What do we know about the aspirations of poor people in developing countries?

It seems obvious that if we want to help anyone to achieve their aspirations we should make an effort to find out what their aspirations are.  That is why I suggested in my last post that it would be a good idea to ask poor people about their priorities for economic development, rather than seeking to replace the Millennium Development Goals with another set of priorities generated by development experts and bureaucrats.

An obvious way to proceed would be to conduct surveys to ask people to select priorities from among the 17 goals proposed by the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. However, I am not sure that list is an adequate reflection of what we know about the aspirations of poor people in developing countries.

The book, Moving Out of Poverty, by Deepa Narayan, Lant Pritchett and Soumya Kapoor (published in 2009) is a good place to start to get some understanding of the aspirations of poor people in developing countries. The study collected information from 60,000 people in over 500 communities in 15 countries. The authors used a range of different data collection methods including focus group discussions, household interviews and interviews of individuals to obtain their life stories. They were aware that some of the methods they used to collect data may be subject to bias, but the methods chosen had the virtue of allowing poor people (and people who had escaped from poverty) to speak for themselves.

One of the major findings of the study was that poor people see poverty as an experience that can be escaped by individual effort, self-reliance and initiative, rather than an identity or fate resulting from personal characteristics (such as illiteracy). The evidence seems to support that view. There is a lot of movement into and out of poverty and there are typically more similarities than differences between households in poverty and those which have escaped poverty.

The views of the poor people covered by the study often reflect what the authors describe as “the hunger for freedom”. The concept of freedom that people have in mind encompasses individual liberty, but it is broader than that. It seems to be summed up in a discussion by women in Chinxe, Mexico, who said: “Freedom means having opportunities”. 

The authors present evidence that the freedoms and opportunities that poor people value are much the same as those valued by other humans: the freedom to speak their minds; the freedom to choose how to live their lives according to their beliefs and desires; freedom to live with dignity and respect (e.g. having enough money for daily expenses and not being beaten); freedom from fear and oppression (including the right to protest and vote); freedom of movement (including, for women, freedom from customary restrictions); and freedom from restrictions hampering the ability of people to find work, control their money, establish and conduct businesses, to own property and goods, and to sell their property whenever and to whomever they choose.

The authors suggest three principles that should guide future approaches to poverty reduction:

•  All actions should seek to expand the scope for people in poverty to utilize their agency (i.e. their ability to help themselves) in both the public and private spheres.
• Actions should seek to transform markets so that poor people can access and participate in them fairly.
• Well-functioning local democracies can help poor people move out of poverty.

Unfortunately, the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals does not seem to consider any of these principles to be sufficiently important to be reflected in future development goals.

Is there no nook of English ground secure from rash assault?

The question is from the first lines of a poem by William Wordsworth, written in 1841 in protest against plans for construction of the Kendall to Windermere railway in the Lakes District of England.

Wordsworth was not impressed by the view that the railway would place the beauty of the Lakes District within easier reach of these who would not otherwise have access to it. He described such arguments as: ‘Utilitarianism, serving as a mask for cupidity and gambling speculations’. Environmentalists sometimes advance similar arguments these days, but few are as rash as Wordsworth. The famous poet suggested that an appreciation of the beauty of romantic scenery was beyond the capability of ordinary people:

‘Rocks and mountains, torrents and widespread waters, and all those features of nature which go to the composition of such scenes as this part of England is distinguished for, cannot, in their finer relations, to the human mind be comprehended, even very imperfectly conceived, without processes of culture or opportunities of observation in some degree habitual’.

Our rash assault on Lake Windermere took place late in August, via the steam train from Haverthwaite to Lakeside.

It is hard to imagine that any reader of this blog would have difficulty in appreciating the beauty of Lake Windermere, but I will nevertheless add some of Wordsworth’s poetry below my photos.

Standing alone, as from a rampart’s edge,

I overlooked the bed of Windermere,

Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.

With exultation, at my feet I saw

Lake, islands, promontories, gleaming bays,

A universe of Nature’s fairest forms

Proudly revealed with instantaneous burst,

Magnificent, and beautiful, and gay.

(William Wordsworth, The Prelude Book IV)

After our cruise on Lake Windermere we visited Grasmere.

Rest in peace, William Wordsworth. I hope our visit did not disturb you too much. We were only in your beautiful Lakes District for one day. 

John Stuart Mill, one of the most famous advocates of utilitarianism, walked all over your Lakes District for the best part of a month in July-August 1831 and even spent about 4 days walking and talking with you.

After visiting Wordsworth, Mill told a good friend, John Sterling:

 ‘all my differences with him [Wordsworth], or any other philosophic Tory, would be differences of matter-of-fact or detail, while my differences with the radicals and utilitarians are differences of principle’. (See: Richard Reeves, John Stuart Mill, 2007, p 74.)

The best explanation of Mill’s views at that time seems to be that he was somewhat confused after setting out to expose himself to a variety of different views opposed to radical utilitarianism - the secular religion of his youth. Mill did this following a mental crisis which he attributed to realization that even if all his (radical utilitarian) objectives were realized, he would not be filled with ‘great joy and happiness’. In addition to the views of Wordsworth, Mill became strongly influenced at that time by French secular messiahs, Saint-Simon and Auguste Compte. (Mill’s involvement in that brand of secular religion has been examined by Linda Reader in her book, John Stuart Mill and the Religion of Humanity, 2002.)

Mill embraced the poetry of Wordsworth because it helped him to achieve a more tranquil mental state. I expect that vast numbers of people have been similarly helped by the imagery of the Lakes District conveyed by Wordsworth’s poetry. 

Do I understand the meaning of W B Yeats' epitaph?

I know that poetry can sometimes convey thoughts and feelings that tend to get lost in prose. Nevertheless, I don’t read much poetry. Reading poetry has always seemed like something that I could do when I become older.

Even so, I have recently been reading some of the poetry of W B Yeats. My interest was aroused by the epitaph on his gravestone in the cemetery of St Columba’s Parish Church at Drumcliffe in County Sligo, when we visited Ireland during August.

What could Yeats have meant by suggesting that we should cast ‘a cold Eye’ on ‘Life’?

Before trying to answer that question it may be worth considering why we should care what Yeats meant. I think we should show some interest because he has been widely held to have been a literary genius. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, for what the Nobel Committee described as ‘inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation’. His poem, ‘Easter 1916’, about the participants in the rebellion that occurred at that time in Ireland, comes to mind as a poem that might warrant that description.

Beside the grounds of St Columba’s is this artistic feature, sculpted by Jackie McKenna.

The figure is called ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’, after Yeats’ poem of the same name, and the poem is laid out in front of him:

‘Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams’.

Yeats seems to be widely esteemed in this part of the world. This statue of Yeats can be found in Sligo.

There is also a Yeats memorial building in Sligo, with displays providing information about his links with that region and other aspects of his life.

There is a Yeats exhibition at the National Library in Dublin, which contained among other things his response to a questionnaire about creative effort. I was permitted to take some photos:

Yeats’ suggests that his creative efforts always involved day-dreaming. He never waited passively for inspiration and always worked systematically regardless of inspiration. He claims that his critical ability was always active in his creative efforts.

Yeats’ epitaph is the last stanza of his poem, ‘Under Ben Bulben’. Ben Bulben is a mountain close to where Yeats is buried.

In a small booklet, entitled ‘The Eye of the Heart’, available at St Columba’s church, Derick Bingham suggests that Yeats is saying:

‘If you are looking for answers as to what lies behind life and death, I can’t help you. You must look somewhere else. Horsemen, pass by’.

That is one possible interpretation.

However, reading the epitaph in the context of the poem, it seems that the horseman referred to is mythical superhuman creature ‘with an air of immortality’. We are told in the poem that such horsemen and women now ‘ride the wintry dawn’ ‘where Ben Bulben sets the scene’.

I think the key to the meaning that Yeats was intending to convey is in the following lines:

‘Many times man lives and dies

Between his two eternities,

That of race and that of soul,

And ancient Ireland knew it all’.

I think Yeats wants us to view life and death through the cold eyes of mythical god-like beings of the ancient world.

That perspective leaves me cold. Is it not better to look at life and death through human eyes? Perhaps contemplating whether those who have gone before have had happy lives can help us to consider how best to live our own lives.

Postscript
This is one of the most popular posts on my blog. I urge visitors to take a look at the comments provided below, some of which disagree with my understanding of the epitaph.

Postscript 2: April 6, 2020
A followup post with comment by Beth Prescott has now been posted: See: What did Yeats mean by "Horseman, pass by"? 

How does meditation affect word mongering?

Teach Us to Sit Still seemed like an appropriate title for a book to read on the flight from London to Sydney a couple of weeks ago. The book, written by Tim Parks (a successful author who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel, Europa) turned out to be an even better choice than I had expected. The book provided me with a timely reminder of the benefits of Vipassana meditation. When I became too tired to read, I put on my eye mask and spent a couple of hours observing the sensations arise and pass away. That is something that I should do more regularly.

Tim has a delightfully dry sense of humour, which he has used to good effect in this book to tell the story of how he overcame severe pelvic pain that had made his life miserable. The medical profession was unable to find the cause of his problem, but Tim found that ‘paradoxical relaxation’ helped. This technique involves calmly identifying and observing tension without trying to relax it; the paradox is that the muscles eventually relax themselves.

Tim’s massage therapist told him that ‘paradoxical relaxation’ had some similarity to Vipassana meditation and he decided eventually to attend a Vipassana course. Although his immediate problem was cured, Tim felt that there was much work still to be done – predators ‘prowled the borders of the small haven of comfort’ he had staked out.

Tim approached Vipassana with irreverent scepticism, but this did not prevent the experience from having a profound impact. I want to focus here on the impact it had on his desire to continue to be a successful author.

At one point in his first meditation course, Tim is reflecting on the relationship between novels and life. He notes that the novels that ‘most accurately, intensely and wonderfully’ imagine life tend to keep us away from life: ‘If it is life we want, we put the book down’. This leads him to consider his own thought processes:

‘First the emotion, then the excited reflection on emotion, attempting to divert it from its initial function, to enroll it in my career project, to turn it into smartness and writing’.

During his second meditation course Tim accepts that the time has come to face up to ‘simply being here, instead of taking refuge in writing about being here’. He comes to consider the possibility that his former illness might be a consequence of his successful writing career:

‘Nor was it unthinkable that the strange pains I had been feeling had in some way to do with all those years sitting tensely, racking my brains over sheets of empty paper, building up hopes, rejoicing over some small achievement, overreacting to setbacks and disappointments. And it was true that if you placed yourself, or your attention, as it were beside these pains, if you just sat together with them and let them be, not reacting or wishing them away, they did in the end subside. Likewise the thoughts’ … .

The passage goes on with Tim acknowledging that he had sensed the first hints of equanimity. He concludes:

‘All you have to do now is stop writing … and you’ll have clinched it. You’ll have changed forever’.

When Tim tells the meditation teacher, John Coleman, that he is thinking of giving up his writing career, Coleman responds:

‘You know a lot of people come to these retreats and get it into their heads they should retire to a monastery or something. I can’t see why’.

Tim didn’t think that response was helpful; it didn’t resolve the conflict that he saw between word mongering and experiencing life.

So, how did Tim resolve that conflict? Well, he obviously didn’t stop writing. He has written a couple of other books since writing Teach Us to Sit Still, including the novel, Sex is Forbidden (first published as The Server). And some of the things he has written suggest that he still sees the potential for conflict. For example in an article entitled ‘The Chattering Mind’, for the NYR Blog, Tim suggests that modern authors are obsessed with mental suffering and impasse: ‘Slowly you get the feeling that only mental suffering and impasse confer dignity and nobility’.

I have just read Sex is Forbidden to see whether it sheds any light on the effect that meditation had on Tim’s writing. This novel tells the story, in first person, of a rather naughty young woman who has spent several months at a meditation institute both as a meditator and as a voluntary helper (server) following a traumatic experience. Despite segregation of sexes at the institute, the young woman almost ends up in another relationship with an older man, after she stumbles on his diary and reads it. The main character is likeable, the challenges facing her are interesting and the story-line seems plausible. At the end, however, I was left unsure of how well Tim had actually managed to capture what might be happening in the mind and emotions of the young woman. (I went looking for reviews by women, but the only review I found that attempted to deal with the issue was by an opinionated man.)

The relevant point, however, is that while this novel is focused on mental suffering it manages to end on a hopeful note. We know that while the main character is unlikely to live happily ever after, her chances of living a happy life have improved.

Tim made a similar point in an interview with Jan Wilm:

 ‘So has meditation changed my writing? I’m not sure. … What I am talking about in a lot of my books is this process whereby you get yourself into a position from which there is no way out. Which is also a way of saying, the whole way you’ve structured your mental life actually doesn’t fit the nature of reality, because when you carry on in the way your map tells you to, you always end in a place on the territory where there’s nowhere to go. A lot of life feels like that to me. The different thing about The Server—and I was quite surprised about this when I wrote the end of the novel—is that here there is a feeling that, if nothing else, that period in the meditation retreat has helped these two people to avoid one more catastrophe, one more dead end. And that the girl, if not the man, has maybe moved on ever so slightly. She is not stuck, she seems able to move forward. I was quite surprised by my optimism’.

What is so good about 'Send Round the Hat?'

‘Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush--

Should be simple and plain to a dunce:

"If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hat--

Were he jail-bird or gentleman once."

Henry Lawson, a renowned Australian bush poet and story teller, used that verse to begin his story, ‘Send Round the Hat’. The story is based on his experience in the Bourke district of New South Wales in the early 1890s and would have been intended to be read mainly by Australian pastoral workers.

I came to re-read the story a month or so ago when I was asked to recommend some historical references for an Argentinian visitor who was interested in the cultural tradition in rural Australia of people sticking together and supporting each other in this vast harsh land. I suggested that ‘Send Round the Hat’ was excellent.   The comment that came back was: ‘Not necessarily that easy for an Argentinean to understand!’

That response is fair enough. There are probably a lot of Australians who would also struggle to understand English as it was spoken in rural Australia in the 1890s.

 Some people might even struggle to understand the message of the poem quoted above. A person who is ‘in a hole’ is in a difficult situation, often involving a financial problem. To ‘pass round the hat’ is to ask people to donate money to help the person concerned – traditionally, by asking them to place a contribution into a hat. The message is to be kind to people who are in difficulty, irrespective of their background.

The storyline is very simple. The author presents a series of anecdotes to explain how Bob Brothers (more commonly known as the Giraffe or Long-‘un because he was tall) has gained a reputation for passing around the hat to help others. He tells us that Bob is always the first to make a contribution when he passes around the hat and that he sometimes has to borrow money in order to do this. The story ends with Bob’s friends stealing his hat and passing it around to raise money to help him on his way back to Bendigo in Victoria to marry the girl he loves.

The story is brought to life by Lawson’s description of the characters involved and their attitudes. Most regard Bob Brothers as a nuisance, or pretend to. One of the characters, Jack Mitchell, is even permitted to suggest that Bob is ‘is one of those chaps that is always shoving their noses into other people’s troubles’ because of ‘vulgar curiosity and selfishness’. According to Jack’s theory, Bob makes his collections because he is ambitious and likes public life.

Fairly early in the story, Lawson has Bob explain his philosophy as follows:

"The feller as knows can battle around for himself," he'd say. "But I always like to do what I can for a hard-up stranger cove. I was a green-hand jackeroo once meself, and I know what it is."

Bob was saying that he does what he can to help strangers in need because he knows what it is like to be one. The ‘feller as knows’ would have a great deal of local knowledge and networks to support him. A ‘hard-up stranger cove’ is a stranger with little money. A green-hand jackeroo is an inexperienced worker in the pastoral industry.

The main reason why I consider ‘Send Round the Hat’ to be excellent is because Lawson is using the story as a gentle way to suggest to his readers that kindness involves helping strangers as well as your mates (friends and people you know well) and fellow members of trade unions, religions and ethnic groups.

The anecdote that makes the point most strongly, in my view, is the description of Bob’s attempt to take around the hat for the benefit of a sick Afghan camel driver:

‘Some years before, camels and Afghan drivers had been imported to the Bourke district; the camels did very well in the dry country, they went right across country and carried everythink from sardines to flooring-boards. And the teamsters loved the Afghans nearly as much as Sydney furniture makers love the cheap Chinese in the same line. They love 'em even as union shearers on strike love blacklegs brought up-country to take their places.

Now the Giraffe was a good, straight unionist, but in cases of sickness or trouble he was as apt to forget his unionism, as all bushmen are, at all times (and for all time), to forget their creed. So, one evening, the Giraffe blundered into the Carriers' Arms--of all places in the world--when it was full of teamsters; he had his hat in his hand and some small silver and coppers in it.

"I say, you fellers, there's a poor, sick Afghan in the camp down there along the----"

A big, brawny bullock-driver took him firmly by the shoulders, or, rather by the elbows, and ran him out before any damage was done. The Giraffe took it as he took most things, good-humouredly; but, about dusk, he was seen slipping down towards the Afghan camp with a billy of soup.’

The point being made was that Bob was even prepared to pass the hat around among bullock-drivers - a notoriously tough and profane group - asking them to make a contribution for the benefit of an economic competitor belonging to a different religious and ethnic group.

‘Send Round the Hat’ might not be great literature, but it makes some important points about the inclusiveness, or otherwise, of Australia’s cultural heritage of supporting people in need. After re-reading it I am still of the view that the tradition of passing around the hat has always been largely about ‘looking after your mates’. However, I greatly admire Henry Lawson’s attempt to promote higher ideals.

What is life like for a Bhutanese asylum seeker living in Germany?

A few days ago Hemlal Mainaly, a Bhutanese asylum seeker living in Germany, offered to provide information for my blog about the problems he has encountered. I decided to interview Hemlal because of my interest in Bhutan. However, his responses remind me that whatever problems people like Hemlal may pose for the governments of countries in which they seek asylum, they are seeking opportunities for happiness that most other people take for granted.

An edited version of the interview follows:

Hemlal, would you please introduce yourself to readers of Freedom and Flourishing?

I am a 33year old single male, currently living in Germany at Hodenhagen. I have studied applied science, and have obtained a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) from Tribhwan University, Kathmabdu Nepal.

I am the youngest member of my family. My parents, both age 67 years, have been living in the US at Syracuse, NY since 2010 under a UNHCR resettlement program. I have 5 sisters, four of whom have also been living in the US. My brother, travelled to the Netherlands in 2005 and his political claims were recognized immediately by the Netherlands authorities. He obtained Netherlands citizenship through naturalization in 2011.

Why did you leave Bhutan?

The government of Bhutan confiscated my immovable properties and terminated the nationality of my parents at gun point. It accused us of involvement in the democratic and peaceful protest that took place in 1990 in Bhutan. The royal authorities declared us traitors and at forced us to sign the ‘’voluntary’’ emigration form.

I left Bhutan in 1991 when I was just 12. We migrated to Nepal and lived at the Bhutanese Refugee Camp at Beldangi 2, aided by UNHCR.

How did you come to live in Germany?

The failure of 16 rounds of bilateral negotiations between the governments of Nepal and Bhutan to resolve the refugee problem left no hope of dignified repatriation of refugees to Bhutan. The degree of frustration among young refugees increased and the security situation became fragile. Insurgent groups formed within the refugee communities aiming to begin armed revolution to Bhutan. The position of those opposed to such groups became insecure as refugees started killing each other in an astonishing way.

Meanwhile, third countries had developed proposals to resolve the Bhutanese refugee problem by offering voluntary resettlement. The resettlement proposals added butter on the fire in the refugee communities. The communities divided, one side accepting resettlement while the other maintaining that dignified repatriation was the only the solution.

I campaigned for third country resettlement for a long time while living at Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. As a result, threats were made on my life and I was not able to go back to the refugee camp. I escaped to Germany in 2007 for my own safety. I had to leave Nepal to protect my life.

What have you been doing since you went to Germany?

Since the beginning of 2007, I have been doing absolutely nothing. My political asylum petitions have been refused by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees and by the Federal Court for irrelevant and incredible reasons. The German authorities accused me of leaving Bhutan voluntarily. They claim that Bhutanese who were expelled following the 1990 protests are not political refugees.

Currently, I have a short residency permit  for the period of six months issued in November 2012.This is something like temporary toleration and valid  as long as the authorities are not able to get travel documents for my deportation to Bhutan . The Bhutanese Embassy at Brussels has apparently not responded to inquiries from the aliens authority.

I have no travel documents, but I am not able to take an integration course. My residency permit does not give me the right to leave German territory. I do not even have the right to visit the Netherlands to see my brother.

Do you consider conditions for asylum seekers in Germany are better or worse than in other countries?

To be very honest, on the basis of my suffering in Germany for last seven years, I caution refugees around the globe please never to step into Germany seeking protection. This is the worst place for refugees and asylum seekers. In the name of giving protection, this jurisdiction destroys the lives of thousands of refugees. They suppress people mentally and paralyse them.

Many resettled Bhutanese refugees have told me that the conditions of life for asylum seekers in other EU states are far better than in Germany, and conditions for asylum seekers in Australia, Canada and the US are also better than here. I would like to express heartfelt thanks to the US government for resettling over 70 thousand Bhutanese refugees at a time when it has been struggling to cope with economics crises. The Bhutanese refugee community will remember this act of kindness for all time.

What are your hopes for future?

I have tried all possible ways to obtain refugee status, but without success. I feel hopeless, helpless and paralysed. My future seems very gloomy, terrible and pathetic. I do not know what will happen from one day to the next.  I have no future prospect in Germany. I would request assistance from all the third countries who have been resettling the Bhutanese refugees.

I also request the diplomatic missions of USA, Australia and all core groups states to pressure the German authorities to open their eyes to the suffering of refugees. There is too much suffering. Enough is enough!

Why hasn't more use been made of ACSA for measurement of progress?

What is ACSA? It seems to be an acronym for a lot of different things, but the particular ACSA I am referring to is Anamnestic Comparative Self-Assessment. This is an approach to measuring progress which was first suggested by Jan Bernheim about 30 years ago.

The distinctive feature of ACSA is that it asks survey respondents to rate their current wellbeing by comparison with their memory of the best and worst periods of their own lives (with the best period being given a rating of +5 and the worst period being given a rating of -5).

ACSA is an alternative to the conventional question which asks people to rate their current lives using abstract universal anchors. For example, the Cantril scale gives ‘the best possible life’ a rating of 10 and ‘the worst possible life’ a rating of zero.

In terms of measuring progress, ACSA has the merit of using anchors that could reasonably be expected to more stable over time than perceptions of the best possible life. As explained in recent posts (here and here), when people are asked to rate their own lives relative to the best possible life, they are likely to be making that assessment relative to a moving target. If they see their own lives improving in line with their perceptions of the best possible life, they can be expected to give similar ratings to their lives in successive surveys. It should be obvious to everyone that it is a mistake under those circumstances to interpret stable ratings as implying an absence of progress.

A major study comparing results obtained using ACSA and a conventional measure of life satisfaction for a large number of adult hospital patients suggests that ACSA is indeed less subject to biases of various kinds. For example, the results obtained using ACSA were more responsive to a major objective change in the prospects of end-stage liver disease patients following liver transplantation. The conventional measure of life satisfaction did not capture adequately the impact on wellbeing of the life-threatened situation of these patients prior to transplantation, or the fact that transplantation restored them to an almost normal life. The study is reported in Jan Bernheim et al, ‘The potential of anamnestic comparative self-assessment (‘ACSA) to reduce bias in the measurement of subjective well-being’, Journal of Happiness Studies (2006). An ungated article providing a brief discussion of ACSA is available here.

The potential strengths of ACSA relative to conventional measures of life satisfaction are most obvious where the focus of research is on changes in the wellbeing of individuals over time. A potential weakness of ACSA arises in comparing ratings of different individuals, even though research findings suggest that there are common elements in memories of different people concerning the best and worst periods of their lives (the best periods often involve such things as birth of a child and the worst periods such things as unemployment). It seems likely that many people in high-income countries would perceive that the worst periods in their lives were not as bad as those experienced by vast numbers other people in the world. They might also perceive that the best periods of their lives were better than those of people with fewer opportunities.

One possible way to combine the ACSA ratings of different people would be to place them on the same scale as conventional ratings using the Cantril scale.  When I did that for myself, I gave a rating of 8.5 to my current life, a rating of 9.5 to the best period of my life and a rating of 6.0 to the worst period of my life. That implies an ACSA rating of about 2 [10*(8.5-6.0)/(9.5-6.0) – 5]. That is also the ACSA rating I gave to my current life when I asked myself the ACSA question directly. Such introspective exercises don’t necessarily mean much, but this one suggests to me that the underlying concepts used in ACSA are compatible with the Cantril scale. I urge other people to do the exercise to see if they also get sensible ACSA estimates. 

As far as I can see there is no reason why surveys could not ask people to give a rating to the best and worse periods of their own lives on the Cantril scale, immediately after asking them to rate their current lives on that scale. The Cantril scale is far from perfect as a methodology for making interpersonal comparisons of well-being, but the results it provides in that context seem to make more sense than in making comparisons over time. The calculation of ACSA scores in conjunction in longitudinal surveys using the Cantril question provides potential for development of meaningful measures of perceptions of progress.

I don’t know the answer to the question I asked at the beginning of this post. More use should be made of ACSA. It seems to me that including ACSA type questions in longitudinal studies, such as HILDA, has potential to provide useful information.

Is the 'trial narrative' integral to emergence of the modern view of happiness?

‘Our own concept of happiness is, in its essentials, the eighteenth-century concept that emerges after the trial narrative has wrought its effects on the classical idea’

-                                                                       Vivasvan Soni, ‘Mourning Happiness’ (2010).

 Soni argues that happiness has come to be viewed as ‘a mere emotion or subjective state’ and that this view of happiness is ‘hopelessly and inescapably private’. He contrasts that with the classical view in which happiness was ‘held to be the highest good for an individual, almost without question’.

The author argues that the trial narrative, referred to in the quoted passage, was introduced by Samuel Richardson’s novel, ‘Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded’, first published in 1740. The novel tells the story of Pamela, a young servant girl, who resists harassment by her sexually predatory master until he comes to recognize her virtue and marries her. It is appropriate to describe it as a trial narrative because it involves the trial of the virtue of an innocent girl who suffers a great deal of misery and eventually obtains happiness (so readers are told) through an elevation in social status (brought about by marriage to the man who almost raped her). There are similar narrative themes in other novels in this period. I suppose a novelist could tell a similar story in the modern world, but the reward for virtue would more likely come in the form of an out-of-court settlement of a large sum of money.

How could our modern concept of happiness emerge from the trial narrative? Soni’s answer is ‘reification’. The main point he is making is that when happiness is viewed as a reward it becomes identified with specific things such as positive feelings, wealth and marriage, rather than being the subject of a narrative which responds to the question of whether an individual has had a happy life (without specifying in advance what that might mean). The author spends a few hundred pages explaining this, so please don’t rush to judgement about the quality of the argument on the basis of my attempt to sum it up in a few words.

The general line of argument seems to me to be plausible. Trial narratives might not have been invented in the 18^th century, but the author seems to be successful in establishing that they became common around that time. His explanation for reification of happiness makes sense. 

However, there is an alternative, less complex, explanation for reification of happiness. With advances in science and technology and the spread of education following the Enlightenment it is reasonable to expect that people in Europe would generally have tended to became more aware of the consequences of the choices that they were making in all aspects of their lives.

The author seems to me to draw a long bow when he attributes the choices that some people currently make, for example the choice to work longer or harder now in order to obtain greater happiness later in their lives, to the power of the trial narrative in modern thinking. People may see themselves as making sacrifices now in order to obtain greater rewards later, but that is no reason to question their capacity for self-direction by implying that they are subconsciously following some kind of script which requires them to undergo a trial of their virtue.

The author attempts to link the trial narrative to Immanuel Kant’s argument that ‘the sovereign who wants to make the people happy according to his concepts’ is likely to become a despot. Surely Kant’s argument that people differ in their thinking about happiness to such an extent that it cannot be ‘brought under any common principle’ deserves to be considered on its merits. If pursuit of happiness is viewed as a collective goal, rather than an individual right, is there not a real possibility that collective efforts to make individuals happy will end up making them miserable?

I found Soni’s discussion of what he describes as ‘the erasing’ of the political concept of happiness during and following the American revolution to be interesting and illuminating. However, I don’t think he is correct in his view of the consequences of failure to include collective pursuit of happiness via government as an explicit goal in the US Constitution. He suggests that ‘without the open and indeterminate horizon of happiness to guide our politics, the state of legitimacy in which we live can have no other purpose beyond maintaining itself’ (p 479). That seems to me to devalue the intended role of the state in defending the rights of citizens to pursue happiness as they see fit and the contribution of civil society to the pursuit of public happiness. And I doubt whether he is correct in implying that Jefferson, the main author of the Declaration of Independence, saw individual pursuit of happiness as a purely private and domestic matter. It seems likely, as suggested by Darrin McMahon (‘Happiness’, p 325-6), that Jefferson's view of the individual pursuit of happiness included a strong dose of doing publicly useful things. McMahon notes that Jefferson was familiar with the work of Francis Hutcheson who argued that people tend to obtain ‘private pleasure’ by ‘constant pursuit of publick Good’.

It is interesting to speculate what effect the inclusion of a goal of pursuit of collective happiness in political constitutions might actually have on public policies. Bhutan’s experiment with gross national happiness (GNH) suggests to me that it would be likely to result in further reification of happiness. Applying a national happiness yardstick to all aspects of public policy tends to make the happiness objective more specific. Pursuit of GNH seems to be evolving increasingly toward specific policies such as discouraging smoking and encouraging organic farming. The niggling concern, lurking at the back of my mind, is that pursuit of GNH could actually impact negatively on the ability of individuals to live happy lives. Sending people to jail for possessing tobacco products or pesticides seems to me to be unlikely to help them to live happy lives.

Finally, I don’t think our modern view of happiness is quite as shallow as Soni implies. While it is common to view happiness as purely an emotion, when you ask people whether they have had a happy life the response you are likely to get is a narrative – a story of flourishing or languishing, or more likely periods of both flourishing and languishing. I am reminded at this point of the findings of Dan McAdams’ narrative research (discussed briefly on this blog here and here) which suggests that the life stories of many people involve redemption themes. In these stories the narrator encounters many obstacles and suffers many setbacks but eventually develops toward actualization of an inner destiny.

Having read and thought about ‘Mourning Happiness’ I admire the ambitious attempt made in this book to identify the dominant narrative theme in our modern lives. In the end, however, I am not persuaded that the dominant narrative themes in our modern lives stem from Richardson’s ‘Pamela’ and similar 18^th century novels. Perhaps it might be just as valid to argue that the dominant narrative themes in our modern lives stem from Homer’s ‘Odyssey’or the biblical story of Job. I suspect it might be an impossible task to identify the different themes in mutually exclusive ways and to disentangle their influence from other factors that impact on on the way we currently view happiness.

What did Milton Friedman have to say about human flourishing?

Who cares? I care for several reasons. Milton Friedman stands out as one of a small number of intellectuals who had a favourable influence on public policy in the 20^th century. Today – July 31, 2012 - is the 100^th anniversary of his birth.  This blog is about freedom and flourishing. And I am wondering how the (provisional) title of the book I am writing, ‘Free to Flourish’, might be perceived. It is a fairly obvious title given the content of the book, but I hope it might be viewed as an appropriate tribute to Milton Friedman, who with his wife, Rose, wrote a better book, entitled ‘Free to Choose’, which was first published in 1979.

I have not been able to find instances where Milton Friedman referred to human flourishing directly in his published works. His references to happiness seem to be mainly in the context of recognition that people have a right to pursue it as they see fit. He argued that the freedom of the individual should be seen as the ultimate goal in judging social arrangements and that a free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives.It is reasonably clear that he thought the vast majority of people would be successful in pursuing their own objectives but he does not seem to have made specific claims to that effect. I expect he would probably have endorsed the sentiment of Friedrich Hayek that 'it may even be that liberty exercises its beneficial effects as much through the discipline it imposes on us as through the more visible opportunities it offers' (Constitution of Liberty, 1960:18). 

Friedman was certainly careful not to claim freedom as ‘an all-embracing ethic’:

‘Indeed, a major aim of the liberal is to leave the ethical problem for the individual to wrestle with. The “really” important ethical problems are those that face an individual in a free society – what he should do with his freedom’ (‘Capitalism and Freedom’, 1962: 12).

For the benefit of readers who have come to view the liberal label as signifying support for ever-greater government regulation, I should point out that Friedman was using the word liberalism ‘in its original sense – as the doctrines pertaining to a free man’.

Friedman was also mindful of the need to acknowledge a limited case for government action on paternalistic grounds. He wrote:

‘Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children’. He pondered the point deeply:

‘The paternalistic ground for government activity is in many ways the most troublesome to a liberal; for it involves the acceptance of a principle – that some shall decide for others – which he finds objectionable in most applications and which he rightly regards as a hallmark of his chief intellectual opponents, the proponents of collectivism in one or another of its guises, whether it be communism, socialism, or a welfare state. Yet there is no use pretending that problems are simpler than in fact they are. There is no avoiding the need for some measure of paternalism’ (‘Capitalism and Freedom’, p 33-4).

However, Friedman would have been alarmed by the modern tendency for all citizens to be treated like children - with the potential for a war on obesity (beginning perhaps with an assault on marketing of soft drinks) to be added to the war on drugs. He argued:

‘Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives’ (‘Free to Choose’, p 227).

Friedman was particularly concerned about the adverse social effects of paternalistic welfare programs:

‘Their major evil is their effect on the fabric of society. They weaken the family; reduce the incentive to work, save and innovate; reduce the accumulation of capital; and limit our freedom’ (‘Free to Choose’, p 127).

It seems to me that one of the most important contributions that Friedman made was his support for efforts to measure economic freedom. In a discussion published in the preface to the 2002 ‘Economic Freedom of the World Report’, Friedman stressed the importance of measurement of economic freedom to development of a better understanding of the concept:

‘There's a phrase written on the entrance to one of the social sciences buildings at the University of Chicago: "When you cannot measure something, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfying." In the process of measuring, you find that measuring is a form of definition. It isn't just that there's economic freedom out there to be measured. In the process of measuring it, we're going to define what economic freedom is. We don't really know what we have, what economic freedom is, unless we've gotten to the point of trying to measure it and see what variables it consists of, and what each of those means. Over the course of time, we have gotten a much more sophisticated understanding of what we mean when we talk about economic freedom.’

In the same discussion he made a plea for economic freedom to be seen in the context of freedom more generally:

‘In looking to the future, I believe one has to be careful not to over-emphasize the role of economic freedom as a source of economic growth, as compared with the role of economic freedom as a part of freedom, of human freedom.

We've talked about economic and political freedom as if they were wholly separate things, which they are not. I think the next big task facing the economic freedom project will be to try to weld the two together and make a combined index of economic and political freedom, especially where they mesh with one another. Property rights are not only a source of economic freedom. They are also a source of political freedom. That's what really got us interested in economic freedom in the first place. Some of the elements in the Freedom House index seem to me to be inconsistent with some of the elements in our index, and it would seem to be useful to see how to reconcile those two and put them on the same philosophical basis.’

One of the features of Friedman’s writings is the importance he placed on political freedoms. His argument for economic freedom was based, in part, on the view that it is ‘an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom’. He saw political freedom – the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men – as requiring the elimination of concentration of power to the greatest extent possible. He argued that competitive capitalism promotes political freedom because it disperses power – it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.

Friedman deserves the praise he has received for his academic accomplishments in economics, but he also deserves praise for his efforts to persuade his fellow citizens of his views about freedom. He knew that he had an important message to convey and he did his best to spread it as far as possible. In the final paragraph of ‘Capitalism and Freedom’ he wrote:

‘I believe we shall be able to preserve and extend freedom … . But we shall be able to do so only if we awake to the threat we face, only if we persuade our fellow men that free institutions offer a surer, if perhaps at times a slower, route to the ends they seek than the coercive power of the state.’

Milton Friedman put his faith in the ability of his followers to persuade their fellow citizens, rather than in his own ability to influence governments directly.

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The site:  www.freetochoose.tv is hosting a 24-hour "Friedman Freedom Festival" beginning 12:00 a.m. US Eastern Time July 31st and running until 12:00a.m. Aug. 1st. It will be a continuously playing list of Friedman talks, musicians from around the world and shorter clips of Friedman - most of which have rarely seen before.

Postscript 1:
Jim Belshaw has a post: 'Friedman, Freedom and Paternalism' in which he kindly refers to this post and some of the discussion below. Jim adopts a definition of paternalism as the state 'telling people what to do'. That is paternalistic, but I need to think more about the issue. My initial reaction is that wealth redistribution is also paternalistic - it is akin to a father taking toys off one child (on the grounds that she has too many) and giving them to her younger brother (who is deemed to have too few). I find it much easier to accept that it might be fair for a father (or mother) to make such a redistribution within their family (hopefully with the consent of the kids concerned) than to accept the validity of Wayne Swan's attempts to apply that ethic to the whole of society.

Jim also refers to a post by Lorenzo; 'Friedman's Century', which has links to several other sites with relevant comments.

Regarding my reference above to the obesity epidemic, Greg Dwyer has referred me to an excellent article entitled 'Sugar Sickness' by New Zealand medical doctor, MacDoctor, who points out the futility of proposals for governments to tax sugar etc. One day the paternalists (or are they nannies?) responsible for the wars against personal responsibility will realize that they are making matters worse.

Postscript 2:

Having looked at common usage of 'paternalism', I now think Jim and kvd are right. It entails limiting the liberty of some person or group in order to protect them.

Milton Friedman also seems to be right in his claim that the motivations of Bismark and the British Tories in creating the welfare state were paternalistic i.e. directed toward protecting people from harm. (Their motives were also political i.e. cutting the grounds from under their social democratic opponents). It is interesting that 'paternalistic' doesn't seem to imply that the action is against the will of the person being protected.

My supposition that Wayne Swan has paternalistic motives in arguing for wealth redistribution is probably wrong. His motives might be better described as egalitarian.

What did Adam Smith think of externalities associated with the efforts of individuals to improve their relative position?

I have enjoyed reading Robert Frank’s new book, ‘The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition and the Common Good’, more than I thought I would. This may be because I felt that the book had been written for people like me - the author seems to want people who have a strong regard for individual liberty to give serious consideration to his views.

I had expected Frank to argue that competition for positional goods involves a negative externality because those who are most successful are envied by many of those who are less successful. However, the view he presents of the nature of externalities associated with competition for positional goods is more subtle and less easily dismissed.

The starting point of Frank’s analysis is the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, which Adam Smith had suggested in ‘Wealth of Nations’ leads self-interested individuals to promote the greater good of society, without intending to do so. Frank describes Smith’s invisible hand as ‘a genuinely groundbreaking insight’, even though, as Smith recognized, the invisible hand ‘breaks down’ to some extent in the presence of externalities, public goods, and so forth. The particular negative externality that Frank is most concerned about in this book is associated with circumstances where individual rewards depend on relative performance and result from the strivings of individuals to improve their relative position. He contrasts this striving to improve relative position (which he describes as Darwinian competition) with the benign competitive forces associated with Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

Frank’s discussion of the different views of competition that he attributes to Darwin and Smith reminded me that Adam Smith had actually written about the strivings of individuals to improve their relative positions in ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ (TMS). Smith suggested in TMS that what people hope to achieve by bettering their condition is not ‘ease’ or ‘pleasure’ but ‘to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency and approbation’ (p 50-51, Liberty Fund edition, 1982). Later in the book, Smith suggests, however, that ‘the poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition’ imagines that if he attained wealth and greatness ‘he would sit still contentedly, and be quiet, enjoying himself in the thought of the happiness and tranquillity of his situation’. According to the story, this ambitious man endures a great deal of misery striving to better his position. By the time he achieves his goal, however, he is near the end of his life ‘his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments …’. At this point he begins to think that ‘wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility’ offering little ‘ease of body or tranquillity of mind’ (p 181).

In my view, Smith’s story understates the benefits that people obtain from wealth because it doesn’t take account of the greater autonomy wealth enables them to enjoy. (I have discussed the link between wealth and autonomy previously on this blog.)

Smith was suggesting that people tend to make cognitive errors of the kind discussed by Daniel Gilbert in his book, ‘Stumbling on Happiness’. This view of strivings to improve relative position differs from that of Robert Frank, who does not rely on departures from the individual rationality assumptions normally used in neo-classical economics.

The similarity between the views of Adam Smith and Robert Frank in relation to strivings to improve relative position lies in the fact that both seem to see this as more or less a zero sum game, with externalities involved. Adam Smith wrote as follows about the externalities associated with the strivings of individuals to better their condition:

‘The pleasures of wealth and greatness … strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are apt to bestow upon it.

And it is well that nature imposes upon us in this manner. It is this deception which arouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and the arts, which ennoble and embellish human life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned the rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains, and made the trackless and barren ocean a new fund of subsistence, and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth’ (p 183).

These days many people would be less inclined to count as a benefit some of the ways in which the face of the globe is being changed by the motion of industry. But Smith’s insight that strivings of individuals to improve relative position can encourage technological progress is still relevant. If such strivings also result in negative externalities, those need to be balanced against the positive externalities that Adam Smith identified.

I promise to write about Robert Frank’s views in my next post.

What is the inner game of stress?

‘The Inner Game of Stress’, by Timothy Gallwey (with Edward Hanzelik and John Horton) is the latest of a series of inner game books.Tim Gallwey has previously written books about the inner game involved in several sports, including tennis and golf, and the inner game of work - based on his experience as a coach and trainer. Hanzelik and Horton are medical practitioners who conduct stress seminars drawing on their understanding of the inner game as well as on their medical knowledge.

I think it would be fair to say that all of Gallwey’s books are to a large extent about avoiding the adverse effects of stress on our ability to function. This book is as much a pleasure to read as Tim Gallwey’s other inner game books. Gallwey is an expert in getting his message across by telling interesting stories based on his own personal experience. I have read all but one of his books. I wrote an article a few years ago describing how the books had helped me in dealing with a stress-related problem.

The main point in this book is that stress involves an inner game as well as external stressors. The inner game arises largely from trying to live with illusions about our own identities. It is as though an internal ‘Stress Maker’ has stolen our identities and substituted an illusion in order to create fear, doubt and confusion. The illusions woven by the ‘Stress Maker’ originate from the concepts, perceptions and expectations of other people.

The great strength of the inner game approach, it seems to me, is that it encourages the belief that each of us has a real identity (a natural self) that we, as individuals, are ultimately responsible for developing. Other people may see our identities as illusions that we have created in our own minds, but we should know better. We know intuitively how to be who and what we are when we recognize our inner resources and the opportunities for learning and enjoyment that are available in association with pursuit of our performance goals. We can learn to trust ourselves to function more successfully.

The book provides practical guidance on how to break the momentum of stress – how to stop and become aware of what you are trying to control and what you can control. It discusses the potential we have to liberate ourselves from illusions by re-assessing the meaning of experiences.

From what I have written, some readers might be concerned that the book might encourage people to become too self-centred – to question the social norms that were instilled in them during childhood and to pursue their own interests at the expense of other people. I think such concerns are misplaced. People don't question norms that they have internalized - adherence to such norms is a matter of self-respect rather than fear. The book recognizes that it is important for individuals to have deep relationships with others. One of the exercises in the book involves seeing problems in a relationship from the perspective of the other person – to understand what they may be thinking, feeling and wanting.

Much of the advice presented in the book is based on individual case studies rather than experiments involving large numbers of people. I don't think that is a huge problem as long as the readers who try the exercises suggested in the book approach them as though they are conducting little experiments of their own. That is consistent with one of the themes of the book, which is to encourage readers to become more aware of what they are doing at present and of the effects of doing things differently.

It is possible that this book, and Tim Gallwey’s other inner game books, may benefit some people more than others. On the basis of my own experience, all I can say is that the ideas in Tim Gallwey’s books have served me well.

Postsript:
Anyone interested in learning more about the effects of stress on the body should click here to see a useful interactive chart.

How should we encourage people to adopt more healthy lifestyles?

Timothy Wilson’s book, ‘Redirect: The Surprising New science of Psychological Change’, is primarily about what he describes as ‘story editing’ – a set of techniques designed to redirect people’s narratives about themselves and the social world in a way that leads to lasting changes in behaviour. Some of this story editing involves writing exercises, such as becoming more optimistic by writing about the process by which you have enabled everything in your future life to go as well as it could. But story editing also involves such things as providing information about social norms to correct mis-perceptions about what everyone else is doing. I suggest that anyone interested in a brief overview of the book should take a look at theinterview of Tim Wilson by Gareth Cook, for ‘Scientific American’ and a reviewby Mario Popova for ‘The Atlantic’.

I want to focus here on what light the book sheds on how we should encourage people to adopt more healthy lifestyles. Some people who are reading this will be thinking that I must have worked in the public sector for too long and become addicted to the ‘we’ word. Why should ‘we’ encourage people to live healthy lifestyles? Shouldn’t ‘we’ mind our own business? Well, in this instance I am using the ‘we’ word because it is appropriate. I think we would all want members of our own families and our friends to live healthy lifestyles, and probably feel that it would be good to encourage them to do that.

A logical place for an economist to begin would be to consider whether incentives - rewards, threats or punishments - should be used to encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyles. The message that I get from Tim Wilson’s book is that while incentives can change behaviour, they are not likely to bring about a desired change in the way people see themselves or in their intrinsic motivations. For example, in commenting on incentive programs designed to encourage kids to read more, Wilson writes:

‘If we want kids to read more, then rewarding them can work – as long as the incentives continue to be available. Rewards can produce compliance, just as punishment can. But … we want our kids to internalize desired attitudes and values … . After all, we can’t reward them for reading a book for the rest of their lives’.

Wilson also refers to experimental evidence that rewards can actually undermine intrinsic interest in an activity by convincing kids that they are doing it for the reward and not because it is enjoyable. When the reward is removed, participation in the activity was lower than in the pre-reward baseline period.

The conclusion Wilson comes to is that parents should use rewards and threats that are minimally sufficient to get kids to do the desired behaviours, i.e. not so strong that the kids view the threat or reward as the reason they are acting that way. If the child is told you will be ‘very upset and angry’ if she does something wrong she will desist to avoid getting in to trouble. If she is told you will be ‘a little annoyed’ she will still desist because she sees herself as a good kid.

So, incentives are no panacea. What else doesn’t work? The book provides quite a few examples of programs that bring people who are considered ‘at risk’ or ‘potential delinquents’ together in various ways (boot camps, counselling sessions etc.) to try to change their behaviour. The experimental evidence suggests that such programs don’t work because people who are brought together learn from each other and identify with group norms.

Another form of intervention that apparently doesn’t work is to scare the hell out of people by showing them very graphically what might happen if they engage in binge drinking, smoke cigarettes, take drugs and so forth. Threatening people with dire consequences for doing things they don’t want to do in the first place can have paradoxical effects. For example, some people may get the message that maybe they are tempted to engage in the undesirable behaviour, after all, since people are going to extreme lengths to talk them out of it.

So, what does work? One approach that works is autonomy support.  This involves helping young people understand the value of different alternatives facing them and conveying a sense that they are responsible for choosing which path to follow.

Encouraging young people to become involved in volunteering seems to have desirable effects on many aspects of their behaviour. The author writes:

‘Involving at-risk teens in volunteer work can lead to a beneficial change in how they view themselves, fostering the sense that they are valuable members of the community who have a stake in the future, thereby reducing the likelihood that they engage in risky behaviours …’

It may be possible to encourage young people to adopt healthier lifestyles by correcting incorrect perceptions about the behavior and attitudes of other young people.  For example, there is apparently a tendency for young people to over-estimate the amount of alcohol their peers drink. When correct information is disseminated, they lower their estimates of how much their peers drink and reduce their own drinking.

I don’t think Tim Wilson makes any broad generalizations in this book about how we should encourage people to adopt healthy lifestyles. In fact, he doesn’t make many generalizations about anything. One of the important messages in the book is the need for appropriate experimental testing to see what actually works. It seems to me, however, that it would be fairly safe to conclude from the book that the best way to encourage people to adopt more healthy lifestyles is through subtle interventions that redirect the narratives that they have about themselves.