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What is it about us that we never seem to be happy, at least for long? What does it even mean to be happy?

There have been endless studies suggesting that, a year after winning a major lottery, people are no happier than they were before. And that a year after losing a limb, those who suffered that tragedy are just as happy, on average, as the lottery winners.

Robert Sapolsky has explained how our body chemistry drives us to always want more — to never really be happy with what we have. That’s probably part of it. But another part of it, I think, is that our human brains’ constant ruminations — second-guessing, worrying, regretting etc, leave us in a stage of constant low-level anxiety, never content with the present, and obsessed with the past and the future.

This is all, of course, just my theory, just my amateur opinion. But my conditioning is to try to make sense of everything, and to use this blog to help me do so, so here we go.

Based on years of living with, observing, and reading about, non-human creatures, my sense is that, unless they have been abused or constrained under situations of chronic stress, they live most of their lives in a state of what I call alert equanimity (box 1 in the chart above). These are, I am guessing, times when their feelings of natural contentment are not being disrupted by stressful situations and the chemical responses of their bodies to those situations…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

June 11, 2020

Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

The oppressed rise to their feet. Police sink to their knees. Silence is violence.

And violence is speech.

From sea to glittering sea, from one continent to the next… protests yet rage.

An injustice somewhere on a Minneapolis street evidently threatens justice everywhere.

It certainly threatens the peace everywhere.

Here in Baltimore, storefronts up Charles Street and down Charles Street are barricaded against bricks:

Is there a greater symbol of hope, of love, than a plywood sheet stretched across a storefront window?

We have yet to encounter one in this world.

“When a Man Enters a Crowd He Exits Civilization”

We have nothing to say against protests, of course. If a man wishes to march against perceived injustice, let him march… lest the heavens fall.

Yet our spacious and tolerant disposition places us in a pickle jar. For a man in a protest is a man in a crowd…

And when a man enters a crowd he exits civilization.

He goes in, his blood goes up… and his reason goes out.

As Herr Nietzsche observed, madness is a rarity in individuals — but the rule in crowds.

Or as argued Mr. Charles Mackay, author of the 1841 classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

“A Crowd Runs Not on Thought but on Hormones”

A man in a crowd ceases to be a man but a face.

He ceases to be an independent unit but a cog in a lunatic machine.

A man in a crowd does not think for himself. The crowd thinks for him.

That is, the man ceases to think whatsoever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On Finding Our Authentic Selves: or, the True and the False in the Age of Rousseau

April 24, 2019

On Finding Our Authentic Selves: or, the True and the False in the Age of Rousseau

Being Part 3 of: Why Liberals Should be Conservative: Climate Change, Excellence, and the Practice of Happiness

It may be urged that every individual man carries, within himself, at least in his adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal. –Friedrich von Schiller

Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for itself; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e. human) being . . . . This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man—the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species.–Karl Marx

As in every kind of radicalism the moment comes when any critique of the present must choose its bearings, between past and future. And if the past is chose, as now so often and so deeply, we must push the argument through to the roots that are being defended; push attention, human attention, back to the natural economy, the moral economy, the organic society, from which the critical values are drawn.–Raymond Williams[i]

First, a recap: I have proposed in Part 1 and Part 2 that Liberalism (which, recall, encompasses mainstream liberals and “conservatives”) does not have the conceptual resources to enforce or even encourage limits to consumption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

10-Minute Neighborhoods: The Low-Tech Solution to Almost* Everything

June 6, 2018

10-Minute Neighborhoods: The Low-Tech Solution to Almost* Everything

What if it were possible to make headway on all these issues with simple changes to our neighborhoods?

What if we could cut our medical costs in half? What if we could give the average American an added five years of healthy life? What if we could cut our energy use, our water use, and our greenhouse gas emissions by more than half while improving our happiness and prosperity? What if we could provide affordable housing for millennials staggering under student loan debt? What if we could help elders age gracefully in a connected community, with their mobility and cognition intact? What if we could create communities where children can experience both safety and independence? What if we could cut in half the cost of essential services provided by cities and towns? What if we could prevent prime farmland from becoming suburbs and McMansions? What if we could create biodiverse greenbelts and wildlife corridors around our towns and cities? What if inside our cities we could create calming tree canopies, community vegetable gardens and open spaces for all to benefit from?

All this can be achieved with 10-minute walkable neighborhoods, neighborhoods where everyone can step out their front door and reach a wide array of goods and services within ten minutes by foot. All it takes is enough density within a half-mile radius of a commercial shopping street to allow the businesses and services there to prosper. We’re not talking Hong Kong or Manhattan density, just 16 or so housing units per acre, which can be easily achieved by allowing again the “Missing Middle” of housing that was so common before World War II. What is the Missing Middle?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The good life or the ballot? Both you say? I say the good life first, the ballot second.

January 25, 2018

The good life or the ballot? Both you say? I say the good life first, the ballot second.

We have reached a pivotal moment. I think we can be certain that governments and other powers, such as corporations and their promotional arms, such as the BBC, are set on destruction. The powers have made no appropriate attempts to act on climate change, or on the current ecological catastrophe. It is plain that those in power think climate change is not real – rather it is a bee in the bonnet of just enough of the electorate to make it politically worth the posture of a response. Since the first world climate summit in 1990 carbon dioxide emissions have risen steadily, so that by 2017 they were 60% higher than when nations first pledged to act. Argument within governing systems is without hope of being heard, or even vaguely understood.

But there is hope. It is (as it has always been) in living the good life. Though such a course may fail, until it does so, it remains a source of happiness. It is now the only productive course we have to mitigate the worst of climate change. By all means speak to the powers – you never know – and this writer is frequently wrong – but without rapid and then hopefully fashionable personal change, there’s not a realistic hope in hell…

If political engagement means that we become distracted from the problems of our own lives, then that engagement will be more destructive than productive. To consider that social change comes more from hierarchical instruction than personal consideration denies laws of physics. Crowds, electorates, gangs, or societies are made up of the physics of people – one by one. A crowd is five people, thirty people, a thousand people with those specific weights, energies and substances.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Volatility on Steroids

October 27, 2017

Volatility on Steroids

Salvador Dalí White calm 1936It’s been a while since we last heard from longtime friend of the Automatic Earth Dr. Nelson Lebo III, New Englander living in Wanganui, New Zealand. Nelson has written a fine collection of articles on this site through the years.

Of course I thought, when I first saw this piece in my mailbox, that he would have written about New Zealand’s new prime minister, Labour’s 37-year-young Jacinda Ardern, whose first action in her new job will be to prevent foreigners from buying existing homes in her country. It’ll be interesting to see how she intends to do so while remaining inside the Trans Pacific Partnership -TPP- agreement.

Radio New Zealand has a portrait in which she says ‘I Want The Government … To Bring Kindness Back’. And obviously my first thought was: wait till you meet Donald Trump. But it would be misleading to put the lack of kindness in politics on his shoulders. There’s too much blood on too many hands.

But Nelson didn’t address her this time. I hope he will soon. Instead, and I should have known, he writes about Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance. When I wrote The Koyaanisqatsi Economya month ago, he said he had been thinking of the same theme.

Nelson named his article “Pura Vida trumps Koyaanisqatsi”, but I thought his emphasis on volatility is too important to not be the headline. Especially given that volatility in financial markets is at a -near- record low, while it appears blatantly obvious that this not reflect the ‘real world’ at all.

Nelson’s summary of the real world: “..hurricanes, mass shootings, hurricanes, opioid epidemics, hurricanes, people sleeping in cars, hurricanes, rising suicide rates, hurricanes, and children dying from cold damp homes..”

If that doesn’t spell volatility, what does? Forget about financial markets reflecting anything real anymore. Thanks to central banks, markets are fiddling while Rome burns.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Brief Visit to the End of the World

February 23, 2016

A Brief Visit to the End of the World

People mostly want the same thing, and many of us already have it, but we don’t really notice it.

I have no way of confirming this, but I bet that if you could interview people across different centuries and cultures, asking them what they wanted most, you would notice a distinct theme in their answers.

Some people would want great riches or power. Others would say they want something very specific: to invent a particular thing, or for a particular person to love them, or to win a gold medal or give an Oscar speech.

But I suspect most of them would say they want something like this:

I want to be able to do my work and spend time with my friends and family, free to live my own values in relative peace. I just want a fair chance to pursue love and happiness, and a stable, humble life.

You could call this “The Peacetime Dream”, a life with the normal share of ups and downs—necessarily including heartbreak, health issues, setbacks and disappointments—but which isn’t defined by war or persecution. Almost universally, people want basic stability and basic freedom, and to someone who doesn’t have those things they are clearly the best things in the world.

But to someone who does have those things, their greatness is not so clear. It’s easy to forget, or never notice at all, that many or most of us already have this state of affairs, more or less—certainly most people who read blogs in their spare time.

It’s also easy to forget that many (or most?) of history’s humans never had the Peacetime Dream. I wonder how many billions of individual human lives have been lived under tyrannical regimes, forced servitude, or during a war or a plague, or maybe all of those things.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ten Wonderful Things I’m Grateful For (Irony Alert)

April 21, 2015

Ten Wonderful Things I’m Grateful For (Irony Alert)

Being grateful boosts your happiness. Ten wonderful things I’m grateful for.

Since every volume on the nearly endless shelf of pop psychology self-help books recommends working up some gratitude as the key to happiness, I’ve conjured up a list of what I’m grateful for. (Please turn your irony setting on.)

1. I’m grateful that our choice of president has been reduced to two equally detestable dynasties or their proxies. This greatly simplifies the process of selecting a warmongering figurehead for the Empire and its bankers.

2. I’m grateful that I can watch a full spectrum of entertainment, ranging from depraved to dreadfully unfunnyon any device at anytime. This white noise helps block out any troubling clarity of thought or urge to ask what I might feel if I wasn’t constantly distracted.

3. I’m grateful that there are so many opportunities to borrow money, because if I couldn’t borrow more, I might miss an astounding opportunity to consume more of something I don’t really need.

4. I’m grateful that every food item in the store now contains sugar in one form or another, or a sugar substitute. This simplifies the process of maintaining my addiction to sugar, as all I need to do is eat anything produced by Corporate America’s food sector.

5. I’m grateful I live in a country where the government can trample on the rights of its citizens behind a thin veil of legitimacy. After all, what terrible thing might happen if the government couldn’t arrest those horrible people tearing up their front yard lawn to plant a vegetable garden?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

I WILL NOT HAVE A DEPRESSING DEPRESSION

March 24, 2015

I WILL NOT HAVE A DEPRESSING DEPRESSION

With the world careening towards great change, challenges and chaos, there is no shortage of links and lists to help us toughen up and get prepared to stay healthy, alert and nimble. But at the end of the day it is our own ‘self’, our mind we are alone with. It is here where fear creeps to the forefront and the darkness which is the unknown future appears so menacing.

Many who are making big changes to their lifestyle express the anger and frustration of not being able to shake friends and family awake, myself included. The adjustments I make will probably allow me to continue to be warm and fed, but leave me wallowing in what I think of as an advance case of ‘survivor’s guilt’. Knowing there will be extreme suffering and loss for everyone, loved ones and strangers alike, if the bottom falls out, how am I to reconcile this contradiction and seek my own happiness?

It is said misery loves company. And it is the rare person who doesn’t resent others basking in a happy disposition while their world seems to be falling apart. So is it wrong to be happy these days? Does it make it more acceptable to others and ourselves if we call it contentment or inner peace instead?

People have a difficult enough time finding happiness in what are generally perceived to be good times. So imagine what happens when fear sets in as the general population beings to recognize that the image of life as it was sold to them is not real and most certainly unattainable. How many people will be thinking about being happy then? Will those who seem to be happy be resented and despised for it? Should we also make ourselves miserable, or fake that we are, in order to appease those who are not?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reframing Progress | Post Growth Institute

December 10, 2014

Reframing Progress | Post Growth Institute.

“…Progress is one of the most powerful notions in the modern world” writes John Dryzek in
The Politics of the Earth.

I’m inclined to agree with him. Progress acts as a kind of meta-narrative, an incredibly potent and pervasive trope that is woven through stories ancient and contemporary, and forms a core part of our culture. The idea of progress is essentially about things getting better, about the future being better than the past and the present. This hopeful idea, tied up with assumptions about how it will happen, forms our shared story of progress – our progress story. It’s natural that humans should be attracted to a notion like this, as it gives people hope, satisfaction, a sense of achievement and empowerment. What isn’t so natural is the way the idea of progress has become so wedded to the idea of economic growth, fuelled by rampant consumerism.

As this earlier post discusses, growing dissatisfaction with GDP as an entirely misleading and insufficient measure of progress has led to a recent explosion of new indicators, such as theHappy Planet Index, the Genuine Progress Indicator and Gross National Happiness, to name just a few. The groups and individuals behind these ideas are getting the conversation started on what we value, what we consider to be progress, and how best to measure it. This is incredibly important work. But it’s not just official indicators that determine what the progress story is all about. The media forms a very influential gateway between the official statistics and measurements and most ordinary people – meaning it’s the media representation that is directly encountered. I think that the work being done on developing new indicators would be greatly supplemented and reinforced by an effort to reframe and redirect the progress story in terms of the language we use to talk about it and the way it’s represented in the media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Buying Less Stuff Can Actually Make You More Happy | Carl Duivenvoorden

November 27, 2014

Buying Less Stuff Can Actually Make You More Happy | Carl Duivenvoorden.

Tax time is never pretty, and for me last year was uglier than usual. By the measures of economics and Revenue Canada, I didn’t have a great 2013. But by the measures of sustainability and fulfillment, I had an awesome 2013. How could that be?

Coincidentally, a book I read recently has helped me make sense of that paradox. It’s called Your Money or Your Life, and it explains how you don’t need as much money as you might think to live a fulfilling, sustainable and financially secure life. That’s especially relevant on the threshold of Black Friday and the coming Christmas shopping frenzy. Here’s an overview.

Financial treadmill

If you work at a conventional job, do you know what price you are getting for your time? Time is the only asset any of us truly have; the authors refer to it as our ‘life energy’.

The answer isn’t as simple as you’d think. If you earn $1,000 for a 40 hour week, the quick answer is $25. But if you spend two hours a day getting ready for work, commuting and unwinding when you get home, your work week is really 50 hours.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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