How many rules for life can you remember?

A few hours after I had finished reading Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life: An antidote to chaos” I thought it might be interesting to see how many of his rules I could remember.

I remembered: stand up straight; use your past performance as a benchmark for comparison rather than other people; have meaningful objectives; don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them; be a good listener; be precise in your speech; tell the truth; and the one about setting your house in “perfect” order before you criticize the world. That is 8 out of 12. The rules are paraphrased as I remembered them rather than quoted directly.

I would not have much trouble explaining in terms of my own experiences why I remembered some of those rules. For example, the lessons that I had about 20 years ago in the Alexander technique left me with some knowledge of the links between posture, attitude and intention, as well as scepticism about the utility of the injunction to “stand up straight”. I remembered the rule about setting your house in perfect order before you criticize the world because I doubt whether anyone ever has their house in “perfect order”. I certainly have no intention of refraining from criticism of the views of “the radical left” until I get my house in “perfect” order.

The four rules that didn’t come readily to mind were: “treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping”; “make friends with people who want the best for you”; “do not bother children when they are skateboarding”; and “pet a cat when you encounter one in the street”. The meaning of the last couple of rules is not self-evident. The one about skateboarding is mainly about encouraging boys to acquire manly virtues. The one about petting a cat seems to be about taking advantage of opportunities to notice that we live in a wonderful world, despite the suffering that is attendant upon existence. That is just my interpretation. As Nathan Robinson has noted, Jordan Peterson does not always abide by his own rule to “be precise in your speech”.

My purpose in revealing how many, or how few, of the 12 rules for life I remembered is to open discussion about the accessibility of the rules Dr Peterson has offered, rather than to confess the imperfections of my memory. A month, or so, after reading Peterson’s book a few cult followers will remember all his rules, but I doubt whether many other readers will remember more than 1 or 2 of them. That is because Jordan Peterson’s selection of rules seems arbitrary, and he has failed to organise them in a systematic way that might make them easily accessible.

The best way I can illustrate the arbitrary nature of Dr Peterson’s rules is by referring to the 12 rules for life that Russ Roberts developed for himself after interviewing Jordan Peterson. Although Roberts acknowledges that his list of 12 rules for life was inspired by Peterson - and there is a lot of overlap between the sentiments covered in both lists - they look quite different. There are also differences in emphasis. For example, the first rule on Roberts’ list, learn to enjoy saying “I don’t know”, might be implied by Peterson’s rules about telling the truth and listening, but in my view, he doesn’t give this rule as much prominence as it deserves. If other people can develop a different set of rules for life, it is reasonable to ask what would make Peterson’s list superior to one that might be drawn up during a brain storming session by any randomly selected group of people.  

Dr Peterson’s list of rules would be more memorable if they were related in an obvious way to a central organising principle. His book has underlying themes, but those themes are not evident in his list of rules. Perhaps someone could develop a mnemonic to help people remember the items on his list, but that would trivialize the whole exercise.

As I read through the 12 rules, the rule “pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)” strikes me as being of central importance. Dr Peterson’s offers several definitions of meaning, all poetic rather than precise.  The definition that seems to come closest to the central theme of his book is this one:

“Meaning is the ultimate balance between, on the one hand, the chaos of transformation and possibility and on the other, the discipline of pristine order, whose purpose is to produce out of the attendant chaos a new order that will be even more immaculate, and capable of bringing forth a still more balanced and productive chaos and order. Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that” (p 201). 

That passage brings to mind an attempt I made a few years ago to understand the meaning of Dao. We can feel that we have some understanding of Dao, but it is difficult to be precise in our speech about it. My limited understanding left me feeling that it is wise to proceed with minimal rules, waiting to observe how things develop, and redirecting with minimal effort the things that are subject to our influence. I’m not sure that Jordan Peterson would agree.

If I push myself to be precise, what I would mean by pursuing what is meaningful, is pursuing what is important to you in the various domains of life.

In the personal domain we seek to understand what we know and what we don’t know, where we have been, where we are now, what we value, and what values we want to be expressed by the persons we are becoming. Our values determine our intentions, our attitudes and our posture. We want to improve, so we focus on our intentions in what we do, rather than our expectations of how we will perform based on how we have performed in the past. We measure our performance by comparison with our own past, rather than the performance of other people. We treat ourselves like persons we are responsible for coaching. We seek friends who want the best for us, providing encouragement and taking us to task as appropriate.

As regards interpersonal relations, we seek to place particular importance on authenticity and trustworthiness. We listen to what others have to say because they may know something that we don’t.  We seek to be precise and forthright in communication. We encourage our loved ones to behave in ways that will enable them to be widely liked and respected.

We approach the world with humility. We don’t seek to govern the lives of other people because we know the shortcomings in our governance of our own lives. We avoid the temptation to be over-protective of young people because they have to learn from experience how to take responsibility for their own lives.

So, that probably covers more than enough rules for life. If you can only remember one rule, the most important rule is to remember to do what is important.  That rule in particularly useful to remember when you find yourself falling into the trap of trying to avoid negative thoughts and feelings. Doing expedient things to make yourself feel better is likely to end up making your life more chaotic.

I would like to end this somewhat critical post by acknowledging that there is much that I like about Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life”. In fact, my main point is that it is unfortunate that the author has not found a way to make the messages of the book more memorable.

Are nature and biodiversity essential to health and happiness?

There is no prize for guessing the answer given by Susan Prescott and Alan Logan in The Secret Life of your Microbiome: Why nature and biodiversity are essential to health and happiness.

This recently published book is written for a popular audience, but the authors have expert knowledge of the microbiome – the microbes and their genetic material found in the human gut and skin. Susan Prescott is an immunologist and paediatrician. Alan Logan’s background is in research relating to naturopathic medicine. It is obvious that the authors have spent a lot of time sifting through scientific evidence in writing the book.

Some of the evidence suggesting that nature and biodiversity are essential to health and happiness is derived from inspection of the stools of our Paleolithic ancestors. Evidence from archaeological sites suggests that our hunter and gatherer ancestors ate a wide variety of plant food and had a greater diversity of micro-biota than most people living modern lifestyles. The same is true today of people who are still living traditional lifestyles close to nature.

The authors accept that modern medicine and hygiene have brought great benefits, but they point to evidence that a diet with a great deal of sugar, ultra-processed food and drinks – as well as excessive use of antibiotics, stress and physical exhaustion – can lead to gut permeability, an increase in blood endotoxins, and an increase in central nervous system inflammatory chemicals. Intestinal permeability is apparently associated with a range of chronic conditions including autism, asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, heart disease, irritable bowel, obesity, type 2 diabetes, psoriasis and schizophrenia.

Prescott and Logan argue that we have a symbiotic relationship with the human microbiome, which co-evolved with our ancestors. The microbiome provides functional benefits such as nutrient extraction, protection against harmful microbes, regulation of metabolism and production of important biochemicals. Researchers don’t yet understand what microbes would comprise an ideal microbiome, but the key seems to be diversity, which is encouraged by dietary diversity. The authors suggest that the human immune system has evolved to expect a kaleidoscope of biodiversity.

The authors view commercially available probiotics and prebiotics as a useful supplement that can help defend against dysbiotic forces in the modern environment, rather than as a substitute for the adoption of a healthy lifestyle. They emphasize the importance of dietary choices, physical activity, sleep and experience of natural environments.

There is substantial evidence, some previously discussed on this blog, that experience of natural environments has a positive impact on health and happiness. Prescott and Logan provide an interesting account of Japanese research relating to shinrin-yoku – the absorption of the forest into the body and mind:

“Remarkable studies have demonstrated that, individually, the sounds of nature, the sights of nature, the invisible chemicals secreted from trees (phytoncides, or phytochemicals), and the touch of natural products like wood (compared to synthetic resin), can positively influence stress physiology and our parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” branch of the nervous system that cools the jets of over-stimulation. The sum of research shows that our sensory system understands nature like an old friend.”

One of the authors’ aims seems to be to promote nature relatedness – fascination with nature and a desire for contact with it. They note evidence that nature relatedness is associated with high levels of psychological wellbeing, lower anxiety and greater meaning and purpose in life. Experience in nature tends to lift nature relatedness scores. Practicing mindfulness while walking in nature has additional emotional benefits. Moreover, the combination of nature relatedness, mindfulness and meaningfulness of life promotes pro-environmental behaviours.

Prescott and Logan leave readers in no doubt that they view pro-environmental behaviours to be desirable. I agree with them.

However, I strongly disagree with authors about economics and politics. They argue:

“It’s up to governments, insulated against lobbyists, to help curb the wild west that is fueling the dysbiosphere. Time and time again industry has shown it just can’t stop itself from pushing dysbiotic choices on our children.”

They oppose the view that “an individual can assume responsibility for personal health problems by simply adopting what biomedicine has to offer”. They suggest that view is deficient because it “doesn’t consider that a broken socio-ecological system might be the driving force for the need of biomedicine in the first place”.

When I read such views I have to remind myself that in writing about supporters of socialism Friedrich Hayek insisted “that it is neither selfish interests nor evil intentions but mostly honest convictions and good intentions which determine the intellectual's views”. (Quote from ‘The Intellectuals and Socialism’). It is not necessarily a waste of time to try to correct the errors of well-intentioned people.

Some of the errors made by Prescott and Logan are as follows:

1.       The view that government can be insulated against lobbyists is contrary to everything that is known about government and human nature.

2.       The phrase “pushing dysbiotic choices on our children” refers to advertising and selling products that are only harmful to human health when consumed inappropriately. There is nothing in our legal or economic system that requires parents to buy such products for their children or to allow them to over-indulge. Firms already offer foods for sale that are beneficial to health and will have a greater incentive to do so as consumers become more aware of the health implications of the choices they make on behalf of their children.

3.       The widespread human misery (and environmental catastrophes) caused by socialist economic experiments during the 20^th century should make us wary of claims that the socio-ecological system is broken. In what respects is it broken? What precise interventions are proposed to fix it? And, are we sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that those interventions will produce better overall outcomes?

Susan Prescott and Alan Logan were unwise to include ill-informed rants on economics and politics in this book. It seems to me that those rants detract from their efforts to promote a revolution in attitudes toward the micro-biome and the environment.

In my view this book is nevertheless worth reading because of the substantial body of scientific evidence it provides that many aspects of human health and happiness depend on the microbiome.

Why might economic development influence how unhappy people feel when they don't get the love they desire?

There is evidence that a discrepancy between the amount of self-transcending emotion (e.g. love, trust) that people want to feel and what they actually feel has an adverse impact on their happiness.  Researchers have observed that this adverse impact is greater for people in countries with relatively high levels of economic development.

What is it about economic development that could explain this?

Before canvassing possible explanations I need to provide some background information. The evidence referred to above is in a recent article entitled ‘The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right?’  by Maya Tamir, Shalom H. Schwartz, Shige Oishi, and Min Y. Kim. The study was based on a cross-cultural sample of 2,324 participants from 8 countries around the world.  I wrote about the main findings of the article on this blog in my last post entitled: What was Aristotle’s secret of happiness?

As indicated in the diagram reproduced above, the authors found that the absolute discrepancy between desired and experienced self-transcending emotions had a larger impact on life satisfaction and depressive symptoms of people in countries with relatively high ratings on the Human Development Index (HDI).

Evidence that economic development influences the impact of emotional discrepancy on happiness was only observed in respect of self-transcending emotions. The findings of the study suggest that economic development has no influence on the way discrepancies between desired and experienced anger, excitement and calmness impact on life satisfaction and depressive symptoms.

So, what is it about economic development that could explain why it seems to make happiness levels more sensitive to feeling the right amount of love? The authors suggest that perhaps “for people who struggle to meet their basic needs the amount of love they actually feel matters more for their happiness than whether this amount feels right or not”. They suggest that this would not apply to other emotions because love is “linked to social connectedness”, which “is presumably a basic human need and a key determinant of well-being”.

I’m not sure I understand what the authors mean. Anger might also be linked to social connectedness. Angry people might find it harder to maintain strong social connections.

A distinguishing feature of love, relative to emotions such as anger, is that when people are asked how much love they feel they could think of either how much they feel loved by others, or how much love they feel toward others.

If we think in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it might be reasonable to speculate that people whose basic physiological and safety needs are satisfied might place higher priority on obtaining love than those who are struggling to meet their basic needs. In economic terms this could be thought of as an upward shift in the marginal utility of love as incomes rise. That could explain why a shortfall in love obtained relative to the desired level seems to have a larger impact on happiness of people in countries with relatively high HDI ratings.

That is just speculation. The authors suggest future research should explore further “when, why, and how” the links between emotion discrepancies and well-being vary across countries. It will be interesting to see what eventuates.

What was Aristotle's secret of happiness?

Aristotle held that being happy is the same as living well and doing well – it involves fulfillment of potentials inherent in each individual human. From this perspective, happiness is activity in conformity with virtue. It is acquired through practice in much the same way as one might learn an art or craft. Aristotle’s view rests on the view that emotions are not inherently good or bad. Virtue lies in avoiding excess or deficiency:

“For example, one can be frightened or bold, feel desire or anger or pity, and experience pleasure and pain in general, either too much or too little, and in both cases wrongly; whereas to feel these feelings at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount - and the best amount is of course the mark of virtue. And similarly, there can be excess, deficiency, and the due mean in actions. Now feelings and actions are the objects with which virtue is concerned; and in feelings and actions excess and deficiency are errors, while the mean amount is praised, and constitutes success; and to be praised and to be successful are both marks of virtue.” Nicomachean EthicsBook 2.

Aristotle acknowledged “happiness does seem to require the addition of external prosperity”, but he regarded notions that happiness can be identified with wealth, pleasure, health, honour or good fortune as superficial.

Aristotle’s view also differs from the modern view of happiness as a state of contentment, as satisfaction with life, or as the absence of symptoms of depression.

Many psychologists maintain that since Aristotle’s teachings on happiness were about ethics - how people should live their lives – they have little relevance to the question of what makes people happy. Subjective well-being research has been dominated by the view that happiness is about the balance between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. Even the use of life satisfaction, which has some cognitive content, has been grounded largely in utilitarian philosophy. More recently, some researchers have sought to introduce eudaimonic considerations by asking respondents about feelings of autonomy and competence, the quality of personal relationships and whether they feel that their lives are meaningful.

Aristotle would not have accepted a distinction between living a virtuous life and living a pleasant life. He maintained: “happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of all things”. Similar views have been expressed by some modern philosophers. For example, Neera Badhwar writes: “the integration of emotional dispositions with intellectual (especially deliberative dispositions), which is required by virtue, makes virtue highly conducive to happiness, since a common source of unhappiness is conflict between our emotions and our evaluations” (Well-being, Happiness in a worthwhile life, p 152).

Can Aristotle’s view about the desirability of minimising the excess or deficiency of emotions be tested empirically? Some conditions need to be met before empirical testing is possible. First, we need a measure of human flourishing. In the absence of anything better, we might need to be prepared to accept some standard measures of life satisfaction, for example, as an indicator of human flourishing. Second, we need to be able to accept that the individual is an appropriate judge of “right feelings”, so that any excess or deficiency of emotion can be measured as the difference between right feelings and actual feelings. I’m not sure whether Aristotle would have accepted the second condition, but I don’t have a problem with it.

Some such testing has been reported in a recent article entitled ‘The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right?’  by Maya Tamir, Shalom H. Schwartz, Shige Oishi, and Min Y. Kim. The study was based on a cross-cultural sample of 2,324 participants from 8 countries around the world. The researchers used statistical analysis to explain happiness in terms of the discrepancy between desired and actual emotion. Their analysis controlled for experienced emotion, desired emotion and some other variables. They measured happiness both as life satisfaction and the absence of depressive symptoms. The analysis focused on four categories of emotion: self-transcending emotions (love, affection, trust, empathy, compassion); negative self-enhancing emotions (anger, contempt, hostility, hatred); opening emotions (interest, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, passion); and conserving emotions (calmness, relaxation, relief, contentment).

As expected, the researchers found that people were happier the more they experienced pleasant emotions and the less they experienced unpleasant emotions. However, they also found that people were happier when they experienced smaller discrepancies between the emotions they experienced and the emotions they desired.

In accordance with the Aristotelian prediction people were happier when they felt the emotion they desired, even when that emotion was unpleasant.

The authors concluded:

“The secret to happiness, then, may involve not only feeling good but also feeling right.”

The authors note that their findings are consistent with two different interpretations: happiness is related to experiencing the emotions one desires, or happiness is related to desiring the emotions one experiences. In either case it may be reasonable to speculate that awareness of a discrepancy between desired and experienced emotion leads people to engage in struggles that make them unhappy – whether they are struggling to change their cognitions or their emotions.

What advice would Aristotle offer to a person who felt unhappy as a result of a discrepancy between desired and experienced emotion? Would he tell that person to obtain cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help bring their emotions under the control of reason? He certainly emphasized the importance of practical reason, so he might have seen merit in CBT.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the context in which Aristotle advocated “right” emotions was more about the nature of virtue than about the emotional benefits of self-control, even though he recognised the latter aspect. In modern terms, it seemed to me that Aristotle’s discussion of the virtue of emotional moderation translates to a discussion about values. The message I take is that to have lives worth living we need to look our values and to behave like the persons we want to become.

How do we know what we value?

“Although feelings are the one output of the adaptive unconscious that is likely to reach consciousness, sometimes even feelings are unconscious. And other contents of the adaptive unconscious, such as personality traits and goals, are likely to remain beneath the surface, unavailable to conscious scrutiny (the beam of the flashlight).”

The quoted passage is from Timothy Wilson’s book, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the adaptive unconscious. The author views the adaptive unconscious as a “necessary and extensive part of a highly efficient mind”. Its functions include “warning people of danger, setting goals, and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner”.

The context of the quote is a discussion of introspection as a means by which people can “try to decipher their feelings, motives, traits, or values, not to mention what they want for dinner”. The “beam of the flashlight” refers to a metaphor in which the mind is thought of as a cave, with consciousness constituting those objects that are not currently in the beam of the flashlight. The quote seems to imply that our values and preferences are not necessarily easily accessible by just focussing our awareness inwards.

Tim Wilson argues that because people “cannot directly observe their nonconscious dispositions, they must try to infer them indirectly, by, for example, being good observers of their own behaviour”. He suggests that when we discover important truths about ourselves through introspection we do so by constructing stories about our lives, much as a biographer would. Trying to access unconscious goals and motives results in “a constructive process whereby the conscious self infers the nature of these states”.

I felt somewhat bemused when reading that - presumably because of my training as an economist. The idea of being able to discern our values and preferences from our behaviour seems to have more in common with the neoclassical economists’ notion of ‘revealed preference’ than with the view of many psychologists (and behavioural economists) that people are prone to make irrational choices because of cognitive biases that reflect non-conscious influences.

Of course, Tim Wilson does not suggest that the adaptive unconscious always makes the right choices for us. He notes that it is important to distinguish between “informed and uniformed gut feelings” by gathering as much information as possible to allow your “adaptive unconscious to make a stable, informed evaluation rather than an ill-informed one”.  His main point seems to be that in order to make good decisions, e.g. in choosing a spouse or buying a home, you need to avoid over-analysis by the conscious mind.

Does it make sense to try to try to infer your values from your past behaviour? If the aim of the exercise is self-improvement that approach might appear to be futile. If you see need for improvement in your behaviour, it isn’t immediately obvious how the values that can be inferred from your past behaviour could provide helpful guidance.

So, how can people bring their values to awareness in order to engage in self-improvement exercises? Tim Wilson has some suggestions, but before considering them it might be useful to consider approaches adopted by some psychologists engaged in therapy and personal training.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) places a heavy emphasis on living according to values, so the approach adopted by ACT therapists might be of particular interest. One approach used in ACT is the life compass, which ask people questions to elicit values in various domains of their lives – relationships, health, work, leisure etc. People are asked what is important or meaningful to them, what sorts of strengths or qualities they want to develop and what they want to stand for. That approach obviously works if you can find what you value by just shining the flashlight into your cave. But to do that you must have a fair amount of self-knowledge already, and you would probably have constructed a story about where your values have come from.

ACT offers a range of techniques to elicit values if they don’t readily come to consciousness. One technique noted by Russ Harris in ACT Made Simple is to imagine what you would love to hear people say about you, and what you stand for, in short speeches at your 80^th birthday party. (Dr Harris presumably doesn’t have many readers who are over 80.) In The Reality Slap, he suggests that it is also possible to elicit values by remembering a “sweet spot”, a memory that encapsulates some of life’s sweetness for you. After appreciating that memory, he asks people to notice the personal qualities they were exhibiting and what this reveals about the personal qualities they would like to embody.

The Authentic Happiness web site (stemming from Martin Seligman’s book of that name) has, among other things, an extensive questionnaire that enables people to discover their ‘signature strengths’. People taking the questionnaire are asked to what extent 240 statements describe themselves. The statements seem to be largely about dispositions rather than past behaviours, so seem to assume prior knowledge of dispositions.

The Enneagram Institute offers people an opportunity to discover more about their personality type through a questionnaire (the RHETI) which asks participants to choose between 144 paired statements relating to their past behaviour. One of the potential benefits of this approach is that it seems to offer a way for people to identify values that can guide them toward attainment of higher levels of personal development, without having to attempt to make fundamental personality changes.  For example, a person who has a persistent desire for self-control could see himself, or herself, as having many of the characteristics of a Reformer, and thereby see potential for growth by becoming more reasonable, and progressively acquiring greater wisdom. Some more examples might help to make the point: a person who seeks to avoid conflict through accommodation might have many characteristics of the Peacemaker, and see potential for growth by acknowledging her or his peacefulness and seeking to become indomitable; a person who is highly defensive much of the time might have many characteristics of a Loyalist, and see potential for growth by becoming more trusting, cooperative, reliable and courageous; and a person who is restless and constantly seeking stimulation might have many of the characteristics of an Enthusiast, and see potential for growth by becoming more productive and more grateful. Similar personal growth paths exist for the five other personality types.

A couple of the approaches described above bring values into conscious awareness through an explicit consideration of past behaviour. The sweet spot approach builds on selection of a particular memory, whereas the RHETI may help people to identify their potential by providing them with a systematic way to understand their past behaviour and personality. Unfortunately, although the RHETI is being widely used in personal training exercises, its predictions do not yet appear to have been subjected to a great deal of rigorous scientific testing.

One approach that Tim Wilson advocates is Pennebaker’s exercise which involves writing about the deepest thoughts and feelings associated with an important emotional issue. Although writing about emotional experiences is distressing in the short run, it apparently has positive long-run effects. The exercise seems to help people make sense of a negative event by constructing a meaningful narrative that explains it. A possible downside of this approach is that some people may dwell on negative life experiences by constantly revising their narratives. I expect that some people might also have a tendency to fuse with stories that make their lives miserable.

Tim Wilson acknowledges that some narratives are better than others. He writes:

"As with any biography, there are multiple ways of telling the story. A good biography, though, has to account for the facts of the person’s life and capture his or her inner goals and traits. The better a story does at accounting for the “data” of the person’s adaptive unconscious, the better off the person is. By recognizing their nonconscious goals, people are in a better position to act in ways to fulfill them, or to try to change them."

How can we change our non-conscious states in order to match our more positive self-stories? Tim Wilson suggests we follow Aristotle’s advice to acquire virtues by first putting them into action. We can change our feelings and traits by changing our behaviour. In order to “change some aspect of our adaptive unconscious, a good place to start is deliberately to begin acting like the person we want to be”.

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.