Your Meditation Guide Blog

After having greatly enjoyed Doubt: A History, by Jennifer Michael Hecht, I’m now reading her The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn’t Working Today. The first book is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in skepticism across time and cultures, including the many -- usually under appreciated -- religious skeptics. Hecht’s second volume should also be on the shelf of anyone seriously interested in happiness, and who on earth isn’t?

There has been a renaissance of writings about happiness lately, from newspaper and magazine articles covering research on the psychology of that human emotion to a number of philosophers mining their more than two millennia of literature to distill advice useful to Westerners at the onset of the 21st century. Hecht’s take, however, is different, and reflects her training as a historian. The basic idea is simple yet powerful: the best antidote to being trapped by cultural fads is to broaden one’s view both in time and in space. Take a look at how people in different historical periods and in diverse cultures approached the “problem” of happiness and you will get a helpful perspective on the idiosyncrasies of our own time and place.

For instance, take drugs. Not literally, but in the sense of considering the issue of drugs. Hecht points out that today we think of certain drugs (say, cocaine) as harmful and we accordingly make them illegal. Other drugs (caffeine) are instead not only allowed, but even studied to highlight their positive effects on our ability to “perform” at work and in life. But of course there was a time when cocaine was perfectly legal and considered as recreational as coffee is today. It is well known that the “coke” in Coca-Cola derives from the fact that one of the original ingredients of the beverage was cocaine, but did you know that one Angelo Mariani had the idea, back in 1863, to market coca-infused wine in Paris? “Vin Mariani,” not surprisingly, became a success and the guy got rich on it. The point isn’t that cocaine does not have harmful effects and should therefore be freely available. Rather, drugs in general do not come with a “bad” or “good” label, because most of them have positive or negative effects, depending on how they are taken (try injecting yourself with pure caffeine), and of course on what society thinks is “good” or “bad.”

Hecht applies the same historical and comparative approach to money (does it make you happy?), our bodies (why do we spend so much of our life dieting and running on a treadmill going nowhere?), and celebrations (why do we get together for weddings and sports events, but don’t run naked in the woods anymore?), making a convincing case that a lot of what we do to increase our happiness has little connection to our actual needs, and may in fact contribute significantly to our sense of un-happiness, or at least of dissatisfaction with our lives.

Hecht sometimes pushes the envelope a bit too far from my perspective as a scientist, suggesting or implying that modern scientific research on issues such as diet and exercise are not really improvements on our past knowledge, but simply contribute to generate more useless or downright destructive fads. I doubt it, though she is of course right that there is often a vast chasm between the best science that we have available and the reason people take up yet another “miracle” diet or exercise regime. (For the record, having read and practiced quite a bit in this area: no special diet is necessary to lose weight, and exercise by itself won’t do it unless you go to the gym at the rate of an olympian athlete. Here is the priceless “secret,” though, for which I will charge you nothing: eat fewer calories than you burn, and the second principle of thermodynamics will do the rest for you.)

Equally interesting is Hecht’s first section of The Happiness Myth, which should probably be re-read by the time one gets to the end of the book. It distinguishes among three types of happiness, which is helpful because often people mean very different things by that simple word. For Hecht there is “good day” happiness, determined by the little things you actually do in your daily routine; then there is “euphoria,” which is intense, long-lasting in your memory, but quite rare; and finally we have “happy life,” which has to do with the broad pursuits in life and requires long-term goals and a lot of work. It is important not to confuse these while at the same time realizing that we need a balance among all three of them (one cannot be happy by simply pursuing good days, or euphoric moments, for instance).

Also important are what Hecht calls the “four doctrines” for happiness, which she distills from the wisdom of millennia of philosophical writings in the east and west: know yourself; control your desires; take what is yours; and remember death. The author devotes one short chapter to each of these doctrines, and they are worth the reading in themselves as well as brief introductions to the thinking of philosophers from Aristotle to Epicurus, writers from Marcus Aurelius to Freud, and mystics from Koheleth to Buddha.

I don’t know whether I’ll be happier after reading this book, but I will certainly have gained a deeper perspective on the whole business of happiness. If knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon famously said, then I will also have gained more power over my own life, and that’s no small achievement to derive from a book.

Zen Diamond, the largest manufacturer of diamond jewelry in Europe and the No. 1 exporter of precious stones in Turkey, has plans to enhance efficiency and boost productivity during the global economic slowdown, a top company executive has said.

James: Because nothing says materialism like Zen!! And nothing could be further from the teachings of Zen than using the advertising tag line, "Diamonds are Forever" as we all know that nothing is forever. In the end Zen is just a word and I'm not going to let anger and other unskillful feelings arise because of a word.

Still you'd never see the Jesus Diamond company or Christ Wine. Maybe they could put a copy of the Diamond Sutra in with each diamond product. That might even things up with the consumerism/materialism message of the diamonds.

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

**NOTE: This is not an attempt to insult anyone so if you are insulted by this post then I apologize. I am starting a series here on how Biblical stories can often be explained by a modern understanding of science. I am doing it not out of a desire to destroy anyone's faith but from a personal interest explaining the stories I've heard during my 22 years as a Christian. I am a skeptic by heart and enjoy explaining the seemingly inexplicable.***


Sodom and Gomorrah were two ancient cities mentioned in the Bible most likely near the Dead Sea. The story in the Bible says that the town was destroyed by "God" because of the their "wickedness" by fire and brimstone (sulfur rock). So what does science have to say about this story?

As we know much of the Middle East sits above oil and natural gas fields as well as atop pockets of sulfur rock or brimstone. There are fault lines in the area where most scholars believe Sodom and Gomorrah existed as well as within much of the "Holy Land." Ancients didn't know much science and therefore natural disasters would be seen as "God's" doing and explained by man's "sinning."

So all it takes is a decent sized asteroid to hit the area, which would ignite the oil and natural gas fields nearby and underneath the city. As well as the igniting and throwing sulfur rocks into the air, which would then reign down upon the nearby cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Thus giving off the effect of flaming rocks pouring down upon the cities and burning them to the ground.

Another explanation could stem from the many fault lines that exist in Israel, Jordan and throughout the Middle East. An earthquake could have cracked the Earth, which exposed natural gas pockets, pools of oil and veins of sulfur rock. All it would take is one spark from the many cooking fires to explode the pockets of gas, ignite the sulfur rock, which would reign back down upon the city burning it to the ground.

There are simple, (Occam's razor) scientific explanations for this event either way and so people who were not privy to science would seek to explain such a natural disaster with what they believed--"God." "God" was an understandable way to explain events, which were at the time mysterious in origin and thus very frightening.

“I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.” This, infamously, was uttered by former chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, who admitted that his view of how economies work was deeply flawed, and yet refused to issue an apology for years of federal intervention (or lack thereof) based on his “flawed” model. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are suffering economic hardship as a result of someone making policy decisions on the basis of a flawed assumption.

How is this possible? Economics is supposed to be a solid discipline, founded on complex mathematical models (and we all know math is really, really difficult). They even give Nobel prizes to economists, for crying out loud! And yet, economics has always had to fight off the same reputation of being a “soft” science that has plagued sociology, psychology, and to some extent even some of the biological sciences, like ecology and evolutionary biology. Indeed, like practitioners in those other fields of inquiry, some economists admit of being guilty of “physics envy,” that is, of using the physical sciences as the model for what their field ought to be like. Turns out even the assumption that a good science should be modeled on physics is “flawed,” to use Greenspan’s apt phrase.

A recent article by Chelsea Wald in Science (12 December 2008) puts things in perspective by asking how it is possible that so many smart people in the financial sector made irrational decisions over a period of years, despite clear data showing there was a problem, and eventually leading to a worldwide economic crisis that is at the least poking at, if not shaking, the foundations of capitalism itself.

Part of the answer is to be found in the persistent idea in economics that “markets” work because people are rational agents who act in their own self-interest and have perfect, instantaneous access to relevant information about the businesses they are considering investing in. Economists are not stupid, and they know very well that perfect rationality, complete information and instant access are all light years away from the reality of how markets operate. And in fact recent models have relaxed these assumptions to some extent. But it is so much more tractable to model things that way! After all, physicists do it too: remember those problems in Physics 101 that started “consider a spherical cow…”?

But now there is a new kid on the block: “behavioral finance” takes seriously the idea that people act somewhat rationally some of the time but can spiral into downright panic at other times. The new approach draws from an interdisciplinary milieu that includes “soft” sciences like psychology and sociology, since those are the fields that tell us the most about the idiosyncrasies of human behavior. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is another science that has been inspiring economists for some time now: evolutionary biology. The old “efficient markets hypothesis” underlying classical models is being replaced by the “adaptive markets hypothesis,” where Adam Smith’s invisible hand becomes more directly analogous to natural selection.

As evolutionary biologists have found out, natural selection is not an optimizing process, but a satisficying one, meaning that it produces whatever outcome happened to be achievable at a particular historical moment and that works “well enough” for the problem at hand. Moreover, it does so while “wasting” a lot of resources and often marching straight into dead ends (just think that over 99% of the species that ever existed went extinct). The emerging picture is much more realistic than the rationalist paradigm, but it sure is a lot more messy too.

There is another lesson to be learned from evolutionary biology that will not make economists, or the public at large, particularly happy: when complex systems evolve over time the paths they take is contingent on historical accidents (as opposed to being deterministic, like the laws of macro-physics, outside quantum mechanics). Sociologists, psychologists, ecologists and evolutionary biologists will readily tell their economic colleagues that it is certainly possible to explain past events (the extinction of the dinosaurs, the dot-com bubble) by the use of sufficiently complex causal-historical models. What seems to be out of reach, however, is precisely what economists want most: predicting the future, the hallmark of “good” science.

I’m talking here about specific, actionable predictions, not general ones. Meteorology, for instance, is predictive in the sense that it will tell you that there is a high probability of low temperatures in New York City in the period December-February, no matter what the year. But it is barely capable of telling you whether tomorrow you’ll need a heavy coat or an umbrella. Similarly, ecologists can say that the likelihood of extinction goes up when certain environmental parameters change, for instance the size of the available territory, or its links to similar territories nearby (which affects metapopulation dynamics). But they will be hard pressed in predicting which individual species will go extinct when and where.

Similarly, the new economic models “work” in the sense that they can say, for instance, that stocks that are difficult to value will do well in “optimistic” times, while easy to value stocks will do better in “pessimistic” times. Heck, they can even predict that the variance in how well stocks do is higher for the first type than for the second one. But none of that is going to be of any use when you talk to your broker later today and have to make decisions about what to buy or sell here and now.

The moral of the story is that all of the above is not a failure of economics, sociology, psychology, ecology or evolutionary biology. It is the predictable outcome of the fact that these sciences deal with complex, historical systems, unlike much (though not all) of physics. The real assumption we need to get rid of is the highly persistent and pernicious one that physics is the golden standard by which all other sciences ought to be measured. Now if we only could convince federal funding agencies of that...

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

~Franz Kafka from his poem, "Learn to Be Quiet."

James: It's somewhat hard to imagine the brooding Franz Kafka as a student of mindfulness but here he is teaching it with just as much clarity as many monks!!

Then there is this Zen-like comment from Kafka regarding his relationship with Judaism/spirituality (he was known to show interest in Judaism especially later in life), "What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe."

His questioning of what he has in common with "himself" and what that "self" even means seems like an almost koan-like statement. The whole of the quote sounds as if it came from a Zen Master trying to teach a novice that the label "Buddhist" is not important but rather the essence and teachings of Buddhism. For example, being present to be content with the basic things in life such as standing (or sitting) in a corner and breathing.

PHOTO: Franz Kafka by Anthony Hare 2003.

So an Atheist sign in the state capital of Illinois was stolen and now the Atheist group behind the sign wants to replace it with a new one saying, "Thou Shalt Not Steal." Yet Gretchen Carlson apparently doesn't get the point of the replacement sign.

It seems apparent to me that those who would be the most upset by the sign would be rabid Christians. Therefore reminding them that they [most likely Christian] broke a commandment of the very religion they are claiming to defend by stealing that sign is on point and brilliant. It's called using your critics words and beliefs against them. It's a great debate tactic and Carlson's only comeback to it is to claim that Atheists have no right to use the ten commandments because Atheists don't believe in them? That's a nice dodge from the point of Christians stealing despite being commanded NOT too.

So in other words Christians can break the commandments when dealing with Atheists because Atheists shouldn't have the same rights to freedom of expression as Christians enjoy. In part too because Atheists are seen by extreme Christians as evil to be defeated by any means necessary and therefore (to these type of Christians) the end justifies the means (i.e. stealing). It's not too unlike radical Muslims who think "God" will bless them in heaven for killing the nonbeliever because belief in "God" is more important than free will and the commandment against killing. Thus we see that many radical Christians don't actually believe following every commandment by the letter as they often say they do.

Michelle Maulkin actually takes the high road for once in basically saying "Just ignore them." But Carlson is completely freaked out to the point of saying that if they treat them as equals then Christianity might disappear??? Come on. Honestly. It might disappear from the public square (as it should according to the Constitution) but Christianity is not going to disappear from a country [America] that is beyond any measure predominately Christian. Besides, where is their faith that "God" won't let Christianity die out in America?

And should it be about control? Shouldn't your belief in Christianity be personal? Isn't it more about your own salvation than about being the dominate belief system to maintain your feeling of superiority as being "number 1?" I'm a Buddhist and we are no where near the dominate religion in America and I don't care. I don't practice Buddhism so that maybe one day Buddhism can dominate America. I practice it because I find meditation to be helpful in my daily, personal life.

I am a weak Atheist/strong Agnostic, I know many other Atheists and for most it's not about abolishing Christianity but rather about equal representation in the public square. Either everyone gets to have a display or no one should as the public square belongs to everyone and public/government buildings/locations are paid for by everyone--not just Christians. It seems really simple and basic to me.

Metaphors are dangerous things. On the one hand, it seems pretty much impossible to avoid using them, especially in rather abstract fields like philosophy and science. On the other hand, they are well known to trick one’s mind into taking the metaphor too literally, thereby creating problems that are not actually reflective of the reality of the natural world, but are only perverse constructs of our own warped understanding of it.

Take the metaphor of living organisms as analogous to complex artifacts, which led William Paley to articulate the most famous argument in favor of Intelligent Design -- an argument that, incidentally, has not changed in its broad philosophical outline since the early 18th century. David Hume -- rather presciently, since he wrote before Paley -- pointed out that the metaphor is flawed. Hume argued that living organisms are not like watches, to use Paley’s analogy. They are not machines that are assembled, but organic beings that develop gradually over time. Accordingly, the ID argument of “irreducible complexity,” as it is known nowadays, doesn’t make sense because it is based on the machine metaphor. To put it another way, biochemist Michael Behe doesn’t understand how the bacterial flagellum could have evolved because he doesn’t understand evolution and insists in thinking of the flagellum as a “propulsion engine” analogous to those built by Evinrude.

Yet, even serious biologists (i.e., unlike Behe) have been guilty of enthusiastically pushing what is clearly a flawed metaphor: the idea that the DNA sequence of an organism’s genome is analogous to a computer “program,” and that it provides the “blueprint” for building said organism. Hence the wild (and, as it turns out, completely unfounded) claim a few years ago that sequencing the human genome will tell us everything there is to know about “making” a human being. The human genome has been sequenced, and what we have found is that genes, though playing a crucial causal role in development, are just one piece of a vast and as yet largely unresolved puzzle.

Ironically, the harbinger of the demise of the genetic program-blueprint metaphor is the serious study of genomics itself. A recent article by Tanguy Chouard in Nature (20 November 2008) explains why. Researchers are finding out that what matters is not so much individual genes, but the way networks of genes function together. Take the example of the Bicoid gene in Drosophila: it was thought to be essential in establishing the form of the body in all insects, based on its effects on the development of body shape in fruit flies. No such thing, as it turns out. Once scientists looked for Bicoid-like genes in other insects they simply did not find them! Turns out that Drosophila is an exception (ah, the perils of “model” organisms), and that in species from wasps to beetles the job carried out by Bicoid is achieved by minor rearrangements of a large regulatory network encompassing a myriad of other genes.

According to the same article, biologists are even beginning to document how evolution transitions from one regulatory network to another. Phylogenetically informed investigations conducted with different species of yeast, for instance, show nice intermediate stages from one arrangement to another, demonstrating that major changes at the genetic level can occur with minimal disruption of physiological or other phenotypic features. Finally, researchers have modeled the evolution of large regulatory networks and found that any particular phenotype can be underlined by a huge number of functionally equivalent genotypes, which implies that evolution of genetic networks can often be semi-neutral with respect to the organism’s fitness.

All of this should dispatch once and for all ideas like “genetic program” and “genetic blueprint,” thereby also dramatically undercutting any claim to genetic determinism (as opposed to more mild “genetic causalism,” for lack of a better term). There is no program or blueprint because the developmentally-relevant information is distributed among different levels of organization, including but not limited to the level of gene networks. So phenotypes are truly emergent properties of gene-gene (and of course, gene-environment) interactions. This is completely different from the case of human-made programs and blueprints, which feature a relationship between input and output that is much closer to a simple one-to-one mapping. This is why living beings can evolve one complex feature after another without having to be “redesigned” from scratch. Hume was right: machines are simply not good metaphors for organisms, and it is time for stubbornly reductionist biologists to move on and search for better metaphors.

I thought I'd post a fun, happy and relaxing song this morning. The artist is Jason Mraz and I really dig his reggae sound. Reggae is one of my favorite musical styles because it is so calming and gets me to dance around a bit and let my body relax to the beat. I also really like the message of this song of living in the now, letting go of our hang-ups and enjoying what he have and not worrying about what we don't have. As well as rejoicing in the power of love.

I was recently sent a copy of "Society Without God" by Phil Zuckerman to review. The author lived in Denmark and Sweden for 14 months and discovered through personal interviews with average Danes and Swedes that Scandinavia is quite Atheist/Agnostic.

It has been a falsehood heard in many religious circles (especially within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions) for years that society can not succeed without a belief in a creator god. However, Zuckerman presents his thesis that despite their lack of belief Scandinavians are some of the most socially well adjusted and successful people on Earth.

Some give the examples of the former USSR, North Korea, Cuba and China to try and argue that nontheist societies breed oppression and are not good examples of healthy societal life. However, Zuckerman deftly responds saying that those were/are governments who force everyone to be Atheist/Agnostic:

In each case, religion wasn't abandoned by the people themselves in a natural process over several generations [James: Like Scandinavia]. Rather, the "abandonment" of religion was decreed by vicious dictators who imposed their faithlessness on an unwilling, decidedly un-free citizenry.

He gives several interesting reasons for why secular societies are so stable and successful one of which is education. He found that a high level of Scandinavians are educated and that the higher level of education one achieves the less one believes in a god. And while being an nontheist, Zuckerman makes sure to say that not everything about monotheism is negative. He does list positives of believing in a god/supernatualism. Overall though he paints a very convincing picture that belief in a creator god is not necessary to a moral and ethical society.

It is fascinating in that his argument is built directly from primary sources by interviewing average citizens. This strength, however, does become a bit of a weakness for this book because the interviews become too many and the answers become repetitive. That would be my one criticism of this book.

As a nontheist Buddhist I found myself agreeing quite often with the sentiments expressed by these Danes and Swedes. I have read many books on Atheist thinking and I find it noteworthy that most don't even mention/cover Buddhism in their critiques of religion. In my mind that is because Buddhism falls inbetween religion and Atheism. It's kind of in its own category that seems to have more in common with philosophy and psychology than with strict religious dogma.