Does intention exist in the universe as an invisible field of energy?

I decided to revisit Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention after a friend made some enthusiastic comments to me about it. I told her that I didn’t share her enthusiasm, but I couldn’t remember why I had misgivings about the book.

The existence of intention as an invisible field of energy in the universe is, of course, not capable of being proved or disproved using conventional scientific methods. That is itself not a reason for rejecting such beliefs. If someone tells me that they feel empowered by the belief that they are serving God, I am inclined to feel happy for them. I certainly have no basis on which to claim that belief is wrong – even if I wanted to.

However, it is reasonable to question whether a person’s beliefs about intention are consistent with other beliefs that they hold.

Wayne Dyer acknowledges that his belief that intention is an all-pervasive universal force is not consistent with his belief that individuals have free will. He refers to this as a paradox and suggests that you can live with it, just as you live with the “paradox” that “you’re a body with beginnings and ends, with boundaries, and a definition in time and space, you’re also an invisible, formless, unlimited, thinking and feeling being”.

Is there a paradox involved in thinking of yourself as an entity with particular bodily characteristics, whilst also thinking of yourself as an entity which manifests a range of qualities such as kindness, boldness and wisdom? I don’t think so.

Moreover, it is difficult to see why a prior commitment to live with paradox would be necessary if intention is the all-pervasive universal force that Wayne Dyer claims it to be. Would such a force require us to disrespect the intellectual resources that it has bestowed upon us by making a prior commitment to live with inconsistencies in our belief systems? If we are seeking serve something more important than our own personal interests would Intention not be able to find a way to make itself known to us? Is it necessary to acknowledge the existence of a paradox, or mystery, before one’s intuitions can even begin to suggest that the sense of purpose one feels might be linked to a supernatural source?

The author claims that Intention has seven faces. His discussion of the first six of those intentional frames may be useful to people interested in developing a stronger sense of purpose:

1. Creativity: “Creative energy is a part of you …”. My interpretation is that being creative is a fundamental characteristic of humans. It makes sense to have an intention to use our creative energy to produce better outcomes in all that we do.
2. Kindness: “Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved”.
3. Love: “This face of intention … wishes only for us to flourish and grow, and become all that we are capable of becoming”. An intention to help others to flourish and grow makes sense if we want to experience the benefits of living in loving families and communities.
4. Beauty: “By choosing to hang on to one’s corner of freedom even in the worst situations, we can process our world with the energy of appreciation and beauty and create an opportunity to transcend our circumstances”. That statement was inspired by the example and views of Viktor Frankl.
5. Expansion: “The elemental nature of life is to increase and seek more and more expression”. I think that means that an intention to achieve personal growth can always be achieved through greater expression of creativity, kindness, love and appreciation of beauty.
6. Abundance: “there are no limits to our potential as people, as collective entities, and as individuals”. I don’t pretend to be a fan of “The Secret” or even “The Power of Positive Thinking”. It is my understanding of economics that suggests to me that the world offers abundance, provided that individuals are free to use their resources as they choose to take advantage of the opportunities available. A realistic optimist could be expected to have the intention to seek out opportunities and make good use of his or her personal resources.

According to Wayne Dyer, the seventh face of intention is receptivity.  He explains: “The receptive face of intention means to me that all of nature is waiting to be called into action. We only need to recognize and receive. … By being receptive, I’m in harmony with the power of intention of the universal creative force”.

I can understand why people are attracted to the idea that whatever seems wrong in their lives is the result of being out of alignment with Intention. It offers the promise of a remedy for all ills. As the author writes:

“Act as if anything you desire is already here. Believe that all you seek, you’ve already received, that it exists in spirit, and know you shall have your desires filled”.

I know that this kind of positive thinking can sometimes be helpful. The problem is not so much that we are likely to act as though we can fly by flapping our arms, or live without food – although some do – it is in knowing how to deal with the negative thoughts that intrude when positive thinking fails to produce the outcomes we hope for. Wayne Dyer suggests:

“Even when nothing seems to indicate that you’re accomplishing what you desire in your life, refuse to entertain doubt. Remember, the trolley strap of intention is waiting for you to float up and be carried along”.

Visual imagery can help to remind us of commitments that we have made to ourselves. The  message is clear enough. If you don’t achieve the outcome you hope for, you have not been trying hard enough to align yourself to Intention. Keep your thinking under constant surveillance. If that makes you feel unhappy, try even harder to align yourself to Intention. If you think you are going crazy, try even harder to align yourself to Intention.

I now remember why I had misgivings about the book.

It seems to me that the important ingredient missing from Wayne Dyer’s book is self- acceptance. In order to transcend something it is necessary to accept it. It is difficult to see how anyone can sustain intentions consistent with creativity, kindness, love, beauty, personal growth and abundance if they reject the sensations and emotions they experience. Rather than seeking to call nature into action to serve our intentions, we should be seeking to live in harmony with the natural world, including our natural selves.

Do our life stories make us all communitarians?

Before I read Michael Sandel’s book, Justice: What’s the right thing to do?, I hadn’t realised that I was once a Kantian. That was before I became a utilitarian, libertarian and then classical liberal. Sandel hasn’t persuaded me to become a communitarian, but he has challenged me to think some more about just conduct and limits to individual freedom.

Communitarians argue that we can’t reason about justice by abstracting from, or setting setting aside, our personal aims and attachments. For example, they seem to be saying that it is fruitless to ask ourselves what rules of society we would favour behind a veil of ignorance that made us unaware of our own personal circumstances.

The particular issue I want to focus on here is whether our perceptions of identity, based on our individual life stories, make us all communitarians. Sandel follows Alasdair MacIntyre in arguing that we can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’, if we can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’. In terms of this perception, moral deliberation is more about interpreting your life story than exerting your will.

I see no problem in going down that  path. It seems to me to be appropriate to think about personal morality in terms of life stories and personal identity. That approach is consistent with the following views previously supported on this blog:

• Jonathan Haidt’s view that hiving comes naturally, easily and joyfully to humans, and serves the function of bonding individuals together into communities of trust, cooperation, and even love;
• the identity economics of George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton which suggests that people gain utility when their actions conform to the norms and ideals of their identity (or social category e.g. gender, race, social class, age group) and lose utility when they do not; and
• the social intuitionist view of Jonathan Haidt and Fredrik Bjorklund that moral beliefs and motivations come from a small set of intuitions that evolution has prepared the human brain to develop and that these intuitions then enable and constrain the social construction of virtues and values.

So, where do I part company with Michael Sandel? I leave him at the point he proposes that governments should use coercion in an attempt to strengthen a sense of community. For example, he proposed increased taxes on the wealthy “to rebuild public institutions and services so that rich and poor alike would want to take advantage of them”. He puts that forward as a remedy for a perceived problem arising from the growing inequality: a tendency for rich and poor to live separate lives, which tends to undermine the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires.

I am prepared to accept that some coercion is necessary to oblige all citizens meet obligations that are imposed on them according to democratic processes that are supported by the vast majority. The democratic system would break down if individuals were permitted to choose to disobey laws without incurring a penalty. The legitimacy of the system is enhanced by rules that enable people who do not like existing processes to propose constitutional changes, or to seek some other country to live that has a system of government that is more to their liking.

However, respect for the system of government is not enhanced by forcing people to fund facilities that they would prefer not to use. Such action is more likely to fragment a community than to promote social cohesion. When wealthy people have the option to escape high taxes by moving their business activities to a different jurisdiction, they often choose to do so. Some even change their country of residence.

More fundamentally, I think Sandel under-estimates the ability of individuals to set aside their own personal circumstances and interests when considering issues such as the provision of a social safety net, funding of public services, and taxation of wealth. Steven Pinker is probably correct in the view he expressed, in The Better Angels of our Nature, (discussed here) that an "escalator of reason" has provided a basis for taking intuitive moral foundations beyond family and tribal loyalties as education levels have risen and skills in abstract reasoning have improved.

The escalator of reason involves ascending to the vantage point of an impartial spectator (i.e. detaching oneself from a parochial viewpoint). Pinker argues that a value system in which human flourishing is the ultimate good can be mutually agreed upon by any community of thinkers who value their own interests and are engaged in reasoned negotiation.

As I have previously argued, rather than seeking to promote community solidarity through coercive means we should be seeking to reinforce voluntary social cooperation.

Why am I interested in happiness research?

“THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general.” Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter2.

I'm not like that. However, an interest in happiness research may seem to many people to imply an obsession with measuring, calculating and attempting to understand things that are not meant to be understood. 

Perhaps trying to understand what makes people happy is a bit like trying to understand why jokes are funny. It isn’t obvious that an understanding of what makes jokes funny would be much help to anyone in telling jokes, or how an understanding of what makes people happy would help anyone to become happier.

It is fairly easy to explain how I came to be interested in happiness research, so I will begin by writing about that. In my work as an economist I spent more than a few decades considering what government policies were likely to advance the well-being of the people in the countries where I have lived and worked (mainly Australia and New Zealand. It seemed fairly obvious that the vast majority of Australians and New Zealanders wanted higher incomes, so it was reasonable to assume that would improve their well-being. If someone questioned whether higher incomes would make people any happier, my defence was that economists should be in the business of making it possible for people to have happier lives rather than advising them how to spend their money.

At the same time, I could not help becoming interested in the puzzle of why happiness surveys showed little or no increase in average happiness ratings in high income countries over several decades while average income levels rose substantially. This is of course Easterlin’s puzzle - named after the economist Richard Easterlin.

I stopped being puzzled once I understood that happiness surveys measure emotional well-being - a component of well-being rather than the whole package. There is no reason to expect the value that people place on physical health, education, housing and safety, among other things, to be fully reflected in measures of emotional well-being. 

Emotional well-being is strongly related to self-esteem, optimism and the feeling of being in control of one’s life – none of which would be expected to be strongly influenced by further increases in incomes in high-income countries.

It is true, of course, that when people see higher incomes as the pathway to emotional bliss they are unlikely to be satisfied with one pot of gold - even if they find the end of a rainbow. But most people seem to make sensible choices. They might seek a higher income if that is necessary to pursue objectives that they consider to be worthwhile. For many people, higher incomes are incidental to career objectives. There is no reason to expect people to stop trying to achieve more in life just because they are satisfied with their current standard of living.

It seems to me that if we are interested in measuring well-being, then the survey measures of happiness are just one of the items we should look at. I favour the approach taken by the OECD in its Better Life Index.

However, an indicator approach doesn’t give economists a value-free measure of well-being. It leaves open the question of what weights should be given to the various component indexes. The OECD leaves the value judgement in the hands of the users of its index. That is more appropriate than having researchers assign weights, but it would be good to see how weights might need to differ to reflects the different values of people in different parts of the world. In my view the Better Life Index should be accompanied by illustrative weights derived from a values survey.

So, one of the reasons why I am interested in happiness research is apparent from what I have written. Happiness research is relevant to measurement of human well-being and that is relevant to economic policy.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between freedom and flourishing. Do government restrictions on individual freedom – in the wars against drug taking, smoking, alcohol, obesity, overwork etc. - actually have the desired effect of enabling people to have happier lives? I don’t think so. The policies adopted by governments seem designed to make people less happy in an attempt to get them to adopt healthier lifestyles, but I don’t know where to find the evidence to prove it.

In any case, that is only part of the story. My interest in happiness research is not always closely related to government policy. Some of my recent posts have taken me into the relationship between life satisfaction and the incidence of negative emotional experience. I am not sure why I am interested in such matters. Nevertheless, it seems more satisfying than spending my time trying to understand what makes jokes funny.

Is the incidence of depression higher where people are experiencing more negative emotion and suffering?

It would be difficult to be interested in human flourishing without having some interest in understanding the differences in incidence of “suffering”, negative emotion, and depression in different parts of the world.

I have written a few posts about negative emotion recently, but it is now a few years since I looked explicitly for a relationship between “suffering” and depression at an international level. The last time I looked, I couldn’t see any relationship. I concluded that “the data … suggest there is no simple relationship”.

There is now some new data available, so I have taken another look. But I don’t want you to get too excited, because you might end up feeling disappointed.

A data set on depressive disorders in 2010 has been compiled by Alize Ferrari and others as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study. The researchers collected data on the depressive disorders from published articles and pooled the data using a statistical technique (Bayesian meta-regression). The data used below relates to major depressive disorder (MDD) which is also known as clinical depression. It involves at least one major depressive episode in which the affected individual experiences a depressed mood almost all day, every day for at least 2 weeks.

The negative emotion data is sourced from the Gallup World Poll. Respondents were asked if they experienced worry, anger, sadness or depression yesterday. The data used is based on country averages of yes/no answers (yes = 1).

The data on suffering is from the new Gallup-Healthways Global Well-being index. The index covers 5 dimensions of well-being: purpose (liking what you do and learning or doing something interesting); social (having supportive relationships); financial (having enough money to do what you want and not being worried about money); community (liking where you live and having pride in your community) and physical (feeling active and productive, and in good health). People are classed as suffering in a particular element if their well-being in that element is low and inconsistent.

For the purpose of this exercise I have estimated the percentage suffering in each country as the average of the percentages suffering in each dimension.

After the three data sets were combined I had data for 114 countries. At the country level, there is a modest degree of correlation between the three variables:

Struggling and MDD:                          0.24

Struggling and negative emotion:        0.20

Negative emotion and MDD:              0.06 .

The graph presented below provides a basis to compare averages for the relevant variables in 10 regions of the world.

All three indicators tell an unambiguous story of misery in the Middle East and North Africa. Suffering seems somewhat higher in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the incidence of negative emotion is apparently lower in that part of the world than in the Middle East and North Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe seems to have a fairly high incidence of all three indicators of misery. The incidence of depression and suffering is similarly high in the former Soviet countries, but the incidence of negative emotion is similarly lower.

East Asia stands out as having a relatively low incidence of negative emotion and depression, but a higher incidence of suffering than Latin America. According to the Gallup-Healthways data, the incidence of suffering in Latin America is not much greater than in Europe.

It is possible to speculate on reasons why the three indicators tell different stories in several regions of the world. Cultural factors probably explain the relatively low incidence of negative emotion in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Cultural factors might also explain why the incidence of suffering has been assessed to be relatively low in Latin America. (As discussed in an earlier post, cultural factors might also explain why the Gallup-Healthways index shows a high percentage of the population in Latin America to be thriving). There may also be potential for the estimates of depression to be biased by such factors as differences in availability of trained mental health professionals.

That leaves me concluding that caution is required in comparing suffering, negative emotion and depression in different parts of the world. I know that is a fairly lame conclusion, but I did warn you not to get too excited.