Someone so very dear to me suffered a loss. In this case it was a voluntary loss, a husband phoned to say he wanted out of the marriage. It was another one of those cases of storybook romances gone wrong. They seemed so well suited and happy. There had been few bad times.
Here is where Johnathan Heit's image of the elephant and boy-rider particularly suits. The elephant is that huge part of us that we talk about controlling even though control is really quite unrealistic. The "inner child" doesn't do the situation justice because at critical times the child fusses and rages, but must eventually go where the adult leads to survive. However an elephant appearing placid and cooperative is ultimately a dangerous and wild thing. We cannot and should not forget the power of a neglected elephant.
When we suffer loss it is that inner beast that stays awake at night and keeps asking "where is she, where it he? " We try to explain why it happened, and that we must be brave, how strong we are....then we see the picture on the wall, the shell from Hawaii, the pair of worn socks in the drawer and the crying questions inside start up all over again. The more we try to distract ourselves with bank accounts, laundry, and programming the cell phone, the louder the cries are when they break through our shell.
The answer I have begun to discover in my own journey is to ride with the lonely elephant where it wants to go. Let it hunt for the lost and weep and thunder in the night. The elephants greatest fear is that it will be left alone. It needs to know you won't leave it alone in the dark. Ignoring that being inside of you is worse than ignoring a child crying, because an elephant that is upset can harm everyone in its way.
Taking this problem "out of the metaphor," we need in time of loss to spend some nights with a photo album and a bottle of wine. Remember the good times and cry. If you were left behind or wronged, remember the bad times and swear. Make sure to use the words asshole or bitch as often as you can. It is easier to lose someone in anger than in love, and the love was probably unrealistic if we didn't see the signs that leaving was about to happen. If something inside of you doesn't see the wrong, its damn-well time it did.
When you have raged enough, pile some of the memory items together and hold a bonfire to put some distance between your memories and you. Dance around the fire. Then take the ashes of your fire and plant a rose in it.
Living through your pain rather than by ignoring it and you have a much better chance for a new beginning. Your pain is a sign that you are a whole person not just half of one. Because you live you hurt. Experience the hurt and you will grow.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, May 21, 2007
Elephant riders in real life
We are trying to understand the achievement of human happiness making use of the metaphor linking human existance to the relationship between an elephant and a rider. An elephant and a rider must be understood as a relationship since the combination of the two is much more than the sum of the parts.
1. The elephant is the basic producer and consumer for happiness. The rider alone can't create or sufficiently experience happiness. Like a coach it can plan the game and review the films, but not win the game or experience the victories.
2. The riderless elephant is not well equipped to navigate a modern complex world for happiness. There are too many choices to make, and the immediate situation cannot sustain and satisfy the elephant for long.
I found this site interesting because it enlarges upon the nature of elephant-rider relationships.
http://www.elephant.se/elephant_training.php?open=Elephant%20training
1. The elephant is the basic producer and consumer for happiness. The rider alone can't create or sufficiently experience happiness. Like a coach it can plan the game and review the films, but not win the game or experience the victories.
2. The riderless elephant is not well equipped to navigate a modern complex world for happiness. There are too many choices to make, and the immediate situation cannot sustain and satisfy the elephant for long.
I found this site interesting because it enlarges upon the nature of elephant-rider relationships.
http://www.elephant.se/elephant_training.php?open=Elephant%20training
Elephants are dangerous to work with, if you are not acting right.To act right, is learning how they act, and follow this system.To behave like an elephant, is the secret. Forget about human feelings, our definitions about right or wrong, just follow the easy rules of the elephants. If you do, its risky, but less dangerous. Walking on a street is also risky, so what is the difference?
Isn't this fascinating concept, to forget about "our definitions about right or wrong?" To be a successful and happy rider, we must "follow the easy rules of the elephant." The relationship is inherently risky as well, to work with the elephant is dangerous but rewarding.
To really know my elephant heart, what are the simple rules that I must understand?
Saturday, May 5, 2007
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
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
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