On Irony and Happiness
I was packing to leave town and had Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine with my luggage. I’ve been reading it for months and I’m finally close to finished.
My husband provided me with a dare of sorts: "Read something positive and happy on the plane" (i.e., leave Klein at home). "Um, I don’t think I have anything like that," I responded. I read mostly nonfiction, and though I do have a couple of novels in mind to read, I keep forgetting the titles when it really matters (like when I’m in the bookstore).
I figure there must be a qualified book in the airport bookstore, so I leave Klein’s book at home. The problem is that the "uplifting" department contains mostly "inspirational" books that are religion-based, and the first thing I thought of doing with any free time I have here in NYC is to track down Religulous. God-based books aren’t exactly my preference.
Then I saw it: Authentic Happiness. That’s probably a happy book, right? But here’s the rub: I was in a hurry so I grabbed the book and bought it without even looking at who wrote it. On the plane, I begin reading, thinking all of the happiness inside will begin to wash over me.
I get to page 20, to one of those italicized personal stories that are popular in narrative nonfiction. Here’s what I read:
I’m in Ithaca, New York, and the year is 1968. I’m a second-year assistant professor of psychology at Cornell, and I’m only a couple of years older than my students. While I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, I had, along with Steve Maier and Bruce Overmier, worked on a striking phenomenon called "learned helplessness."
I whip the book closed in terror and see that it’s author is Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., and all of the details of his horrific torture of rats and dogs that I learned about in college comes flooding back. This exercise, remember, was designed to provide me with something "happy" to read.
We discovered that dogs who experienced painful electric shocks that they could not modify by any of their actions later gave up trying. Whimpering softly, they passively accepted shocks, even when these later shocks could be easily escaped (20).
The payoff for me has been pretty good, too. Working within a disease model, I have been the beneficiary of more than thirty unbroken years of grants to explore helplessness in animals and then in people (22).
Ten years into our work on learned helplessness, I change my mind about what was going on in our experiments. It all stems from some embarrassing findings that I keep hoping will go away. Not all of the rats and dogs become helpless after inescapable shock, nor do all the people after being presented with insolvable problems or inescapable noise. One out of three never gives up, no matter what we do (23).
There are many exercises in the book, all of which can be found at www.authentichappiness.com, and because I’ve been in therapy for most of my adult life, and because I’m fairly reflective, none of the information was news to me. Seligman’s theory is that trying to fix your weaknesses isn’t as important as cultivating and capitalizing on strengths.
He writes about what makes people happy (not money), and who the happiest people are (not lawyers), and how to increase your happiness. Probably the most suprising tidbit (and this is all research-based) is that the more you express your negative emotions, the less happy you are likely to be. It therefore isn’t true that when you’re having a negative emotion, you should express it because refraining from doing so is somehow unhealthy, or the emotion will leak out elsewhere if it is unexpressed. "Expressed and dwelt upon, though, emotions multiply and imprison you in a vicious cycle of dealing fruitlessly with past wrongs" (70).
Seligman believes that religion gives meaning to life for those who are religious, and by the end of the book, the nonreligious, agnostic Seligman has decided that "God comes at the end" of life, and "such a life is sacred" (260).
The entire experience of reading this book was colored by knowing how Seligman got his start in psychology. I read it to the end in the hope that somewhere in those 260 pages, I’d learn over the past 40 years Seligman realized that there was no reason to torture dogs or rats, or even that he could have done it differently. I wanted to see some kind of remorse.
Seligman writes about forgiveness and about letting those in your life know how important they are to you. In my mind, that would have been the perfect place for a welfarist-type–or any type–of apology to all of the rats and dogs he unnecessarily tormented.
But there was nothing.
Happiness, apparently, is for people.
And animals aren’t included in those we have wronged.
I read about those horrific experiments a few years ago. I think Martin E. P. Seligman and people similar to him fall into the same category as political or religious ideologues who are willing to, for example, torture a person or commit genocide “for the Cause”.
They are similar to psycho- and sociopaths in that they behave monstrously, even by contemporary welfare standards. But they are different from psychopaths and sociopaths mainly in the sense that they have a Big Cause or Big Reason that is Extremely Important in their narrow worldview, whereas psycho- and sociopaths behave monstrously due to hereditary (psychopath) or environmental (sociopath) reasons. What is pretty clear is that if Seligman and people similar to him were born into a society that encouraged monstrous behavior toward certain ethnic groups (the horrific Nazi experiments on Jews comes to mind), they would not be the kinds of people who would question or resist it. It’s disgusting that so many people can have such an utter lack of empathy for the pain of others, regardless of their race, ethnic group, or species when some Cause has, in their mind, “justified” the horrific means.
I have serious doubts that Seligman’s work has helped humans at all, but even if it has, it is so drastically offset by the sick experiments he carried out that any improvement in any humans’ lives is morally vacuous. It is comparable to throwing a party off of money obtained from selling guns to genocidal child killers.
Such monsters are generally incorrigible, so it doesn’t surprise me that Seligman indicates no remorse over his past torture chambers.
Indeed, it's ironic that he learned about happiness by torturing animals.
It's not surprising that he believes self-delusion (religion) is a secret to happiness.
I happen to agree with many of his findings. I have come to my own conclusions regarding happiness, sadness, and delusion without having to torture animals. I just tested on myself to see what worked and what didn't.
I experienced some trauma as a child (abuse from my father) and I've been diagnosed with depression a few times in my life. When medicines not only didn't work, but made me suicidal, I opted to change my entire view of the situation, with the inclusion of some "delusions" in a kind of forced optimism. I think I've found a healthy balance of skepticism and optimism, which along with good nutrition, regular exercise, and exposure to sunlight has CURED my depression 🙂
I would not call myself an exceptionally happy person, but I am certainly much more happy now than previously.
I forgot to comment on happiness. IMO, happiness is a pragmatic word for marketing books, but it is useless for describing the state of our being. For me, happiness and unhappiness is always a mere fleeting state of mind, as in, “I’m happy to hear that Jim finally went vegan” or “I’m happy that the weekend is here.” A better way to describe what booksellers mean when they say “happiness” is flourishing or the Greek term eudemonia. Happiness is a fleeting mind state limited to how much serotonin or dopamine is occupying our brain at the moment; flourishing is a much more inclusive concept that includes the average of our mind states over time, our self-assessment, and our ability to achieve, work, create, recreate, and rest in a pattern that suits us well and keeps us interested and engaged in our lives over weeks, months, and years. We can have our ups and downs, our happy and unhappy hours or days or weeks, and even our failures struggles and still flourish.
If Dr. Seligman professes to have found the key to happiness and not come to terms with issues of lab murders I suggest he hasn't really done his homework and that his "happiness" is not "authentic".
Reaching a state of peace and balance requires a journey through the past. With effort and reason you should be able to "heal" the wrongs. Often, this requires experiencing "negative" emotions. Unfortunately, conventional medicine and pharmacutical interests want simply to "control", "supress" or "adjust" those feelings. I don't know all that many people, but of those I do know, most are on some kind of "scrip" to level thier "mood". You're right Elaine… so much can be done without the drugs. And without the killing of animals.
Dr. Seligman is avoiding introspection and self judgement in regards to his mistreatment to animals… I think a rational and connected soul longs for justice… especially when reconciliation is due from one's self. I've been rescuing my "inner child" all my life. Feeling remorse for things done wrong, (particularly heinous and unconscionable things) is a part of the "healing/growing" process and I don't think anyone can have "genuine" happiness without it.
I can see the irony though… Mary, you were just doing a "positive" thing – a "normal" thing – and you get hit with some "animal issues" they've created. I certainly can sympathize.
On a different note, "Religulous" looks like fun. Sort of like "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden".
The Shock Doctrine is timely for me to investigate as well. My husband dabbles in "conspiracy theory"… I admit the more I know, the more I'm resolute in my mistrust of "institutions". Washington and Wall Street are now in open collusion and tax-payer sanctioned corruption… But the "wool" and "rum" people are satisfied so it all should be just fine… ha, ha
Circumstances are now that Marshall Law can be enacted easier than ever before. It is said that 911 was the "Pearl Harbor" needed to relinquish the rest of our freedoms. There's much suspicion concerning the destroyed documents, time lines, prior affiliations with Bin Laden and even the insurance scandal regarding the profits made to the owner of the World Trade Center. It sounds outrageous and too preposterous but then I Google "Rex 84" and "Fema Coffins", and I'm not so sure. I've discovered the existance of "world orders" like "Scull and Bones" that have operated over 100years, financed by fortunes made through government assisted opium, diamond and gun cartels. This "brothehood" professes "exclusion", and plots methods to further their control of the masses, the resources, commodities, and capital. There's also rumor that the election would have been "postponed" if budget terms weren't met. I don't know if any of this is true but it doesn't help to know that Bush SR and JR are members of "Scull and Bones"…
Mary… have fun in New York… but be careful too 🙂
Before I gave up on psychotherapists, one recommended to me a book called "The Feeling Good Handbook" (with the caveat that I would hate the title, which I do). As I recall, it also had a section on experiments with causing learned helplessness in dogs, but the author said that he felt bad about doing them and some such, so I thought perhaps it was by the same guy and I could pipe in with good news that he did have some kind of conscience. But no, it was another guy.
Yeah, it seems the key to being happy and cheerful all the time is to ignore reality, or at least avoid thinking about it most of the time, because reality is depressing. I'd rather be sad than dishonest and irresponsible (although I do see a difference between my "omg hopeless" mood and "well, my own personal life is not bad" mood, so maybe it's no longer clinical depression).
I sent a note to Mary on July 18, pointing out that Martin Seligman was under suspicion of having been involved with the US program to interrogate (torture?) prisoners:
http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/martin-seligman.php
Setting aside for the moment any issues related to animal experimentation, I do think that positive psychology is quite a promising field (certainly, much more so than most of the pseudoscience that passes for treatment). Here's an interesting blog that I follow (it's loosely based on the principles of positive psychology):
http://www.happiness-project.com/
I was also very impressed with a book called, "The Happiness Hypothesis", by Jonathan Haidt, who is a psychology researcher at the University of Virginia. After I read the book, I exchanged a couple of e-mail messages with him and tried to turn him on to abolitionism (he told me that he was about to co-teach a class with Peter Singer). Don't know if it worked or not.
I applaud you for making it through the book. I find that sometimes when I run into a part of the author's world view that is directly opposed to my own that it is difficult to keep reading. I found this in the case of The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan – a terrific book except for the section on vegetarianism. In that section Pollan tries out vegetarianism but is already pre-disposed to dismissing it, and then proceeds to make weak arguments against it. I found that much of the information in the book was well-researched and beautifully written and for that reason I recommend it to others, but I usually note that this particular section was not given the thorough research the other sections were.
Thank you for your comments on Seligman. More people need to know where he started.