The book and the blog

I have had a wonderful few weeks slowly reading through The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt.

The book is an amazing and stimulating read, combining the science and philosophy on human happiness into a surprisingly well-integrated whole. After reviewing the work a little, I want to consider where it leads us next.

The first seven chapters give the reader understanding of happiness gleaned from great philosophers and psychologists. At Chapter eight and beyond, Haidt tries to combine the philosophical and religious wisdom on virtue with the evolutionary and psychological basis he has established for happiness. Haidt has a tough sledding here, because he himself expresses that he is a Jewish atheist. He needs to justify a scientific base for the evolution of a moral and virtuous nature.

The author poses the dilemma, "If evolution is all about survival for the fittest, then why do people help each other so much?". Haidt rejects Darwin's hypotheses that "...groups compete just like individuals, and therefore psychological features that make groups successful...should spread like any other trait." This is untenable to Haidt because it assumes that we survive like an ant colony, on the basis of our group traits (p.231). Clearly we are not in colonies having identical traits. If only one human in a non-family grouping is altruistic enough to die for the survival of those not related, then that individual is sacrificing altruistic genes for no evolutionary benefit. Repeat that process over eons and then altruism, and non-selfish virtues would perish, unless the altruistic performances were reserved for our genetic extended family. This is simply not the case, the captain of the ship will sometimes sacrifice himself for people from all over the world.

Seeing this apparent paradox, Haidt finds an explanation for the moral imperative of man without conceding the existence of an independent religious reality. He bases his case on the work of evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, who maintains that we have a cultural evolution to parallel the genetic one. The two are not firmly linked: the cultural teachings of Christ or Buddha are able to survive with or without their genes. This makes sense since we are working towards a "Hal" generation of computers that can reason. It is possible that computers created by us will think in ways that are different. Even among humans there are those of us who would push a button to destroy us all, if they thought like God in the time of Noah that evil was too pervasive. Thought-culture can exist independently and has its own methods of evolving.

At this point the book ends, I have hopes of building more conceptual chapters beyond the ten. One area I would like to deal with is the current cultural evolution of individuality. Progressively all cultures seem to be shifting towards the value of individuality. Does being successfully independent increase our capacity for happiness? This should be studied.

I was in a Chinese restaurant and talked to a young manager (in her 40's perhaps). She told me that families were no longer insisting their children worked in the family business, and that less often do grandparents expect to live with their offspring. A young Sikh friend told me that he wanted his success not to simply base itself on the expectations of his parents for wealth in a prestigious field. He wanted to succeed in living and succeeding according to his own expectations. We are wrestling in many if not all cultures with the call to "finding personal freedom".

The branch of psychology best suited to exploring individuality is existential psychology. I notice from web searches that there are links between humanistic psychology, positive psychology, and existential psychology. Haidt's book seems to step around existentialism; he found an existential time in his youth to be rather lost and depressing. This is curiously the response of most people when exposed to the possibility of world without inherent meaning or valid external judgement. The rest of the animal kingdom doesn't have the capacity or need to think otherwise, and doesn't appear to agonize over whether the world is caring or planned. As many of us learned as children, the unplanned times were the ones that had the most meaning. Somehow the plans of God and parents degenerated into pronouncements that escaped our ability to comprehend.

In any case the existentialist philosophers are not cited in the book, which I believe explains why the author spends so much time with the nature of people to find attachment and meaning.

Haidt missed an interesting opportunity to discuss the human need for independence and freedom after exploring Harry Harlow's experiments with Rhesus monkeys. Harlow's landmark study showed that without physical contact, monkeys, and by unavioidable extension humans, are impeded in their psychological development. As a result of this study we now think it essential to find opportunities to hold our children more than we once did. As well as demonstrating the affect of contact-deprivation, Harlow also showed the ability of normal Rhesus babies to reach out and explore after brief reinforcement hugs from the cloth mothers. The monkeys would use surrogate cloth mothers as a “psychological base of operations.” It is surprising that the equivalent of a teddy-bear hug and food was enough to raise brave monkeys. It would also be interesting to learn how much of our happiness depends on our need to independently explore our world. From the first day we decide to play with our toes we may be exploring for meaning rather than waiting to find it planned by God or hard-wired by our evolution. Meaning may be individual.

From Harlow we need also learn to imitate the wire and cloth mothers a little, and be prepared to release our children to practise adventuring for meaning.

Perhaps in today's world we should equally be discussing de-attachment, since codependant relationships between parents and children are extending far into adulthood. With clingy relationships the norm we may have an explanation as to how spouses can becoming increasingly like surrogate parents or surrogate children. I would like to consider whether we should avoid adult relationships with those who are excessively attached to parents in favour of relationships with independently-minded people.

Chimpanzee mothers raising offspring in captive isolation from their peers perform abysmally, often neglecting or leaving their young (see Tetsuro Matsuzawa's Essay on evolutionary neighbors). Modern human culture, especially in the West, may be peculiar in its reliance on the theory that monogamous coupling is a sensible and suitable environment for raising children. In many tribal cultures, children are raised as much by the tribe as by parents. Perhaps breakdown in community-wide child rearing is more a problem than breakdown in monogamous marriage for the problems we see with anti-social behaviour in the young. Tribal child-rearing was the norm in North American Indian societies. The child of one was the child of all.

Haidt interestingly accepts monogamy as a given, even though any zoologist would note that monogamy is a rarity except in songbirds, which are now also under suspicion of infidelity. Gorillas are polygamous, for example, and they are genetic cousins of ours. Monogamy in anthropology has a brief and narrow history. Monogamy in psychology may be an application of values more than science. Many cultures had or do have polygamous traditions. Haidt discusses excessive sexuality as a form of addiction, but it may very well prove to be the sexually deprived who have more of a problem with sexual expression with others. At best monogamous relationships seem more theoretical than actual.

Summarizing I feel that a welcome sequel to the Happiness Hypothesis could be built on the human drive to independence, personal freedom, and self-actualization. Research should be examined to see if people free are people happy. More needs to be done on what sort of relationships, sexual and otherwise, are necessary for human happiness. We need to know if the need to associate may only valid when in the context of free will to associate according to personal choice. Do we fall in love, or do we capture it as a confident act of free will?

Jim Bruce