le_bebna_kamni: (Default)
le_bebna_kamni ([personal profile] le_bebna_kamni) wrote2007-02-15 11:42 am

Please Read this Book

First off, is the pink decor for Valentine's Day making anyone else shudder with revulsion?

In looking at my first two book reviews, as well as considering others in the past, I realize that when I dislike something, I am much more likely to write lots of material on it (hence drawing more attention to the thing that I don't want people to read). I'm not sure I can change that tendency (I feel like good things speak for themselves, but bad things have to be headed off at the pass), so I'm drawing attention to my third book with the statement:

Please Read This Book


Book #3: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt
Give me a book that combines copious amounts of scientific studies, cross-cultural analysis, and a well-balanced perspective, and I'll show you a book that's dear to my heart.

While happiness is certainly an overarching theme for the book, the title doesn't even begin to cover the range of topics you can find within its pages. Jonathan Haidt takes readers on a journey through the human psyche, showing us how our conscious and subconscious minds interact to make us both altruistic and selfish, "base" and "divine", and how we reconcile these disparate parts of ourselves.

To help readers understand how the human mind works, Haidt calls upon the elegant analogy of a rider and elephant. The rider represents those parts of the brain that we consciously control, and the elephant symbolizes our more unconscious processes. People who work with elephants know that these creatures are intelligent and can learn to follow commands put forth from the rider. But these elephants are also large creatures with minds of their own, and if they truly want something, there is almost nothing the rider can do to stop the elephant. While most of us who like the idea of free will may argue that the rider has much more control over the elephant than the analogy suggests, Haidt presents some compelling psychological studies that show we're not as rational as we choose to believe.

Understanding that we're elephants first, and riders second, gives us a better way to make change in our lives ‒ or as Haidt calls it, "retrain the elephant". Approaches that only deal with the conscious rider often fail, or produce minimal short-term effects. But experiences that target the elephant ‒ the more emotional or "visceral" side of our natures that stems from the subconscious structures of our brain ‒ can have much better success.

How then should we retrain our elephants? Haidt gives his readers a wide range of answers, all of which tend toward ways that our human brains are already wired to make us happy. Some of them seem obvious (cultivating close social networks, finding a job that gives a certain amount of "flow" and overarching purpose), and some of them seem a bit disturbing (like the cultivation of virtue) to people who have left repressive religious backgrounds.

Haidt also trespasses into a realm that many of my non-theistic friends may find unsettling: the notion of divinity. While Haidt himself is a professed atheist, he has found much evidence in cross-cultural studies and the sciences that people have a natural tendency to want something that is greater than themselves. From psychedelic drug studies in the 60's, to modern brain scans of meditators, to subjective reports in ethnographies, human beings do seem to have a "god" gene that seeks out certain transcendental states. Rather than positing religion as a force of evil that should be stamped out, Haidt talks about the past evolutionary benefits religion might have had, and the current benefits that still remain (although his chapter title "Divinity With or Without God" implies that we can experience some of the same benefits of organized religion without being theistic).

The last few chapters and the conclusion itself is rather weak (he primarily says there are many perspectives that we should balance in our lives, and leaves it at that). But the message itself is superb: we are the products of thousands of years of biological, cultural, and social evolution. The only way we can begin to understand who we are as human beings and who we could potentially become is by understanding all of these factors together. Even if you don't agree with everything he has to say in the book, almost everyone will find some new aspect of understanding to take away.

All in all, a highly recommended read.

[identity profile] grypeseye.livejournal.com 2007-02-19 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll keep an eye out for that book.