Can your view of human flourishing be summed up in a selection of quotes?

The quotes selected for this post are related specifically to individual flourishing or personal development. I will follow this up later with a selection of quotes relating to the social conditions that favour human flourishing.

Rather than selecting the most inspirational quotes I can think of I have selected quotes that seem to support what I hope is a coherent set of propositions about human flourishing.

       1. Happiness is the final end to which humans are naturally attracted.

“Since there is evidently more than one end, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes …) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are final ends; but the chief good is evidently something final. ...

Now such a thing happiness [living well and doing well], above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else …” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, 7.

2. Reflection tells us that there is more to happiness than having a successful life.

“For both ancients and moderns, the starting point for considering happiness is a conventionally successful life which the agent finds satisfactory. … We have no concept which readily covers both the unreflective notion of success in life from which we start, and the revised notion of success in life with which we end if and when we have appropriately revised our priorities, and given morality its appropriate place in our life. The fact that we lack such a concept doubtless owes something to our tendency to see the pursuit of morality as being always likely to be in tension or conflict with the pursuit of other ends.” Julia Annas, philosopher, The Morality of Happiness, 1993, p 453-4.

  3. Human flourishing is the exercise of practical reason to actualize human potentialities.

“Ontologically considered, human flourishing is an activity, an actuality, and an end that is realized (or a function that is performed) through the self-directed exercise of an individual’s rational capacity. … As an actuality, human flourishing consists of activities that both produce and express in a human being an actualization of potentialities that are specific to the kind of living thing a human being is and that are unique to each human being as an individual.” Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, philosophers, The Perfectionist Turn, 2016, p 45.

 4. We feel elevated when we contemplate the natural beauty of our world and the kindness of other humans..

Many words have been written to express such thoughts, but the those that come to mind at the moment are the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World”, a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss, first recorded by Louis Armstrong, and released in 1967. You can view the lyrics and listen here.

 5. We are responsible for setting the internal rules that determine our behaviour.

“The brain is an evolved system, a decision-making device that interacts with its environment in a way that allows it to learn rules to govern how it responds. It is a rule-based device that works, fortunately, automatically.” Michael Gazzaniga, neurologist, The Ethical Brain, 2005, loc 1278.

 6. Individuals flourish as their reason and emotions learn to work in harmony.

“We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider, and we are the elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills” p 22.

“Reason and emotion must work together to create intelligent behaviour, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) does most of the work” p 13.

“virtue resides in a well-trained elephant” p 160. Jonathan Haidt, psychologist, The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006.

7. Unpleasant thoughts and feelings are a natural part of life.

“So here is the happiness trap in a nutshell: to find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings – but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create” p 40.

“As you open up and make space for these feelings, you will find they bother you much less, and they ‘move on’ much more rapidly, instead of ‘hanging around’ and disturbing you” p 45.

“A rich, full and meaningful life comes about through accepting your thoughts and feelings instead of fighting them, and taking effective action, guided by your deepest values” p 74.  Russ Harris, MD, The Happiness Trap, 2007.

 8. Grant yourself the freedom to pursue your goals.

“The easiest way to convince yourself that you don’t have mobility is to form ironclad concepts of yourself and how you do things …  . Freedom is about realizing that you always have the choice to start moving in any desired direction regardless of your past.” Timothy Gallwey, coach, The Inner Game of Work, 2000, p 126.

9. You get to choose whether to be content with past achievement or to stoke motivation.

“Once you have taken the first two steps in self-control – setting a goal and monitoring your behaviour – you’re confronted with a perennial question: Should you focus on how far you’ve come or how much remains to be done? There is no simple, universal answer, but it does make a difference … . For contentment, apparently, it pays to look how far you’ve come. To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.” Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, psychologists, Willpower: Rediscovering our Greatest Strength, 2011, Loc 1804

10. Be yourself!

“The paradox that frees you from all the prisons of self and the worries about image and approval is that the highest development of self is self-forgetfulness. When you fully integrate the awareness that it’s not about you, your focus shifts. Now you realize it’s about the experience, the contribution, the exploration, the discovery, and transformation. Now you’re free to be fully present without double-tracking in your head worrying about whether you have their approval.” Michael Hall, psychologist, Unleashed, 2007.

How do people living in the modern world get happiness all wrong?

Leah Goldrick provides her answer in this guest post, which is a slightly modified version of an article originally published on her excellent blog, Common Sense Ethics .

We all want to be happy. But could it be that we have our understanding of happiness all wrong? The general definition of happiness is philosophically unsophisticated. It pretty much boils down to the ongoing experience of positive emotions and a lack of negative ones. Life is about more than just moving yourself around, spending money and enjoying your next fix. Is our unphilosophical (and perhaps incomplete) understanding of happiness why so many of us are miserable according to mental health statistics?

Is there a missing moral component at the root of happiness? The ancient Greeks definitely thought so, and it turns out that genomic research conducted by Barbara Frederickson, which has previously been discussed on Freedom and Flourishing, indicates that we may be biologically wired for what they called eudaimonia (from daimon, or true nature). Differing from hedonism (pleasure or self gratification), eudaimonia is often translated as flourishing or living well, with a sense of noble purpose, virtue, and connection to others.

​In other words, real happiness is impossible without virtue - or arete in ancient Greek. Arete means excellent character, or reaching your highest human potential. Eudaimonia not only protects our physical and mental health at the cellular level, it may lead to a long term, more profound sense of well being. 

So what do we do if we want to experience eudaimonia? How do we reach our highest potential?

There are 3 concrete steps that you can take to be happy in the ancient Greek sense. First, you must acknowledge that virtue is necessary for happiness. Eudaimonia is about more than just feeling good, it is about becoming the best person that you can be. Second, you must do the inner work that is necessary to truly "know yourself," as Socrates said when he quoted the Delphic Oracle. And finally, you must take action and apply your unique talents and gifts in life for the good of yourself and others.

​1. Understand That Virtue Is Necessary For Happiness

What is happiness anyway? The experience of pleasure? The absence of pain? Gaining things that bring you contentment? The enjoyment of life? It seems like there is something missing here. An entire industry of motivational speakers and self-help gurus revolve the concept of well being, but each of them probably interprets happiness differently.

Various Eastern and New Age philosophies offer a different definition of happiness, one that is interesting and perhaps more complete - that happiness is the byproduct of our life's journey, and not a destination to be arrived at or something to be gained. But rather a state of mind or a sense of flow. This definition is closer to eudaimonia, but still morally agnostic.

It was the ancient Greeks who offered the most compelling definition of happiness, one that includes an ethical dimension - eudaimonia. Aristotle was the first philosopher to really flush out the concept of eudaimonia, but Plato's writings, as well as Socrates', contained elements of it. Aristotle felt that happiness in the modern, hedonic sense was a vulgar concept. Not all pleasures lead to well-being. In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle notes that "Living well and doing good are the same as being happy."

The Stoics went even further than Aristotle and argued that only virtue is necessary for happiness. Aristotle thought that some elements of hedonic happiness, such as having good food, a home, family, leisure, and so on, were necessary for a good life. But a good life was incomplete without also pursuing excellence. We don't live well only by amusing ourselves.

The ancient moral dimensions of happiness through virtue and excellent character were lost sometime in the interceding millennia. But Barbara Frederickson's recent genetic study seems to support Aristotle's position, or maybe the Pythagorean position. While hedonia is somewhat necessary, it is eudaimonia which benefits us the most: 

“We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those ‘empty calories’ don’t help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically,” she said. “At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose. Understanding the cascade to gene expression will help inform further work in these areas,”  Frederickson states.

Frederickson's research may also offer some insight into the theory of hedonic adaptation - that people are observed to revert back to prior levels of happiness soon after experiencing something pleasurable. Pleasures may make us happy in the short term, but they are fleeting and unable to provide us with long term health benefits and a sense of well being that comes from working to improve ourselves and becoming the best person that we can be.
​

2. Know Yourself

The phrase "Know thyself," or Gnōthi sauton in Greek, is typically attributed to Socrates because he often used it. But it has its roots in the legend of the founding of ancient Greece. As the story goes, 7 sages and law givers gathered at Delphi and laid the foundations for Western civilization. They had the phrase inscribed on the entrance to the sacred oracle. "Know thyself," has been the philosopher's clarion call ever since.

Plato believed that the human psyche has 3 parts: logical (or intellectual), spirited (having to do with action and the courage to be good) and appetitive (having to do with desires and emotion). In the just person, all three parts of soul agree that the logical must rule, bringing the other 2 parts - the spirit and the emotions - into a state of good or concordance.

The point here is that if you want to be happy, you can't be internally at war with yourself.  You must bring your intellect, emotions, and actions into harmony with each other. Otherwise, you might experience a situation where you desire something that you know to be wrong intellectually - and the result is often bad decisions and unhappiness. 

The psychologist Carl Jung believed that accepting and Integrating the shadow into your conscious personality is a great way to flush out any internal contradictions withing your psyche. The result of shadow work is the full integration of the self, leading to a better understanding of your true nature, or daimon in Greek.

If you don't know how to begin doing shadow work, my Knowing Yourself Better Questionnaire is a good place to start. I can say that this technique has helped me personally.

  

3. Find Your Life's Purpose

Can you be truly fulfilled without knowing what you are living for? Once you understand yourself at a deep level, you will know where you can best contribute your unique talents in the world. As sense of noble purpose rooted in meaning is the is the final step towards eudaimonia or flourishing. 

​We all have free will to make choices that improve our well-being. This tendency towards growth and flourishing is common to both the Greek philosophical tradition and modern humanistic psychology. The psychologist Carl Rogers states:

‘...man's tendency to actualize himself, to become potentialities. By this I mean the directional trend which is evident in all organic and human life - the urge to expand, develop, mature - the tendency to express and activate all the capacities of the organism and the self. This tendency may become deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defences; it may be hidden behind elaborate facades that deny its existence; it is my belief, however, based on my experience, that it exists in every individual, and awaits only the proper conditions to be released and expressed'.

​

Make sure that your activities in life have a noble purpose. Each of us has special talents that we can use to make the world a better place. The daimon, or true nature, refers to a your highest potential, ​and when you put your potential into action, happiness is the result. 

​A good, happy life, is the result of a virtuous character, self acceptance, and continual striving towards excellence.


You May Also Like:
​4 Life Lessons We Can Learn From The Cynics
​The Shadow: How Introspection Can Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Yourself

How can we avoid the happiness trap?

The idea that pursuit of happiness can be futile has been around for thousands of years. In my last post, I discussed J S Mill’s contribution in the 19^th Century. In this post I will discuss the contribution made by Russ Harris in The Happiness Trap: Stop struggling, start living, which was first published in 2007. This book is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) developed by Steven Hayes.

Russ Harris suggests that many people are caught in a happiness trap, which is based on four myths:

1. Happiness is the natural state for all human beings;
2. If you’re not happy, you’re defective;
3. To create a better life, we must get rid of negative feelings; and
4. You should be able to control what you think and feel.

It would be easy for me to become side-tracked into a discussion of how prevalent the happiness trap might be. The survey evidence suggests to me that in high income countries most people are actually fairly happy, but the picture that emerges does differ depending on the way happiness is measured. For example, at a national level high levels of positive emotion are not always accompanied by low levels of negative emotion. It is also possible for a substantial proportion of the population to experience chronic anxiety and depression at some time during their lives, despite the sustained existence of relatively high average happiness levels.

The important points are that too many people are falling into the trap of struggling to get rid of negative feelings and of attempting to control what they think and feel. I don’t think it is a myth that happiness is the natural state for most humans to be in: a majority of humans seem to have an inbuilt optimism bias. Nevertheless, there are times when it is natural, healthy and appropriate for humans to have negative thoughts and feelings. We cannot avoid having negative thoughts and feelings, but we can exercise a great deal of control over our responses to thoughts and feelings.

Harris argues that happiness has two very different meanings. The first refers to a feeling: a sense of pleasure, gladness or gratification. The second refers to a rich, full and meaningful life. The happiness trap is associated with craving the first form of happiness. If we seek to live a full and meaningful life at various times we can expect to experience the full range of human emotions, including sadness, fear and anger.

The author writes:

“The reality is, life involves pain. There is no getting away from it. As human beings we are all faced with the fact that sooner or later we will grow infirm, get sick and die. …”

But he provides grounds for hope:

“The good news is that, although we can’t avoid such pain, we can learn to handle it much better – to make room for it, rise above it and create a life worth living”.

So, how does the book suggest we go about creating lives that are worth living?  As I read it, the book does this by suggesting ways in which we can exercise and develop our personal powers (or capabilities) in relation to thoughts, sensations, values and goals. The underlying idea seems to be that if we manage to cope with unhelpful thoughts and unpleasant feelings, identify and endorse the values we want to guide us, set sensible goals for ourselves, act purposefully and engage fully in what we are doing, we will end up with lives that are worth living. That makes a lot of sense to me.

The approach suggested for coping with unhelpful thoughts or stories is to defuse them. The simplest technique suggested is to give yourself some distance from the thought by observing, “I am having the thought that …”. Many other techniques of defusion are suggested. One I particularly like is to thank my mind for the unhelpful advice it is giving me, and then ignore it.

The approach suggested for coping with unpleasant feelings and sensations is expansion -  that means making room for them rather than struggling with them. The three basic steps of expansion are: to observe the feelings and sensations in your body; breath into them; and let them come and go, or just stay there. If that sounds like Vipassana meditation, there are probably good reasons for that.

On the basis of my personal experience (as a consumer of self-help advice rather than a professional) I have doubts about the author’s recommendation to focus on the most uncomfortable sensation first. Acceptance of unpleasant sensations seems easier in the context of scanning my whole body, noticing and accepting all the sensations. Nevertheless, I particularly liked this comment:

“As you practice this technique one of two things will happen: either your feelings will change or they won’t. It doesn’t matter either way, because this technique is not about changing your feelings – it is about accepting them”. 

Russ Harris is of course not the first person to argue that we need to be guided by our values – our deepest desires relating to how we want to be and what we stand for – in order to have a rich full and meaningful life. For example, Aristotle emphasized the importance of values to individual flourishing, and Ayn Rand had John Galt develop a cogent argument leading to a definition of happiness as “that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values” (Atlas Shrugged, p 1014). Harris underlines the importance of values by referring to Viktor Frankl’s observation that the prisoners who survived in Auschwitz were often not the physically fittest, but those who were most connected with something they valued such as a loving relationship with their children.

Harris suggests that people identify their values in all domains of their lives: family, marriage, friendships, employment, personal development, recreation and leisure, spirituality, community, environment, health etc. Many of the questions involve asking what sort of person we want to be and what qualities we want to bring to our experiences.

The next step is to set goals and action plans relating to our values for each domain of our lives. When reading about it, the process seemed as though it might be just as boring as corporate planning, but that need not be so. Findings of recent neural research (by Christopher Cascio and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania) indicate that a focus on things we value in life -  referred to as self-affirmation – is associated with greater activation in parts of the brain that are known to be involved in expecting and receiving reward (the ventral striatum and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex).  A focus on what is most valued in a future context also involves more neural activity in areas associated with thinking about the self (the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex).

It is worth remembering that the point of acting in accordance with our values is about the quality of our journeys through life rather than about reaching ultimate destinations.  As Russ Harris puts it:

“When we move in a valued direction, every moment of our journey becomes meaningful”.

I have written enough to provide a few hints about the contents of the book. My one criticism of the book (as a consumer of self-help products) is its failure to recognize that some cognitive approaches, e.g. Neuro-Semantics, can help people to adopt the frames of mind that they value, without having to engage in a struggle against negative thinking. Leaving that aside, in my view, this book has great value in helping readers to work out what they have to accept in life, what they can hope to change, and what commitments they have to make to make their lives more meaningful.

Was J S Mill correct in his observation that happiness cannot be obtained by seeking it?

John Stuart Mill is often quoted as an authority on the question of

whether happiness can be obtained by seeking it. In Autobiography he wrote:

“Those only are happy ... who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way”.

How can that view be reconciled with Mill’s conviction “that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life”? That was no problem for J.S. Mill. In Utilitarianism he proposed:

“the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator”.

Mill enlisted the support of a widely-esteemed authority in support of that proposition:

“In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality”.

Mill might not have been a reliable exponent of the teachings of Jesus, but he was certainly an artful propagandist for utilitarianism.

Coming back to the original question, it seems important to be clear about the nature of the happiness that Mill claimed could not be obtained by seeking it. In his writings he seems to accept that some of the pleasures of life can be obtained by seeking them. As noted in my discussion of his views on pushpin and poetry (here and here) he regarded some pleasures as being higher than others.

Mill saw the development of “noble character” as intimately linked to the higher pleasures. At one point Mill seems to suggest that development of a noble character is an avenue to happiness. In Utilitarianism he wrote:

“... if it may be doubted whether a noble character is always the happier for its nobleness, there can be no doubt that it makes other people happier ...”.

Mill argued that some happiness could be obtained by cultivating tranquillity:

“the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing, such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a person above the chances of life, by making him feel that, let fate and fortune do their worst, they have not power to subdue him: which, once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety concerning the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquility the sources of satisfaction accessible to him, without concerning himself about the uncertainty of their duration, any more than about their inevitable end”.

In saying that happiness cannot be obtained by seeking it, Mill possibly meant that tranquility of mind cannot be obtained by seeking pleasure. Mill’s personal experience is relevant here. He reports that he helped himself to regain some measure of happiness after suffering a nervous breakdown when he was a young man by reading the poetry of William Wordsworth. In Autobiography he wrote:

“What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of”.

Wordsworth’s poem “Imitations of immortality from recollections of earlychildhood” might provide an example of what Mill was writing about.

What should be make of Mill’s suggestion that to be happy people need to fix their minds on some object other than their own happiness? In his autobiography Mill reports that he came to that view after his nervous breakdown. It has been suggested (for example by Kieran Setiya) that Mill displayed a lack of self-knowledge because he became unhappy even though he had already met his own condition of aiming not at his own happiness, but at the happiness of others.

However, my reading of Mill’s account suggests that he saw his problem as stemming from the moment when he asked himself whether he would be happy if all his objects in life were realized. Mill implies that his mistake was to question his own happiness:

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning”.

Under what conditions would a person who was fully absorbed in a major social or political movement be likely to be made to feel depressed merely by asking himself if he would be happy if all the objectives of that movement were realized? It seems to me that one set of circumstances in which that outcome might make sense is if the person concerned had been indoctrinated into the movement from an early age and had not previously considered the extent to which “his” objects in life were consistent with his own personal values. Those conditions may have applied in the case for JS Mill, who was educated by his father to become a propagandist for utilitarianism.

That explanation fits with Mill’s account that the first "small ray of light broke in upon [his] gloom" when he "accidentally" read the passage from Marmontel's Mémoires that relates his father's death and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt as a result of his increased responsibilities. It strikes me that Mill might at that moment have been inspired to see himself as an autonomous individual rather than a creation of his father (James Mill) and Jeremy Bentham (his godfather).  

So, after all that, was Mill correct in his observation that happiness cannot be obtained by seeking it? The answer depends on what we mean by happiness. The small amount of wisdom I have gained from my reading in this area suggests that it makes sense to pursue the things we (as autonomous individuals) value most highly in all domains of our lives. Whether or not that brings us great joy, it is likely to give us the satisfaction of knowing that our lives are meaningful.

Note: This is a revised version of an article posted on this blog in 2008. I have revised it because my views have changed.

Are the Scandinavian countries almost nearly perfect?

This question is prompted by Michael Booth’s book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People. The author is English; he is married to a Dane and lives in Denmark. The subtitle (of the version I read) suggests that the author has exposed “the truth about the Nordic miracle”. The book is indeed informative, but the author’s main aim seems to be to entertain readers with his observations on the different character traits of the people in the five Nordic countries – Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland - and what they think of each other.

The book could be viewed as essential reading for people thinking of spending time in Scandinavian countries. Visitors might need to be warned, for example, that Swedes tend not to be as well-mannered as observers of the on-court behaviour of Swedish tennis players might expect. Booth describes their behaviour when boarding public transport as “breathtaking rudeness” (but he comes from a country in which people do tend to apologize excessively).

The book also has much to offer people, like myself, with an interest in explanations for the high average happiness levels of these countries (as recorded in numerous international surveys) and those attempting to understand why Scandinavian welfare states have not yet collapsed.

The book was recommended to me by Jim Belshaw, an old friend and fellow blogger, because of my interest in happiness research. Jim has recently visited Denmark and has written on his blog about hygge – which translates as cosiness and has some similarity to the Australian concept of mateship – as well as about ethnocentricity and migration.

Michael Booth is bemused that the Danes tend to be consistently close to the top the world happiness rankings: even by comparison with the British they seem to be “a frosty bunch”. He suggests that the Danes are among “the least demonstrably joyful people on earth, along with the Swedes, the Finns and the Norwegians”. The author suggests that many Danes are themselves similarly bemused: “they tend to approach the subject of their much-vaunted happiness like the victims of a practical joke waiting to discover who the perpetrator is”.

It is often difficult to know when Booth is being serious, but he offers several more or less plausible explanations for the apparent contentedness of the Danes. These include low expectations resulting from their turbulent history, and a facility for denial of the costs of being Danish - including the high taxes and the loss of freedom of expression and individualism associated with hygge and Jante Law (the social norms of a small town). Such speculation is fun, but it may not be necessary to an understanding of why the Danes tend to be relatively satisfied with their lives. The relatively high average happiness levels of the Danes and other Scandinavians can be largely explained (statistically at least) in terms of such variables as average income, social support (having someone to count on in times of trouble), healthy life expectancy, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and relative absence of corruption. There is a good discussion in World Happiness Report 2015 (pages 21-26).

There is another possible explanation for Scandinavian happiness that I was hoping Michael Booth might have had some fun with. Last year Eugenio Proto and Andrew Oswald published exploratory research findings suggesting that cross-country differences in happiness are associated with “genetic distance from Denmark”. Apparently, the closer a country is to the genetic makeup of Denmark, the happier are the people in that country, other things equal. The study seeks to control for a fairly wide range of other variables. One part of the study is based on information on the incidence of people with short alleles (those who draw the short straw in terms of the serotonin-transporter gene) who have a genetic predisposition to overreact to stressful events. I was hoping that Michael Booth might have speculated about whether there might be something in the cultural heritage of the Scandinavians that could explain their genetic makeup. Unfortunately, the research paper was probably not published before his book was finished. When Booth did comment he cast doubts on the validity of the research findings, citing “the Dane’s record high consumption of antidepressants, which would appear to contradict the report’s assertions regarding clinical depression”. Well, who knows? More research might be required.

The thought of Scandinavians as being “almost nearly perfect” raises the question of how well these countries rate in terms of the “good society” characteristics, which I have previously proposed on this blog (in my most popular post) and in Free to Flourish as criteria that nearly everyone would consider to be important. For convenience, relevant information is summarised in the table below. The table shows data for the top 20 countries, according to their average ranking on the three criteria: peacefulness, individual opportunity and economic security. The shading - from green, through yellow to red - denotes levels of performance on each criterion from relatively strong to less strong for these top performers. (The indexes combine 15 indicators, using methodology described in Free to Flourish.)

It is obvious from the table that the Scandinavian countries are relatively good societies - according to the criteria I espouse. They rank very highly in terms of peacefulness and economic security - although, apart from Norway, they do not rank so highly in terms of individual opportunity. Equal weighting of the criteria might not be appropriate. If I had to choose whether it would be better for my grandchildren to live in a country offering greater individual opportunity or greater economic security, I would choose individual opportunity. However, my personal priorities are probably not widely shared in the Nordic countries. I wonder to what extent those priorities are shared among the large numbers of people who have migrated to Sweden in recent years.

The more contentious issue is whether these societies will remain “good” in the future. Michael Booth provides some hints in his discussion of productivity in Denmark:

“I have read numerous articles in Danish newspapers of which the gist has been ‘Well, things are going well for the other Scandinavian countries so they will probably go well for us too,’ in which no mention is ever made of Norway’s colossal oil wealth or Sweden’s manufacturing supremacy and major public sector reforms. Denmark’s economy is far, far weaker than its neighbours’, and the country is facing far more serious problems, but the Danes are oddly reluctant to address their private debt levels or their gigantic welfare state”.

So, what about Finland and Iceland? There is apparently more to the Finns than taciturnity, modesty, trustworthiness and binge drinking. As well as Santa and forestry, they have a substantial electronics industry (think Nokia). Research and development spending is relatively high as a percentage of GDP and relatively little of this is public money. The Finnish education system seems to be relatively good by OECD standards (average PISA scores are very high) for reasons which seem to be related to the high regard for teaching as a profession and the simplicity of the Finnish language. The future economic growth prospects of Finland have been rated highly by the World Economic Forum, among others.

Iceland’s economy was almost wiped out by the GFC, but it now seems to be recovering. That is an interesting story, but it doesn’t deserve space in this post because the population of Iceland is tiny (about 330,000). That is less than the population of Canberra (which is admittedly somewhat bloated).

Since I have mentioned population I should note in passing that world-wide interest in the Nordic countries seems to be disproportionate to the size of their populations. The total population of the Nordic countries is only about 25 million – not much larger than Australia's. Sweden is largest, with 9.6 million people; the populations of Denmark, Finland and Norway (5.6, 5.4 and 5.1 million respectively) are all smaller than that for Victoria (5.8 million).

Coming back now to the question of whether the Nordic countries will remain good societies, it looks as though Norway will continue to be helped along for a few more decades by the rents from oil resources, while the Swedes and Finns will probably get by without too much trouble on the rents from their past investment in intellectual capital. All the Nordic countries will be helped by their high levels of social capital (trust) which seems to make changes in policy direction relatively easy to achieve as they endeavour to make their welfare systems more affordable. At this point I should mention the impact of immigration.  (So, I have mentioned it.)

Before I end this long post I want to give you a better indication of the flavour of the book by referring to some of the author’s comments on what the people in the different Scandinavian countries think of each other. According to Michael Booth, their Danish neighbours regard the Swedes as stiff, humourless, rule-obsessed and dull, and the Finns see them as “slightly foppish”. These days the Norwegians have enough money to rise above ancient resentments – they pay Swedes to wait on their tables and peel their bananas (to make a sandwich spread). The Swedes, who are wealthier than their other neighbours, tend to remain aloof from regional resentments, but they are inclined to make sanctimonious comments about anti-immigrant policies adopted by the Danes.

The overall impression I am left with, however, is that the lingering resentments among the Nordic countries are fairly tame by comparison with those among the different national and regional groups in the British Isles.

Do humans have an inbuilt potential for realistic optimism?

In order to think clearly about this question it is helpful to remember that the opposite of optimism is pessimism. Realism is not the opposite of optimism.

  

My understanding is that realists seek to base their estimates of the probability of future events on evidence of one kind or another. Optimists tend to over-estimate the probability of positive future events. Realistic optimists are aware of their optimistic tendencies when they make predictions and important decisions.

The idea that humans have an inbuilt tendency to be optimistic is supported by neurological research discussed by Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist, in her book The Optimism Bias. Brain imaging studies show that the brain structures that are engaged when people recollect the past are also called upon when they think about the future. The author’s research suggests that when people think about their futures there is normally also a tendency for activation of neural pathways associated with optimism (the rACC and the amygdala). Healthy people expect the future to be slightly better than it ends up, and thus tend to be less accurate when predicting future events than are people with mild depression. (The line of argument in the book is summarised in an extract published in The Guardian.)

Tali Sharot suggests that the optimism bias has evolved because it encourages people to try to transform their predictions into reality:

“The brain is organized in a way that enables optimistic beliefs to change the way we view and interact with the world around us, making optimism a self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Sharot recognizes that optimism can be a health and wealth hazard when it causes people to make risky choices. She suggests:

“if we are aware of the bias, we would should be able to remain optimistic – while at the same time being able to promote action that will guard us from the pitfalls of unrealistic optimism”.

One point that occurred to me while reading The Optimism Bias is that this bias may often compensate for other common biases such as risk aversion and loss aversion, which tend to pull in the opposite direction. (I doubt whether I am the first person to think of this. It occurred to me that the logical place to look for a discussion would be Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, but I couldn’t find it even though his chapters discussing the optimism bias and loss aversion are in close proximity.) The research by Robb Rutledge, which I discussed in “What is the secret of happiness?” seems relevant. If we have chosen a particular strategy because of its potential to yield high average returns over the longer term, it is often better to stick with it even if outcomes are disappointing in the short term. Under those circumstances, realistic optimism would help us to reject the temptation to avoid further disappointment by lowering our expectations and adopting a low-risk/low-return strategy.

A point that should be emphasised is that optimistic expectations can only become self-fulfilling if they induce people to change their behaviour in ways that make them self-fulfilling. There is support for that view in recent research by Elizabeth Tenny, Jennifer Logg and Don Moore. This research suggests that the benefits of optimism lie mainly in encouraging people to increase their effort in order to improve performance.

Similar findings were obtained in research by Gigi Foster and Paul Frijters (abstract here) comparing the expectations of Australian students about the grades they were likely to achieve with the grades they actually achieved. Individuals with high self-esteem were found to over-predict their outcomes and to put in more effort than fellow-students with otherwise similar characteristics.

Humans do seem to have an inbuilt potential for realistic optimism that enables them to set goals that are not far beyond their reach and then inspires them to work hard to attain those goals. However, potential is like a glass half full. The processes that function autonomously within us do not necessarily ensure that we remain optimistic or that our optimism is tempered by realism. In order to attain and maintain realistic optimism we need to become sufficiently self-aware and equanimous to avoid the pitfalls of pessimism and unrealistic optimism.

Postscript
I am having second thoughts about the extent to which an optimism bias should be considered normal. The short allele variant of the 5-HTTLPR, which is associated with stronger attentional bias toward negative stimuli, is apparently present in almost half of the population of countries for which data is available. Most of us view optimism as desirable, but many of us have to exert some effort in order to maintain an optimistic outlook.

How good is life satisfaction as a measure of psychological flourishing?

In recent years psychologists have adopted a number of somewhat different approaches to measuring psychological flourishing. This is not an area in which I can claim much expertise, but that will not stop me from writing about it. The question of what it means for a human to flourish is one that everyone should be encouraged to consider for themselves.

The definition of flourishing adopted by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So in their article ‘Flourishing Across Europe’ (published in Soc.Indic.Res. in 2013) viewed it as lying at the opposite end of a spectrum to depression and anxiety. The authors identified 10 features of positive well-being by examining internationally agreed criteria for depression and anxiety (DSM and ICD) and defining the opposite of each symptom. The 10 symptoms of flourishing identified were: competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality.

A measure of flourishing was developed from responses to questions included in the European Social Survey. Indicators used were as follows:

• Competence: Most days I feel a sense of accomplishment from what I do;
• Emotional stability: (In the past week) I felt calm and peaceful;
• Engagement: I love learning new things;
• Meaning: I generally feel that what I do in my life is valuable and worthwhile;
• Optimism: I am always optimistic about my future;
• Positive emotion: Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?
• Positive relationships: There are people in my life who really care about me;
• Resilience: When things go wrong in my life it generally takes me a long time to get back to normal (reverse score);
• Self-esteem: In general, I feel very positive about myself;
• Vitality: (In the past week) I had a lot of energy.

I would have liked to see autonomy included in this list. Adult humans can hardly be said to be flourishing if they do not exercise their potential to organize their own lives. The authors argue against including autonomy on the grounds that its opposite is not specified in the DSM and ICD. It is difficult to accept that mental health professionals do not view failure to become or remain an autonomous individual as a mental disorder. Various problems in self-direction seem to be recognized as associated with personality disorders in DSM-5.

Leaving as aside my views about their failure to incorporate autonomy in their measure of flourishing, one of the attractive features of the approach adopted by Huppert and So is that it does not pretend to provide a comprehensive measure of human flourishing. It relates specifically to the psychological aspects of individual human flourishing and doesn’t pretend to encompass physical health, wealth, practical wisdom etc.

One interesting feature of the results of the study using data from a sample of 43,000 Europeans was that the individuals identified as flourishing did not correspond very closely to those identified as having high life satisfaction. For Europe as a whole, the percentage who were both flourishing and had high life satisfaction was 7.3%. Among people who met the criterion for flourishing, 46.0% had high life satisfaction, and among people who had high life satisfaction, 38.7% were flourishing. (The correlation between life satisfaction and flourishing was only 0.34.) The authors conclude:

“Clearly, flourishing and life satisfaction are overlapping but distinct concepts, and a great deal would be lost by measuring life satisfaction alone, although there is frequently pressure in large scale surveys to do so.”

However, the ranking of European countries according to the estimated percentage of the population who are flourishing seems fairly consistent with the rankings obtained using life satisfaction. In in order to compare the ratings with a similar measure based on life satisfaction, I have used the Gallup organisation's data on “thriving” covering a similar time period. Gallup uses the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale to measure life satisfaction by asking respondents to place the status of their lives on a "ladder" scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life. Individuals are classified as thriving if they rate their current lives a "7" or higher and their future lives at "8" or higher. The relationship between the estimated percentages “flourishing” and “thriving” is shown in the graph below.

It seems clear from the graph that it doesn’t matter a great deal whether you use indicators of psychological health or life satisfaction to compare the psychological well-being of people in different countries. (At a national level the correlation between flourishing and thriving is 0.87.) The errors in using life satisfaction as an indicator of flourishing that are evident at an individual level tend to cancel out in aggregating to a national level.

What this means, I think, is that if you want to know about an individual’s psychological well-being, measures of life satisfaction are a poor indicator. However, if you are looking for a summary indicator of psychological well-being at a national or regional level, life satisfaction might be good enough.

How will future technological advances impact on the quality of life of people in high-income countries?

As discussed in earlier posts, I am fairly optimistic about the potential for technological progress to continue to provide widespread economic opportunities for people in high-income countries. In this post I want to consider two arguments advanced by people who are pessimistic about the potential for technological advances to continue to improve the quality of lives of people in high income countries. 

The first argument of the pessimists is that because most people in high income countries are already highly satisfied with their lives, the additional opportunities provided by technological advances are not worth having. As I see it, this fails to recognize that the benchmarks that people use when asked to evaluate the quality of their lives tend to change with changes in their perceptions of what might be possible. It would be unreasonable to expect that peoples’ perceptions of what it means to be living the best possible life will remain unchanged over the next 50 years.

Introspection is probably sufficient to persuade most readers that it is possible to be highly satisfied with life and nevertheless perceive that there is potential for the lives of future generations to become even better in some respects. Some formal evidence that this happens was provided in an article on this blog last year. Using World Values Survey data for a range of high-income countries the article demonstrates that a substantial proportion of those people who claim to be completely satisfied with their lives (above 40% in some countries) are in complete agreement with the proposition that “because of science and technology there will be more opportunities for the next generation”. The corresponding percentages who completely disagree with that proposition are tiny.

The second argument of the pessimists is that the disruptions associated with technological innovations cause a great deal of anxiety and unhappiness. 

It is obvious that many people who lose their jobs or feel that their jobs are threatened do suffer anxiety and unhappiness. As previously discussed here, rising unemployment has been associated with declines in life satisfaction in countries of southern Europe following the global financial crisis.

A recent article by Rainer Winkelmann has drawn several important conclusions about the relationship between unemployment and life satisfaction from German panel data:

• Over the last three decades, average life satisfaction of unemployed people – around 5.5 to 6.0 on a ten point scale - has always been at least one point below that of employed people.
• Life satisfaction tends to decline prior to unemployment and does not fully rebound to pre-unemployment levels four years after an episode of unemployment.
• About half the people who became unemployed experienced no reduction in life satisfaction. Unemployed people experience a substantial reduction in life satisfaction (and find a job more quickly) when they have a strong work ethic.
• Duration of unemployment seems to have no impact on the life satisfaction of people who are unemployed.
• There is a strong association between the aggregate unemployment rate and average life satisfaction levels even for employed workers, reflecting the negative impact of perceived job insecurity.

 Australian data also suggests that the level of job insecurity is strongly related to the state of the economy. The Household Financial Comfort Survey (conducted by Me Bank) shows marked fluctuations from quarter to quarter in perceptions of how easy it would be for workers to obtain another job if they become unemployed. In June 2015, casual workers were most pessimistic about finding another job (85% said it would be difficult), followed by self-employed workers (63%) part-time workers (63%) and full-time workers (51%). However, NAB’s Quarterly Australian Consumer Anxiety Index suggests that job security is a much less important source of anxiety for Australians than government policy, cost of living, ability to fund retirement, and health.

Discussions of technological unemployment tend to focus unduly on potential job losses and to overlook the impact of new technology on economic growth. It is far from obvious that technological innovation reduces employment opportunities at an economy-wide level. The chart below shows the annual rates of growth in employment and multi-factor productivity (probably the best measure available of technological innovation) for the period 1995 to 2013 for those high-income countries for which comparable OECD data is available.

 The chart certainly does not show a general pattern of low employment growth in countries with relatively high levels of technological innovation. If anything, it suggests the opposite. The modest growth in employment in Korea may reflect limits on growth in available labour since the unemployment rate in that country has been relatively low (less than 4% of the civilian labour force in each year of the last decade) and a rising percentage of the age 15 to 64 population is in employment.

High rates of growth in employment at a national level will not necessarily prevent the emergence of persistently high levels of unemployment in regions where declining industries have been major employers. This poses a policy problem in helping older workers to cope with the changes in their circumstances. The current policy framework in Australia seems to provide incentives for many such people to migrate from long term unemployment to disability pensions. The problem is likely to be exacerbated by increases in the age at which people become entitled to aged pensions. Past experience suggests that regional development policies do not provide a panacea for regions that have little to offer investors other than an aging unskilled workforce. It is difficult to see the problems being resolved by adopting an NZ style investment approach to removing people from unemployment benefits as proposed in the McClure report (discussed here) but, hopefully, I am wrong about that.

In a chapter in the CEDA report Australia’s Future Workforce? Andrew Scott suggests that one of the lessons learned from the decline of employment in manufacturing locations since the 1970s “is that you cannot just take middle-aged workers out of factory environments, put them into classrooms and then expect them to immediately learn new skills for new jobs in that unfamiliar setting”. He suggests that the approach to active labour market policies adopted in Denmark has much to commend it. I will remain unpersuaded until I see a good cost benefit study of the policies adopted in Denmark, comparing the approach adopted there to a range of alternatives including offering early access to aged pensions (at say, age 60) at a lower than normal rate of benefit, to unemployed people in regions of high unemployment.

To sum up, I don’t think there are strong grounds for pessimism about the ability of technological progress to provide widespread opportunities for people in high-income countries to improve the quality of their lives. It is important to recognize, however, that many people will lose jobs as a result of this process at some point in their lives. Most will readily find alternative employment, but in regions that are adversely affected by technological unemployment some people are likely to have their lives severely disrupted.

How does nature connectedness affect happiness?

White sands walk: Jervis Bay, NSW, Australia

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!   Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 6 May 1851.

Thoreau still speaks eloquently for everyone who feels a need to spend time in the natural environment in order to re-charge their emotional batteries. Recognition of the importance of the natural environment to human happiness now seems to be supported by the findings of social research which show that nature connectedness - identifying with and feeling connected to the natural world – is correlated with happiness. The strength of this relationship is similar to that between happiness and personal income, marital status, volunteering, and personality traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness.

Formal evidence on links between nature connectedness and happiness has only emerged during the last few years. What I write below is based mainly on a meta-analysis by Colin Capaldi, Raelyne Dopko and John Zelenski published in September last year. In order to be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to include at least one explicit, self-report measure of nature connectedness and at least one measure of happiness and report on their relationship. The meta-analysis covered 30 samples, giving a total sample size of 8523. Most samples came from Canada, the U.S. and Europe.

The meta-analysis showed that the strength of the measured relationship between nature connectedness and happiness was influenced by the way these variables were defined and measured. A measure of inclusion of nature in self had a stronger relationship than other measures of connectedness. Vitality was the happiness concept with the strongest relationship to nature connectedness.

The authors note that correlation between nature connectedness and happiness does not necessarily indicate that nature connectedness causes people to be happier. It is possible that causation might run from happiness to nature connectedness or that some third variable might be responsible for the observed correlation.

However, there is fairly clear evidence from another meta-study (by  Diana Bowler et al) that exercise in natural environments promotes greater emotional health benefits – in terms of feelings of energy, and less anxiety, anger, fatigue and sadness - than exercise in an artificial environment. There is also evidence that nature connectedness is positively related with time spend outdoors in contact with nature.

It is possible that some part of the correlation between nature connectedness and happiness is associated with feeling connected. Feeling connected to nature might be similar in that respect to feeling connected with the community. The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness is still evident, however, when other connections (e.g. family and culture) are controlled for.

The authors note that the relationship between nature connectedness and some forms of happiness may be adversely affected, to some extent, by a tendency of people who feel connected to nature to be worried about the future of the environment. Such concerns are more likely to dampen positive emotions than eudaimonic measures of happiness because such people are likely to become engaged in pro-environmental behaviours that make their lives seem more meaningful.

There is evidence that feelings of nature connectedness are stronger in some cultures than others and are influenced by early childhood experiences. That suggests to me that causation runs from nature connectedness to happiness, rather than vice versa.

Why are old Americans more satisfied with their lives than are old Europeans?

The latest WorldHappiness Report (2015) contains an interesting chapter examining how happiness varies around the world by gender and age. The chapter was written by Nicole Fortin, John Helliwell and Shun Wang.

What would you expect those comparisons to show? I guess many people would expect that, on average, women would be less happy than men because in most of the world the opportunities available to females are still less favourable than those available to males.

The data doesn’t actually show that. When people are asked to rate their lives relative to the best possible and worst possible life (i.e. using the so called Cantril ladder) the world averages show that until they are about 50, women tend to rate their lives more highly than men. Perhaps women are more inclined to look on the bright side of life.

In any event, differences between the happiness of women and men are much less marked than differences between young and old people. On average, happiness tends to decline to about age 40 - a few years later for men than women - and then to stay relatively flat.

That finding was a surprise to me. I was given the impression from research I had read about that happiness was U-shaped over the life cycle. When I looked for more recent literature, just now, I found an article by Paul Frijters and TonyBeatton, published in 2012, based on panel data for Germany, Britain and Australia, which suggests the dominant age-effect is a strong happiness increase around the age of 60, followed by a major decline after 75. So I should have had an open mind about what to expect.

The data in the World Happiness Report shows a great deal of variation in the relationship between age and happiness in different parts of the world. Happiness does not vary much with age in South-East Asia, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Happiness declines sharply with age in CEE&CIS region (former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Central Europe) and less sharply with age in Latin America, Middle East and North Africa and Western Europe. The only regions with the U-shape are East Asia and NA&ANZ (North America, Australia and New Zealand).

It does not surprise me that there is a different relationship between happiness and age in high and low income countries, but I did not expect to see the different patterns in Western Europe and NA&ANZ which are shown below (based on Figure 3.2 of the World Happiness Report 2015).The NA&ANZ data are dominated by America (regional averages are calculated using population weights) so I am seeking an explanation of why old Americans are relatively more satisfied with their lives than old Europeans.

The different pattern between America and Europe also showed up in survey respondents’ reports of some positive emotions experienced the preceding day: smiling and laughing a lot; enjoyment; and learning or doing something interesting. The survey data also shows that older women in Western Europe report experiencing greater sadness, physical pain and depression than do men of comparable age in that part of the world, or people of either gender in America.

A hint about the possible causes of the difference in patterns between America and Europe is given by looking at the determinants of life satisfaction, as indicated in the regression analyses undertaken for the report. Those determinants are income, health, generosity, corruption, freedom of choice and social report.

An inspection of the graphs showing how those variables differ according to the age of respondent suggests that the main area of difference is in respect of perceptions of social support. What this means is that, on average, older people in Western Europe perceive that they are less able to count on relatives and friends for support when they need it than are older people in North America.

It is interesting to speculate about the reasons why old people in Western Europe are less likely to feel that they can count on relatives and friends in times of need. The thought that passes my mind is that the reasons might have something to do with the nature of the welfare states of Western Europe, but that might just reflect my prejudices.