How important is resilience to individual flourishing?

 

Everyone knows that resilience is important in coping with misfortune. However, it may be more important than I had thought.

My attention was grabbed recently by a newspaper article discussing a study suggesting that people with higher levels of resilience may live up to 10 years longer. The study was discussed in an article (possibly gated) by Lucy Dean in the Australian Financial Review (8 Sept, 2024) which also draws on an interview with Justine Gatt, director of the Centre for Wellbeing, Resilience and Recovery at UNSW and Neuroscience Research Australia.

The Longevity Study

The findings of the study by Aijie Zhang et al were published in an article entitled ‘Association between psychological resilience and all-cause mortality in the Health and Retirement Study’, in BMJ Mental Health (2024;27:e301064).

The study was based on the experience of 10,569 U.S. adults aged ≥50 (mean chronological age  67 years ) in the Health and Retirement Study (2006–2008). Mortality outcomes were determined using records up to May 2021.  During that period, 3,489 all-cause deaths were recorded.

The questionnaire used to measure resilience covered qualities such as perseverance, calmness, a sense of purpose, self-reliance and the recognition that certain experiences must be faced alone.

After adjusting for potential confounding factors, the researchers observed a decrease in the risk of death by 38% in the quartile with higher psychological resilience scores, compared with the group with the lowest scores.

The authors note that their findings are consistent with studies that have shown a significant positive correlation between life goals and self-rated health, with life goals moderating the relationship between self-rated health and mortality. Maintaining a positive self-perception of ageing has a positive effect on functional health, and optimism independently protects against all-cause mortality. Other studies demonstrate that individuals with poor social relationships have an increased risk of death.

The Compass Wellbeing Scale

Justine Gatt leads a project which aims to identify the underlying markers of wellbeing and to improve understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute towards resilience to stress and adversity.

In this project, mental wellbeing is measured using the 26-item COMPAS‑W Wellbeing Scale which provides a ​“composite” measure of wellbeing; that is, a measure of both subjective (hedonia) and psychological wellbeing.

The COMPAS‑W scale encompasses measures of composure, own-worth, mastery, positivity, achievement and satisfaction. The existence of a relationship between the Compass scale and resilience is based on the view that factors associated with resilience, include:

• The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out
• A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities
• Skills in communication and problem solving
• The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
• A feeling that you are a master of your environment and in control
• A general positive outlook on your life and satisfaction with everything you have achieved

Justine Gatt argues these are skills that people can learn and develop for themselves. 

The research on resilience is ongoing, but the qualities encompassed in the Compass scale are obviously worth fostering.

Does your well-being depend on your PCNs?

 

The accompanying graphic suggests that it does. It is from Michael A Bishop’s book, The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being, published in 2015.

What is a PCN? A PCN is a positive causal network, or feedback loop. The general idea behind PCNs is that a person has a high level of well-being when they are experiencing a self-perpetuating cycle of positive emotions, positive attitudes, positive traits, and successful engagement with the world.

Bishop wrote the book to provide positive psychology with a solid foundation based on “a bit of fairly conventional philosophy of science”. He argues that the philosophical literature on well-being (hedonism, informed desire theory, and Aristotelianism) is too fragmented to provide positive psychology with a solid foundation.

The author observes that positive psychology offers practical, science-based advice about well-being. The explosion of scientific research on well-being has revealed homeostatically clustered sets of feelings, emotions, attitudes and behaviors. That provides the basis for positive psychology to be viewed as the study of the structure and dynamics of PCNs.

Bishop demonstrates that much research in positive psychology can be viewed in that light.

Consistency with my view of well-being

In my view, it makes sense to view psychological well-being as being at the opposite end of the spectrum to mental illness. Felicia Hupert and Timothy So viewed it as being on the opposite end of the spectrum to anxiety and depression. Those authors identified ten symptoms of well-being: competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality. They examined relationships among those symptoms in a study using data from a representative sample of 43, 000 Europeans. (‘Flourishing Across Europe’, Soc. Ind. Res. 2013.)

The view of psychological well-being adopted by Hupert and So seems to me to be easier to understand than Michale Bishop’s view that it consists of PCNs. Nevertheless, the two views don’t conflict. At one point Bishop actually suggests that it is possible to understand PCNs by contrasting them with negative or vicious causal cycles involving negative thoughts, feelings, attitudes, behaviors and dysfunctions.

Do PCNs constitute “The Good Life”?

As a neo-Aristotelian, the main objection I have to Bishop’s book is its title.

I am not particularly concerned that Bishop’s approach might be at variance with that of psychologists who claim to have an Aristotelian approach to positive psychology. Those people are well-intentioned but the indicators they use seem to be somewhat removed from what Aristotle had in mind when he expressed the view that human flourishing is a virtuous activity of the soul.

I guess that Aristotle would see a strong positive link between virtue and PCNs. After all, he saw virtue as being about not just about doing the right thing but also taking pleasure in it. Of course, Aristotle also acknowledged that people could obtain pleasure (but not eudaimonia) without being virtuous.

That raises the question of whether it is possible for a villain to have a high level of psychological well-being. In my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing I expressed a view implying that villains can’t have high level of psychological well-being:

“It may be possible for a villain to score highly on positive emotion and self-esteem, but I doubt that a villain could obtain a high overall score in a competently administered psychological assessment.”

I based that view on research findings relating to the dark triad.

Bishop presents a different view:

“In a culture in which cruelty is rewarded, a person naturally disposed to cruelty can have success and a high degree of well-being. This is not a consequence to jump for joy about. It’s just a sobering fact about our world that bad people can have well-being.”

Bad people can certainly have the outward signs of success in a culture in which cruelty is rewarded but I suspect that, even in that cultural context, people who take a stand against cruelty may tend to have stronger PCNs. (I could be wrong about that. It is an empirical question.)

In their book, Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Roger Bissell and Vinay Kolhatkar suggest that humaneness is constitutive of a psychic state humans desire and cite evidence opposed to the widespread belief that ruthless people tend to get ahead in life, love, and especially business. (For references, please see my essay entitled ‘Is it possible for humans to flourish if they don’t live good lives?’, recently published on The Savvy Street).

Irrespective of whether bad people can have high PCNs, no Aristotelian could accept that they are flourishing. The view that bad people can live “good” lives is also opposed to the folk view of what it means to live a good life. (Please see the essay cited above for references and discussion.)

Conclusions

In his book, The Good Life, Michael Bishop argues that positive psychology should be viewed as the study of the structure and dynamics of positive causal networks (PCNs). PCNs are self-perpetuating cycles of positive emotions, positive attitudes, positive traits, and successful engagement with the world.

The view that psychological well-being is deeply rooted in strong PCNs seems to be consistent with the view that it lies on the opposite end of the spectrum to anxiety and depression.

The title of Bishop’s book is at variance with his view that it is possible for bad people to have strong PCNs. I am not convinced that it is possible for bad people to have high PCNs. Irrespective of whether that is so, however, people of bad character certainly do not live “the good life”.

Is Vipassana meditation consistent with self-acceptance?

Vipassana is an ancient form of meditation based on practice of equanimity in observation of physical sensations and thoughts. As people who practice Vipassana observe sensations arise and pass away, they experience a lessening of both aversion of unpleasant sensations, and of craving for pleasant sensations.  The Vipassana tradition has been kept alive since the time of the Buddha, and popularized over the last 50 years by S. N. Goenka, who died in 2013. The practice is taught in 10 day residential courses.

People who hold views that are incompatible with the Buddhist principle of anatta, or no self, are not excluded from attending Vipassana courses. I have practiced Vipassana meditation, with varying consistency, for about 25 years, and associate the practice with self-acceptance rather than loss of a sense of self. Moments of self-forgetfulness, accompanying feelings of goodwill towards other beings, could be described as quieting the ego rather than abandoning it. It seems to me that Scott Barry Kaufman may be on the right track in his suggestion that “those with the quietest ego defenses often have the strongest sense of self”. (See Transcend, p 204-5).

However, when Goenkaji was asked why he only spoke of the ego in negative terms, he replied:

“Now it seems to you that there must be an 'I' who feels, but after beginning to practice Vipassana, you will reach the stage where the ego dissolves. Then your question will disappear! For conventional purposes, yes, we cannot run away from using words like 'I' or 'mine' etc. But clinging to them, taking them as real in an ultimate sense will only bring suffering.”  

That raises interesting issues. In this article I will briefly discuss the concept of no-self, illustrate similarity between the practice of Vipassana and a psychologist’s approach to self-acceptance, consider how Vipassana meditation might be viewed from an Aristotelian perspective, and end with some observations about the nature of the inner game involved in acquiring equanimity and practical wisdom.

The No-self idea

In their book, Classical Indian Philosophy, Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri note that the Buddha sought to differentiate his view from those who say that we are identical to our bodies and from those who say we have souls that lack connection to anything else. They write:

“To express his own view, the Buddha offered similes: a person is not like the thread running through a necklace of pearls, but like the flowing of a river or the flickering of a candle flame.”

The river metaphor captures the idea that to grasp on to feelings, perceptions, or mental fabrications of the self is as futile as it would be for a person to try to avoid being swept down a swiftly flowing river by grasping on to grasses etc. growing on the banks.

I am attracted to a different river metaphor which reconciles my observation that impermanence is pervasive with my inability to doubt my own existence, and perception of my “self” as having continuity (at least while I remain alive). I have written previously about Richard Campbell’s suggestion, in his book The Metaphysics of Emergence, that Plato may have misrepresented Heraclitus in claiming he said, “You cannot step into the same river twice”. Heraclites may have been trying to convey the insight that the river stays the same even though it consists of changing waters. Campbell suggests that rivers exemplify “that the continued existence of things depends on their continually changing”. It makes sense to understand consciousness as a flow, and to perceive ourselves as complex processing systems.

Self-acceptance

In explaining Vipassana meditation, Goenkaji emphasized that attempts to escape from misery by diverting the mind to another object did not provide lasting benefits. He explained:

“The object of meditation should not be an imaginary object, it should be reality—reality as it is. One has to work with whatever reality has manifested itself now, whatever one experiences within the framework of one's own body.”

It seems to me that the Vipassana approach of observing thoughts and sensations with equanimity has much in common with the approach to self-acceptance recommended by the psychologist, Nathaniel Branden, in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem:

“At the most fundamental level, I accept myself. I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them. I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.” (p 163)

An Aristotelian perspective

It is clear from the passage quoted at the beginning of this article that Aristotle thought it inconceivable that a person could doubt his or her own existence.

However, Vipassana’s emphasis on equanimity as a desirable frame of mind has much in common with Aristotle’s view of temperance as a virtue. An equanimous person could be expected to be temperate in emotional expression – to be able to avoid excessive anger, fear etc. The techniques involved are also similar in respect of the emphasis placed on practice of the relevant frame of mind and associated behaviors.

As I see it, one possible difference between an equanimous person and a temperate person is that the latter would be less inclined to accept that there should be no craving. In accordance with Aristotle’s teaching, a temperate person could exercise his practical wisdom to crave the things he ought, to the extent he ought, as he ought, and when he ought.

Nevertheless, I have not found the practice of Vipassana meditation to be an obstacle to exercising practical wisdom to pursue personal goals enthusiastically. When I meditate conscientiously early in the morning that tends to promote clarity of thinking which serves me well later in the day.

The inner game

How is it that a person who lacks peace of mind (equanimity) can learn to observe troubling sensations and thoughts with equanimity? How can it be possible to adopt a frame of mind which requires the exercise of a quality that you perceive yourself to lack? It seems to me that the people who do such things must be drawing on inner resources that they didn’t fully realize that they had.

Tim Gallwey, the inner game guru, has helped many people to draw upon resources that they didn’t realize they had. Gallwey is recognized as a pioneer of sports psychology, and is the author of books applying inner game concepts to a range of activities including tennis, golf, work, and stress management. The aim of the inner game is to improve the internal dialogue that people carry around with them. For example, if an individual’s internal dialogue is infected by self-doubt, they can improve their performance in sport by observing what happens when they trust their unconscious minds to coordinate their muscles.

The general pattern of the inner game is to recognize that performance is being adversely affected by mental interference associated with false beliefs about one’s self – the lack of a desired quality – and then to observe what happens when that quality is expressed. People improve their performance as they discover qualities, or inner resources, that they didn’t know they had.  (Readers who want to know more about Tim Gallwey’s inner game approach may be interested to listen to a podcast I have prepared.)

The point that needs to be emphasized is that if we assert that we are inherently lacking in desired qualities (wisdom, temperance, integrity, courage, self-trust etc.) we are fooling ourselves. We all have potential to demonstrate qualities that we perceive to be lacking by asking ourselves what we would be thinking or doing if we believed that we possessed those qualities to a greater extent than at present.

So, I ask myself: If I was a wiser person, what would I be thinking right now? I am thinking that it would be wise to end this now and leave readers to contemplate their answers to that question. 

How are life satisfaction ratings related to living standards evaluations?

 

It is well known that in wealthy countries, further improvement of average incomes has only a small impact on average life satisfaction. Diametrically opposed explanations have been offered.

On the one hand, there are those who say that if rising incomes have little effect on average life satisfaction, that must mean that their apparent impact on living standards is a mirage – rising incomes do not count as progress.

On the other hand, there are those who say that average life satisfaction numbers are garbage – you can’t expect to get useful information by asking people to rate their satisfaction with life on a 10-point scale. They say that rising average incomes provide an accurate picture of progress.

In my view, those opposing explanations are both unhelpful to an understanding of the relationship between living standards and life satisfaction. In my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I explain that rising incomes result in actual improvements in living standards, and count as progress because that is what people aspire to have. Since self-direction is integral to human flourishing, it is obvious that progress is inextricably linked to conditions that enable individuals to meet their aspirations more fully. In the book, I also explain why I think average life satisfaction is an appropriate measure of psychological well-being at a national level. I suggest that psychological well-being, along with wise and well-informed self-direction, is one of several basic goods that a flourishing human could be expected to have.

The moving benchmark problem.

The failure of life satisfaction to reflect improved living standards is explained as follows in my book:

“The happiness surveys behind this puzzle, often referred to as the Easterlin puzzle, ask respondents to rate their lives relative to benchmarks such as the best possible life. Let us assume that when a person in a high-income country, call him Bill, answered that question in 1990, and he gave a rating of 8/10 for his life. Since then, Bill’s income has increased at about the same rate as the average for the country in which he lives, and there have been no abnormal changes in the circumstances of his life. In January 2020 … he again rated his life as 8/10. …

Bill’s income has risen, but his rating of his life has not risen.

The problem is that the survey prompted Bill to rate his life against a moving benchmark. Bill’s view of what constitutes the best possible life is likely to have risen over time. The people he sees living such a life have obtained access to better communication technology, and other things that have potential to enhance the quality of life. If you ask people to rate their current lives relative to a benchmark that is moving upwards over time, measurement error is inevitable.”

Ways to avoid the moving benchmark problem include the ACSA approach previously discussed on this blog (here and here). For reasons best known to themselves, happiness researchers have not shown much interest in using that approach to test the extent to which life satisfaction measures are distorted by moving benchmarks.

Living standards comparisons

The moving benchmark problem does not arise when people are asked how their standard of living compares with that of their parents when they were about the same age. Surveys of that kind have tended to provide information consistent with perceptions of ongoing progress with rising incomes in wealthy countries.

There is no plausible reason why such inter-generational comparisons should be viewed as less credible than life satisfaction ratings, or vice versa. As I see it, they are cognitive evaluations of different things. The intergenerational comparisons are measuring perceptions of progress, and the life satisfaction ratings are measuring current psychological well-being.

Merging life satisfaction and living standards evaluations

In order to obtain a better understanding of the linkage between perceptions of progress and current life evaluations, it is necessary to bring those different cognitive evaluations together in some way. That has been made possible by inclusion in the latest round of the World Values Survey of a question asking respondents whether their living standards are higher, lower, or about the same as those of their parents when they were about the same age. The graphs shown above were prepared using the excellent Online Data Analysis facility of the World Values Survey. Information is shown for the United States and Australia, but similar pictures emerge for other high-income countries.

The most obvious point illustrated by the graphs is that people tend to be much less satisfied with their lives if they perceive that their living standards are lower than those of their parents at a comparable age. Their perceptions that their living standards have fallen tends to make them feel grumpy about life.

The second point to emerge is that the life satisfaction ratings of those who perceive that their living standards are better than those of their parents are not much higher than for those who perceive that their living standards are about the same as those of their parents. Their perceptions of progress are not reflected to any great extent in their satisfaction current lives. That result is consistent with my view that life satisfaction is a poor indicator of the extent to which people meet their aspirations for higher living standards.

Implications

Perceptions of change in living standards that emerge from intergenerational comparisons are related to the recent history of economic growth in different countries. The greatest percentage perceive that their living standards are higher than their parents in countries that have sustained high rates of growth in per capita GDP over several decades. Of the 54 countries for which data are available, Vietnam has the greatest percentage in that category (90%) and Iraq has the lowest (21%). The corresponding percentages for Australia and the U.S. are 56% and 48% respectively.

Percentages who perceive that their living standards are lower than their parents follow a broadly similar pattern, but in most countries are within the range of 10% to 25%. Of the 54 countries, Zimbabwe is the only one where more than half of respondents perceived that their standard of living was lower than that of their parents. The corresponding percentages for Australia and the U.S. are 15% and 19% respectively.

The age structure of people who perceive themselves to be worse off than their parents suggests that this source of grumpiness is likely to pose a greater problem in Australia and the U.S. in the years ahead. The incidence is lowest among the 65+ age group (7.6% for Australia and 8.4% for the U.S.). The highest incidence in Australia is in the 25-34 age group (20.1%) and in the U.S. in the 35-44 age group (26.4%).

Conclusions

Average life satisfaction provides useful information on psychological well-being at a national level, but is a poor measure of the extent to which people are meeting their aspirations for higher living standards. As expected, people who perceive their standard of living to be higher than that of their parents, do not rate their life satisfaction much higher than those who perceive their standard of living to be about the same as that of their parents. However, people who perceive their standard of living to be lower than that of their parents have markedly lower life satisfaction than the other groups. The percentage of grumpy people in countries such as Australia and the U.S. seems set to rise in the years ahead unless opportunities improve for young people to meet their aspirations for higher living standards.

Which are the countries in which people have the best opportunities for psychological well-being?

This might seem like an odd question, so I will begin by explaining why I think it is worth considering.

Psychological well-being was identified in a recent post on this blog as one of five basic goods that a flourishing human would be expected to have. The post listed a range of aspects involved in psychological well-being: emotional stability, positive emotion, satisfaction with material living standards, engagement in doing things for their own sake and learning new things, perception of life as meaningful, a sense of accomplishment, optimism, resilience, vitality, integrity, and self-respect.

It seems reasonable to expect that opportunities for individuals to experience some of those aspects of psychological well-being might be greater in some countries than in others.

In compiling my list of aspects of psychological well-being, my starting point was the definition of psychological flourishing adopted by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So in their article ‘Flourishing Across Europe’ (published in Soc.Indic.Res. in 2013). These authors view psychological flourishing as lying at the opposite end of a spectrum to depression and anxiety. They identified 10 symptoms of flourishing (competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality) as the opposites of internationally agreed criteria for depression and anxiety (DSM and ICD). The study has previously been discussed on this blog.

My main modification to Huppert and So’s list is the addition of satisfaction with material living standards. In my view, people who feel miserable because they are dissatisfied with their material living standards are deficient in psychological well-being, even though they may not be suffering from the symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Despite my desire to modify the measure of psychological flourishing constructed by Huppert and So, it strikes me as providing a good basis for international comparison of psychological well-being. Unfortunately, this measure is only available for European countries, and for one year, 2006. That leads me to consider whether life satisfaction is a satisfactory alternative measure.

Is life satisfaction good enough?

The chart shown above suggests that, at a national level at least, the percentage of people who are satisfied “with how life has turned out so far” (ratings of 9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10) is a good predictor of psychological flourishing. In a simple linear regression, the percentage with high life satisfaction explains 83% of the inter-country variation in the percentage who are flourishing. (The chart was constructed using life satisfaction data from the 2006 European Social Survey used by Huppert and So to construct their psychological flourishing indicator.)

The idea that life satisfaction could a good enough measure of psychological flourishing might appear to be at variance with the findings of Huppert and So.  As discussed in an earlier post, Huppert and So found that only 46.0% of people who met the criterion for flourishing had high life satisfaction, and only 38.7% of people who had high life satisfaction met the criterion for flourishing.

 

However, the appropriateness of life satisfaction as an indicator of psychological flourishing depends on the purpose for which the indicator is to be used. If you want to know about an individual’s psychological well-being, it is hardly surprising that a single question about life satisfaction has been found to be a poor indicator. If your focus is on average psychological well-being at a national level, life satisfaction seems to be a good enough indicator because much of the measurement error at an individual level washes out in calculating national averages.

The countries with highest average life satisfaction

Average life satisfaction data from the Gallup World Poll is published annually in the World Happiness Report. This data set covers many countries and measures life satisfaction according to the Cantril ladder scale, with a rating of 10 being given to the best possible life and a rating of zero is given to the worst possible life.

In the 2018 survey, average life satisfaction ratings were greater than 7 in 15 countries: Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Sweden, New Zealand, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany and Czech Republic. Average ratings tend to be fairly stable from year to year, but a decade earlier, Ireland, Spain, U.S, Israel, Belgium and France had average ratings above 7, and U.K, Costa Rica and Germany had ratings below 7.

Regression analysis undertaken by John Helliwell et. al. show that almost three-quarters of the variation in national annual average life satisfaction scores among countries can be explained by six variables: GDP per capita, networks of social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and freedom from corruption. That list of variables has a strong overlap with determinants of other basic goods in my list of the five basic goods that a flourishing human could be expected to have. (See other posts in this series, here, here and here.) Apart from GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy, however, the data used in the analysis of Helliwell et al are based on perceptions of survey participants rather than objective measurement. (The analysis is a pooled regression using 1704 national observations from the years 2005 to 2018.)

Since my focus is on identifying countries where a person chosen at random would have the best opportunities, the median life satisfaction for each country would be a better criterion than the mean. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to such data at a national level. Estimates of median life satisfaction for broad regions (based on data here) suggest that median life satisfaction is typically lower than the mean. The difference between mean and median tends to be small for countries with relatively high life satisfaction: Western Europe (6.6 for mean cf. 6.4 for median) and North America and ANZ (7.1 cf. 6.9). The difference more substantial in some other parts of the world e.g. South East Asia (5.4 cf. 4.8).

Avoiding and reducing misery

In considering which countries offer the best opportunities for psychological well-being, countries with high average life satisfaction would be less attractive to risk averse people (most humans) if a relatively high proportion of the population of those countries nevertheless lived in misery. However, available evidence suggests that factors that lead to high life satisfaction also tend to reduce misery. For example, it is apparent from the graph below that the regions of the world with highest average life satisfaction tend also to have the lowest percentages with low life satisfaction.

A study by Andrew Clark et al for the World Happiness Report 2017 used data for the U.S., Australia, Britain and Indonesia to examine how much misery would be reduced if it was possible to eliminate one or more key determinants. The factors considered were poverty, low education, unemployment, living alone, physical illness, and depression and anxiety disorders. The authors found that the most powerful impact would come from the elimination of depression and anxiety disorders.

Conclusions

Life satisfaction is not a particularly good indicator of individual psychological well-being, but it seems to be a good enough indicator to use in international comparisons.

Countries with the highest average life satisfaction are characterised by relatively high income levels and life expectancy, accompanied by perceptions of strong social support, freedom and low corruption. The percentage of the population who are dissatisfied with life tends to be relatively low in such countries.

What are the basic goods of a flourishing human?

A good place to begin is with the discussion of the basic goods of “the good life”, by Robert and Edward Skidelsky in their book How Much is Enough (2012). The relevant discussion is in Chapter 6, entitled ‘Elements of the Good Life’. I published a somewhat critical review of the book on this blog some years ago, but I saw some merit in the authors discussion of human flourishing.

The authors adopt the following criteria to identify basic goods:

Universality: not specific to eras or cultures;

Finality: not just serving as a means to a more basic good;

Sui generis: not incorporated in some other good;

Indispensability: lack of the good leads to loss or harm.

I accept those criteria.

The authors identify the following seven basic goods:

• Health: ‘‘the full functioning of the body, the perfection of our animal natures”.
• Security: ‘‘an individual’s justified expectation that his life will continue more or less in its accustomed course, undisturbed by war, crime, revolution or major social and economic upheavals”.
• Respect: an individual’s feeling that others ‘‘regard his views and interests as worthy of consideration, as things not to be ignored or trampled on”.
• Personality: ‘‘the ability to frame and execute a plan of life reflective of one’s tastes, temperament and conception of the good”.
• Harmony with Nature: ‘‘a sense of kinship with animals, plants, and landscapes”.
• Friendship: ‘‘all robust, affectionate relationships”, including work relationships etc. as well as family relationships.
• Leisure: “that which we do for its own sake”, not just time off work.

That list summarises 17 pages of discussion, so it may not do justice to the authors’ deliberations. Nevertheless, it provides a basis to consider whether items have been identified appropriately, and whether anything important has been left out.

Health is obviously an essential characteristic of a flourishing human. The authors want to discourage “an obsession with longevity”, but it is reasonable to assert that flourishing involves living healthily for the term of one’s natural life.

Security is important, but it serves as a means to other goods, including a long and healthy life and psychological well-being (an important omission from the authors’ list of basic goods).

Having others respect of one’s views and interests feels good, but it isn’t indispensable to individual flourishing. Respect for one’s natural rights (life, liberty and property) is certainly indispensable, but serves as a means to other goods, including the ability to live a long and healthy life, interact with others for mutual benefit, and to the acquire human and physical capital that contributes to flourishing.

“Personality” does not seem to capture adequately the ability to frame and execute a plan of life reflective of one’s tastes, temperament and conception of the good. The authors use the term personality, rather than autonomy or practical reason, because it implies “spontaneity, individuality and spirit”. Those aspects of personality could be more appropriately incorporated under psychological well-being. The basic good corresponding to framing and executing a plan of life seems to me to be best described as accepting responsibility for self-direction.

Living in harmony with nature is important to human flourishing, and not just because of environmental impacts on human health and well-being. As I see it, the motivation for living in harmony with nature stems from deep-seated intuitions about our kinship with other living things.

Friendship doesn’t seem the most appropriate word to capture the wide variety of relationships that the authors put under this heading. The relevant basic good seems to me to be positive relationships.

Leisure is usually thought of as time off work, rather than engagement in doing things for their own sake. Martin Seligman uses the term ‘engagement’ to refer to the relevant basic good in his book Flourish (2011).

The other four elements of well-being identified in Seligman’s PERMA acronym (discussed here) are positive emotion, relationships, meaning and achievement. Of these, Skidelsky and Skidelsky only directly acknowledge relationships as an element of the good life. It seems to me that positive emotion and a sense of achievement are essential characteristics of a flourishing human.

Meaning requires a little more discussion. Seligman defines ‘meaning’ as belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self. This makes sense if serving the self means pursuit of personal pleasure. Those who see their lives as meaningful could be expected to value more things in life than their own pleasure.

So, here are the basic goods that I would expect a flourishing human to have:

1.  The prospect of a long and healthy life.
2. Wise and well-informed self-direction.
3.  Positive relationships with family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and trading partners.
4. Psychological well-being: emotional stability, positive emotion, satisfaction with material living standards, engagement in doing things for their own sake and learning new things, perception of life as meaningful, a sense of accomplishment, optimism, resilience, vitality, integrity, and self-respect.
5. Living in harmony with nature.

What do I plan to do with this list? My interest is in the factors that lead to differences in opportunities for human flourishing in different countries. For example, which are the countries where some person chosen at random is likely to have the best prospects of a long and healthy life? How can we explain why the prospects for that individual are better in those countries?

Such questions will be explored in later posts.

Can the hope circuit help us to circumvent dysfunctional politics?

This question came to mind when I was reading the final chapter of Martin Seligman’s latest book, The Hope Circuit.

The book is an autobiography, but in discussing his own life the author provides readers who have little knowledge of psychology, people like me, with a painless way of informing themselves about some major developments in this field over the last century.

Marty Seligman played an important role - as a researcher, author of popular books, and transformational leader - in helping to bring about important changes in his profession. He made major contributions in encouraging the profession to study cognition, recognise evolution, embrace positive psychology, and give greater attention to prospection.

I will focus here on learned helplessness, learned optimism and the hope circuit. Marty, as he is accustomed to being called by just about everyone, made his name as a researcher in the 1960s for his work, with Steve Maier, on learned helplessness. Marty and Steve observed that when dogs were unable to avoid electric shocks by changing their behaviour, they subsequently tended to remain passive when they did have the opportunity to avoid shocks. The dogs appeared to have learned that nothing they did mattered.

Marty saw the potential implications of this research for understanding of mental illness among humans and developed the helplessness theory of depression on that basis. That theory was subsequently reformulated, with assistance from John Teasdale, to take account of the way people think about the causes of their feelings of helplessness. For example, those who see their current problems as likely to last forever and to undermine everything they do are likely to feel helpless long into the future. Pessimism leads to helplessness.

Marty’s popular book, Learned Optimism, published in 1990, integrated research findings on learned helplessness and explanatory style.  It advocated disputing pessimistic thoughts as the central skill of learned optimism.

Marty coined the term “hope circuit” in 2015 to describe the MPFC-DRN circuit of brain activity discovered by Steve Maier, who had retrained as a neuroscientist. Marty explains that Steve’s discoveries turned learned helplessness on its head:

“He showed that the arrow of causality that we had postulated was wrong and that it was not helplessness but control and mastery that were learned".

One of the implications of this research is that therapy that “creates end runs” around trauma and helps people to plan a better future is likely to be more helpful than therapy that tries to undo trauma by confronting the past.

What does all this have to do with dysfunctional politics? This passage got me wondering:

"Human history has, until recently, been a tale of woe: warfare, plague, famine, injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent death. The last half century has witnessed, if not the eradication, a great reduction of these ills. When the world is a vale of tears, it is natural that politics, religion, science, medicine, and the arts should concern themselves with defense and damage. But what happens when the world is no longer a vale of tears?"

My initial reaction to that passage was the same as my reaction to Steven Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now. I agree that massive progress has been made in human flourishing, but I see huge problems ahead for liberal democracy. We are confronted by widespread failure to adhere to the norms of self-reliance and reciprocity that underpin liberal democracy.

I became even more pessimistic when my thoughts turned to Jason Brennan’s book, Against Democracy. In my response to that book I mourned the declining power of the major political parties to shape political agendas in ways that moderate the ill-informed desires of electors. I raised the question of whether many voters would be likely to accept impartial advice on how to vote to achieve their objectives.

It is not obvious that there is anything that anyone can do now to save liberal democracy from political hooliganism.

So, why aren’t I feeling depressed and helpless?  The main reason is that a few months ago Max Borders’ book, The Social Singularity, gave me grounds to hope that technological advances will eventually enable citizens to circumvent dysfunctional politics. Rather than moaning endlessly about the decline of liberal democracy, we can look forward in the hope of a better future. There may even be practical things that we can do in cooperation with others to facilitate growth in opportunities for human flourishing.   

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.