The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes it Hard to Be Happy (2010) (7 page)

The Old Self and the New Science

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ou can have anything you desire and become anyone you wish to be. There are no limits to potential, achievement and reward. The universe is an endless conveyor belt of prizes. Such are the seductive claims of the self-help industry in its annual outpouring of books with titles such as:
The Joys of Much Too Much: Go For The Big Life
–
The Great Career, The Perfect Guy, And Everything Else You ‘ve Ever Wanted
.

The covers are brightly coloured, the titles are long and greedy, the tone is frenziedly cheerful and the argument has three basic assumptions: that fulfilment is a consequence of worldly success (
God Wants You To Be Rich);
that there are a number of simple steps for achieving fulfilment (
Life Is Short- Wear Your Party Pants: 10 Simple Truths That Lead To An Amazing Life);
and that anyone who follows the prescribed steps will discover vast, untapped potential (
Awaken the Giant Within
). Self-help must take some of the blame for fostering the illusion that fulfilment is easy.

Distaste for the fatuous breeziness of self-help has also possibly encouraged a rejection of all psychology as lightweight and worthless. But the message of serious psychology is the opposite of that of self-help – fulfilment is not easy, but exhaustingly difficult. Theorists of the self insist on understanding and transformation but psychology has shown how difficult these can be. Attempts at self-understanding will be strenuously opposed by the id’s cunning use of self-deception, self-justification and self-righteousness. There seems to be no delusion too absurd, no justification too irrational and no righteousness too extreme for the human mind to accept.

The delusions begin with the very idea of happiness. Everyone everywhere, regardless of age, gender, social status or wealth, reports a happiness level over 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 – and, stranger still, is certain of even greater happiness in the future. The American psychologist Jonathan Haidt claims that there are similar delusions for all the desiderata, that most Europeans and Americans rate themselves above average on a wide range of talents including virtuousness, intelligence and of course sexual performance. This made me think of my self-important teaching colleagues – and, sure enough, Haidt says of college professors, ‘94 per cent of us think we do above-average work.’
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Needless to say, I am among this 94 per cent. And it turns out that teachers are even more deluded than students – a mere 70 per cent of students believe they are above average. The temptation to laugh is checked by another troubling thought: most of my colleagues believe themselves to be terrifically amusing; everyone also has an above-average sense of humour.

But, as so often, there is an intriguing exception. Haidt observes that the desiderata delusion is weaker in east Asian countries, and possibly non-existent in Japan. Is this evidence of the beneficial influence of Buddhist culture, which attempts to dispel illusion and reduce attachment to the self?

But we exaggerate only our own virtues. On those of others we are realistic. Two psychologists, Nicholas Epley and David Dunning, asked people to predict whether they would behave selfishly or cooperatively in a game played for money. The result: 84 per cent claimed that they themselves would play cooperatively – but the estimate of cooperative behaviour in others was only 64 per cent. And, in fact, 61 per cent did play cooperatively.
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In other words, as Buddha and Christ said repeatedly, we are hypocrites.

There is at least the consolation that many of the psychologists’ findings support the insights of religious and philosophical thinkers, in particular the conclusion reached at the very beginning by the Greeks and repeated by everyone since, but still not generally accepted – that success and prosperity alone will not make anyone happy. A certain level of affluence is of course required to provide the basics, as Aristotle acknowledged, but more will do little to increase satisfaction. Many of the experts produce a graph of happiness level against income. This rises steeply at first and then levels off. After a certain point, having more has no effect. There is even an equivalent graph for countries, which shows happiness levels rising at first with stages of economic development but then tailing off – so increasing wealth is as ineffective for nations as for individuals. And the same phenomenon may be observed over time – the increasing affluence of the West over the last few generations has brought no corresponding increase in happiness.
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There is also evidence that, as Buddha and Spinoza claimed, resisting the desire for immediate gratification can bring long-term fulfilment. In 1970 Walter Mischel sat a succession of four-year-old children in front of a marshmallow on a plate and explained that he had to leave the room for a moment but that, if the marsh-mallow was still uneaten when he returned, the reward would be two marshmallows instead of one. Around a third of the children scoffed the treat straight away, another third tried to hold out but succumbed at various stages, and the final third succeeded in waiting for the double pay-off. When Mischel surveyed the children fifteen years later he discovered that those with self-control had turned out more successful in every way, both educationally and personally, whereas those unable to delay gratification were more likely to be low achievers, to have drug and alcohol problems, and, interestingly, to become bullies, a confirmation that desire for power is a kind of greed indulged by the unfulfilled. Further investigation revealed that the key talent of the self-controllers was not so much willpower as detachment, an ability to think of something other than the treat on the plate.
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It is encouraging to know that a third of four year olds are little Buddhas – but this classic experiment was conducted in 1970, just before the era of rabid consumption. Today’s four year olds would probably wolf down the marshmallow and then complain that marshmallows are rubbish.

Other experiments have confirmed the age-old insight that the more we have, the more we want; that life is a progression, not from satisfaction to satisfaction, but from desire to desire. The economist Richard Easterlin asked young people to identify the consumer items they thought essential for the good life; sixteen years later he asked the same people the same question. What happened was that they had moved up the scale of desirables – television, car, house, overseas holidays, swimming pool, second home, etc. – and wherever they had arrived it was always the next item that would finally make them happy. No sooner was one thing acquired than they got used to it, took it for granted and wanted the next.
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This study investigated only attitudes to consumer goods, but the effect applies to everything desirable – welfare benefits, pay rises, promotions, holidays, gourmet food and gourmet sex. As Schopenhauer remarked: ‘With possession, or the certain expectation of it, our demands immediately increase and this increases our capacity for further possessions and greater expectation…to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is.’
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The psychologists’ terms for this are ‘adaptation’, ‘habituation’ and ‘the hedonic treadmill’.

And it occurs to me that there is also negative adaptation – we think we will be less unhappy if we do less of an unpleasant chore, but the less we do the less we want to do. This happens when you feel atrociously overworked, manage to get the workload reduced but soon once again feel atrociously overworked. In fact the expectation of relief may mean that having to do less is even more vexing.

And from my own experience I can add that habituation applies not just to money, goods and pleasures, but also to fame. Artistes usually claim to want only a modest level of recognition – publication, exhibition, opportunities to perform – but as soon as this level is achieved they crave more. And there is no upper limit. Even the hugely famous are irritated by a single dissenter. This is a vulnerability worth remembering – by refusing to join in the adulation, even the most insignificant of us can infuriate a celebrity.

So the human capacity for self-deception is extraordinary – but there is another capacity that is even more impressive. The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare and the subtlety of a Jesuit. One example that especially impressed me was the argument of a wife-beating husband who explained patiently that the punches and kicks requiring hospital treatment were a proof not of his own, but of his wife’s, atrocious behaviour – if a gentle soul such as he was driven to violence then the provocation must have been intolerable. And this was an intelligent, sensitive man, a well-known poet famed for his honesty, tolerance and love of women.

The classic experiment on self-justification was carried out over fifty years ago when a psychologist called Leon Festinger infiltrated a cult that was based on the belief that a flying saucer would arrive at midnight on 20 December 1954 to save true believers from the end of the world on 21 December. Many cult members left their jobs and gave away their savings and, on the evening of 20 December, gathered with their leader to await deliverance. When midnight came and went without a spaceship there was naturally a certain amount of apprehension. But at 4.45 a.m. the leader finally realized what had happened – the unshakeable faith of the true believers had caused the world to be spared: ‘Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and Light as now floods this room.’
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Hallelujah! The ecstatic group contacted the press to report a miracle and then rushed out into the streets to convert the unbelieving world.

So not only does irrefutable evidence fail to destroy a delusion; it can actually reinforce and intensify the false belief. For this astounding feat of mental trick cycling Festinger coined the drab term ‘cognitive dissonance’. Unable to tolerate two dissonant beliefs, the mind simply eliminates the more inconvenient of the two. And, whereas contradictory evidence is uncritically rejected, confirming evidence is uncritically accepted. If there happens to be no evidence either way, this too is taken as confirmation. I discovered this myself during the Troubles in Northern Ireland when an exultant group of nationalists informed me that, as result of a successful IRA action, the local hospital morgue was overflowing with the bullet-riddled bodies of British soldiers. ‘But there’s been nothing in the papers or on TV,’ I objected. They laughed in contempt at this naive response: ‘
Exactly
.’

No mental feat is too difficult for self-justification – and memory distortion is one of the easier tricks. As all dictators understand, those who wish to alter the future must first alter the past. So, ability to cope with the future is encouraged by exaggerating problems overcome in the past – hence the popularity of accusing parents of bullying or neglect; not only does this make the child seem more resourceful, it is a convenient way of attributing blame for any lingering imperfections. Our own past bad behaviour is, of course, conveniently suppressed. Nietzsche understood this: ‘‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually memory yields.’
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And creating memories, even the most bizarrely implausible, is only a little more difficult than distortion. There are several million Americans who sincerely believe that they have been abducted by aliens.
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The clinical psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed several hundred of these ‘experiencers’, as they describe themselves, and found the same pattern. All of them had suffered from mental distress and dysfunction and then had had an alarming sleep experience – actually a phenomenon known as ‘sleep paralysis’ – which they subsequently explained by an abduction story. The aliens were then blamed for the original problems. As a woman suffering from sexual dysfunction explained, ‘I understand that it’s related to what the beings did to me. I was a sexual experiment to them from an early age.’
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This is an extreme way of evading responsibility – but it might cause less damage than blaming parents…unless the aliens get hold of Clancy’s interviews, realize that they have been made scapegoats and decide that, as innocent victims, they are entirely justified in mounting an alien invasion of the USA.

Of course, the experiencers are familiar with the scientific explanation and vigorously reject it (‘I swear to God, if someone brings up sleep paralysis one more time I’m going to puke’), greatly supported in this by mixing with fellow experiencers and sharing stories, for justification also operates at the group level. The ‘us-consciousness’ described by Sartre creates an overwhelming urge to justify anything done by Us and to condemn anything done by Them. Such Us⁄Them distinctions can be based on the most minor differences – and have been created artificially by researchers – but are strongest when the distinction is longstanding. Religion, of course, provides the ultimate differentiation, with a divinely anointed Us and a divinely damned Them. And anyone who has lived in a long-term conflict area will be familiar with the line, ‘Their atrocities are always so much more vile than ours’, or, from the more passionate group advocates, ‘Our atrocities were actually committed by
Them
to discredit
W
.

The perpetrators of violence often follow a cycle where the innocence of a victim requires a drastically contemptuous justification that actually intensifies the hatred and rage. So the more helpless the victim the more violent the attack, and the more desperate the need to re-establish moral superiority. Dictators invariably see themselves as self-sacrificing patriots working only for the good of their countries. The writer Louis Menand spotted a wonderful poster in the Haiti of the infamous Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier: ‘I should like to stand before the tribunal of history as the person who irreversibly founded democracy in Haiti – signed, Jean-Claude Duvalier, President-for-Life.’
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