Longitudinal study tells us what makes people happy

What makes people happy? On quite a few occasions, I've posted at DI with regard to ideas that I learned through reading various books and articles (a search for "happiness" in the DI search box will give you dozens of articles). What does that reveal about me, I wonder? Today, I had the pleasure of reading an extraordinarily thoughtful article on this same topic: "What Makes Us Happy?" by Joshua Wolf Shenk appears in the June 2009 edition of The Atlantic. You'll find an abridged edition of the article here. Shenk's article is anchored by the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest running longitudinally study of mental and physical well-being in history. It was begun in 1937 in order to study "well-adjusted Harvard sophomores (all male), and it has followed its subject for more than 70 years." The study was originally known as "The Grant Study," in that it was originally funded by W.T. Grant. Despite all odds, the study has survived to this day--many of the subjects are now in their upper 80's. Along the way, the study was supplemented with a separate study launched in 1937 dedicated to studying juvenile delinquents in inner-city Boston (run by criminologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck). You'll enjoy Joshua Shenk's work on many levels. He writes with precision, providing you with a deep understanding of the featured longitudinal studies. You will also enjoy his seemingly effortless ability to spin engaging stories (there are dozens of stories within his article) and his exceptional skill at crafting highly readable prose. I'm writing this post as a dare, then. Go forth and read Shenk's article and I guarantee that you will be thoroughly enriched and appreciative. The Atlantic also provided a video interview of George Vaillant, now 74, who since 1967 has dedicated his career to running and analyzing the Grant Study. As you'll see from Shenk's article, Vaillant is an exceptional storyteller himself. The Atlantic article, then, might remind you of one of those Russian dolls, and that is a storyteller telling the story of another storyteller who tell stories of hundreds of other storytellers. For more than 40 years, Vaillant has not only gathered reams of technical data, but he has poured his energy into interviewing the subjects and their families and melding all of that data into compellingly detailed vignettes of the subjects. Telling stories is not ultimately what the study was supposed to be about, of course, and Vaillant also tells us what those stories mean for the rest of us. Truly, what makes people happy? Vaillant offers answers that you will be tempted to immediately apply to your own situation. Vaillant has a lot to say about "adaptations," how people respond to the challenges they face in life. As a Shenk explains,

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Quote time

I love to collect quotes. Such a high ratio of thought-provocation per word! I'd even bet that there is a the seed for a novel in most well-honed quotes. I collect these from many sources, though more than a few of the following were presented to me by The Quotations Page, which I use as my homepage. Some of these quotes have made the rounds (the oldies-but-goodies), though I'd bet that you'll find more than a few that you've never seen before. Enjoy. In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Johann von Neumann (1903 - 1957)

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.

Robert Byrne

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Jumpers (1972) act 1

The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.

Douglas Adams , Last Chance to See

“It is not acceptable to have a religion where the alternative to faith is punishment — that’s how you train dogs, not develop people.”

Deng Ming-Dao

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

George Wald (1906 - )

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

H. H. Williams

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What is St. Louis like?

People from my town of St. Louis are going ape-shit thinking that the national spotlight will come to our city along with the All-Star Game. It's really sounding like mega-insecurity to me. If you're really proud of your city, then be proud. You shouldn't need some sports announcer to say a few nice things about one's tourist attractions between pitches in order to feel validated. And if that sports announcer's opinion is so important, let's make sure that he takes a tour of our decaying city schools before the baseball game so that he can give the national sports audience an informed opinion or two on that, between pitches. And, really, what's more important if you had to choose between having first rate tourist attractions and a first rate school system? But my ambivalence leads to an important question. What is St. Louis really like? I've lived here all my life, and there is much to like about our city (as well as many things that need much improvement). Rather than write my own lengthy description of St. Louis, I'm going to refer you to this well-written balanced account by Alan Soloman of the Philadelphia Inquirer. What should we be thinking about St. Louis as the All-Star Game approaches? Here's Soloman's ominous opening, although his article eventually veers to many of the positive aspects of my river city.

The Gateway Arch, symbol of the place, and the museum beneath it represent the nation at its swaggering best, symbols of a Western expansion that would define us in so many ways. That we're talking about St. Louis - a city that's seen its share of rough times and that, like the country, isn't exactly in swagger mode right now - in a way adds particular power and poignancy to this year's celebration.

For another angle on how St. Louis is doing, check out this article in The Riverfront Times, where the author asks whether the recent efforts to beautify St. Louis amount to "putting lipstick on a pig."

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This much I know: AC Grayling

Today I share a few pearls from philosopher AC Grayling, writing for The Guardian. A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it. The democracy of blogging and tweeting is absolutely terrific in one way. It is also the most effective producer of rubbish and insult and falsehood we have yet invented. When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff? Christian churches and Muslim groups have no more right to have their say than women's institutes or trades unions. The government has actively encouraged faith-based education, and therefore given a megaphone to religious voices and fundamentalists. Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends. I'm not sure it is possible to think too much. You don't refresh your mind by partying in Ibiza. That single sentence: "science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty..." says more about my own views than an entire caffeine-fueled screed ever could. It's said that brevity is the soul of wit; those nine words illustrate that it can also be the soul of wisdom. Certainty seems to be the single most important thing that separates the devout believer from the atheist, the agnostic, the deist & the doubter. It's fine to say "my god, and my way of worshipping my god, will see me rewarded in the afterlife." I have no issue with that claim on the surface. But you can't be certain of it - certainly not certain enough to damn or pity people who disagree with you or dare to shine lights on the holes in your story. I can't be certain my direct ancestors had opposable big toes and could manufacture their own vitamin C or that our universe is thirteen billion years old, but that's the direction in which the evidence points - convincingly, with a giant pointy finger. No, I'm not certain at all, but that's where I'm putting my money. The holes in those converging storylines are not nearly as glaring as those present in the many, certain alternatives - and they're getting smaller all the time. All those from the "certainist" camp can do is rationalise (ironically enough) the size, shape and positioning of their holes - or look at their stories from such an angle that the holes aren't visible. Well, I prefer a story that makes sense no matter how you look at it.

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Catholic Answers: don’t even lie in the same bed . . .

Is it OK for unmarried adults to lie in the same bed, even if they don't have sex. Quick answer: NO. That's the advice I got here, at the Chastity Q&A. It's a sexual catechism filled with all kinds of advice, such as how far you can go without committing a sin. Is foreplay wrong? Here's advice I had never before considered:

Perhaps the easiest way to find out if our actions conform to authentic love is to imagine God sitting on a nearby sofa watching us. If his presence would cause immediate shame or the desire to stop dead in our tracks, we need to ask ourselves why.

How creepy! Would a married couple have sex if God was sitting on a nearby sofa watching? And, BTW, isn't God supposedly omniscient? Aren't good Christians supposedly to always assume that God is on a nearby sofa? Is it OK for homosexuals to raise children? No:

The impact of a mother in her family is unrepeatable, and the same can be said of the father. Two moms don't make a dad, and two dads do not equal a mom. This is the way nature has designed it.

Oh, and don't bother using condoms, because they cause greater numbers of unplanned pregnancies:

The fact is, increased condom use by teens is associated with increased out-of-wedlock birth rates.”

You'll also learn that merely looking at women in swimming suits is akin to pornography and that "porn trains us to have mental polygamy." All of this advice was provided by spin-off ("Chastity") site linked to a Catholic website ("Catholic Answers") that provided so much Catholic esoterica that it left me disoriented in 20 minutes. Truly amazing that so many people are willing to discuss, as one example of many, the difference (if any) between the "holy spirit" and the "holy ghost." Here's another interesting question: Should rock music be allowed at church? Absolutely not, because "If you were before Christ being crucified on Calvary, truly there witnessing it, would you start up a rock band and clap and dance?" The argument seems to be that as Jesus was bleeding to death on the cross, he would rather have someone nearby playing solemn music on an organ. If you want to be more than simply a good Catholic, "Catholicy Answers" is clearly the site for you.

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