On February 25, group discussion, led by Gary, was extensive about Chapter 7 The Uses of Adversity and Chapter 8 The Felicity of Virtue. Read on for a synopsis of these two chapters. It was decided to include Chapter 9 Divinity With or Without God on March 11 with Richard guiding us. On March 4, we will have our monthly BakeOff.
In Chapter 7 Haidt proposes the "adversity hypothesis," which says that people require adversity, setbacks and maybe even out and out trauma to reach their highest strength and potential for fulfillment and personal development. Psychology had looked to the natural resilience of people that allowed some to bounce back from trauma to normal functioning. But it is only in the last 15 years that research has looked at the benefits of the stress itself. We have learned that we humans benefit from trauma, crises, and tragedies in three primary ways.
First you learn your hidden abilities perhaps that you didn't know you had by rising to the challenges. This learning improves your self-concept. The second class of benfits regards relationships. The adversity is a filter and separates the fair weather friends from the true deep friends. Those true friendships strengthen even further in adversity and these people involved in the crises open their hearts to each other. Thirdly the adversity changes priorities and the philosophies toward the present and toward other people. Values and perspectives change dramatically. There is often a committment to live life to the fullest and to live each day completely, and to live in the present moment as much as possible.
The question arrises: Must we suffer? The adversity hypothesis has both a weak version and a strong version. The weak version just says that adversity might lead to benefit. But the strong version states that adversity is necessary in order for a person to reach the highest levels of growth and development. If the strong version is true, then it means that in life we should take more chances and even suffer more defeats.
Psychologists often talk about the different levels of personality. The first level consists of basic traits such as: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These are facts about the elephant and reflect a person's automatic reactions to various situations. A second level of personality could be called "characteristic adaptations" and includes personal goals, defense mechanisms, values, beliefs, and life stage concerns. These adaptations occur when the rider and the elephant work together to find new ways of dealing with life events. The third level of the personality is the life story. We are all trying to make an evolving story with our lives, that combines a reconstructed past, a perceived present, and an anticipated future into a coherent and vital life myth. The life goals that people pursue with their characteristic adaptations can be divided into four categories: work and achievement, relationships and intimacy, religion and spirituality, and generativity, ie leaving a legacy and contributing something to society. In trying to meet these life goals, we need adversity to create an interesting life story. We are happier if our life goals are coherent. That is achieving lower levels of our life goals is a stepping stone to achieve higher levels of life goals if our goals are all coherent. Sometimes an adverse event so shakes up our movement toward life goals that we need to totally change our goals. When that happens, sometimes the life goals that replace the previous ones are more coherent and our life story is positively affected.
The ability to make sense of tragedy and then find benefit is the key that unlocks posttraumatic growth. Optimists have the genes to more easily make sense of the tragedy. They expect their work to pay off and they go right to work to fix the problem. But even pessimists can benefit if they can find a way to make sense of the adverse event and draw constructive lessons from it. It does not seem to matter what kind of adverse events occur, either the seriousness, or for example the degree of shame associated with the adverse event. What mattered was what people did afterwards. Also having a support group after the adverse event was important in helping a person make sense of the event.
So how can we help ourselves when adversity strikes? Well, first before an adverse event even happens, we can try to change your cognitive style. Remember how -- by meditation, by cognitive therapy, or by medication. Secondly, we need to cherish and build our social support network. Third, religious faith practice aids growth by fostering sense making and social support to enable us to benefit from the adverse affect. Most religions have stories and interpretative schemes for losses and crises. And finally when trouble strikes, no matter how you feel about it, at sometime in the next few days or weeks, pull out a piece of paper and write about what happened, how you feel about it, and why you feel that way. Through the writing method, some order is likely to emerge and help you benefit from the tragedy.
A few other principles emerge in this chapter. From research studies, it appears that people are most able to benefit from adverse events when they occur in the late teens and into the early twenties. Wise people are able to balance three responses to situations: adaptation (changing the self to fit the environment), shaping (changing the environment), and selection (choosing a new environment). This balance is shown in the "serenity prayer": "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." If you already know this prayer, your rider knows it (explicitly). If you live this prayer, your elephant knows it, too (tacitly), and you are wise. Posttraumatic growth therefore usually involves the growth of wisdom.
Chapter 8 The Felicity of Virtue
Ancient spiritual traditions all usually present long lists of virtues. Trying to practie these virtues creates excellence and is supposed to create happiness. But these ancient texts rely on rules and role models that are not based on proofs and logic. These ancient texts also emphasize practice and habit rather than factual knowledge. Moral education of the past needed to teach tacit knowledge --social skills were so finely tuned and practiced that one automatically could feel the right thing to do, know the right thing to do and want to do the right thing.
The author, Jonathan Haidt, feels that our modern Western society has made some large mistakes in our current moral education. He says that science, on which our modern society is based, values parsimony, but virtue theories with their long lists of virtues and subvirtues were never parsimonious. Wouldn't it be satifying for the scientific mind to have one virtue, one principle, one rule from which all others could be derived? Also the widespread philosophical worship of reason made many philosophers uncomfortable with locating virtues in habits and feelings.
We have educated our children by trying to teach them through quandary. That is we try to teach our children how to reason what would be the best behavior in response to a specific action, instead of teaching them through learning of virtue and practices. Haidt says this weakens morality and limits its scope. Haidt says, "In our thin and restricted modern conception, a moral person is one who gives to charity, helps others, plays by the rules, and in general does not put her own self-interest too far ahead of others'. Most of the activites and decisions of life are therefore insulated from moral concerns." Haidt thinks it better to be like the ancients, with a thicker, richer notion of virtues as a garden of excellences that a person cultivates to become more effective and appealing to others. Then virtue is its own reward. "Trying to make children behave ethically by teaching them to reason well is like trying to make a dog happy by wagging its tail. It gets causuality backwards."
Positive psychologists, Peterson and Seligman have proposed the following list of virtues that should be practiced until one becomes as excellent as possible in as many as possible.
1. Wisdom: curiousity, love of learning, judgment, ingenuity, emotional intelligence, perspective.
2. Courage: valor, perseverence, integrity.
3. Humanity: kindness, loving.
4. Justice: citizenship, fairness, leadership.
5. Temperence: self-control, prudence, humility.
6. Transcendence: appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, hope, spirituality, forgiveness, humor, zest.
If you can work on these virtues practicing with your strength of character, then this practicing of excellence has a reward of its own, and this whole process sounds like the "Flow" proposed by Czikczentmihalyi.
Research studies show that happy people are kinder and more helpful than the control group. Helping others does indeed help the self, but in a complex way that depends on our stage in life. The elderly benefit more from volunteer work both because the work helps them further their life story, and the volunteer work provides a support network just when that network is diminishing due to death and health attrition.
Finally, Haidt talks about two types of diversity. Demographic diversity is to be sought. This provides inclusiveness in our society for all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences and disability status. But Haidt feels that the educational mistakes talked about previously and its lack of constraints leads to a moral diversity that does not provide enough guidelines and leads to "anomie" which is a normlessness. There is a lack of knowledge about what the right thing to do is. Haidt agrees that we don't want to go back to ancient restrictive traditions and fundamentalism which prejudices against women and other groups. But I don't think he has an answer for the correct balance of demographic diversity and moral diversity. He ends by stating that the American motto e pluribus unum should be followed, but with the right balance. The celebration of pluribus should be balanced by policies that strengthen unum.
Any comments about this difficult chapter?
Remember next week, a BakeOff. And we return to The Happiness Hypothesis with Dick Y. leading us in discussion of Chapter 9-11.
1 comment:
What a great summary Ann! --- Todd
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