Frozen Toothpaste

Matthieu Ricard’s Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill is probably the most important book in my life. No work has ever influenced so many aspects of my life or caused me to see the world so differently. Were there only one book that I could take with my to a desert island, I think this would very likely be it.

All of this is not to say that the book is flawless. On the second reading, some parts of the book seemed superfluous. Most memorably, the results of scientific studies which Ricard dutifully reports are interesting, but not as good as much of the rest of the book.

All of this may lead to the most important question: what is this book about? And were I a more careful writer I would edit this to answer that question at the start. Alas, I am not.

The book is, as you can probably infer from the title, a how-to to happiness. As such, the label “self-help” could be applied to it, but that conjures up images of hundreds of unsavory hucksters and swindlers who claim that they’ll make your life better in a snap. This book does no such thing.

Ricard, as the spelling of his name signals, is French by birth. He’s also a Buddhist monk who spends his time between Nepal and Tibet, serving as a translator for the Dalai Lama. And though it would be reasonable to say that Ricard’s answer to happiness grows out of Buddhism, one needn’t understand the first thing about the practice to get something from Ricard’s book.

Many, upon first introduction to Buddhism, see it not as a religion, but as a philosophy or even a type of positive psychology. The fact that Buddhism takes no explicit stance on the existence of deities (or a deity) makes this interpretation easier. And though Buddhism can be endowed with as many dogmatic traditions as any Western religion, the parts which Ricard discusses are not.

For those doubters of Buddhism (and religions in general), Mr. Ricard does conveniently provides scientific evidence — that stuff I said was dull — that Buddhist practice can and does make people happier, more controlled, and peaceful.

All of this is not to say that Happiness is some extended argument for Buddhism as the happiest religion in the world. It is, at the most basic level, an introduction to what thoughts and practices have made Mr. Ricard “the happiest man in the world.” (It was, if you’re wondering, that article that led me to the book in the first place.)

This book didn’t by itself transform my thinking, but it clarified and made much more salient some arguments that I’d been hearing for sometime and not fully understanding. The triviality of difference. The merits of optimism. The way to value all time. The wastefulness of envy.

It’s very likely that you could read this book and recieve from it much less than I have. It’s even possible that I received from this book more than it endeavored to give. But I can say with firm conviction that this book could teach everyone something, and many a great deal. After two readings, I still look forward to returning to it again and again, getting as much as I possibly can.

When you look around at the world, it’s easy to be angry. There are socio-political problems all over: Darfur, Myanmar, Iraq, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Somalia… the list could go on and on. There are also the scourges of poverty and hunger that never seem to leave us. And the more mundane but pervasive problems of theft, violence, and murder. And this is not even to mention the lower-key but no less troubling problems of racism, (hetero-)sexism, ageism, religious intolerance, general carelessness, ignorance, and outright selfishness. In short, “man’s inhumanity to man.”

And though I don’t think anger at these things is bad — after all, these are ugly things — I’m not really convinced it’s wise to spend your life angry at forces you cannot control. Any single man or woman, despite their dedication, power, and time available, cannot end any single force listed above. Even the American president — arguably the most powerful man in the world — requires a large bureaucracy and a number of allies to change anything in a noticeable way.

This is not to say that you cannot work to change things on a small scale. You can, for example, share your conviction that the rest of the world must act to end the conflict in Darfur. If you share this widely and well, you’ll probably convince at least a few others of that fact. But if you set out with the impression that you alone will end the conflict, you’ll only end up disappointed.

One of my favorite reminders of this is the Serenity Prayer. Regardless of how you feel about the Christian God, the use of the prayer by Alcoholics Anonymous, or the controversy over it’s authorship, I think everyone can learn something from it. The version I commonly hear says:

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.

Interestingly, Wikipedia cites the original version as follows:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

I think there’s a subtle and important difference between the two, but both are cogent explanations of the way one should act in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems. Surely other people, religious or not, have said the same thing, but if they ever said it with greater brevity or beauty, I’ve not seen it.

One could rightly critique both versions of the prayer for not being completely clear about what distinguishes between “things I cannot change” and “things I can.” That would be “things that cannot be changed” and “things that should be changed” if you use the second version. I think that “things that should be changed” is a more useful idea on this account, though it is also less clear about the distinction between what one should and should not get angry and worked up about.

Certainly, you alone cannot end racism, but it’s a problem that should change, and one you can work on. I would find it impossible to defend the idea that you should permit it. Parents shouldn’t let their kids be (overtly) racists, friends shouldn’t let friends be racists, and maybe strangers shouldn’t let other strangers be racists. But trying to end overt racism is not going to immediately end racism everywhere, and maybe racism will still remain just under the surface. But you must keep trying to change the things you can.

I think there’s a troubling possibly, after hearing this prayer, that one could begin to accept all behaviors. After all, the behaviors of others are necessarily beyond my control. But by expressing a conviction that certain behaviors should not be tolerated, I can influence how some act. Only those who will let my opinions influence their behavior will change — but I’d be changing the things I can.

You alone will not change the world, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to change what you can. That is the valuable reminder of the Serenity Prayer.

Since I’ve been writing about ignorance, I thought a quote on a similar topic was in order. This quotation is from W. K. Clifford, an atheist philosopher and mathematician, who argued that faith is both irrational and immoral. You can read the (almost) full text of “The Ethics of Belief” online, if you’re interested. It was Clifford’s work that spurred William James to write “The Will to Believe,” which was previously on “Other People’s Words.” Though I now find Clifford’s strident tone off-putting, there was a time this quote was very important to me.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the duty of questioning all that we believe.

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing. It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought were safe and strong. To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances. We feel much happier and secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, than when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. …we naturally do not like to find that we are really ignorant and powerless, that we have to begin again at the beginning, and try to learn what the thing is and how it is to be dealt with — if indeed anything can be learned about it. It is the sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of belief and afraid of doubting.

…

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubt which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

I’m fairly certain that the most dangerous people in the world are those that nihilistically believe that their group — especially one they find essential to their identity — is under attack. Many relatively powerless people with such fears, rational or otherwise, resort to terrorism. Having no ability to defend their group through conventional warfare, they strike anything and everything they see as endangering their desired order of the world.

Some people who foster this type of fear are able to carry out traditional war, Hitler was. So was Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the American rebels in 1775, and the Israelis in 1967. There are literally hundreds of examples of wars that began with fear — likely as many examples as there are wars — so I’ll move on.

Additionally, many with such fears are able to systematically kill the “other” that’s they see as threatening them, this is something Hitler did, but so did Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, the Rwandan Hutus, and — depending on who you ask — the Turks during the First World War.

This is not to say that all the above examples came to exist only because of a fear that a group was under threat, certainly some of these examples were furthered as much by a greedy thirst for power as for legitimate fear about the future. But that doesn’t mean that aspiring despots don’t, at least, appeal to ideas of external threat from a people’s common enemy. This is, generally, the essential method they use to gain the power they need to become true despots. Anyone with even a faint notion of 1930s Germany knows that’s exactly what Hitler did — convinced the German people that their superior race was being mongrelized and would perish if they didn’t help him to expand their empire.

Further, some people acting against such an existential threat — real or imagined — may not comprehend the ideology they’re defending. Certainly some young Muslims are simply becoming terrorists because they feel that they are supposed to. This was also true of most Germans that became Nazis, something Hannah Arendt made clear to the world in Eichmann in Jerusalem, from which we inherit the idea of “the banality of evil.”

But I think most Islamic terrorists believe — or would at least claim to believe — that Israel and the West pose an existential threat to the Muslim way of life. Such a party line is what you’d expect to hear from any group “at war” with any other.

Spain’s Basque separatists, and the more moderate separatists in Quebec, also believe that their peculiar way of life — different from their surrounding country — would collapse were they not acting to defend it. This view is probably not accurate, but it doesn’t stop them from holding it.

And these aren’t the only groups seek territorial integrity for their way of life. The famous Irish Republican Army was established to defend the Irish way of life from the British incursion in the northern part of their island. Thankfully that struggle is essentially over, but many, including the Basques, the Chechens in Russia, and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, continue to fight.

Separatists, terrorist groups, and nations can turns to some scary techniques when they feel their existence is threatened. Perhaps the most notable example of this is nuclear weaponry, but it is certainly not the only.

History has made clear that the only reason Albert Einstein pushed the Americans to develop nuclear weapons was his belief that the German Nazis were doing the same thing. The Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons because of the threat posed by the American warheads. Britain and France developed the technology for fear of the Soviet Union. China developed them for fear of the West, and perhaps the USSR. Israel possesses nuclear weapons because it is so profoundly insecure in the Middle East. India and Pakistan developed the warheads for fear of China, but mostly for fear of each other. North Korea has developed them for fear that China’s not committed to its protection. Iran is now seeking nuclear technology for fear of its neighbors — especially, but not exclusively, Israel.

I think it’s reasonable to claim that all terrorist organizations and nuclear powers developed in profound fear for their security. Genocides, too, seem to arise from the idea that one ethnic group is threatened by another.

Closer to home, some have argued that this systematic rhetoric of danger is essentially what George W. Bush has used, with varying degrees of success, since September 11, 2001. That he convinced Congress and the country that they faced an immediate and systematic threat from the mythical forces of “Islamofacism” which constitute the “Axis of Evil.” Whether or not this supposed threat ever existed, it could certainly be argued that it’s the primary reason the United States is still entrenched in Iraq.

Whether or not this was ever Bush’s goal, the idea that Bush effectively used terrorism to fight those he considered to be terrorists is, at best, bitterly ironic.

Perhaps then, if all disturbances to peace — war, genocide, terrorism, and nuclear proliferation — are caused by some variant of fear, world peace is as simple as convincing all people in all parts of the world that they have nothing to fear from external forces.

Unfortunately, I’m relatively certain that this is easier to say than to do.

Today’s “Other People’s Worlds” is about the age-old question of belief versus atheism. It’s also a rather oddly cited quote, for which I apologize. It comes from the philosopher William James’s “The Will to Believe,” one of the most famous Christian apologetics. In it, James argues that belief (in God) is a choice that one must make, and by equating agnosticism with atheism, he says there are essentially two choices. As an apologist, James argued in favor of belief.

However, in this passage, James is quoting Fitz James Stephen who talks about the religious choices that underpin a person’s life. (I have taken some liberties with the formatting.)

I began by a reference to Fitz James Stephen; let me end by a quotation from him.

“What do you think of yourself? What do you think of the world? … These are questions with which all must deal as it seems good to them. They are riddles of the Sphinx, and in some way or other we must deal with them.

“…In all important transactions of life we have to take a leap in the dark. … If we decide to leave the riddles unanswered, that is a choice; if we waver in our answer, that, too, is a choice: but whatever choice we make, we make it at our peril.

“If a man chooses to turn his back altogether on God and the future, no one can prevent him; no one can show beyond reasonable doubt that he is mistaken. If a man thinks otherwise and acts as he thinks, I do not see that any one can prove that he is mistaken. Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him.

“We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one.

“What must we do? ’ Be strong and of a good courage.’ Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. … If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.”