proponents of ID have yet to put forth a falsifiable hypothesis that can be attacked directly.

Bush Promotes Faith-based Science

A number of sources have reported that President Bush has come out in favor of teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. According to the 3 August 2005 Washington Post story titled "Bush Remarks on 'Intelligent Design' Theory Fuel Debate:"

"Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

The complete transcript of the exchange from which this excerpt is taken was published by the Washington Post on 2 August 2005 as part of its "White House Briefing" feature.

Predictably, this pronouncement has resulted in widespread denouncement by such organizations as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Humanist Association, National Science Teachers Association, and American Geophysical Union,

An interesting parody of the case for teaching ID may be found here.

The Back of the Bus?

US News and World Reports has posted an article about a Universist group in Alabama being denied use of a local coffee shop for their meetings.

The problem arose, says Universist Movement founder Ford Vox, when he met with Anderson to discuss holding a gathering at Cool Beans. After she asked what the group believed in, he claims, Anderson said she was not comfortable with it meeting in her cafe because she is Christian.

This is somewhat reminiscent of WASH being denied the use of Winchester Hall in Frederick, Maryland for a forum on the public display of the Ten Commandments a few years ago.

Universists embrace a "progressive, natural religious philosophy" not entirely unlike Humanism.

Decades of the Decalogue

In his concurring opinion in today's disappointing Supreme Court decision in Van Orden v. Perry Justice Breyer notes:

As far as I can tell, 4o years passed in which the presence of this monument, legally speaking, went unchallenged (until the single legal objection raised by petitioner). And I am not aware of any evidence that this was due to a climate of intimidation. Hence, those 40 years suggest more strongly than can any set of formulaic tests that few individuals, whatever their system of beliefs, are likely to have understood the monument as amounting, in any significantly detrimental way, to a government effort to favor a particular religious sect, primarily to promote religion over nonreligion, to "engage in" any "religious practice," to "compel" any "religious practice," or to "work deterrence" of any "religious belief."

This is quite a precedent, amounting to a sort of squatter's right for the surrender of our constitutional protections. While good arguments have been made that opposition to such ostensibly harmless public religious displays is not as important as contesting more substantive forms of religious discrimination, today's decision seems to invalidate this line of reasoning. Instead, the folly of tolerating even minor public endorsement of religion is laid bare before us. Similar arguments have been made in other venues, with respect to the "one nation, under god" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance, for example, and the "in god we trust" motto on our currency. Methinks, perhaps, we doth protest too little.

While challenging these monuments on constitutional grounds may no longer be tenable, there is ample opportunity to argue with their very substance. Perhaps if the surrounding citations from Exodus were regularly displayed (see, for example, http://www.wash.org/wlapr05_6_1.html) the absurdity of promoting such religious codes as the basis for our contemporary legal system would be more apparent.