EP18. 25 January 2006.
Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Sharpe. All rights reserved.
In process.
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION:
ANECDOTES TO TRUTHFULNESS
The corpses near me, crawling with lice, did not bother me.
Victor Frankl sat on the wooden lid of an access shaft in Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp.
Only the steps of passing guards could rouse me from my dreams; or perhaps it would be a call to the sick-bay or to collect a newly arrived supply of medicine for my hut consisting of perhaps five or ten tablets of aspirin, to last for several days for fifty patients. I collected them and then did my rounds, feeling the patients’ pulses and giving half-tablets to the serious cases.
Frankl witnesses that, for prisoners to survive the camps, a
meaning had to possess them, a purpose had to fill them and insulate them from
the horror. Frankl practiced his doctoring, thought of his wife, and tried to
reconstruct his scientific manuscript the
Does Frankl’s observation generalize to a lesson about life for all of us?
This book concerns universal principles of life present in all societies and religions. Frankl’s experience and writing illustrate one such principle, which he borrows from Friedrich Nietzsche:
[The person] who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
Frankl understood this saying and, drawing from his death camp experiences, constructed a theory about life in general: human beings need meaning and purpose to survive and live to their fullest.
Your mission in life is to have a ‘why’ to live for, to use your best qualities in the service of the kind of world you want to live in. That is your purpose. That is what life expects from you. And when you live according to your purpose, setting goals that support it, you’ll find the pieces of your life drawn together into a strong internal whole. Then, no matter how difficult life’s experiences may prove to be, you will be able to endure and even prevail.
These words appear in John Templeton’s book, Discovering the Laws of Life. Templeton believes that we find our lives useful and joyous when we learn what the calls the ‘Laws of Life’ and apply them to everyday situations. Frankl’s is one of Templeton’s moral principles. Together they help form, Templeton believes, the right way to live. They help us control the factors in life we can influence, and doing this rewards us.
Templeton declines a monopoly on overarching principles for successful, happy living. He even offers a reward for any proposed adage he can accept as a Law of Life. Other collections of wisdom statements precede his; Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, and Dale Carnegie’s Ten Or So Ways to Win Friends and Influence People, all come to mind.
Many such books could include Frankl’s suggested behavior. But why would his experience also apply to other people? The majority of us don’t live in concentration camps. And for many sayings an opposite one also exists; compare ‘Pleasing others before thinking of your own pleasure,’ from one of Templeton’s lists, with ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Anecdotes confound claims of universal truthfulness and thus thwart attempts to achieve through them a more joyous and useful life in any circumstance and culture.
Templeton seeks support for his belief in the Laws of Life beyond his intuition and experience, possibly because of problems such as these. He believes that science provides the answer. It supplies a general method for discerning truthful statements from untruthful ones. If I let go an apple directly above the head of a man seated a couple of feet below, it will fall and hit him, no matter where on earth or when I perform this experiment. Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation predicts this. Science can examine and test these principles of life, Templeton thinks, in the same way it examines and tests the universe’s physical laws. The scientific approach can establish whether a proposed law or anecdote does apply universally.
Three caveats restrict this claim about natural moral principles, however.
First, note that the observation about apple falling applies on the earth or near a massive body like the earth, but not everywhere; think of astronauts floating around inside a Space Shuttle in orbit. A moral principle, if established scientifically, can similarly claim only universal but conditional correctness. Proven moral principles describe what happens all over the world in certain circumstances.
If I walk out of the library now, chances are it will be raining because it has rained all week and it was raining 30 minutes ago when I returned from lunch. The second caveat stems from the nature of the scientific results that support natural moral principles: they are probabilistic. So-and-so will probably happen to people if they behave in such-and-such a way in such-and-such circumstances. They will probably become happier and more successful if they carry out a scientifically established moral principle when in particular situations.
Third, claims about a natural moral principle depend on the quality of
experiments about it and on repeated confirmations of it in all sorts of
circumstances. Researchers have tested some in various cultures and
subcultures. Others they have scrutinized apparently only on
Templeton seeks scientific support for the Laws of Life (even with the above limitations) because then, he believes, more people would accept and follow them. He wants to encourage universities and schools throughout the world to teach this new science once examined critically. I know of no one who refuses to wear a quartz watch because they think it won’t keep accurate time. Yet these timepieces rely on the laws of quantum physics. Most modern people believe in science’s objective authority, and some, perhaps many, perhaps most concur with and act on what science says. Scientific knowledge claims people’s belief. Scientific moral principles may also claim people’s belief.
Scientific research provides indirect support for a form of the principle that Frankl suggests, ‘the person who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how’. People experience ‘flow,’ this research shows, when absorbed in an activity and unaware of themselves: when they garden, sew, construct a model airplane, play the piano, paint, or a myriad other things. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi arrived at the idea of flow when he studied artists who spent many hours immersed in their painting or sculpting. They worked as if nothing mattered except their creation. They labored for reward that lay intrinsically in the work itself, not for external marks of praise, promotion, or money. Csikszentmihalyi and his team, and other research groups as well, extended this original investigation by beeping people at random intervals. The subjects recorded what they were doing at that moment and how much they were enjoying themselves. They usually reported little satisfaction and little feeling of flow when they lazed around, as couch potatoes for instance. They reported more positive feelings when they engaged in something active – at play or at work – that required their skills.
Flow happens when we optimally engage our skills and fully engage our talents, without underchallenging ourselves (which leads to boredom) or over-challenging ourselves (which leads to stress). ‘Flow occurs,’ Csikszentmihalyi says, ‘in that delicate zone between boredom and anxiety.’ Then we find meaning, purpose, happiness, competence, satisfaction, and self-esteem: the effects flow engenders. We become less self-conscious and less aware of the minutes that tick away. Flow allows us to bear almost anything else in our lives, including the horrors of a concentration camp.
This book discusses several other principles beside Frankl’s, 28 topics in all. Most of them can lead to success and happiness.
As a child, I obtained a clock from my father (a watchmaker) and prized it apart, carefully because I knew what happened to a spring let loose. Then I tried to reassemble it, wheel by wheel, bit by bit. I wanted to know how it worked. The same with universal principles for life. Why does human nature operate this way? Why, if people follow the laws, will they find success and happiness?
Psychology, sociology, and biology offer complementary ways to explain the power of these life principles. Evolutionary psychology combines these three disciplines in its subscription to a doctrine of contemporary psychology and psychiatry: early social environment plays a cardinal role in shaping the adult mind. Evolutionary psychologists work this out with Darwinian tools, however, rather than with behaviorist or Freudian or Jungian ideas.
Biology and its evolutionary processes provide two means, evolutionary psychologists believe, for producing human traits.
· One originates in the genes. A certain cluster of genes can initiate the flow of dopamine, a brain neurotransmitter that provides us with our sense of well being. A defective cluster can diminish the dopamine function and this may drive the person to drugs, alcohol, or other activities (such as murder and violence) that boost the dopamine affect. The dopamine cluster is one of innumerable examples. Genetic differences between individuals help shape our different levels of a particular personality trait.
· The second sort of biological explanation derives from the differences between us as we grow up. They generate, for instance, the different degrees of guilt, ambition, and insecurity that we feel. This role (perhaps the larger one) derives from the genetic commonalties that natural selection formed, as opposed to the genetic differences between individuals. Generic, species-wide development programs absorb information from the social environment. They then adjust the maturing minds accordingly. ‘Human nature consists of knobs and mechanisms for tuning the knobs,’ writes Robert Wright.
Evolutionary psychology posits an evolutionary explanation for the origin of human characteristics and the means by which each can vary across individuals. Culture and biology, therefore, root morality. Our biology and our culture dictate – and their forces insure – that if we have a why to live for, we can bear almost any how. The moral principles supported by the research therefore truly constitute elements of natural morality.
This book draws on research results to show how science approaches the ideas in several life principles. It describes conditions under which they hold. Some start as anecdotes and, with scientific refinement, emerge as generally germane and therefore liable to work with every one of us.
Natural moral principles are like tools. When we apply them consistently, they possess the power to inject more joy and success into our lives.