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.

What can be done about the "game of mates"?

What is wrong with looking after your mates? If you ask any Australian chosen at random the chances are that they will tell you that it is good to help friends and acquaintances. Yet, the same person would be likely to express disapproval of people who use powerful positions in politics, public service, business and unions to look after their mates at the expense of the broader public. That is a downside of the mateship culture.

In their book, The Game of Mates, How Favours Bleed the Nation, Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters explain that “the game of mates” also involves a strong element of self-interest. When people play that game, they look after their mates in the expectation that their mates will reciprocate. The game involves the exchange of “grey gifts” among groups of mates. Grey gifts arise from political and bureaucratic discretion in interpreting and enforcing regulation. The granting of such gifts differs from theft and bribery because it is difficult to identify as corrupt or illegal in any instance. Participants do not ask for direct trades and exchanges are spread out over time.

A typical example of the game of mates involves a politician or senior bureaucrat providing grey gifts to an industry or firm and then subsequently moving to take a well-remunerated position in that firm or industry. The most important attribute the appointee brings to the new position is his, or her, ability to reward the new employer by playing the game of mates with great expertise.

Murray and Frijters make the claim - exaggerated in my view - that the game of mates enables well-connected individuals to steal roughly half of “the real wealth” of the rest of the community – whom the authors refer to as the “champion Aussies”. They give the impression that the beneficiaries of the game are wealthy and the victims are relatively poor. However, they do admit that it is possible for an individual to benefit from the game with respect to some regulations and to be a victim with respect to others. Not much attention is given to the deadweight costs of the game of mates - everyone has less incentive to work, save and invest when a substantial part of the income produced ends up funding mates’ games.

Much of the book explains how the authors see the game of mates being played in different parts of the economy. In property development, there is a game involving rezoning of land for residential use. In transportation, the game involves negotiation of public private partnerships (PPPs) to fund infrastructure projects. There are also games involving granting of mining licenses, administration of superannuation funds, banking regulation, tax dodges, regulation of pharmacies, assistance to agriculture, undue restriction of taxi licences, dominant supermarkets influencing their regulatory environment, and even the control of public universities for the benefit of private interests.

Murray and Frijters offer some remedies to disrupt the game of mates. They show insight in their suggestion that the game can be tackled more effectively by reducing the value of grey gifts - by selling them or taxing them - rather than by adding additional layers of regulation. However, they don’t seem to recognise that the best way to reduce the value of grey gifts is to reduce the extent to which the economy is subject to government regulation, and the political and bureaucratic discretion associated with it.

Some of the authors’ proposed remedies seem bizarre. For example, they suggest that foreign experts be contracted to develop new laws and regulations for their specialist industries. I wonder how they would prevent the foreign experts from playing the game of mates to benefit their buddies and amigos at the expense of “champion Aussies”.

Another bizarre suggestion is to increase competition by creating public competitor companies in industries such as banking, land development and the universities. The fact that Australian universities are still largely government-owned might have caused the authors to think a little more about the likely effectiveness of that remedy. Political appointment of boards and chief executives, combined with vast discretion for allocation of grey gifts, make government-owned enterprises part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

In my view, the book’s ideologically blinkered approach favouring government enterprises is a major shortcoming. The authors ask:

“If governments believe that they are unable to efficiently construct school buildings, hospitals, roads, or powerlines, through their own departments or government-owned companies, what magical skills do they believe they possess in order to effectively negotiate with and regulate, the powerful private interests they are selling these assets to?”

Part of the answer to this question is that trade unions – major players in the game of mates whose role is barely recognised in this book – can exert more influence over government departments and government-owned companies, than over private enterprises. Public sector managers have a strong incentive to sacrifice productivity to maintain the appearance of industrial harmony because that is what their political masters expect of them in playing the game of mates.

Another part of the answer is that it is easier for governments to remove regulation protecting private firms from competition than to remove similar barriers protecting public enterprises. For example, it is unlikely that Australia Post’s monopoly on letter carriage would be maintained if that organisation was privatised and its community service obligations (more mates’ games) were converted into transparent subsidies for people living in remote areas.

I could go on for a few thousand more words discussing the shortcomings of this book – including its highly misleading claims about banks creating credit, and its view that sovereign risk is a “mysterious idea”. However, that might be boring.

The thought I want to leave you with is that despite its many shortcomings, this book raises disturbing issues that should not be lightly dismissed. The authors deserve to have their claims subjected to detailed scrutiny, but not by me! I could change my mind about that, of course, if one of my mates can come up with a sufficiently lucrative consultancy proposal to bring me out of retirement 😊

What caused the narcissism epidemic?

It seems obvious that there is a narcissism epidemic in many countries: people taking selfies everywhere we look; adolescents saying that their goal in life is to become famous; celebrities behaving like gods; people exploding in rage in response to imagined affronts; charlatans, shysters and jerks everywhere betraying trust. Psychologists have been written books about it: “The Narcissism Epidemic”, by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, tracked scores of U.S. college students on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) across generations and found that there had been an increase in narcissism.

Claims based on the NPI have been disputed by Kari Trzensniewski, who conducted research using a slightly different data set and found no increase in NPI scores. In the face of ambiguous evidence, I wonder whether it might be narcissistic of me to continue to accept that there is a narcissism epidemic. Nevertheless, I will persist. A national survey conducted in the U.S. suggests that about 10 percent of people in their 20’s have experienced symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) at some time during their lives. So, even if narcissism hasn’t been increasing it might still be reasonable to view it as an epidemic.

NPD is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, exaggeration of achievements and talents, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others' feelings. The Mayo Clinic has published a longer list of symptoms that are referred to in the DSMv. Narcissism exists on a spectrum, ranging from exhibiting a few traits to the full-blown personality disorder.

Anne Manne, an Australian journalist has provided an interesting discussion of the nature and causes of narcissism in her book, The Life of I, The new culture of narcissism, updated edition published 2015.

She notes that Twenge and Campbell have taken aim at myths regarding the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem. They point out that narcissism is not just high self-esteem, in the sense of a quiet and sturdy confidence in oneself. Narcissists feel superior; they are arrogant and unwilling to accept criticism.

Twenge and Campbell also suggest that it is a myth that narcissism is a mask for low self-esteem. They are opposed to the psychodynamic view that narcissists are flawed people who are ‘hurt deep down inside’. According to their view a narcissist is ‘just a jerk’.

However, Manne notes that Erin Myer and Virgil Zeigler Hill found that narcissistic people revealed lower self-esteem than non-narcissistic people when a bogus lie detector test was used in assessing self-esteem and narcissism. Narcissists don’t like to admit weakness or vulnerability.

Manne points to a corresponding division of views on the causes of narcissism. Twenge and Campbell argue that what makes a child into a narcissist is spoiling, indulgence, an absence of moral discipline in building character, and a culture of excessive praise, of telling children they are special. However, findings of research by Lorna Otway and Vivian Vignoles, using recollections of young adults to test a range of views of the role of parenting in development of narcissism, support a Freudian view. Apparently future narcissists receive constant praise from their caregivers that is accompanied by implicit messages of coldness and rejection rather than warmth and acceptance. This helps explain the combination of grandiosity and fragility exhibited by many narcissists.

Manne also discusses evidence that infants whose dependency needs are rebuffed by parents tend to become aggressive adults. Studies by Alan Sroufe suggest that preschoolers forced to self-reliance too early tended to bully others and engage in repeated acts of cruelty. Their early experiences at home made such behaviour seem natural.

The author also draws attention to research suggesting that affluent families are not immune to problems arising from parents being emotionally distant from their children. While insisting on high levels of achievement, such parents are often indulgent towards bad behaviour.

Manne sees the problems of parenting as linked to limited government support for parental leave. After a brief discussion of this topic she concludes:

“This brave new world is a whole lot larger than its symptoms – the self-esteem movement or the college kids with unrealistic ambitions or the helicopter parents rushing in to rescue a child whose grades are poor. Another way of looking at narcissism is that it is a quality required for survival in the hyper-competitive paradise of the new capitalism”.

That is indeed another way to look at the issue. Manne attempts to support that view in the second part of her book, holding Ayn Rand responsible for the “new capitalism”. She refers to Rand as “a monstrously narcissistic character” and suggests that “she practiced what she preached” in her philosophy of selfishness.

The main problem I have with that claim is that some of Rand’s behaviour seems to me to have been more selfish – showing less regard for other people - than that of the heroes of her novels. The behaviour of the heroes of her novels was presumably intended to illustrate the selfishness that she saw as a virtue, but I have difficulty, as previously noted, in recognising these fictitious characters as being particularly selfish

At one point Manne states that Rand’s “heroes are all young, male, wealthy … “. That left me wondering whether Manne had ever taken the trouble to read Atlas Shrugged. If she had done so, or even if she had looked up the list of characters on the internet, she would have been aware that Dagny Taggart was female.

Manne’s claim that Rand promoted “an ideology of narcissism” can be much better answered by an Objectivist, than by a reader of Rand’s novels like myself.  John Galt said:

“Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy – a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer”. (Atlas Shrugged, p 1022)

Manne raves on about what she refers to as “the neoliberal revolution” as creating an ideological framework for narcissism to flourish at an individual level. Yet she doesn’t specify the nature of the incentives that could have caused that to occur. If “neoliberalism” means free markets, how do free markets provide an incentive for appointment of narcissistic business leaders? Under normal circumstances the last thing individual investors want is to have their wealth depend on the actions of a narcissistic chief executive.

Some investors might think it makes sense to take a punt on a narcissistic entrepreneur in highly regulated industries where there may be something to be gained by hoodwinking politicians and voters. Otherwise, why take the risk that the narcissist might run off with your money or spend it to enhance his own image?

It is disappointing that Manne has not considered whether narcissism might be a problem in occupations other than business. Markets expose private sector narcissists to financial disciplines for failure to deliver on their promises unless they can use their skills to persuade governments to bail them out. Casual observation suggests that some other occupations - such as politics and some parts of the media - provide a breeding ground for narcissism and a sanctuary for narcissists.

Anne Manne has not, in my view, made a persuasive case that Ayn Rand’s philosophy played a large role in the partial return to classical liberalism in the U.S., the U.K, and a few other countries including New Zealand and Australia, during the 1980s and 90s. And she certainly hasn’t made a persuasive case that free markets promote narcissism.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Life of I. I particularly enjoyed reading her explanation of the behaviour of Anders Breivik and Lance Armstrong. The book seems to provide a good introduction to psychological research on the nature of narcissism and parenting styles that lead to narcissism.

Will individualism destroy Western Civilization?

Paul Kelly’s article ‘Blessed be the egoistic individuals’, a gated article published in The Weekend Australian (July 8-9, 2017) asserts that the decline in professed Christianity in Australia from 88 per cent of the population in 1966 to 52 per cent in the most recent census is an epic change that “has profound consequences for society”. I agree with him, although I suspect that the change might be exaggerated by greater honesty in the responses in recent censuses. I also agree with Kelly’s claim that there is a link between decline of Christianity and the emergence of a situation where “politics is being asked to assume a role and burden utterly beyond its capacity and guaranteed to leave community-wide unhappiness”

In my view, the linkage between the decline of Christianity and inflated expectations of politics arises from the growth of the welfare state. As people have come to rely more heavily on government, faith in government has tended to replace faith in God. Increased dependence on government for education, support for the elderly, health care etc. has been associated with a decline in family responsibilities, a decline in support provided by civil society, and a decline in individual responsibility.

However, Kelly takes a different view. He identifies individualism as the culprit. In taking that view he overlooks the contribution of Christianity to recognition of the worth of the individual human.

To explain I will first sketch out Kelly’s line of argument:

1. There is an “obsession about individual autonomy in every aspect of life: love, work, race, sex, culture and death”. This “is narcissism presented as self-realisation and human rights”
2. Narcissism has become an epidemic and is the central problem of our times. The new terror is to be invisible. Many people now have “a distorted idea of the human person and human aspiration”.
3. The narcissistic attitudes now prevalent contrast starkly with the modesty, humility and forbearance of the generation who lived through the Depression and World War II. It is impossible to separate those virtues from the Christian norms that were so pervasive at the time
4. The rise of “progressive values in the name of freedom and justice” during the 1960s marched in parallel with the decline in religious faith. They were “different sides of the same coin”
5. Eventually, the revolution took judicial and legal form. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and the mystery of life”. Kelly claims that at this point: “The idea of freedom was separated from a higher order moral duty and tied to personal self-realisation and self-esteem. Narcissism was legitimised”.
6. As the moral status of the church declines, the moral status of progressive ideology grows. Pivotal to this transition is the progressive attack on the Aristotelian framework that made the West a success. This concept envisages three “necessary” elements for human happiness: domestic society (marriage and family), faith and church and, finally political society. Progressive doctrine denies any preferred model for family structure “since that would be prejudicial and discriminatory” and seeks to drive religion from the public square.
7. “As the society of family and marriage becomes mired in confusion, as the society of church and religion is the target of assault, so the society of politics is being asked to assume a role and burden utterly beyond its capacity …”

Interestingly, what Kelly refers to as “obsession about individual autonomy in every aspect of life” corresponds fairly closely to “emancipative values”, as measured on the vertical axis of the chart shown below. Emancipative values reflect concern about such matters as personal autonomy, respect for the choices people make in their personal lives, having a say in community decisions, and equality of opportunity. As well as supporting gender equality, people who have emancipative values tend to consider independence and imagination as more desirable child qualities than obedience, and to be tolerant of divorce, abortion and homosexuality.

"The New Cultural Map of the World”, from Christian Welzel, Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation, Figure 2.3, 2013.

The countries in which emancipative values are most common are also characterised by strong secular values, but a high score on secular values is obviously not a particularly good predictor of strong emancipative values.  As the chart shows, the dominance of secular values is most noticeable in former communist countries, but is also more evident in the welfare states of western Europe than in the United States and Australia. 

In equating self-realisation with narcissism, Kelly is casting his net very broadly indeed. His net not only catches the self-esteem advocates - who deserve criticism, in my view, for leading people into narcissism – but also all those who have followed in the footsteps of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

In fact, every program for self-improvement that draws inspiration from Aristotle is caught in Kelly’s net. All such programs are based on the potential for self-realisation – the idea that humans have a natural orientation toward pursuit of their own ultimate good and that it is desirable for individuals to realise the potential of their character or personality. While I can claim little knowledge of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, I understand that he expressed similar sentiments.  I also have the impression – based on distant childhood memories - that acceptance of personal responsibility for character development was one of the messages of the Parable of the Talents.

In staging such a broad attack on individualism, Kelly overlooks the contribution of Christianity to recognition of the intrinsic worth of the individual human. He might find Larry Siedentop’s book, Inventing the Individual, discussed here, to provide a useful reminder of the historical role played by Christianity in liberating individuals from constraining perceptions of their personal identities as defined by social roles, and in encouraging recognition that individuals have consciences that deserve to be respected.

I agree with Kelly’s comments about the epidemic of narcissism and most of the other points he makes. However, I am concerned about his claim that the U.S. Supreme Court legitimised narcissism by separating the idea of freedom from moral duty, and tying it to personal self-realisation and self-esteem.

Who knows what the U.S. Supreme Court was claiming? It is certainly not clear to me that it was claiming that the concepts of “the mystery of life” that individuals “have the right to define” for themselves have the status of “moral truths”. Kelly’s comments left me wondering what role he sees for legislators and courts in enforcing compliance with “moral truths”. Does he really think that freedom should only be about being free to do the things that one has a moral duty to do?

I have read and commented on Paul Kelly’s views on individualism only because many of his other contributions to Australian journalism have been excellent. A few years ago I expressed the view that, over several decades, he had developed a formidable reputation as Australia’s leading ‘big picture’ journalist. More recently I described him as Australia’s most widely respected journalist.  I stand by those views. I don’t think anyone else has been more successful in identifying the defining elements of the changing political landscape in Australia.