The happiness hypothesis: well-being and life satisfaction

Happiness Hypothesis

I approached Jonathan Haidt's book The Happiness Hypothesis with the same sort of hubris that I tend to exhibit when someone asks me if I like a work of art. I am quite confident that I can point to art that I like, while being less consistently able to tell why I like or don't like a work of art. Similarly, I have been quite confident of my ability to describe what appears to make me happy and, further, I believe that I have rather unerringly sought what seems to make me happy. But a reading of Haidt's book made the ground shift under my life tenets much the same as wet beach sand gives way -- where standing still for any length of time, I find that little pools of water have mysteriously appeared under my toes and heels. Where did the solid footing of the hard wet sand go? Eventually, I must admit that sand is sand, wet or dry, and it never makes a good foundation. The same can be said for our fondest and most frequent beliefs about how the world works -- or rather, how we as humans work in the world.

I have often found useful Plato's illustration of the cave as a way to depict the limitations of human awareness. To this, now, I can add another practical Plato conceptualization, as cited by Haidt. The idea of a bad horse being as deaf as a post has great applicability. Haidt has used the phrase to express the absolute resistance that habit or instinct has toward reasoned resolve. As Haidt points out, Plato and others who lived during a time when large animals were routinely domesticated clearly understood what it means to control a creature without changing its nature. To me, this is the message that Haidt delivers in his chapter on the divided self. The best horse trainer is the one works with the horse's instincts to teach behavior that is foreign to it, or at least is not in its repertoire. Similarly -- though Haidt refers to an elephant from chapter to chapter -- it makes sense that our implicit or automatic processes can be managed though not eradicated. In fact, just as Haidt learned to trust the trail horse not to walk off the edge of the trail and fall onto the rocks below, Haidt indicates that trusting those implicit and automatic processes to do just what they have always done grants a measure of control over the confederation of elements of the mind.

Haidt posits that people can develop their rational understanding of their behavior sufficiently to be efficacious self-evaluators, and thereby act with greater concordance among the various aspects of their "whole" being. Grounded in positive psychology, Haidt's theories describe pathways for people to create more intentional lives by integrating the many disparate forces that influence their behavior and thinking with the inescapable biological aspects of being human. Some of the very simplest of Haidt's dualities resonated with me, particularly the notion of our lizard brain that doesn't ever stop working, even when our more sophisticated intellectual engine is driving.