Happiness: What is the Secret Sauce?

I have been reflecting on Ray’s lecture yesterday about the link, or lack thereof, between money and happiness. As a psychology undergrad, yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve heard about the magic number beyond which money doesn’t matter. It’s a widely cited body of research, complemented by the many, many studies about what actually does increase happiness (think gratitude, meaningful relationships, work-life balance, etc.). Yet, here we are, spending huge amounts of money on graduate degrees, hoping our newly acquired credentials will qualify us for careers that pay us well to do what we care about. I feel this tension particularly strongly as a dual degree student with the business school. My peers are working their butts off to get high-paying jobs, despite the scientific evidence that we will inevitably be unfulfilled if we follow the highest salary. So what gives? Why are we so stubbornly unwilling to acknowledge the evidence against a path to happiness paved with dollar bills? And more importantly, what will it take (or as Ray would say, what are the conditions under which) we will finally wake up and change our behavior? I have a few thoughts based on what we’ve learned in class about why we struggle to change right now:

1. Norms: We live in a society where the norm very clearly establishes money as a proxy for success. In that regard, the normative belief is that others in our lives expect us to make decisions aligned with maximizing income. Suggesting that you are going to forego college to pursue your passion for music, for example, is viewed as risky, irresponsible, even immature behavior rather than brave, thoughtful or reflective of self-knowledge. It is no wonder that we continue to buy into (pun intended) the notion that money equals success.
2. Attentional Fatigue: In the face of such overwhelming social norms, it would take a substantial amount of directed attention for a person to really reflect on their goals and how to get there, not to mention be open to take an “alternative” path. At the same time, we live in an era of infinite stimulus and too many demands on our attention to count. Our culture is one of constant connectedness, demanding that you not only know everything, but also be available at all hours. This does not exactly foster an environment conducive to restoration and reflection.
3. Awareness of Consequences: While we know that the pursuit of wealth does not yield happiness based on research, individuals do not necessarily know this from personal experience. The adverse consequences of prioritizing wealth over happiness are not likely to be felt until much later in life, while we are making decisions about our careers and personal lives right now.

Now that I’ve painted a fairly bleak picture of why we’re doomed to forever fall into the trap of a mindless pursuit of profitability, my question for our class is what do we do next? If we were to design an intervention to encourage ourselves and our peers will reevaluate the paths we’re on, what would it look like? It seems to me that building a community of people willing to challenge the status quo has a lot to do with it. I also think frequent feedback and reinforcement would be an important component of any attempt to shift the norm. What else will it take?

The end of the world is coming... and it is brought to you by Coca-Cola

I have a dear friend that is an engineer like me, but his life-long dream is to become a poet. Or some sort of writer, at least. I can't say he has succeeded but he is definetely good. He usually comes up with clever phrases like the one top (I don't really know if he took it from somewhere... maybe he did) and I find it fascinating. I mean the end of the world is the event to end all events so prospecting it from our consumerist worldview i can't imagine it not having a sponsor. And Coca-Cola sponsors all major events, so why wouldn't they sponsor the biggest one in mankind history? I mean they somehow found the way to sponsor sport events like the Olympics and it doesn't seem to bother us, so probably they will find a way to make the Apocalypsis appealing. And well, for a change, it is an event they helped materialize and not an obvious whitewash.

All jokes aside, even with the world collapse being an unlikely scenario, we do face difficult times. The two most likely scenarios we covered in class, Green Stability and Energy Descent, require a significant paradigm change for us, as a global society. We can't continue living this way. We know it. We all know it. We also know that this materialistic way of living is not significantly "better" for us. And by "we" I don't mean "we, the experts" I mean all of us, as Ray told us in today's lecture.

So what is happening? Are we in a spell casted by the Illuminati and Reptilian lords? Is Coke's main ingredient a mind controller? Are we just dumb?

I understand that a a transition towards a greener global society requires patience and positive emotions and that our role as "experts" is to guide the population but i don't overstimate the power of anger. Anger gave us mankind major political revolutions and structural changes. People should get angry when Coca-Cola sponsors the Olympics, but that doesn't mean that they should go and bomb their local Coca-Cola store. I doesn't even mean that they should stop drinking Coke. They should find a way to channel that anger into something positive.

Today's class was an eye-opener in some ways. The seed of sustainability is already planted in society. Our role is to nurture it with water... and not with Coke.

The Tale of the Woeful Reader: A True Story

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in the deep, dark forest where the wildcats roamed. Every day, she bounced happily into her wagon so her father could take her to school in the nearby countryside. She loved school, and always tried hard for the sake of trying. She loved learning as much as she could about far-off kingdoms and beasts great and small. Before she was old enough to go to school, she loved it when she would bundle in blankets by the fire and her mother and father would read to her. She simply couldn't wait until she was old enough for school where she would get to read all by herself. For she knew at school there would be a whole library full of books, and whole hours of class devoted to spending time in that library. Oh the anticipation!

Finally the time had come to be at the country school where her library time could begin in earnest. She cursed her fellow little girls and boys for moving so slowly on their way down into the cellar, where the books lived, and bumped into them in her haste as she neared the warm glow of the lanterns on the colorful bookshelves. To her the library was magical, with its winding stacks of knowledge and fantasies, its magnificent maps and paintings on the walls, and wise Mrs. Lockwood, the keeper of the books. The little girl spent hours dwarfed in a too-large chair, learning words she'd never imagined and weaving together elaborate tales of adventure with each page. Mrs. Lockwood even showed her the wonders of the great books of ancient knowledge where she could read about powerful emperors and cities of yore. When the school year ended, she could hardly wait for summer to fly by so she could come back to the library the following year. 

And so it was that the autumn came and the next school year began. But unbeknownst to the little girl, a strange thing was to begin in the library this year. The library contained a market, full of sparkling treasures, that the little girl had always seen but never been allowed inside. This year, on her first visit to the library, Mrs. Lockwood told her that she have special privileges this year in the library. The little girl would get to visit the special market, if she would only continue to read the books she loved and share their stories with Mrs. Lockwood. With each picture book she read and shared, she would be given one silver coin. When she got better at reading and could read bigger chapter books, she would receive a whole gold coin! The little girl couldn't believe it! She could collect coins for the reading she would have done anyway, and use it to buy gifts for her darling mother and father. They worked so hard and were so kind to her--she loved them so, and as she had no brothers or sisters, she wanted to do everything she could to make them happy. She quickly earned several silver coins for her reading, and brought home a golden treasure box, a jeweled necklace, and a wooden game for her mother and father.

But a strange thing happened as the years went on. The little girl got better and better at reading, make no mistake. She earned many gold coins for reading long, difficult books. But she stopped hurrying to the library, and stopped feeling its magic beckon. In her free time after school she began to rush through her books, no matter how captivating the story, so she could move on to doing other things. She found herself even bored while at the library, especially when she was waiting her turn to share a story with Mrs. Lockwood. Her last year at the school, she only bothered to read a few books.

And then the little girl grew up. She still loves tales of adventure and seeking out new knowledge, but she does not look to books for these. Instead reading is the last thing she instinctively wants to do to learn or experience something. She would rather learn and be entertained by talking and working with others, through watching motion pictures, or simply by jumping in and doing things. She has continued to go to school to seek higher learning, and reads a great deal for her increasingly difficult classes. However, she dreads this reading and only reads when a teacher tells her to, with grades and the promise of a degree having replaced Mrs. Lockwood's gold and silver incentives. In fact, in the whole rest of her life combined she has never read as many books as she did in that first year at the country school, before the gold and silver coins entered her life. Since she left the country school, she has only actually finished a handful of books, ever, for the pure enjoyment of it. This makes her sad, because she remembers that little girl who loved books and longed to soak them in over long hours by the fire. However, she is now ruined and has to fight to swallow what she reads. Today, as she writes this tale, she realizes that it must have been the gold and silver coins that spoiled her love for reading. Although Mrs. Lockwood meant no harm, the little girl fell prey to the justification effect, and, without even realizing it, attributed her motivation for reading to the wealth and gifts it brought her from the library market. To this day, without that extrinsic motivation, she finds her motivation for reading as barren as the dark lands she once read about in those fairytales of yore.

Is there any way for that little girl to return and read happily ever after?