Happy Happy Joy Joy (Again)

Harari takes a look at Daniel Kahneman's studies of happiness.

His starting point is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where everybody is drugged to be happy all the time. What's wrong with that, he asks. Most readers do not like that world and find it dystopian.

Kahneman took a virtual microscope to the lives of working women in Texas, and asked each to record what they were doing every few minutes and write down how they felt about it. One striking result was that the most unpleasant parts of their day were spent dealing with their children. On the other hand, when asked in the abstract what gave them the most joy in their lives, they named their children.

There is more than one way to interpret this, but he pays attention mostly to the idea that what really gives us happiness is meaning in our lives. In that way, the much harder life of the medieval peasant might have given him more happiness if he could feel meaning in the pursuit of heaven and other meaningful goals.

Science does not offer much (or any) meaning to life.

He also seems to like Buddhism a lot - but is not too fond of New Age interpretations thereof.

His aim was not to tell us what happiness is, but expose us to a few current theories.

The biggest hole in our understanding of human history is how it affected the people who lived then.

Next: the future.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more