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MARTIN Seligman, in his book, Flourish, offers a number of observations that deserve more detailed treatment. (Seligman, Martin, Flourish. New York: Free Press, 2011, pp. 16–20. ISBN 9781439190760.) Among them (page references are to the pdf version of the book):
The necessity of others (Sartre was wrong)
Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play No Exit might have been judged meaningful by him and his post–World War II devotees, but it now seems wrongheaded (“Hell is other people”) and almost meaningless, since today it is accepted without dissent that connections to other people and relationships are what give meaning and purpose to life.
[...] Very little that is positive is solitary. When was the last time you laughed uproariously? The last time you felt indescribable joy? The last time you sensed profound meaning and purpose? The last time you felt enormously proud of an accomplishment? Even without knowing the particulars of these high points of your life, I know their form: all of them took place around other people. Other people are the best antidote to the downs of life and the single most reliable up. Hence my snide comment about Sartre’s “Hell is other people.” [pp.15, 16]
We remember bad events more easily than good
We think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. Of course, sometimes it makes sense to analyze bad events so that we can learn from them and avoid them in the future. However, people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful. Worse, this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. One way to keep this from happening is to get better at thinking about and savoring what went well.
For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So to overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well.
[p.21]Drawn by the future - nor merely driven by the past
Finally, human beings are often, perhaps more often, drawn by the future than they are driven by the past, and so a science that measures and builds expectations, planning, and conscious choice will be more potent than a science of habits, drives, and circumstances. That we are drawn by the future rather than just driven by the past is extremely important and directly contrary to the heritage of social science and the history of psychology. It is, nevertheless, a basic and implicit premise of positive psychology.
[pp. 49-50]Evolution driven by positive relationships, rather than the “selfish gene”
What is the big human brain for? About five hundred thousand years ago, the cranial capacity of our hominid ancestors' skulls doubled in size from 600 cubic centimeters to its present 1,200 cubic centimeters. The fashionable explanation for all this extra brain is to enable us to make tools and weapons; you have to be really smart to deal instrumentally with the physical world. The British theoretical psychologist Nick Humphrey has presented an alternative: the big brain is a social problem solver, not a physical problem solver. As I converse with my students, how do I solve the problem of saying somerhing that Marge will think is funny, that won't offend Tom, and that will persuade Derek that he is wrong without rubbing his nose in it? These are extremely complicated problems—problems that computers, which can design weapons and tools in a trice, cannot solve. But humans can and do solve social problems, every hour of the day. The massive pre-frontal cortex that we have is continually using its billions of connections to simulate social possibilities and then to choose the optimal course of action. So the big brain is a relationship simulation machine, and it has been selected by evolution for exactly the function of designing and carrying out harmonious but effective human relationships.
The other evolutionary argument that meshes with the big brain as social simulator is group selection. The eminent British biologist and polemicist Richard Dawkins has popularized a selfish-gene theory which argues that the individual is the sole unit of natural selection Two of the world's most prominent biologists, unrelated but both named Wilson (Edmind O. and David Sloan), have recently amassed evidence that the group is a primary unit of natural selection. Their argument starts with the social insects: wasps, bees, termites, and ants, all of which have factories, fortresses, and systems of communication and dominate the insect world just as humans dominate the vertebrate world. Being social is the most successful form of higher adaptation known. I would guess that it is even more adaptive than having eyes, and the most plausible mathematization of social insect selection is that selection is done by groups and not by individuals. [...] [thus evolution encourages us to seek out positive relationships]
[note also in this context the observation of the anthropologist at the meeting in Tucson that early human development required cooperation, rather than competition. There is no evidence of large-scale warfare until food is stored in baskets and jars. Prior to that time, social cooperation was essential for survival in a world containing sabre-tooth tigers the size of moderate-sized horses.
“Each element of well-being must itself have three properties to count as an element:
1. It contributes to well-being.
2. Many people pursue it for its own sake, not merely to get any of the other elements.
3. It is defined and measured independently of the other elements.”
This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2017
