While I agree with the gist of this article, I think it's walking a razor's edge to differentiate between a "happy" life and a "meaningful" life. I could argue that perhaps there isn't more to life than being happy, and what a meaningful life brings is a more complex form of happiness, a lasting reprieve from the existential terror that envelopes us between acts of isolated pleasure-seeking. So yes, you may report higher life satisfaction with a meaningful life vs. a "happy" one, but if you're going to define happiness in such a narrow, superficial way, then you're kind of guaranteeing this conclusion.
I think a better title would've been "There's more to life than seeking selfish pleasure." But this is more linguistic nitpicking than anything else.
This post can be added to the pile of why HN discussions are getting more and more pedantically lame.
The post adds so little. And even in the post, it acknowledges this, yet has so many words/syllables/phrases to read through just for everyone, even the poster, to come to the same conclusion.
I really don't like being negative. I guess it's the negative pedantry that has bothered me to the point of saying something. If I'm in the minority and just venting, apologies (My comment might just be the ticket to get it out of my system).
This is just a reflection of the sorry state of the publishing industry.
We are fast approaching the point when one cannot expect a robust piece of writing (specialized or general) of lasting worth, unless its behind a paywall.
Frankly I don't blame them. Although some new entrants like QZ (dot) com and very few others are trying, there have been no inroads made in this direction, over the past five years.
We need some form of a micropayments mechanism to incentivize good work.
Agreed, and the saddest part is I think anybody with half a brain can see it coming, and nobody wants it, but we'll wind up there anyway.
It's sort of a great example why the idea of a good "race to the bottom" no longer excites but rather uneases me. We've just gotten so darn good at reaching new lows.
I disagree. Complaining about typos and grammatical errors and "distinctions without a difference" is pedantry. But the use of words matters in philosophical subjects, and there's a big difference in implied meaning between "meaning is better than happiness" and "complex happiness is better than simple happiness".
No, the post is spot-on about how the article is really just playing with definitions. What the post is doing is what LessWrong calls "dissolving the question"[1].
Reword the article to be pointing out that "There's more to life than immediate hedonistic pleasure seeking activities". Now, most people just agree with it. Instead, if you play with multiple meanings of "being happy", you can try to create a sense of insight or deepness where none exists.
As to why the post added a disclaimer, perhaps he wanted to be polite and not sound offensive to what Frankl has accomplished. (Me too: I'm not saying Frankl's work was not good, just the style the article portrays.)
Talking about the place of meaning and happiness in life is philosophy, and philosophy is a lot like math in that you can't jump into the middle of something and think you know what "well-ordered" or "compact" or "happiness" mean. It isn't pedantry to dissect the meanings of commonplace words in an article like this, especially since Frankl's understanding of happiness is apparently different from the definition of happiness used in the psychological research the article discusses.
I saw the post as more "roll with the punches". And yes, that phrase trivializes some terrible experiences. But I feel like that's what Dr. Victor is getting at. The most successful people are those who are willing to reframe their perspective and create goals/silver linings around that perspective.
In the (arguably) skewed world of Silicon Valley I think that's a valuable thing.
First, not all suffering makes lives more meaningful. It's the process of suffering through something and prevailing or even being overwhelmed and yet later finding a way to get back up that gives us meaning.
Second, we do not have the right to make others' lives more meaningful if they do not want them to be. The state's core role is to protect our rights. Libertarians and conservatives define rights negatively, while liberals also speak of positive liberties in addition to negative one, but this is the core premise of liberal democracy. What we do with these rights and liberties is up to us.
Of course there are exceptions: this is a big argument for having national service or conscription even in countries that can afford professional militaries and don't have hostile neighbors. I happen to disagree strongly with the idea of any kind of national service or conscription, but I don't find it something that should be dismissed outright and without debate.
More to the point, we do voluntarily inflict suffering on ourselves all the time: most obvious being physical exercise, pain of childbirth, but less obviously difficult academic programs (e.g., EECS at UC Berkeley or CMU). Indeed, we pay a great deal of money to have others inflict suffering on us as long as we're able to extract meaning from it.
Nice comment on the origional article: The modern definition of "happiness" certainly refers to the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure. But it is instructive to consider how the term has evolved since the time Thomas Jefferson enshrined the "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration of Independence as being a fundamental human right. Jefferson most likely borrowed this idea from John Locke, one Jefferson's key intellectual influences. In his essay "Concerning Human Understanding", Locke stated that, "The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty." Locke was not referring to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, but to the Aristotelian meaning of "happiness", which Aristotle had described not as the satisfaction of our desire for sensual pleasures, but a person's active pursuit of virtue or excellence, or, in other words, the pursuit of meaning (the phrase "pursuit of happiness" is actually redundant since pursuit is an essential part of Aristotle's definition of happiness). So during the 18th Century and at the time of the birth of this nation, the search for happiness and the search for meaning in life were actually one in the same.
I think it was saying that if "happiness"="the pursuit of meaning" then "pursuit of happiness"="pursuit of the pursuit of meaning." Which is redundant.
Along with other commenters, I think our society redefined happiness to mean something it doesn't. I normally dislike self-help books ("The only way to get rich from a self-help book is to write one."), but on someone else's recommend I picked up: "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by William Irvine ( http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/01953... )
It is written by a philosopher and its aim is to rehabilitate the Stoics and explain how their philosophy could be useful in modern society. I'd highly suggest reading it (along with the works of actual Stoics as well as pre-Socratic philosophers), particularly to those who like the core message of Zen Buddhism but find it less suited to their way of thinking and difficult to practice.
"Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life."
So the thousands who died on the camps were some kind of nihilists, eh?
Why people always want life to be meaningful. Life may very well be absurd.
Is the pursuit of meaning a requirement for living a good life? I don't think so.
Well, I think the trick is the find meaning in small things and not to worry too much (all of the time) about how what you do fits in the grand scheme of things. Because, indeed, things that are meaningful on a small scale might be absurd when you put them in a bigger context.
So I don't see a contradiction here.
Of course worrying about what things mean on a larger scale can be virtuous, but you also want to come to terms with your limitations as a human being in a specific context.
I suggest you read some Frankl and try not to be too reactionary to the position he holds. You may in fact learn something about your own position that "life may very well be absurd".
No, the thousands who died were not nihilists; but the ones who did survive in spite of the odds, no matter what, were more able to do so when they had some meaning to their life.
And that is a very, very powerful observation. Its especially relevant today, when .. in fact .. life can very well be absurd. The difference between the two conditions is, to put it simply, you.
One of the great questions of the logotherapy practice, though it's never put this way for obvious reasons, is when the patient seeks for help and the psychiastrist asks: why don't you kill your self? The whole job of the doctor is to help the patient to find the answer for this question and help him to integrate that answer into his life.
And on the people who died in the camps being nihilists, well, the nazis didn't ask people about their ideas before killing them. And I think that some people had the death as their own meaning in life (e.g. the father who put himself in the death's line, in place of his child).
The article never actually gives a reason for preferring the pursuit of some meaning to the pursuit of happiness[1], does it? At most it provides anecdotal evidence you are more likely to survive a concentration camp.
[1] Ignoring the debate on how much they are, or can be, mutually exclusive.
In his bestselling 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life.
It's interesting to contrast this with the stories from Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.
Yet another gratuitous cruelty: the killer targets the most innocent, the people who would never steal food, lie, cheat, break the law, or betray a friend. It was a phenomenon that the Italian writer Primo Levi identified after emerging from Auschwitz, when he wrote that he and his fellow survivors never wanted to see one another again after the war because they had all done something of which they were ashamed. As Mrs. Song would observe a decade later, when she thought back on all the people she knew who died during those years in Chongjin, it was the “simple and kindhearted people who did what they were told—they were the first to die.”
That book has many tales of people surviving by cheating, stealing, and ignoring the plights of others. That's the real truth: In a starvation situation, nice people die first. A sense of meaning contains zero calories.
Meaning for life creates desire to live. it does not have to be real, moral, or good. Most stupid or lowly reason can give people strength to fight for survival in adverse situation.
It might be that the experiences/conditions were a bit different: perhaps (shameless utter speculation) Viktor Frankl had in mind those cases in which people were not intentionally murdered, but rather died themselves (starvation / reluctance to eat / falling apart / suicide). e.g. (wiki):
"On 25 September 1942, Frankl, his wife and his parents were deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic. When his skills in psychiatry were noticed, he was assigned to the psychiatric care ward in block B IV, establishing a camp service of "psychohygiene" or mental health care. He organized a unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. Later he set up a suicide watch, assisted by Regina Jonas."
Then again, e.g. his mother was killed intentionally in gas chambers. etc.
Is there any evolutionary advantages to be happy ad infinitum/nauseam? Not really. If we were blissful, serene, tranquil, peaceful, happy at all times there wouldn't be any incentive to progress, harbour thoughts of inadequacy and shortcoming? Fleeting happiness and love and feeling well are just evolutionary devices to keep us procreating and keeping the offspring safe until it can fend for itself.
He had a pregnant wife, that he chose not to protect, in favor of staying with his parents.
That's a tough position, and I am slightly critical of his decision, but recognize it as a tough call. Optimally, he would have put her on a ship and stayed with them, I suppose.
That she ended up dead, as well as both his parents, is sad. I would personally have probably tried to find a third way of doing things (sneak parents out of the country through any means necessary), but given some strange binary choice, I would have left with my wife. It isn't like the parents would survive conditions that got bad enough to kill his wife.
I can't imagine any parents expecting, encouraging, or wanting their children to remain in Nazi-controlled Europe when their children had an opportunity to flee to the US, as Frankl did.
(Also, every Western country who denied visas in the 1930s to the vast majority of Jews...wtf?)
Inside your brain there's a monkey brain. It is very certain about what it wants: tasty food, sexy partners, leisure time to sit in a tree and do absolutely nothing. You can use your amazing powers of reasoning and problem solving to give the monkey all it wants. Or you could question its wisdom, give it the occasional snub, and work on things that will still be important in a hundred years instead.
Maslow conceptualized human beings' needs into a hierarchical system. Where things like food and sex are lower level (and more necessary) than things like friendships and family.
Viktor Frankl chose to remain with his family rather than pursue his career in America. In Maslow's hierarchy, Frankl was rational in pursuing familial ties over his own "self-actualization".
Pure ambition is the most naked representation of this principle at work -- an infinite purpose that is never achieved. There is a surprising level of unhappiness in those individuals who have risen to the greatest heights of professional success for precisely this reason. Happiness and contentedness seem to require an ability to say "that's enough for now"... so can a highly, intrinsically driven individual truly achieve happiness?
My Catholic grandmother - who was born Jewish but orphaned and survived Nazism in Vienna - bought my my teenage atheist self this book. It worked on me in a way religion did not and has shaped my life since, leading me towards Ruskin being a pin-up in my historical studies.
It's a little crude but really is a great book, and the older I get the truer I think its premise is.
Articles such as these are very strange to me. There always is some unspoken nebulous assumptions which the author doesn't even bother to justify. What is the "better" that the author is referring to? She seems to think that it is better to be a person who could survive living in a Nazi prison camp than someone who could not. But what are you giving up to gain this ability? And why is it so important?
Listing out a recipe for how to become a "better" person is also a strange way of trying to help somebody. I mean, doesn't the idea of becoming a better person appeal the old base instincts of greed and fear? Greed of having the ability to appear confident, strong and satisfied, thereby the social status ladder, and fear of falling behind. By following her advice from such a viewpoint, you might be allowing yourself to be ever more aligned to instincts that drive people to despair.. ever chasing the carrot just out of reach.
Of course, it's just my interpretation. The author may never have intended to appeal to such base emotions, and is simply trying to help you achieve a higher plane of thought by example. And the book she pushes may truly be full of insight to guide you to the next step in your path to enlightenment and fulfillment.
All these self-help guru's all do seem to follow the same pattern though, it's always some sort of plan to appeal to your basic instinct to be better than the people around you. If they were truly altruistic, then why is it always a solution to your problem their peddling, and there is usually some next step tied to giving someone somewhere money?
I think they are often doing a disservice to people who take this stuff too seriously. By constantly bombarding you with the assumption that you're broken and they have the fix, they leave you feeling not to bright, helpless and insecure, when in fact if you just trust in yourself, you'll get over it. But telling people to do that doesn't sell.
I submitted this article a while ago when it was first published in The Atlantic, but it received no up-votes, so I deleted it. I wanted there to be a discussion on HN even though I doubted whether this was the appropriate place to have such a discussion.
The reason I posted it was because I wanted to see where people's logic would allow them to go regarding happiness and human action. I wanted to contrast what The Atlantic had written on Frankl with one of his contemporaries and Auschwitz inmate, Jean Améry. Améry was a Holocaust writer and survivor, but his ideas were in extremely stark contrast to Frankl. Améry was an intellectual in the old sense of the word. As in, he treated the world logically. He believed he had nothing in common with Jewish people. And, more to the point, he didn't theorise or philosophise his way out of the concentration camp like Frankl did. That is, Améry preferred to see the real, raw, tangible truth of how many Nazis treated them.
'"[W]hoever is, in the broadest sense, a believing person, whether his belief be metaphysical or bound to concrete reality, transcends himself," Améry says. "He is not the captive of his individuality; rather he is part of a spiritual continuity that is interrupted nowhere, not even in Auschwitz.'
This, of course, Améry was not. Before publishing On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death, he tried to take his own life but failed. After the book's publication, he tried once again and was successful. In this book, he talks about an internal, "other" logic that is only attained when one is suicidal. Yes, he is in favour of suicide once it has been thought about 'objectively' (even though he admits subjective occurrences are what drives the suicide). I highly recommend reading him.
But I must say, I've read some posts/submissions on suicide here and have never commented, because my opinions are unintentionally controversial and probably not systematic enough on the matter. I believe if given the option, one should always choose life, but I could never fault those for wanting to end theirs, because given the current state of many Western, developed countries, societies are unfortunately too cruel for some individuals. I remember when I wrote an essay in favour of suicide, my professor accused me of being hypersensitive. That may be true, but this is just one way how society has suppressed any real helpful way to have a discourse on voluntary death--by marginalising and labeling the "minor" numbers that end their lives; that is, "we" have to fix "them"; surely, nothing can be wrong with "us".
All this is just an excuse to recommend Améry. Reading him was, despite my young age, just like Kafka wrote:
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
"Happiness" means so many things.
Almost all of our pursuits are just achieve this nebulous goal: To be happy.
Through meditation I came to the conclusion that what we typically call happiness is just a temporary satisfaction of desires that won't last.
True happiness seems to be accepting what is, without judgment by realizing "emptiness" (a term describing that nothing exists on its own or has a distinct identity, including the self).
Once you see this you'll wonder how you could have missed this all this time, since it is so obviously true.
The problem is remembering this when things go wrong; that is distinguishes people truly at peace from the rest of us.
If nothing exists, why seek anything?
I don't disagree with your assertion, I just think it could be further developted to explain some reasons why it would be interesting to struggle to live and not throw the baby out with the bathtub.
I believe Nietzsche was going to tackle this question, but died before he could.
Yep, that's the interesting question. Along with: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Note that I did not say "nothing exists" I said "nothing exists on its own". Could have said "Don't take the self so seriously, in only exists in relation to other things".
Indeed, why seek anything? That only makes sense if there's something missing. Meditation would have it that there is nothing missing and that we just don't know that.
The article would have benefited from some clarity about the different meanings of happiness: Frankl's, which isn't discussed at all, and the definition used in the psychological research cited by the article. I think the author wrote a short article about a very provocative point raised in psychological research, dressed it up by bookending it with references to Frankl, and then completely ignored the contradictions and interesting questions raised by juxtaposing the two.
I mean, look at the transition from the Frankl intro to the meat of the article. First, the discussion of Frankl seems to imply that happiness depends on meaning. Quite possibly -- depending on the definition of happiness. "Research" is invoked to support Frankl: "having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction" and so on. Then this non-sequitur:
"It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."
---
This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness.
... followed by a discussion of how meaning and happiness are different and can be achieved independently. The article jumps from Frankl's point, which is that happiness cannot be pursued because it must "ensue" from meaning, to a very different point, which is that happiness can be achieved without meaning, and this is a socially harmful thing because it is associated with selfish feelings and behaviors! They're completely different ideas going in completely different directions, and the article just staples them together, with Frankl being the piece incongruously tacked on.
However, at the heart of the article is a psychological study that tackles a challenging question that goes back at least to Socrates' discussion of the Ring of Gyges. It is a common feature of many Greek schools of philosophy that they start from the assumption that the purpose of life is to be happy and conclude that happiness requires living (roughly) a moral life. This is a convenient but dubious coincidence: we may not be convinced, but we dearly wish it to be true.
Now we have psychologists apparently warning that scientific evidence is accumulating against this cherished link between "happiness" and virtuous, socially constructive living. This is a fascinating point. It's a scientific challenge to what you might call a very common "religious" belief that is a core belief of many non-religious people as well. The Greek philosophers, and many people today whom we might call progressives or liberals, believe that to make people good, you only have to educate them[1]. Understanding will compel them to act virtuously, even if their only concern is their own happiness. The belief that people who properly understand themselves will be good, compassionate people continues to be widespread today, bolstered by research into our empathic, social nature. Against this is the conservative view of people as innately morally flawed beings, driven by selfish desires, socially redeemable only through order and punishment, morally redeemable only through divine grace. The conservative view is bolstered by the evolutionary reasoning, which points out that genetic self-interest is only partially and accidentally congruent with ordinary notions of morality.
Anyway, I'm off to read the new study that prompted the article[2], and I can at least appreciate the article for surfacing this study, linking to it, and prompting me to think about these things again.
[1] Buddhists can be included in this group, and I'm sure there are many others I've left out.
51 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadI think a better title would've been "There's more to life than seeking selfish pleasure." But this is more linguistic nitpicking than anything else.
The post adds so little. And even in the post, it acknowledges this, yet has so many words/syllables/phrases to read through just for everyone, even the poster, to come to the same conclusion.
I really don't like being negative. I guess it's the negative pedantry that has bothered me to the point of saying something. If I'm in the minority and just venting, apologies (My comment might just be the ticket to get it out of my system).
I thought his post and the original article were very human.
We are fast approaching the point when one cannot expect a robust piece of writing (specialized or general) of lasting worth, unless its behind a paywall.
Frankly I don't blame them. Although some new entrants like QZ (dot) com and very few others are trying, there have been no inroads made in this direction, over the past five years.
We need some form of a micropayments mechanism to incentivize good work.
It's sort of a great example why the idea of a good "race to the bottom" no longer excites but rather uneases me. We've just gotten so darn good at reaching new lows.
Reword the article to be pointing out that "There's more to life than immediate hedonistic pleasure seeking activities". Now, most people just agree with it. Instead, if you play with multiple meanings of "being happy", you can try to create a sense of insight or deepness where none exists.
As to why the post added a disclaimer, perhaps he wanted to be polite and not sound offensive to what Frankl has accomplished. (Me too: I'm not saying Frankl's work was not good, just the style the article portrays.)
1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/
EDIT - I have immense respect for Dr.Victor. I didn't intend to sound arrogant.
In the (arguably) skewed world of Silicon Valley I think that's a valuable thing.
Second, we do not have the right to make others' lives more meaningful if they do not want them to be. The state's core role is to protect our rights. Libertarians and conservatives define rights negatively, while liberals also speak of positive liberties in addition to negative one, but this is the core premise of liberal democracy. What we do with these rights and liberties is up to us.
Of course there are exceptions: this is a big argument for having national service or conscription even in countries that can afford professional militaries and don't have hostile neighbors. I happen to disagree strongly with the idea of any kind of national service or conscription, but I don't find it something that should be dismissed outright and without debate.
More to the point, we do voluntarily inflict suffering on ourselves all the time: most obvious being physical exercise, pain of childbirth, but less obviously difficult academic programs (e.g., EECS at UC Berkeley or CMU). Indeed, we pay a great deal of money to have others inflict suffering on us as long as we're able to extract meaning from it.
Why is that your job?
Even if it's good for them, you don't have to be the one to do it.
And the same applies to everyone else, plus governments.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-character/
It is written by a philosopher and its aim is to rehabilitate the Stoics and explain how their philosophy could be useful in modern society. I'd highly suggest reading it (along with the works of actual Stoics as well as pre-Socratic philosophers), particularly to those who like the core message of Zen Buddhism but find it less suited to their way of thinking and difficult to practice.
So the thousands who died on the camps were some kind of nihilists, eh?
Why people always want life to be meaningful. Life may very well be absurd.
Is the pursuit of meaning a requirement for living a good life? I don't think so.
So I don't see a contradiction here.
Of course worrying about what things mean on a larger scale can be virtuous, but you also want to come to terms with your limitations as a human being in a specific context.
No, the thousands who died were not nihilists; but the ones who did survive in spite of the odds, no matter what, were more able to do so when they had some meaning to their life.
And that is a very, very powerful observation. Its especially relevant today, when .. in fact .. life can very well be absurd. The difference between the two conditions is, to put it simply, you.
I don't either. I think living a good life brings meaning.
And on the people who died in the camps being nihilists, well, the nazis didn't ask people about their ideas before killing them. And I think that some people had the death as their own meaning in life (e.g. the father who put himself in the death's line, in place of his child).
[1] Ignoring the debate on how much they are, or can be, mutually exclusive.
It's interesting to contrast this with the stories from Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.
Yet another gratuitous cruelty: the killer targets the most innocent, the people who would never steal food, lie, cheat, break the law, or betray a friend. It was a phenomenon that the Italian writer Primo Levi identified after emerging from Auschwitz, when he wrote that he and his fellow survivors never wanted to see one another again after the war because they had all done something of which they were ashamed. As Mrs. Song would observe a decade later, when she thought back on all the people she knew who died during those years in Chongjin, it was the “simple and kindhearted people who did what they were told—they were the first to die.”
That book has many tales of people surviving by cheating, stealing, and ignoring the plights of others. That's the real truth: In a starvation situation, nice people die first. A sense of meaning contains zero calories.
"On 25 September 1942, Frankl, his wife and his parents were deported to the Nazi Theresienstadt Ghetto. There Frankl worked as a general practitioner in a clinic. When his skills in psychiatry were noticed, he was assigned to the psychiatric care ward in block B IV, establishing a camp service of "psychohygiene" or mental health care. He organized a unit to help newcomers to the camp overcome shock and grief. Later he set up a suicide watch, assisted by Regina Jonas."
Then again, e.g. his mother was killed intentionally in gas chambers. etc.
I would assume Frankl was talking about those who had survived the harsh daily conditions rather than those who had dodged a bullet or a gas chamber.
:)
That's a tough position, and I am slightly critical of his decision, but recognize it as a tough call. Optimally, he would have put her on a ship and stayed with them, I suppose.
(Also, every Western country who denied visas in the 1930s to the vast majority of Jews...wtf?)
Maslow conceptualized human beings' needs into a hierarchical system. Where things like food and sex are lower level (and more necessary) than things like friendships and family.
Viktor Frankl chose to remain with his family rather than pursue his career in America. In Maslow's hierarchy, Frankl was rational in pursuing familial ties over his own "self-actualization".
It's a little crude but really is a great book, and the older I get the truer I think its premise is.
Listing out a recipe for how to become a "better" person is also a strange way of trying to help somebody. I mean, doesn't the idea of becoming a better person appeal the old base instincts of greed and fear? Greed of having the ability to appear confident, strong and satisfied, thereby the social status ladder, and fear of falling behind. By following her advice from such a viewpoint, you might be allowing yourself to be ever more aligned to instincts that drive people to despair.. ever chasing the carrot just out of reach.
Of course, it's just my interpretation. The author may never have intended to appeal to such base emotions, and is simply trying to help you achieve a higher plane of thought by example. And the book she pushes may truly be full of insight to guide you to the next step in your path to enlightenment and fulfillment.
All these self-help guru's all do seem to follow the same pattern though, it's always some sort of plan to appeal to your basic instinct to be better than the people around you. If they were truly altruistic, then why is it always a solution to your problem their peddling, and there is usually some next step tied to giving someone somewhere money?
I think they are often doing a disservice to people who take this stuff too seriously. By constantly bombarding you with the assumption that you're broken and they have the fix, they leave you feeling not to bright, helpless and insecure, when in fact if you just trust in yourself, you'll get over it. But telling people to do that doesn't sell.
The reason I posted it was because I wanted to see where people's logic would allow them to go regarding happiness and human action. I wanted to contrast what The Atlantic had written on Frankl with one of his contemporaries and Auschwitz inmate, Jean Améry. Améry was a Holocaust writer and survivor, but his ideas were in extremely stark contrast to Frankl. Améry was an intellectual in the old sense of the word. As in, he treated the world logically. He believed he had nothing in common with Jewish people. And, more to the point, he didn't theorise or philosophise his way out of the concentration camp like Frankl did. That is, Améry preferred to see the real, raw, tangible truth of how many Nazis treated them.
To quote a blog post about Améry, which I recommend (http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/p/jean-amery-biographical-introd...), that quotes him:
'"[W]hoever is, in the broadest sense, a believing person, whether his belief be metaphysical or bound to concrete reality, transcends himself," Améry says. "He is not the captive of his individuality; rather he is part of a spiritual continuity that is interrupted nowhere, not even in Auschwitz.'
This, of course, Améry was not. Before publishing On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death, he tried to take his own life but failed. After the book's publication, he tried once again and was successful. In this book, he talks about an internal, "other" logic that is only attained when one is suicidal. Yes, he is in favour of suicide once it has been thought about 'objectively' (even though he admits subjective occurrences are what drives the suicide). I highly recommend reading him.
But I must say, I've read some posts/submissions on suicide here and have never commented, because my opinions are unintentionally controversial and probably not systematic enough on the matter. I believe if given the option, one should always choose life, but I could never fault those for wanting to end theirs, because given the current state of many Western, developed countries, societies are unfortunately too cruel for some individuals. I remember when I wrote an essay in favour of suicide, my professor accused me of being hypersensitive. That may be true, but this is just one way how society has suppressed any real helpful way to have a discourse on voluntary death--by marginalising and labeling the "minor" numbers that end their lives; that is, "we" have to fix "them"; surely, nothing can be wrong with "us".
All this is just an excuse to recommend Améry. Reading him was, despite my young age, just like Kafka wrote:
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Through meditation I came to the conclusion that what we typically call happiness is just a temporary satisfaction of desires that won't last.
True happiness seems to be accepting what is, without judgment by realizing "emptiness" (a term describing that nothing exists on its own or has a distinct identity, including the self).
Once you see this you'll wonder how you could have missed this all this time, since it is so obviously true. The problem is remembering this when things go wrong; that is distinguishes people truly at peace from the rest of us.
Note that I did not say "nothing exists" I said "nothing exists on its own". Could have said "Don't take the self so seriously, in only exists in relation to other things".
Indeed, why seek anything? That only makes sense if there's something missing. Meditation would have it that there is nothing missing and that we just don't know that.
I mean, look at the transition from the Frankl intro to the meat of the article. First, the discussion of Frankl seems to imply that happiness depends on meaning. Quite possibly -- depending on the definition of happiness. "Research" is invoked to support Frankl: "having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction" and so on. Then this non-sequitur:
"It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."
---
This is why some researchers are cautioning against the pursuit of mere happiness.
... followed by a discussion of how meaning and happiness are different and can be achieved independently. The article jumps from Frankl's point, which is that happiness cannot be pursued because it must "ensue" from meaning, to a very different point, which is that happiness can be achieved without meaning, and this is a socially harmful thing because it is associated with selfish feelings and behaviors! They're completely different ideas going in completely different directions, and the article just staples them together, with Frankl being the piece incongruously tacked on.
However, at the heart of the article is a psychological study that tackles a challenging question that goes back at least to Socrates' discussion of the Ring of Gyges. It is a common feature of many Greek schools of philosophy that they start from the assumption that the purpose of life is to be happy and conclude that happiness requires living (roughly) a moral life. This is a convenient but dubious coincidence: we may not be convinced, but we dearly wish it to be true.
Now we have psychologists apparently warning that scientific evidence is accumulating against this cherished link between "happiness" and virtuous, socially constructive living. This is a fascinating point. It's a scientific challenge to what you might call a very common "religious" belief that is a core belief of many non-religious people as well. The Greek philosophers, and many people today whom we might call progressives or liberals, believe that to make people good, you only have to educate them[1]. Understanding will compel them to act virtuously, even if their only concern is their own happiness. The belief that people who properly understand themselves will be good, compassionate people continues to be widespread today, bolstered by research into our empathic, social nature. Against this is the conservative view of people as innately morally flawed beings, driven by selfish desires, socially redeemable only through order and punishment, morally redeemable only through divine grace. The conservative view is bolstered by the evolutionary reasoning, which points out that genetic self-interest is only partially and accidentally congruent with ordinary notions of morality.
Anyway, I'm off to read the new study that prompted the article[2], and I can at least appreciate the article for surfacing this study, linking to it, and prompting me to think about these things again.
[1] Buddhists can be included in this group, and I'm sure there are many others I've left out.
[2] http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/aaker/pages/documents/SomeKe...