Is the Bible True?

Is the Bible true? To borrow a phrase from Pontius Pilate, what is "Truth?" And what is the Bible true, or false, about?

Is the Bible true?

When We Ask Whether the Bible Is True, What Do We Mean by "Truth?"

When fundamentalists say that the Bible is true, they mean basically the same thing as the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy: the Bible (and specifically the creation account in Genesis) is factually accurate, free from mistakes and contradictions, and authoritative on all matters on which it speaks, including science and history. According to most evangelical Christians, you can read the Bible for a literal account of how God created the heavens and the earth in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.

Incidentally, many atheists approach the Bible from the fundamentalist perspective, i.e., reading the Bible in a straightforward, literal way; although the obvious difference is that atheists believe that the Bible is not true, because its statements about science and history, when read literally, are factually inaccurate and contradictory.

On the other hand, many Christians, such as Catholics, Methodists, and Episcopalians, take a more nuanced and philosophical approach to reading the Bible. Of course, with Catholics, the dogmatic fundamentalism comes into play, not with the Bible, but with the Church's traditions, such as various doctrines about Mary's immaculate conception and perpetual virginity.

For most Christians in more traditional denominations, the Bible is true in the sense that Galileo allegedly said it was true, when he was on trial for heresy: the Bible tells you how to go to heaven; it doesn't tell you how the heavens go.

Under Galileo's view, the Bible's authors wrote about history or science only incidentally; those subjects were not their focus, and it certainly wasn't God's purpose to give us a scientific or historical textbook. The Bible's statements about history or science may, or may not be, correct; but because the purpose of the Bible is to convey spiritual truths, the truth of falsity of the Bible's statements about physical science are not material.

So is the Bible true in the literal sense meant by fundamentalist Christians (and some fundamentalist atheists)? And if not, could it be true in the more philosophical and theological sense in which it is believed by more mainstream Christians?

My Journey As a Recovering Fundamentalist, and What I Learned...

As I indicated in a previous post, I am a recovering fundamentalist. No, I never really read Genesis as literal history or science (at least not since early childhood), but I did believe in the literal truth of most of the New Testament, in particular the biggest miracle of them all, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

For me, the errors and contradictions in Genesis were simply too much to ignore. You can't even get through the creation account without running into all kinds of problems.

Creationism: Literal Fundamentalism or Figurative Imagery?

People say they believe that the creation account in Genesis is true. I say, "Great! Which one?"

Huh? Which creation account?

Most people read through the first two chapters of Genesis without ever noticing that they are describing two separate and mutually exclusive creation accounts. Just read Genesis 1:1 to 2:3, and make a timeline of everything that happens. Then, read Genesis 2:4 through 2:24 and make a timeline of everything that happens. Then compare your timelines.

Were humans created after the plants and animals or before? Did God create male and female humans at the same time, or did he create a man first and then a woman much later?

I have pretty much always known that Genesis could not be literally accurate, since it contains two contradictory creation accounts. However, I thought that both accounts could be read together to give a general thematic account of how humans were created by God, but rebelled spiritually against God by wanting to determine what is good and evil for themselves, rather than accepting God's sovereignty or the moral law that he imposed.

Also, I believed that at least some of the miracles in the Bible happened, more or less, as recorded. Specifically, I believed in the literal virgin birth of Jesus, as well as his crucifixion, death, and literal resurrection from the dead; and I believed that Jesus was literally going to return to bring the world to an end and institute a final judgment.

I know that many fundamentalists would not have considered me a real fundamentalist, given some of my positions on specific doctrinal issues or on the interpretation of certain biblical texts. However, the reason I use that label is that my approach was similar to theirs. I wanted to find the "Truth," and I believed that the Bible gave me everything I needed in order to ascertain the Truth concerning God, the meaning of Life, and how people ought to live.

Psychological Reasons for Believing in the Truth of The Bible

For me, the attraction of this belief system was that it provided a safe and comfortable haven from the unpredictable storms of life. For a Christian, everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. There is no such thing as luck. God has the major parts of Life's rich pageant all figured out, and he will cause all things to work out for the best for those who trust him and follow his word (Romans 8:28).

Belief confers immense benefit psychologically. Security and safety are basic human desires, and it feels incredibly reassuring to know that God knows everything about your situation and that he has a foolproof plan to make your life into something profoundly meaningful.

Of course, such belief can also have immense psychological costs. What if there is no plan? What if the world doesn't operate according to the principles that are set forth in the Bible as absolutes? What if, as Forest Gump put it, shit happens? Your obstinate refusal to entertain certain questions or to admit certain realities can cause tremendous cognitive dissonance. To avoid unpleasant truths, you sometimes have to deny your own very genuine thoughts and feelings, as well as force your experience of the world to fit within the boundaries of your orthodox expectations. In doing that, you disown your truest and most authentic self.

Cognitive Dissonance Arising from Believing The Bible to Be Absolutely and Unquestionably True

For me, I wound up realizing that even though I seemed to always know what I "should" do or "had to" do, I no longer knew what I wanted to do. I felt like I should be happy and content, but I wasn't. I I was believing the right things and doing the right things, yet I was miserable and terribly distressed.

Let's say I saw a sign that said, "No Jesus, no peace; know Jesus, know peace." Let's say that someone pointed it out to me in passing. I would, out of a sense of obligation, say, "Amen." I would force a smile. Why? Because I knew I should agree with it. Because by faith, I knew the formula worked. Except that it wasn't working for me. I knew Jesus, but I didn't have peace. But surely that was due to some fault of mine. Not praying enough. Not enough faith. Pride. I must have too much pride, or something. I certainly couldn't entertain any doubt about the formula.

I eventually reached a point in my life where the evidence became too overwhelming to ignore: the formulas were not working. And all the "biblical" advice I was getting from my fellow Christians only added to my confusion, because none of that was working either. Worst of all was the so-called Christian counseling and Christian therapy.

Is the Bible True about Mental Health? A Digression on Christian "Counseling"

Even though I did not believe that the Bible was absolutely, unquestionably true about the physical world, I still believed the Bible to be absolutely and unquestionably true concerning our inner spiritual and emotional life. I knew that modern science had disproved many of the explanations and predictions of natural phenomena that medieval Christians had made based on the Bible; however, I thought that science had left the Bible's statements about our inner human nature more or less intact. Therefore, I deferred to the Bible and to Christian "authorities" when it came to matters of mental health. This was a big and very costly mistake.

Let me digress for a moment about Christian "counseling." This stuff is total horseshit. Actually, it's much worse that horseshit. At least with horseshit, you're not likely to mistake it for being the cure for a very real illness.

American Christianity's pseudo-answer to modern psychiatric medicine is a bunch of dark-ages nonsense. Imagine a faith healer telling a cancer patient not to do chemotherapy anymore, because secular medicine is not biblical. When it comes to mental and emotional health, that's basically where "Christian" therapy is at.

For Christians with mood disorders and other mental health issues, the charismatic churches offer the Inner Healing Movement, which goes by various names like "Sozo" and "Theophostic Prayer Ministry" or "TPM." The operative principles of these inner healing programs is derived from repressed memory therapy (guided by the Holy Spirit, purportedly). That's right. Repressed memory therapy. Something that secular medicine tried and REJECTED as completely UNRELIABLE several DECADES ago. Supposedly, the Holy Spirit helps you dredge up your repressed memory of the first time you felt afraid or abandoned or what not; and then you look for Jesus in that memory, so he can heal it. Best of all, it is absolutely guaranteed not to give you any false or unreliable memories, because it's all done in Jesus's name!

Christians "counselors" are using therapy based on 1950s-era junk science, but because Jesus is involved, there's no possibility of it harming anyone. I'm amazed by the level of presumptuousness people are willing to take with mental health, that they absolutely, positively would not take in other areas of life, no matter how super-spiritual it sounded. No megachurch pastor would fly on an airplane being piloted by someone with zero flying experience, no matter how "led by the spirit" that person claimed to be. We're skeptical when it comes to physical safety, but not when someone makes an unscientific claim about mental and emotional health..

Sorry for the digression. I suppose you could infer that my own journey with mental health and my struggle with depression and anxiety had a lot to do with my realization that I did NOT have the answers, because the answers thought I had were definitely NOT working. Moreover, I was reading and hearing people share their own experiences and insights in secular contexts, and it seemed to me that the secular wisdom was at least showing real results.

At some point, I really started to question the insistence of Christian leaders on staying within the Christian culture when it came to mental health issues. For example, when I shared with one leader that I was going to see a therapist through a employee assistance program offered by my employer, the leader asked only, "Is she a Christian?" Not, "Is she qualified? Does she know her stuff? Is she licensed? Have her techniques been scientifically tested?" Nope. None of that mattered. All that mattered was whether she was a Christian.

I realized something in that moment. I believed this particular person meant well when he cautioned me about using a non-Christian therapist. But it struck me that he probably would not have stressed the issue of the therapist's religious affiliation if I had mentioned that I was seeing a physical therapist while recovering from a leg injury. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that these fundamentalist leaders and teachers were very selective in their orthodoxy.

I Do Not Believe That The Bible Provides Helpful Insights about Human Nature 

Eventually, the dam broke for me. I reached a point where I had to be honest with myself. The biblical explanations and predictions about human nature were just as wrong and counterproductive as the ones about astronomy or biology. As I read and exposed myself to the ideas and findings of modern neuroscience, I had to admit that modern science did a better job of explaining human nature than the Bible and theologians did.

As Sam Harris explains in his fantastic book Waking Up, the religions of the East may make some bizarre and unnecessary metaphysical claims about the Universe, but they also provide some genuine, important, and empirically verifiable insights about consciousness and experience. However, the Abrahamic religions of the West, including Christianity, do not merely provide useless conceptions of the Self and human awareness, they make positively harmful and misleading claims that can be difficult to overcome, even though the evidence of modern science almost uniformly contradicts these claims.

Is The Bible True? The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back for Me...

I finally reached a point where I was able to admit to myself that I did not believe much of the Bible's claims about Human Nature, but I still believed that The Bible was true in an important sense. The New Testament, at least, recorded supernatural events that really happened, right? These were eyewitnesses to the ministry and miracles of Jesus, right? Maybe the New Testament writers were not qualified to speak on matters of mental health or the laws of nature, such that they wrote a fallible account of what Jesus did and said, but at least I could be sure that Jesus really did and said those things, even if the New Testament writers misinterpreted it or got some of the specifics wrong or out of order. Right?

Then I listened to The Historical Jesus by Bart Ehrman. The Historical Jesus is a 12-hour series of lectures by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, in which professor Ehrman approaches the surviving documents about Jesus' life and teachings, including the four canonical gospels, using standard criteria for evaluating historical evidence. The course answers the question, what can we know about who Jesus was and what Jesus taught, based on the historical evidence?

Remember the Matrix, when Neo is offered a red pill and a blue pill? The red pill would dispel Neo's comfortable illusions about his most basic beliefs about the world and about himself. Well, The Historical Jesus was like taking the red pill.

As it turns out, none of the New Testament gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They were written decades after the fact by educated Greek-speaking Christians, not by Jesus's uneducated Aramaic-speaking disciples. The gospels are full of contradictions, some minor, but some touching on core tenets of the Christian faith.

Moreover, an historical analysis of the New Testament indicates that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish preacher who preached about an imminent end of the world, for which the proper response was abandonment of worldly concerns like career, possessions, family, etc. That's what the earliest gospel, Mark, indicates, as do the undisputed letters of the Apostle Paul. It is not until the later New Testament writings, such as the Gospel of John or the letters forged in Paul's name, that Jesus emerges as a transcendent "image of the invisible God" who is "one in being with the Father" and who was "begotten not made." During the intervening decades, Jesus was transformed from the apocalyptic Jewish preacher of Mark's Gospel to the transcendent God of the Gospel of John.

I do want to mention a caveat regarding the Apostle Paul: he really did believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead and that Jesus was coming back, soon, as the apocalyptic Son of Man (from the book of Daniel). The indisputably Pauline epistles include categorical statements from Paul about seeing the risen Christ, and a historical analysis of the New Testament indicates that Paul was originally a fierce adversary and persecutor of the church, but that he subsequently had what he believed to be a bona fide vision of Jesus, and that this experience convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah. Moreover, as a result of this experience, Paul appears to have completely given his life to spreading this "good news" about Jesus. The great weight of the evidence calls many of the New Testament's claims about Jesus into question, but Paul's convictions indicate that at least some of these doctrines do go back to the early decades of Christianity.

After considering Dr. Ehrman's lectures about the historical Jesus, as well as several of his books about the New Testament and church history, such as Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, I believe that it is possible to believe in Jesus as Messiah based on the New Testament, but that this belief would need to be somewhat sophisticated and nuanced in order to be logically sound, given what we know about the New Testament, the ancient world, and the history  of the church.

If God intended for us to take a literal, fundamentalist view of The Bible, then I believe he would have done more (1) to make the Bible internally consistent and (2) to safeguard the earliest writings of the apostles, so that we could be reasonably confident that we know that the original manuscripts of the New Testament actually said. As Dr. Ehrman put it, how can we be certain that God preserved the original manuscripts from error, when he did not preserve the actual manuscripts themselves? What we do have are copies of copies of copies, the earliest of which date from centuries after the books were purportedly written. And the books were originally written decades after the events and speeches that they purportedly document. Given The Bible that we actually do have, it is clear that God did not give us a book that is without error.

Further Considerations on Whether The Bible Is True

While I believe the Bible can support a nuanced and sophisticated faith in God, I also believe that there are other issues that undermine, or at the very least complicate, the question of whether the Bible is true.

Such issues include the problem of extreme suffering, such occurred en masse during the Holocaust or American slavery. How could an all-loving and all-powerful and all-knowing God allow for such suffering, especially of young and helpless children?

I do not pretend to have an answer to these questions. Maybe they are unanswerable (at least for those of us with merely "human" experiences and understandings of the world). I think problems arise when people, who are not satisfied with not knowing, want to go make unwarranted claims about God and humanity and then demand that those claims be swallowed unquestioningly by Christians based on some kind of biblical faith.

Is The Bible True? Some Debates . . .

Below is a video of a debate between Dr. Bart Ehrman and Dr. William Lane  Craig, a Christian philosopher, about the historical reliability of the Bible, specifically with regards to the resurrection of Jesus.

Below is a video of a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Sam Harris concerning morality. Dr. Craig argues that God is a necessary and sufficient basis for morality. Although Dr. Craig is a Christian apologist, he does not specifically argue for a Christian conception of God, although it may be the case that he implicitly makes use of Christian concepts. Dr. Harris argues specifically against Christianity and the Bible being a source of moral Truth.

So Is the Bible True?

So is the Bible true? It depends in what sense you are asking the question. Is the Bible literally, factually, historically, and scientifically true? It's highly unlikely.

But does the Bible contain true and important insights about the spiritual dimension of our universe and ourselves? That is a question that you have to answer for yourself. Fortunately, there are many good resources available to help you, such as Bart Ehrman's books and Great Courses lectures. But ultimately, you have to make the call.
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Is the Bible True? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. And if you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy other articles or blog posts on this site on subjects such as mindfulness and how to define "success."  You may also enjoy reading David Hume's essay On Miracles (https://www.finding-meaning-in-life.com/p/introducing-david-humes-skeptical.html).

How to Cure Boredom in Life

Like death and taxes, boredom seems to be a fact of life in the modern world. People are willing to pay big bucks for amusement and distractions, no matter how fleeting and insubstantial they might be. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, television, shopping, politics, making money, spending money: all of it seems to be a desperate attempt to cure boredom in life.

How to Cure Boredom in Life?

Boredom in Life: The Problem

Sometimes I wonder about myself. For much of my life, I have either been busy and stressed out by some looming project or deadline, or I have been bored and sick and tired of everything, including myself. In times of busyness and stress, I have longed for free time to pursue personal interests or to indulge idle curiosity; but then when I've had the free time to do those things, they feel empty and unrewarding. When looking back and reflecting on this pattern, I wonder, am I just trying to stay busy, so that I don't have to deal with boredom?

It's a terrible way to live: longing for free time, but unable to enjoy it when it comes; alternating between workweeks of busyness and burnout, on the one hand, and fleeting breaks of boredom and depression, on the other. 

Living in that way is analogous to a humorous story told by Woody Allen at the beginning of Annie Hall. Two old women are eating lunch in the cafeteria of a nursing home. One says to the other, "The food here is really terrible. The taste of it makes me want to throw up." The other woman nods and replies, "I know. And they give you such small portions, too." In his analysis of that joke, Woody Allen said that their exchange highlights the way most of us feel about Life: so much of it is unpleasant and painful, yet we feel like it passes by much too quickly.

Boredom in Life: Possible Root Causes

Two things have struck me when I've thought about how to cure boredom in Life. First, primitive people don't appear to be afflicted by boredom, the way we moderns do. Second, while boredom craves distraction, boredom also seems to arise out of distraction in the first place. 

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were talking about problems with the education system in the United States. My wife has been in education at the secondary and collegiate levels for much of her career, and she has strong feelings about the inequality of opportunity that exists for poor and minority students. I can't recall the specifics of the conversation, but at some point, I felt like a light bulb went off for me. I asked her what goods are required for someone to have access to the "good life." She listed off several things that sound unquestionably good, and which are certainly necessary for any meaningful opportunity to thrive in the modern economy, such as literacy, access to technology, etc. I then asked, which of those goods do the Bushmen of the Kalahari enjoy? The answer, of course, was none of them.

Obviously, the Bushmen inhabit a very different world than we do, with different challenges and requiring different skills and knowledge in order to thrive. I am in no way suggesting that we base our education system off what works in a tribal hunter-gatherer society. But what is interesting is that the Bushmen seem to be happy and well-adjusted to life, even though they lack almost all of the things that we would consider necessary for having a good life.

From what (little) I have read about them, aboriginal hunter-gatherers spend most of their time doing nothing, yet they do not appear to be bored or even to have a concept of "boredom" or a word for it. True, there are major differences between the way hunter-gatherers "work" and the way most modern humans work (see, Play Makes Us Human V: Why Hunter-Gatherers' Work is Play from www.PsychologyToday.com); however, that would only explain why they do not get bored while hunting and gathering; it would not explain how they can sit around and do nothing for much of their lives without getting bored, the way most modern people would be bored by even 5 minutes of doing nothing.

I think the most important difference between aboriginal hunter-gatherers and modern Americans is in our social groups. As an American in the 21st Century, I live in a lower-middle-class suburb where I know a handful of my neighbors by name, but I would not consider any of them to be friends, or even close acquaintances. I was born in one state, raised in another, and currently live in yet another. I have only one member of my immediate family who lives within 100 miles of me; the others are spread out across the country. I have childhood friends that I still stay in touch with, but they all live in different states as well. I work with people with whom I get along reasonably well and can have pleasant conversations, but I would not consider any of my coworkers friends. Now compare this to the typical Bushman, who lives among the same immediate family and close friends his entire life.

For the typical Bushman, it would never occur to him to "prove himself" to anyone. Why would he need to do that? What would "proving himself" even mean? His fellow tribesmen would all know him intimately, and he would know them intimately. Their first impressions of each other would have been formed in infancy and long since forgotten. The ability to impress people with your small talk wouldn't mean anything: who would you be trying to impress, and why would you need to impress them?

To be sure, life as a Bushman would be no picnic. You would have illnesses and injuries without modern pain killers. No indoor plumbing, no soft beds to sleep in, no air conditioning in the sweltering hot summer nights.

But you would also never feel lonely or insecure about your standing in the social group. Whenever tragedy struck, you would not face it alone; you would face it in common with all your family and friends. You would never move to a new city where you didn't know anyone or face the pressure of interviewing for a job with a panel of complete strangers. You would never feel pressured to "make something" of yourself or figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

For 21st Century Americans, this is a bigger psychological problem than I think we like to admit, and one that particularly plagues introverts. As Susan Caine describes in her excellent book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, we have developed a "personality ethic" in America, where we tend to admire and seek to be like the smooth-talking and charming man of action, who can sail through a job interview with ease, navigate the office politics with aplomb, get himself noticed and admired by all the right people, and win opportunities and resources because key decision makers are mesmerized by his infectious charisma and self-confidence. That's because we live in a society where no one really knows anyone else and where social and economic arrangements are constantly changing, so that if we want to get a job or seize a new opportunity, it usually involves proving ourselves all over again to a completely new set of strangers. We are never really secure, because no matter how many times we have proven ourselves to others, it is never enough.

For an insecure 21st Century American, if you are not actively running the rat race, then you are not going to outpace your feelings of insecurity. Whenever you take a break or a holiday, there it is: a faceless, formless feeling of dread and uncertainty, a sense of heaviness and self-doubt, a nagging thought that you should be doing something, anything, to establish yourself a little more firmly, to prove yourself a little more convincingly, and thereby give yourself a little more solid footing in the game of life. That restlessness tells you that you should be doing something, even if you don't appear to have anything really to do. Resting contentedly is not an option, since you are not really secure; so you must find something to do to either prove yourself or to distract yourself from the feeling of insecurity.

And that leads me to my next observation: I find that when I am bored, I crave distraction. Yet it is this pervasive distractedness that causes me to feel bored in the first place. Instead of being able to just be myself in the present moment, I feel like I need to be doing something to prove myself, but the desire to prove myself causes me to be discontent with myself and to desire to make myself into someone else or to distract myself from who I really am. Alienated from myself, I am unable to be content, and any free time forces me to face this fact about myself. I have tried for so long to prove myself and figure out who I should be, that I really don't know who I actually am.

To borrow a term from Buddhism, I am experiencing dukkha. Distress, dis-ease, discontentment. I have an empty sense of self that demands to be fed like a hungry child, a self that tries to define itself through attachments to people, places, and things, and which clings to those attachments like a drowning man holds onto a life preserver. When it's just me, with nothing to do and nowhere to be, I feel like the drowning man who lost hold of a life preserver; emotionally I thrash about, desperately trying to find something solid to grab hold of. I feel bored, restless, uneasy, hungry for some sort of distraction or some project to do to stay busy.

Boredom seems to arise, then, from these two things: alienation from my true self, and alienation from true relationships with others. Boredom seems to be a defense mechanism to keep me busy and distracted, so I don't have to experience despair.

How to Cure Boredom in Life

So how to cure boredom in Life, now that I have identified its apparent causes? The first and simplest thing to do is to face the present moment, rather than flee from it. The best tool I have found for this has been (drum roll, please) . . .  mindfulness. Yeah, yeah, I know it's trendy these days and starting to sound cliched, but it does seem to work.

Mindfulness if often touted as the panacea for modern malaise, and this may be why it seems cliched sometimes. We don't want to deal with the underlying problems of modern life, like the crazy frenetic pace of life and the endless to-do lists; so instead of changing our lives and slowing down, we try to use mindfulness as a tool to help us become the supermen we've always wanted to be: I can now be the affable extrovert with an active social life; the tireless and boundlessly enthusiastic office worker who outshines all his peers; the always-present and emotionally sensitive family man, who plays freely with his children and romances his wife; and the well-rounded and cultured man of the world who travels to fun destinations and enjoys art museums and theater. And what enables me to keep up this fantastic to-do list and be the modern renaissance man who is great at everything? My mindfulness sessions . . . Yeah right. I know television and movies make it look that easy, but in the real world, being mindful means making choices and valuing some things more highly than others, not being everyone and doing everything with a superhuman Zen-like serenity.

For me, mindfulness has helped me become more aware of who I am and who I am not. It has helped me admit to myself why I want to do certain things or why I feel like I should value some things, even when deep down, I really don't want to do them and don't really think they are all that important. Mindfulness has helped me simplify, simplify, simplify. Cut through all the mental clutter and chaos and see myself for who I actually am.

Mindfulness seems to be pretty simple. Anchor your awareness on your breath. Give an open-heart and an open-mind to the present moment, and be alert to your feelings, thoughts, and sensations, without being attached to them. Most books and seminars on mindfulness are pretty basic; once you've gotten a little bit of practice, it seems the most effective thing to do is simply to do it, rather than trying to learn more about it. For me, a great starting place was two books: Coming to Our Senses, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, and The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh.  

As for the other root cause of boredom, i.e., the unhealthy social dynamics of modern life, dealing with that has been more challenging. I am trying (this is very much an ongoing process) to be more present and attentive (more mindful) in my interactions with my immediate family, and I know I need to make the time and space to have more frequent and more meaningful interactions with them.

Friendship is vitally important, but it can be very challenging, since (as C. S. Lewis noted in The Four Loves), it requires the soil of familiarity in which to take root. It can be hard as a working adult with young children to have time to devote to pastimes in which I am likely to spend significant time with potential friends.

Moreover, most acquaintanceships fail to make the leap to friendship, because the relationship lacks depth. For me, it is hard to find people with whom I can discuss, not only events, but the meaning of those events. If I visit my childhood friends, they can tell me about recent events in their lives, with people and in settings that I do not share, and yet our conversation about those things will be meaningful. On the other hand, I have co-workers with whom I have an ongoing shared context, but there is no way to go deeper than small-talk with them about our shared experiences. If I were to go to a different job and run into one of them ten years later, after exchanging initial pleasantries, we would have almost nothing to say to each other.

I have come to see how rare it is to find people with whom I can share deep and meaningful connections, and so I have belatedly learned how important my friendships are, and have been, with my childhood friends.

In the meantime, though, I can make it more of a priority to stay in touch with those friends I do have. And, as I stated earlier, I can make it more of a priority to make meaningful time to spend with my children and immediate family. Most of all, when I am with family and friends, I can make sure that I am really present with them, not distracted by thoughts of what happened earlier or of what I hope will happen later. And for that, of course, the practice of mindfulness is deeply beneficial.

So how to cure boredom in life? For me, the best tools have been (1) practicing mindfulness and (2) focusing on prioritizing and being meaningfully present for my relationships with family and friends.

To Accept the Things I Cannot Change...

Should we accept those things that we cannot change, but try to change everything else? I wonder if the Serenity Prayer is too narrow in delineating the things that we should accept in Life, and too broad in prescribing what we should change.

"To accept the things I cannot change..."

If you've had any experience with recovery groups or twelve-step programs -- or even if you haven't -- chances are that you know the Serenity Prayer by heart. Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, who began using the prayer in his sermons in the 1930s, the Serenity Prayer goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The Courage to change the things I can,

And the Wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer certainly can be very helpful as a mantra and as a continual, much-needed reminder that we are limited in our powers to change the world around us. It certainly is helpful to recognize when something truly cannot be changed, so that you do not waste time and energy trying to change it anyway. And if you find yourself frustrated, sad, or angry about the things that truly cannot be changed, then you are wise to go to work trying to change yourself and your response to those things instead.

Also, it takes Wisdom to recognize the distinction --sometimes a fine and nuanced distinction -- between what you can change and what you can't. You may not be able to change the fact that it's raining, but you can change the fact that you're getting wet by going inside, using an umbrella, or wearing a water-proof poncho.

And, of course, you often need courage to make real changes in your Life. Some changes are relatively simple and straightforward and affect only you, but there are other changes that require you to challenge the expectations that others have of you. If you've habitually had a particular role in relation to someone else, then that other person probably expects you to keep on fulfilling that role, even if you are being harmed by it. Your changes will often make others uncomfortable, and their discomfort can cause them to act angrily towards you. When someone else is making unreasonable demands of you or is actively trying to undermine your efforts to change, you will probably need courage to maintain your resolve and follow through on your plans, especially if your plans involve major Life changes.

So in light of these basic principles about Life and relationships, the Serenity Prayer contains some valuable insight and guidance. However, I wonder if it is actually too narrow.

Should one accept only the things that one cannot change, or should one accept more than that? There are things that we need to change, and that we actually can change, so we should certainly change those things. However, we are rarely confronted with choices that are so clear-cut and self-evident: in real Life, each possible course of action will have very real costs and benefits, and those costs may be borne unfairly by others. Sure, I may have the capacity to change something that would yield a small reward to me, but which would also impose a relatively large cost to someone else, or even to myself, in the long run. Should I change something just because I can?

I feel like the Serenity Prayer can encourage me to be too self-centered. This prayer may reflect a much-needed shift in focus for someone who is terribly co-dependent or overly fatalistic and scared of leaving a bad situation. However, there seems to be a "Golden Mean" (as in ancient Greek philosophy) between being too self-sacrificing and being too self-centered. Maybe something like a "Utilitarian Calculus" is needed to weigh the costs and benefits, to oneself and to others, of potential changes and of the status quo.

The Serenity Prayer assumes a good Will in order to work properly. A person with a bad Will could use it as an excuses or justification to do wrong, as with pretty much everything else. (I guess Immanuel Kant was right that the only truly good thing is a good Will.) Perhaps the prayer should say, "God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things that I cannot, in good conscience, change..."

The Serenity Prayer also assumes sound judgment about cause-and-effect and genuine self-awareness. One lesson that I have been too slow to learn in Life is that my circumstances are not always the problem. In a series of different circumstances, I find that things begin well, but that after some time, I wind up feeling frustrated and resentful. I can always find seemingly legitimate complaints to make about my present circumstances, and changing those circumstances seems like an effective way of dealing with those complaints. But if I stop and ask myself honestly, what is the one constant in all those changing circumstances, what do they all have in common, I could see the answer by looking in the mirror: it's me! I am the problem! Maybe my efforts to change my circumstances would be more fruitful if I first make some much-needed changes in myself: if I confront my feelings of entitlement, ingratitude, selfishness, etc.

I'm reminded of the (true) story of a British periodical asking its readers to submit their responses to the question, "What's wrong with the World?" G.K. Chesterton's response was succinct and to the point: "I am."

Of course, that's something else that we cannot completely change: ourselves. Mature self-acceptance seems to involve admitting to ourselves that we are merely human: imperfect, fallible creatures, who have all kinds of cognitive biases, imperfect perceptions, inaccurate memories, and unpredictable emotions. We can do our best to mitigate those imperfections, but we cannot remove them all.

So maybe the Serenity Prayer should also say, "God, grant me the Serenity to accept myself."

In the end, I do ask God to give me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, as well as some other things, like:

• Those things that I am trying to change, but the changes are taking a lot longer than I'd expected;
• Those things that I am trying to change, but it is a process of trial and error, with more mistakes than successes;
• Those things that I can change, and that I should have changed a long time ago (I need the Serenity to accept what I cannot change about the Past);
• Those things that I can change, but the opportunity cost would be prohibitive (i.e., I would be wise to expend my time and resources changing other things first, or I would be wise to accept things as they are, for the sake of some greater good); and
• Those things that I want to change now, but I have not yet completed the preparations that I need to take care of first (i.e., changing now would mean poor timing or trying to short-change the process). 

So although I do need the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, I also need Serenity to accept other things that I probably can change, but shouldn't, at least right now. And, of course, I also need the wisdom and honesty to recognize when not changing, or delaying change, is warranted, and when I'm just making excuses. (But that's a whole other topic...)

What is the meaning of Life for me?

What is the meaning of Life for me? How do I even answer that question? More importantly, how do I answer that question honestly?

How do I say what the meaning of Life is, without resorting to abstract mumbo jumbo or spiritual-sounding platitudes, statements that hide more than they reveal? Can I convey what Life means to me in terms that are concrete and real?

What is the Meaning of Life? (Besides being a Monty Python film...)

Why do I feel the need to have meaning in Life?

I wonder why it occurs to me in the first place to ask the question, "What is the meaning of Life?" From the popularity of books that purport to give an answer to the question, I see that I am not the only one who has wondered about it.

Why do we search for meaning? Here are two possible answers.

First, we could be the product of "intelligent design" (as Philip Johnson puts it). Some sort of divine mind could have created us for a purpose, and then designed us to desire to fulfill that purpose. Just as our brains are "wired" to seek food and sex, our brains could also be designed to crave a higher purpose for our lives, and to not be content until we are actively fulfilling that purpose.

Or second, we could have been produced by a "blind watchmaker" (as Richard Dawkins puts it). We might be the products of random genetic mutations, coupled with the all-important proving grounds of environmental threats and opportunities, which would serve to weed out detrimental traits (the predators would tend to catch the slowest runners, for example) and to encourage  helpful traits (the cleverest hunter catches more prey to feed her young). As a result of the ensuing natural selection, we developed brains that are "wired" both to recognize patterns and also to want to use our energy and resources purposefully, to improve our chances of survival. As cavemen, our brain's reward system would have been activated when we were acting purposefully, by achieving a goal that would improve our health and welfare and the health and welfare of our tribal group.

C.S. Lewis thought that the mere fact that we look for meaning in the Universe (especially religious meaning) is a sign that there actually is real meaning to it. He used the analogy of light and asked whether creatures would develop eyes in a Universe without light. Presumably, the answer would be, no. However, the fact that there is meaning in Life does not mean that it is an objective meaning created for us by God; it could be a meaning that we create, and both the capacity for creating subjective meaning and the innate longing to experience meaning could both be byproducts of the same evolutionary forces. Nevertheless, Lewis's analogy could be taken further: the fact that humans generally expect there to be meaning in the Universe itself, apart from any which we might add, is at least some evidence that the Universe was designed in a purposeful way by some sort of divine mind.

To put it in Aristotelian terms, the Universe appears to have a teleological cause (at least it appears this way to most people throughout the world and throughout history). The fact that we can conceive of the world around us in terms of purpose and meaning and design could be a fact about us, or it could be a fact about the world, or it could be both. Maybe there is purpose and meaning and design in the Universe, and maybe we are designed to seek it, recognize it, delight in it, and even add to it.

Viktor Frankl, the great Austrian psychiatrist, writer, and Holocaust survivor, believed that experiencing meaning in our lives is the penultimate human need, such that when all else is taken away, we can still carry on, so long as we really believe our lives are meaningful, even in a state of extreme deprivation and terribly cruel suffering. His masterpiece, Man's Search for Meaning, makes this case in a way that is hard to argue against; "hard" because Dr. Frankl drew the book's lessons from his own experiences and observations as an inmate of the death camps, surrounded by the very worst of man's inhumanity to man.

In spite of the eminence of Dr. Frankl, I still wonder whether all people in all times and places really do have this need for meaning. It seems that people ask whether Life is meaningful only after they have been disappointed with Life in some profound way. There are people who, to all outward appearances, are completely self-satisfied as they go about the business of making money, collecting status symbols, and engaging in trivial pastimes and empty small-talk, without ever giving a second thought to questions of Truth and Meaning.

True, there are rich and famous artists and businessmen who self-destruct with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll excesses, but these unfortunate souls seem to have already been unhappy and self-destructive, before they set out to conquer the world. Before they hit the big time, their insatiable appetite for fame and fortune appears to have been all that kept them from self-destruction. Mike Tyson  is a classic example of this. Axl Rose is another. Their narcissism drove them to professional greatness, but it ultimately sabotaged what could have otherwise been longer and more accomplished careers. Such people may ultimately turn to pursuing Truth and Meaning after trying and failing to find happiness with sensual indulgence, but they were the type of people who were destined to wonder about the meaning of Life from a young age: they simply weren't happy or comfortable in their own skin, and they needed something to cure them of this essential discontentment -- or "Dukkha" as Buddhists put it.

However, for the many other people out there who never seem to experience (or at least acknowledge consciously) this unhappiness or discomfort within themselves, they seem to be able to get along just fine with sensual indulgence and ego boosts; they never seem to care if there is or is not anything more to Life than their American McDream.

For those of us who feel the need to find Meaning and Purpose, perhaps this fact about ourselves really only shows that we experience dukkha because of some psychological or emotional injury or deprivation at a formative stage. Imagine two kids: Billy and Bob.

Billy is esteemed by his parents, teachers, and peers to be charming and likeable and deserving of constant praise and fawning. He grows up to think that he is the most awesome and talented person in the world, even though he isn't. Moreover, he is given opportunities and resources that further his smug self-assurance. Billy will probably only think about Truth and Meaning as an afterthought. Maybe he'll be raised in a church and give God his due every Sunday morning -- he'll sing a few upbeat songs and listen to a canned sermon about how great God thinks people like him are (and how rotten God thinks the people are who are not like him) -- and Billy will be very happy.

Bob, on the other hand, has parents who are overworked and underpaid and chronically stressed out and short of time. He is shy and socially awkward. He asks questions that get on the teachers' nerves, and they make little effort to hide their contempt for him. As he grows up, he gets little guidance about how the world works, so he has to figure everything out by trial and error. Bob will probably be very unhappy with himself and with Life in general, and he will want something, anything, to give him some sort of real and lasting happiness. If he does have access to sensual indulgence, he will quickly find that it does not satisfy his instatiable need for affirmation and fulfillment. Bob will eventually -- I say inevitably -- turn to questions of Truth and Meaning, because that's all that is left. (All, that is, except social connection and acceptance and meaningful opportunities to develop and apply his talents in a rewarding way.)

It appears to me (but what do I know?) that we seek Truth and Meaning only because other things have not worked out for us. But for those who honestly believe that Life's other pleasures are working out for them, they do not seem to care about Truth or Meaning. Therefore, it may be that our desire for Truth and Meaning is not a fact about the Universe or about Human Nature universally, but is only a fact about our own psychological and emotional development.

What about the religious answer to the Meaning of Life?

I have considered the various answers provided by major world religions to the question of Life's meaning, and I have found them each somewhat helpful, but ultimately problematic. As with different philosophers and philosophical schools, I have benefited from the way that different religious thinkers have put the question; as I consider what they mean, it indirectly forces me to question myself about what I mean. I also think that the stories that different religions tell do contain some very important insights about human nature and the human condition. Ultimately, however, my problem has been that the religious answers seem to lead to a whole package-deal of concepts, doctrines, and practices that are more about justifying the religion itself, than about enabling human individuals to live more meaningful and fulfilled lives.

Religion and the Meaning of Life

I think that is what makes Jesus, as opposed to the Christian religion, so powerful and relatable a figure; he did not really care about theology or religious traditions or religious institutions, and he behaved almost like a Cynic (as in the Greek philosophical school) towards the religious leaders of his day. Jesus healed a blind man on the Sabbath, and when the blind man was cross-examined by the Pharisees, he gave a disarmingly simple retort: "Whether he is a man of religious and moral virtue, I do not know; but I do know this: I was blind, but now I see." (John 9:25)

For the religious systems, their leaders do seem to be concerned with having you buy into their way of seeing the world and their way of doing life, as opposed to sharing their insights with you and allowing you to reach your own conclusions. Religions seems to offer the deceptive luxury of taking the burden of your spiritual and moral freedom away from you; they take responsibility for your life, and you "outsource" your thinking and moral and spiritual decision-making to them. In exchange, you get some tidy, pat answers to Life's biggest questions and problems, as well as the considerable benefit of a ready-made community of believers with whom to enjoy fellowship and support. While the relationships can have some real value, the other aspects of the religious life seem to inhibit, rather than help, the search for Truth and Meaning.

What is it that makes me believe that Life is meaningful?

So now that I've reached what seems to me to be the likely reason why I, and people like me, look for Truth and Meaning, let me consider whether Life is meaningful.

I do believe that happiness is possible, and that is something (as Aristotle noted in the Nichomachean Ethics) that is worth pursuing for its own sake. Perhaps, as hedonists like the Epicureans have believed, happiness is the highest good and something that makes Life meaningful.

Incidentally, if you think of "hedonists" as being wild and deranged, think again: "happiness" for an Epicurean would be characterized by emotional stability and contentment, not by wild sensual indulgence or disordered and unrestrained appetites. Epicurus seems to me to have taught something very similar to the Buddha: cultivation of personal virtue and mental and spiritual clarity; taming our desires and passions, but not denying or unnaturally suppressing them; and learning to experience happiness and fulfillment in the moment-by-moment experience of being alive and  in Life's simple and natural pleasures. Buddha taught that Life is characterized by Dukkha (or distress, discontentment, etc.) and that by living and acting morally, we could experience Samsara, or freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth and all the clinging and clawing that Life does to perpetuate itself meaninglessly. Epicurus taught that discontentment pervades Life, but that we can experience Ataraxia (or freedom from physical and emotional disturbance) by retraining our minds to desire and enjoy only natural pleasures (such as basic food, water, and friendship), and to avoid all unnatural pleasures (such as acquiring status symbols), as well as most pleasures that are natural, but not necessary (such as extravagant foods).  Of the two, I prefer Epicureanism to Buddhism, since Epicurus recognized the value in some of the attachments we form to other people (especially friendships), and good relationships do seem to me to be to be critically important for living the "good life."

And this leads me to something that I believe is a crucial insight from the more important and influential schools of moral philosophy, as well as from the major religions: our connections to other people matter, and how we treat other people matters. Confucius put the Golden Rule in the negative: if you would not want something done to you, don't do it to other people. Jesus gave a positive formulation: whatever you would want someone else to do for you, that's what you should do for them.  We are social creatures; we have the capacity for empathy and acting for the good of another person. Maybe this is due to how we evolved; maybe this is due to how God designed us (or maybe both -- evolution and "intelligent design" don't seem to me to be mutually exclusive); but regardless, we do experience joy, meaning, and fulfillment in and through our relationships with others, and in and through our care for the welfare of others. This can be difficult in practice, but it does reliably yield positive effects in our own lives, when we are able to act with love and compassion for others.

Ultimately, I believe that we can experience happiness and mutually-fulfilling relationships, and that this give our lives real meaning and, ultimately, makes life worth living.  So what is the meaning of Life for me? Experiencing happiness and mutually-fulfilling relationships.

Is Happiness the Meaning of Life?

Throughout the ages, the question has often been asked, "Is happiness the meaning of Life?" There have been widely divergent attempts at an answer, and today we are no closer to consensus than the ancients were. In this article, I will defend the proposition that happiness could be the meaning of life, but it depends.

Is Happiness the Meaning of Life?

Depends on what? Well, for starters, it depends what you mean by "happiness," as well as what you mean by "meaning." Also, the question would implicate your beliefs about the universe (cosmology), God (theology), moral philosophy, etc. It really is a loaded question, but also an interesting one, so let's consider it.

What do we mean by "Happiness?"

Before deciding whether happiness is the meaning of Life, we have to determine what we mean by "happiness." When people talk of "happiness" and being happy, what they seem to mean is something approximating the following definition: "happiness" is the experience of being satisfied with one's self (who one is) and the circumstances of one's Life, including one's relationships, livelihood, living arrangements, and prospects for the future.

As such, "happiness" seems to involve both the absence of negatives and the presence of positives. The negatives would include physical pain and psychological distress, as well as the things that would cause one to experience those ills, and the positives would include physical pleasure and emotional contentment and delight, as well as the things that cause one to have those positive experiences.

Of course, in this world, one cannot expect to experience only positive things. But happiness would seem to require, in total, more positives than negatives. While the "wise man on the rack" may lead to interesting philosophical speculation, it is hard to imagine that anyone could be genuinely happy while simultaneously experiencing physical torture and abandonment by friends and family, and without the benefit of any real hope for some future benefit to accrue to anyone from his or her present agony. Some critical mass of positive experiences seems to be necessary for happiness to be realized.

[Take a break from reading and watch this video about Happiness...]

[Video about happiness, embedded from the TED channel on YouTube: "What Makes a Good Life" by Robert Waldinger]

What do we mean by "Meaning?"

When people speak of something having "meaning" or being "meaningful," they seem to be describing something inherently personal. The thing or experience is meaningful to them. If you press them on what makes something meaningful, it typically involves some essentially personal connection, for example, an old watch has sentimental value because it once belonged to a deceased relative.

Sometimes the connection is more abstract, but even then, it remains essentially personal. For example, a cross is meaningful to a Christian because it reminds her of her belief in Jesus and her commitment to obey his teachings. This belief and commitment are essentially personal: no one else can have those beliefs for her or make that commitment on her behalf; she must do it herself. She may say, "Well, Jesus is the Savior of all the world, not just me," but her belief about Jesus is her belief, regardless of whether it is true. She believes that the cross is meaningful because of her personal experiences and decisions. If no one had ever told her about Jesus and if she had no experience of the Christian religion or its teachings, then she would not see any religious meaning in a cross; she may just think it's an "X" and be reminded of playing tic-tac-toe.

So "meaning" seems to describe some significant personal connection to a thing, person, idea, experience, etc.

Also, the meaning of a thing may be positive or negative. If you are behind on your mortgage, the name of the lender may mean something negative to you. You may experience intense negative emotion if you see the creditor's logo on a billboard or on an unopened envelope.

However, when people speak of the "meaning of Life," they almost always mean something positive. When they seek a "meaning" to their lives, they are looking for something that will indicate the ultimate good that comes from their lives or the sum total of good things that they experience in life.

It is possible that for some people, Life, and all that it entails, means something negative: chronic pain, widespread suffering, etc. Someone who commits suicide, for example, seems to find the thought of continued life unbearable.

Nevertheless, even though Life may mean something negative to some people, we will consider "meaning" only in the positive sense. This makes sense, since "happiness" is a positive state, so if the meaning of Life is happiness, then Life would have a positive meaning. In this sense, when people ask about the meaning of Life, they are asking, "What would make my life worth living? What, in the grand scheme of things, would make my life a success?"

I think that when people ask the question of whether Happiness is the Meaning of Life, they mean something like the following: "When considering my life as a whole, is it best for me to pursue, as my ultimate objective, a state of overall satisfaction and delight with who I am and with the circumstances of my life?"

So is Happiness the Meaning of Life?

For any individual person out there, happiness could reasonably be seen as the meaning of life. As Aristotle pointed out thousands of years ago in the Nichomachean Ethics, happiness is the one thing that we do for its own sake, without reference to any further ends. For anything that we want, we want it either because the thing itself makes us happier, or because it enables us to obtain some further good that will make us happier.

Some people, like Immanuel Kant, may object that we do perform some actions merely because we believe it is the right thing to do, without regard for our own personal welfare or happiness. I have subscribed to this belief in the past. But when I consider the experience of holding to this moral belief or acting upon it, I have to acknowledge that I did experience a sense of pleasure and self-satisfaction from maintaining a "higher" or more "noble" moral code. Perhaps it seemed higher in relation to others, or maybe it was only in relation to myself and what I would have been if I had not adopted a particular moral position. Regardless, feeling like I was maintaining a higher or better moral code gave me a very real sense of pleasure, and I suspect it was this pleasure (i.e., one of the ingredients of happiness) that motivated my moral conviction.

People are complex creatures, so our motives and our experiences are also complex. Sometimes, we experience conflicting desires and thought processes. (Some of the Great Courses lectures really spell this out in great detail, such as Outsmart Yourself: Brain Based-Strategies for a Better You by Peter Vishton.) In that case, we may knowingly decide on a course of action that produces some unpleasant effects, even some intense pain or suffering, but our belief that some greater good will come from our action does give us some real experience of happiness in the present, even in the midst of the pain and suffering. There may also be fears of worse pains in the future, such as when one undergoes surgery to avoid worse health problems in the future, or when a Christian martyr refuses to deny Jesus because of fears of eternal agony in hell or because of the hope of everlasting happiness in heaven. We may say we are doing something ultimately for God or for humanity, but it seems we are also doing what we believe will bring us the most happiness.

I recall an objection to this idea in a philosophy class -- I regret that I do not remember the source of this thought experiment, so if anyone can help me identify the proper source, I would appreciate it.  The objection goes like this. Imagine someone gave you two options, and that after you made your choice, you would not remember the act of making the choice, kind of like the red and the blue pill offered to Neo in the Matrix. The first option was to have your next-of-kin cared for after you are deceased, but you would honestly believe that they were not cared for. You would experience all the distress of believing that they would suffer after your death, when in fact, they would end up doing quite well. The second option was that you would think that your next-of-kin would be well cared for after your death, but in fact, they would be left destitute and in desperate circumstances. Although you would have all the pleasure and happiness of feeling like you had made good arrangements for your loved ones, the reality would be that all those arrangements would fall through or completely backfire.

So given those two choices, which would you choose? The first scenario appears to involve less happiness for you, personally, while the second scenario appears to mean that you would experience more happiness for yourself. Yet everyone, or nearly everyone, who considers this thought experiment says that they would choose the first option: to have their loved ones well cared for, even though they would experience all the unhappiness and distress of believing that their loved ones would not be well cared for.

This thought experiment seems to cut against the idea that happiness is the meaning of life for people. Given the right conditions, most people would apparently sacrifice their own personal happiness for the well-being of those whom they love.

However, I am a little skeptical of the conclusion that we are supposed to draw from this thought experiment. Although the person answering the hypothetical question is apparently considering both their immediate happiness and their long-term suffering, recent studies seem to indicate that when we think of our future selves, we use the part of our brain that is active when we think of other people; the anticipated future pain or pleasure is less real, less tangible, less concrete, less vivid, than the present pain or pleasure we are actually experiencing now. (These studies are cited by Peter Vishton in his Great Courses series Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies for a Better You.)

Of course, this is not a new idea: Socrates expounded a similar theory when attempting to explain why people so often sacrifice a greater, longer-lasting future good for a smaller, more short-term immediate one. A small object that is very near to our eyes appears to be larger than a very large object that is a long ways away. Similarly, a present pleasure appears far greater than a future one, even though the future pleasure may be much richer and more rewarding. We are very poor at evaluating future benefits in comparison to more immediate ones.

The above theory is obvious to anyone who has ever tried to kick a bad habit, break an addiction or compulsive behavior, etc. You want to lose weight for a variety of good reasons, but all those reasons involve some future payoff; that brownie or cheeseburger looks delicious today.

Take cigarettes, which I quit cold-turkey back in 2004. For the first few days, the temptation to smoke would be incredibly intense at times. The reduced risk of lung cancer many years in the future seemed a poor reward for enduring the all-consuming craving for nicotine that I was experiencing in the moment. Obviously, lung cancer would be much more painful than a momentary craving, no matter how intense, but in the moment, the craving was more real. That's why, as Mark Twain put it, "quitting smoking is easy; I've done it hundreds of times." I tried, and failed, many times before I finally succeeded. And what did the trick for me was a respiratory infection that kept me up one night because I could barely breathe. I thought, "So this is what emphysema would be like, only all the time?" Whenever I had the craving, the only thing that worked to fight it was recalling to my mind, as vividly as possible, my (at the time) recent experience of barely being able to breathe in the middle of the night. That was enough to tip the scales in favor of not smoking (that in addition to a couple of dozen other techniques to psych myself out of smoking, but recalling my experience of gasping for breath was the biggest catalyst for me for quitting smoking). My tactic makes sense: I had to make the pain of smoking real in a present, tangible way, in order for me to use it as a counterweight to my monkey-mind's craving for relief of my intense nicotine fit.

In situations, like the thought experiment described earlier, where we appear to be sacrificing our own happiness for the good of others, I believe that if we are self-aware enough, we will find that we really believe (perhaps subconsciously) that we will be happier if we make the sacrifice than if we don't. In the thought experiment, you are making a decision about the future welfare of your loved ones, but you will not remember making it in the future. Nevertheless, while you are making the decision, you would be very much aware of your feelings of kinship and loyalty, as well as your desire to feel good about yourself as being a good person who does what is right. On the other hand, you would be very acutely aware, while you were making the decision, of the distress of feeling like you had betrayed those to whom you were closest, and feeling like you had been a bad person who had behaved shamefully and treacherously. I believe that those immediate feelings would factor into your decision (especially when considering the thought experiment as some abstract, hypothetical question), so even if you decided on an apparently honorable and altruistic course of action, you would very likely be impelled towards that course of action by your desire to gain happiness or pleasure and to avoid pain and emotional distress.

Based on my own experience, I believe Aristotle was right when he identified happiness as the ultimate motivation for all our actions and decisions. It may seem to cheapen moral ideals to say that we pursue them because of our own desire for happiness and pleasure, in conjunction with our (possibly greater) desire to avoid pain and suffering. But if something is good, why should we not take pleasure and delight in it? If anything, this seems to enhance the value of our emotional experiences, rather than degrade them. Of course, it may be that we are designed to take pleasure in doing what is morally good, or it may be that as social creatures, we evolved the faculty of taking pleasure in acting for the good of others, rather than ourselves. In either case, the pleasure or happiness we experience may point to some further good, as defined by God or in terms of what will benefit our species as a whole. But if so, that would not be a good which we experience directly. What we do experience, what actually does motivate us to act or not act, is the desire for happiness and pleasure, operating in conjunction with the desire to avoid pain and suffering.

Happiness is probably what we're after when we look for Meaning in Life...

So is Happiness the Meaning of Life? What we are really asking seems to be, "When considering my life as a whole, is it best for me to pursue, as my ultimate objective, a state of overall emotional joy and contentment combined with physical pleasure?" We may consciously say that we have higher and more noble motives than to make happiness our ultimate aim, but nonetheless, happiness does appear to be what we do, in fact, aim at. 

If you've read Viktor Frankl's incredible book Man's Search for Meaning, then my conclusion probably seems tawdry and ignoble. After all, Mr. Frankl showed that even in the midst of incredible suffering and deprivation, people could nevertheless find meaning in their lives. However, I don't think that my conclusion disagrees with Frankl's report. The inmates at Auschwitz desperately needed some source of happiness that would counter the terrible cruelties inflicted upon them by the Nazis. The meaning that they were able to find in their lives, even in Auschwitz, gave them some very real happiness.

So if finding meaning is what gave them happiness, then how could that meaning be happiness? That seems an irresolvable dilemma. Yet, there are, perhaps, different degrees or levels of meaning that we can experience. Why did they seek meaning? For the good of another? Perhaps, but as Frankl readily admitted, most of them knew that their friends and family were likely to perish and that possibly nothing of their former lives would survive. If a husband knows that his wife or daughter is likely already dead, or at any rate, that she is unlikely to be benefited by the significance and meaning that he attaches to their relationship, then is it really ultimately for the good of that person that one is acting? Even if one is motivated by a desire to help others or to suffer "well," it seems that the source of that motivation is the happiness or joy that one experiences from acting in accordance with one's convictions or of proving to oneself that one can still find goodness in the world, even if only in some small and seemingly inconsequential act of kindness. In all of that, the deeper or more powerful sense of attachment seems to be to the desire for happiness.

Of course, what I've said above may be completely wrong. No doubt, if Viktor Frankl were alive today and read this, he would likely offer some powerful rebuttal, made all the more persuasive by his having lived through it, first hand. 

Christians may point to Jesus' passion and crucifixion as an example of God demonstrating that love is a greater good than happiness, but doesn't the Bible say that it was because of the joy set before him that he endured the cross? (Hebrews 12:2, KJV.)  It may be that God created us for relationship with him through Christ, yet such a beatific vision seems to entail our own happiness, as well as the possibility of bringing happiness to God. If Christ is our example, then according to the Bible, God the Father chose to validate Jesus by saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." So for the Christian, maybe the meaning of Life is happiness, in the sense that we share in and enhance God's happiness.

Alternatively, maybe there is a Deist God who created humans for some purpose of which we are unaware, and that all of our pleasures and pains are aimed at something else entirely. Or perhaps the evolutionary biologists are right, and that the capacity for happiness is merely a trait which we evolved because it was useful for survival as a species, basically a tool for getting us to do the things that make our species more likely to flourish. But in either event, we seem to be more attached to happiness than to anything else, so to us, subjectively, happiness still seems to be the meaning of Life.

But if I take a step back and look at what I have written, it also seems so absurd that I should consider or write about something so grand as the meaning of Life. I can't even figure out how to program a DVD player to record something on TV. (I suppose I could, but it doesn't mean that much to me: I don't believe learning that skill would really increase my happiness.) I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast today, yet somehow I can write about the meaning of Life?

Is happiness the meaning of Life? Instead of making any claim about the meaning of Life for anyone and everyone, let me just say for myself what I take to be the greatest good: to live with peace and contentment, fostering rich and rewarding relationships with others, doing work that I enjoy and which expresses what I believe to be my deepest nature, and feeling satisfied at the end of my life that I left the world a better place than it was when I found it; and I believe that these things are good because they would make me happy. So ultimately, for me, I think the meaning of life is happiness.    

On Slow Living with Mindfulness

The "slow living" movement started in the 1980s in Italy as a counter-reaction to the "fast life," and specifically to that uniquely American contribution to global cuisine: fast food. Although the focus still seems to be on food, the slow living movement has grown to encompass other areas of life, and it dovetails nicely with the practice of mindfulness, and specifically the mindfulness-based stress reduction developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Slow living is better than no living!

Slow living is a much-needed antidote to America's overemphasis of efficiency and productivity

Slow living is a much needed antidote to America's wild worship of efficiency and productivity. When we speak of a person's "net worth," we assess it in terms of dollars, instead of relationships and experiences. We look at multi-millionaire hedge-fund managers as examples of great success in Life, without stopping to ask whether they are on speaking terms with their children, or whether anything else in Life really matters when it's all said and done. We emphasize quantity over quality, and maybe because the quality is so poor, we feel like we're not really missing out on much when we do life at 100 miles per hour, with a lifetime of potential memories whizzing by too quickly to be savored. Slow living is a reminder that there is more to Life than business and making money, and we should question our assumptions about what counts as success in Life.

For many Americans (as well as for the British, the Japanese, etc.), each passing day means another deadline is drawing dreadfully closer. The typical worker is expected to get more done, in far less time, and for less pay (adjusted for inflation) than workers a generation ago. In most families, both parents are working full-time -- and even overtime -- out of necessity, leaving less time for housework and caring for children. Every day, the to-do list seems to get longer, and it can seem like the only way to catch up is to cram even more activities into our already overstuffed schedules. Even though studies have repeatedly shown that multitasking is a myth, we feel like we can't afford to take the time to do one thing at a time, so that we can do it mindfully and meaningfully.

The reality is that our culture is sick. We obsess so much over time, that the difference of a few minutes, or even a few seconds, can cause us to lose our tempers if we are running behind schedule. In all our haste, we miss out on Life's simple joys and pleasures. We defer our enjoyment for a tomorrow that may never come, and when we look back at the past, we see that despite all our frantic hustle and bustle, we never really arrived anywhere.

As Shakespeare put it in Macbeth, "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour on stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing." If it was true in Shakepeare's day, it is all the more true in ours.

As a much-needed antidote to this American madness, Italy has given us the "slow living movement." This overlaps nicely with some of the concepts and insights, such as mindfulness, that American thinkers have imported from Asia's Buddhist cultures over the past few decades. Similarly, modern readers are beginning to rediscover the wisdom of ancient Greeks, such as the Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans, who advocated ataraxia, or freedom from worry and distress, as one of the highest goods in Life.

Slow eating...

I remember meeting some exchange students from the former Yugoslav republic, and I was intrigued by their response when I asked, "What would you say has been the biggest culture shock for you, when you think about the way Americans do things, versus the way things are done in your country?" They chuckled, thought for a minute, and then one of them replied, "The way Americans eat food."

I asked what he meant by that, and he said, "At home, a meal is a big event. We stop what we're doing, and everyone comes together to eat together and visit. It is a big social event for the day." He then added that the quality and freshness of the food was also much better and that people took the time to enjoy eating it. He contrasted this with American's attitude towards meals: we often eat alone, on the go, as quickly as possible, with our minds elsewhere, etc.

If we want to live more fully, a good place to start is with our meals. From the way meals are done in much of the world, I get the sense that fellowship and food go naturally together. There's something about eating food with family and friends that really does make the meal much better.

Also, if we eat more slowly and mindfully, we tend to eat less, but to enjoy what we eat much more. I have been as guilty as anyone of chowing down on a meal without really tasting the food or enjoying the experience. Then, I'm staring at an empty plate and feeling full, but dissatisfied. I may eat more than I should, not because I'm hungry, but because I feel like I will somehow enjoy my food if I eat more of it. But I don't. However, when I remember to take the time to savor each bite, to chew it slowly and really experience the flavors and textures of the food, I enjoy my food more and feel more content when my meal is done, and I'm less likely to overeat.

Of course, there's no reason to stop with reforming our approach to food. Slow living, in conjunction with mindfulness, is an approach to Life that brings great benefit in almost every area: relationships, aesthetic enjoyment, hobbies, and even our work. Since "multi-tasking" leads to distractedness and mistakes, we can often get more done, in the long run, by taking our time than by rushing things.

Video on Slow Living

[Embedded video from TED channel on YouTube: Carl Honore, "In Praise of Slowness."] 

Video on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

[Video embedded from Google's own channel on YouTube: Jon Kabat-Zinn leads Mindfulness Session at Google]

The choice between slow living and not living

When it's all said and done, the choice is not between slow living and fast living; the choice is between slow living and not really living at all.

Life is too short to burn our candles at both ends! And no amount of money can buy back the experiences we miss, if we race frantically through our days. I have wasted too much of my life already, chasing an illusory carrot or fleeing from an illusory stick.

The carrot is the promise of some future payoff: graduation, getting a "real job," getting married, having a family, getting the kids out of diapers, getting the kids through school, retirement, etc. Every time I crossed one finish line, I realize that the race was really far from over; in fact, it was really just getting started. The stakes were now even higher than before, since the next "finish line" was even more critical. So without being able to really enjoy reaching the last milestone, I found myself racing mindlessly towards the next finish line.

The stick consists of any of those imagined catastrophes that has ever kept me up at night: all the what-ifs that will become nightmarishly real if I don't keep running the rat-race with all my might and cunning. What if I don't get a scholarship? What if I get a bad score on this standardized test? What if I can't find a job? What if the car breaks down? What if, what if, what if?

And then there's the desire for distraction and staying busy, which can really come from a fear that my life is ultimately "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (I think this is what lies at the root of "boredom.") If I stay busy enough and preoccupied enough, I won't have to consider that. I won't have to look into the empty vastness of what looks to be an existential vacuum. I won't have to face my responsibility to choose what my life will be or what it will mean.

But if I lose my life through chasing the carrot of some imagined future payoff, or in running away from some faceless anxiety, or in trying to paper over the biggest fear of all, that my life is ultimately meaningless, then my worst fear will be realized: my life will have been meaningless. As Jesus said, "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?"

So I am going to be intentional about taking a more leisurely pace through Life. In addition to practicing mindfulness while I'm meditating, I will strive to practice mindfulness while walking, talking, eating, and working. After all, slow living is better than no living!

See also, slow living article on Wikipedia; WebMD article on why multi-tasking is a myth; and UMass biography of Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (with links to various mindfulness resources). Also, check out Welcome to Finding Meaning in Life for more about this blog and other posts about topics like "happiness" and "meaning."