Happiness & Wish Fulfillment
Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, conducted an experiment a few years ago in which he had students eat a bowl of their favorite ice cream while listening to music — eight days in a row. At the end of the first session, he asked them to predict how much they'd be enjoying the experience at the end. A lot of predictions were flat wrong: students who predicted they'd hate it all by the end were actually still enjoying it a lot; students who predicted they'd be happy turned out to be completely turned off.
That poses a problem for the basic tenets of modern economics: that people act in their own self-interest most of the time, and that they usually know what that self-interest is. "Well-being is actually the central idea of economics," the Princeton economist Alan Krueger said last week. "But we've never really tried to measure it. We've said, If we're richer, and we have more options, we must be better off. But we haven't tried to find out if it's really true." ...
The big question facing the U.S. economy right now may be one that the happiness-studies people are only starting to think about: Can unhappiness hurt an economy? Studies have shown that self-described happy people earn more and are more productive. (Of course, we don't know if success makes them happy, or vice versa.) And, clearly, economic malaise can feed on itself: glum investors turn miserly, consumers get tight, and businessmen balk at risk. Hard as it may be to believe, the future of the U.S. economy looks bright, in the long term. But to get there we might just need to look on the sunny side.
Source: The New Yorker
Most Christians are certain that they will be happy for all eternity in heaven — but why? They certainly haven’t been there, so it's not as though they have any basis for comparison to other activities or places. If people can't be relied upon to know in advance if they will be happy eating ice cream and listening to music just one week away, how can they reliably know in advance if they will be happy in heaven for all eternity? How can they reliably claim that the rest of us will be happy doing the same — so happy, in fact, that we should adopt their religion just to achieve it?
Comments
>Indeed, people are wrong an awful lot about what will make them happy in the future.
I actually think religion adds to this problem by helping to create it. If most parents raise their kids in Christianity in the US, then most kids are not taught critical thought, but trust, faith and acceptance of god’s will for them. If that is what is promoted to me, and not that I should examine my life and try to work out what’s best (but instead trust that a divine book or power knows what’s best), then, if I try to leave that faith and work out my life on my own, as an adult without critical thinking skills or training…what are the odds I’ll be successful in concluding what I need in life and what I need to do to get there?
When I was a Christian, I probably would have gasped if someone told me I lacked critical thinking skills; but after being out of that mindset for a long while, I can see the huge difference in the amount of work I (happily) put in when it comes to evaluating and working toward my future, as opposed to my Christian days, where I did what was necessary, smiled, and accepted whatever happened as god’s plan for me.
When a Christian teen strays from the faith, and then makes a mess of his/her life (which is predictable since they have no real skills to speak of, beyond “trust and obey”), it validates the religion to the child. “I really do make a mess of things when I try to live my life without god. Maybe it is easier to just follow the template.” This is black, that is white, and wow, how easy is that? Much less stress. God really _is_ the answer!
If we step back and consider an Amish model instead, I think it becomes much more clear. Consider the culture shock of a young Amish person who wants to leave and join “the world.” If he isn’t able to overcome his fears and re-learn basic social skills, language, and 9-12 grade educational material…he won’t be able to adequately function outside the Amish community. I can easily imagine such a kid going back harrowed by the experience, and even longing for that simple life–even for all it’s restrictions. At least he understands it, and he can function within it without so much fear and effort and failure.
In modern Christianity we undermine children in the same way–telling them they aren’t worthy, that they’re products of sin with sinful natures who are responsible for the gruesome human sacrifice of Jesus. That even for all their myriad faults and flaws, and even for the reality they “deserve” eternal torture for the crime of being who they are, and not being perfect (what a positive affirmation to a child!), god loves them and will let them use blood sacrifice to be with Him in paradise.
After that self-esteem annihilation, is it any wonder they can’t get their lives together without running back to “god” for some direction?
No self-esteem, no critical thinking skills, and my life is falling apart because…I don’t have god? Or because I don’t have self-esteem and critical thinking skills?
Yes, Tracieh I believe you are absolutely correct. I am a Vocational Technical Teacher. I teach construction and carpentry. I continually tell my students that you need a good understanding of intermediate mathematics and critical thinking skills to be able to convert blueprints into actual buildings. Last year I taught adult students how to do basic woodworking. Most of them could not even read a ruler much less how to add and subtract fractions. Mathematics teaches basic critical thinking. Americans are not encouraged to study math and science, because it produces critical thinking. Critical thinking is detrimental to Christian philosophy, because it makes people think about how they use their brains when reacting to the real world.
My students were from many different countries. The Asians, Cubans, and some Africans did not have the same problems with mathematics. At first they had problems with metric conversion, but after they figured out our backward American system of inches and feet they did very well.
Dave Q
I see a major major problem Here. If you start thinking, your soul is bound straight for the lake of fire and brimstone!! You don’t want that do you?
i had similar thoughts as tracieh while reading this article:
so much of mainstream human culture is blindly listening to what others say is best (religion, fashion, schooling, movies, tv, entertainment etc etc etc)
i find that people in general prefer to have the main things in life decided for them, that they are perfectly content in making the small day-to-day decisions, but not much further.
it could be argued that this is just a basic human trait. but the fact that culturally, we don’t try to instill critical thinking in children, that argument falls flat. to border on conspiracy, it boils down to having a controllable populace. and that is too bad in my opinion.
and yes, it starts at infancy. brand names, and duties, sexual roles etc. again, i haven’t raised a child and i know it is difficult, but i would want to try to raise that child with the idea that there are always choices to make, and to help them learn to make decisions, not provide the answers for them.
i mostly can’t accept something until i can logically understand the concept in my own head first. sometimes this causes problems, but for the vast majority of instances, i am able to file that knowledge away and use it in conjunction with other learned information and use it to make decisions that make me happy. instead of arriving at some goal set out for me by someone else and wondering why i haven’t achieved some illusive canned idea of what happiness means.
I get pleasure from endless things from model building, my dog, and walks on the prairie. I get happiness from taking on crooks and breaking their rackets up. I can thank George Bush for that.
Again amazed at the great answers from tracieh, Dave Q and tamar. How can I top them? except for Ron…I hope he’s joking.