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Happiness
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Roger Fritts
on January 20, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Most of the people I know are happy much of the time and depressed
only occasionally. However, in my work as a minister I have noticed
that a few people seem happy always. They seem to see the glass as
half full no matter what life throws at them. Simultaneously, I have
noticed that a few people are chronic complainers. For them the glass
is always half empty.
I remember a man and a woman in a church that I once served near a
large city in the Midwest. The man was always positive, and the
woman was always negative. One November the woman proposed
that the church have a coat drive. She invited members of the
congregation to bring any excess coats that they had in their homes to
the church. She would take then to a homeless shelter in the city. The
man offered to help. The day of the drive people brought to church far
more coats than anyone had expected. I would guess that there were
150 coats, most of them in good condition. It seemed to me that no
one, no matter how negative, could find anything wrong with this
successful coat drive. However, as I was leaving the church that day,
I heard the chronic complainer say to her always cheerful helper,
"They brought too many coats! How do they expect me to fit all these
coats into my car? This coat drive is a disaster!"
Why are some people happy and others unhappy? This week I read
three books that try to answer this question. The first is by a professor
of Psychology at Hope College in Michigan. Dr. David Myers has
conducted research on what makes people happy. He defined
happiness as "an enduring sense of positive well-being."
In 1992 Dr. Myers published the results of his investigation. He
reported that most people feel that, if they had more money, they
would be happier. However, Dr. Myers discovered that after we meet
our basic needs of food, shelter, and reasonable security, money does
not influence happiness. Once beyond poverty, further economic
growth does not improve human morale. One of the many studies Dr.
Myers gave as evidence was a survey of the forty-nine wealthiest
Americans as listed by Forbes. As a group they turned
out to be only slightly happier than the average person.
He argued that we are always comparing ourselves with others and
always comparing our current experience with previous experiences.
Our personal feelings of well-being hinge on how we are doing
compared with our peers, our fellow workers, our friends, and our
extended family. Your feelings are tied to how the experience you are
having now compares with previous experiences, such as other
sermons you have heard.
Ambrose Bierce defined happiness as "an agreeable sensation arising
from contemplating the misery of another." Put more positively,
happiness depends not on our status or wealth, but on our attitude.
We can, Dr. Myers argues, be happier by striving to make our goals
short term and sensible. We can choose our comparisons intentionally.
He says this is why religious activities involving denial often give
people a feeling of happiness and spiritual renewal. The Islamic
practice of fasting during Ramadan is an example. For those of us who
enjoy food, the month of fasting each day from sunrise to sun down
could create a contrast between hunger and eating. This comparison
would make us happier when we sit to eat. Another example is a silent
retreat, so as the one held last week here at our church. For those of
us who enjoy talking, the contrast between our normal life of and
silent retreat, reminds us of the happiness of a simple conversation.
I was pleased that Dr. Myers found that people who attend a worship
service at least once a month are happier. Survey after survey across
North America and Europe revealed that religious people more often
than nonreligious people reported feeling happy and satisfied with life.
In one study religious people were twice as likely as non religious
people to say they were "Very Happy." In America religious people
are much less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, to divorce or to be
unhappily married, or to commit suicide. People who go to worship
at least once a month are even physically healthier and live longer.
As I said, Dr. Myers published his findings in 1992. Around that time
a man named Dr. David Lykken read an article about happiness by
Dr. Myers in The Journal of the American Psychological Society.
The article reported that subjective well-being, or happiness, is largely
unrelated to income level or educational attainment, or social status
or to whether a person is married or single. It occurred to Dr. Lykken
that he already had in his computer at the University of Minnesota
data on middle-aged people who are a representative sample of the
population of Minnesota. More important, part of his sample was of
twins.
Because of the location of the University of Minnesota, this research
on twins has sometimes been called the twin city's twin studies.
Dr. Lykken and other researchers found that genetically identical
twins separated at birth and raised by completely different parents
were still remarkably similar. In one example (that was widely
reported, the twins even appeared on the Tonight Show) two twins,
who were raised apart, both had married and divorced women named
Linda and then married women named Betty. Both had produced a
son, one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. Both
had dogs as youngsters, and each had named their dog, Toy. Each
man had a woodworking shop in the basement. Each man had
constructed a white lawn seat around the trunk of a tree in his back
yard. Each man had the endearing habit of leaving little love notes
around the house for their wife. Both men drove Chevrolets, chain-smoked Salem cigarettes, chewed their fingernails, drank miller light
beer, and had worked as deputy sheriffs in their respective counties.
Both enjoyed stock car racing, but disliked baseball. Although they
had never met before the study, they had both taken a spring holiday
on the Gulf Coast of Florida, driving down in their Chevrolets to the
same quarter mile stretch of beach.
Dr. Lykken wondered if happiness also could be genetically
determined. By the late 1990s he had studied 120 pairs of reared-apart
twins and four sets of reared-apart triplets. He discovered that, if one
twin on a happiness scale of one to ten rates himself as a six, there is
an 80% chance that the other identical, reared apart twin, will also
rate himself as a six on a happiness scale. In other words, his evidence
suggests that our biology determines 80% of our happiness and that
our environment determines 20%. This let Dr. Lykken to say. "It may
be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and
therefore counterproductive." He said he regretted the statement
when he saw it in print. What he should have said is that 80% of our
happiness is biologically determined. The choices we make about our
environment determine the other 20%. So to be happy we should keep
exercising, keep developing and maintaining friendships, keep seeking
out rewarding work, and keep coming to church.
Dr. Lykken reported his research in a book called
Happiness the Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment, published in 1999.
A summary appeared in an airline magazine. A man named Stephen
Braun, a medical writer who writes television documentaries on
medical science and writes for magazines and newspapers, was idly
flipping through the airline magazine to pass the time and a headline
caught his attention that said, "Forget Money; Nothing Can Buy
Happiness." The short article said that happiness is now a hot topic
for investigation. C urrent research strongly suggests that how happy
we are has more to do with our biology than with beauty, wealth, or
education.
The idea that happiness has strong biological roots struck Stephen
Braun as one of the most important and profound subjects that he
could imagine. He thought to himself: "Every human being, no matter
what culture, age educational attainment, or degree of physical and
mental development wants to be happy." "What," he thought, "does
it mean, if this ultimate goal is the product not of our many vaunted
efforts, but of the unique constellation of our genes?"
The result of these questions is a third book on the topic of happiness,
published two years ago, with the title
The Science of Happiness, Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood.
Mr. Braun visited Eli Lilly world
headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, a new state-of-the art drug
research facility paid for by the sales of a little capsule called Prozac.
One of the most popular medications in the world, Prozac has brought
in more than twenty-five billion dollars for Eli Lilly. However, the
patent on Prozac expires December 2, 2003. [My source for this was
a book published in 2000. After the sermon several persons pointed
out that a judge ruled the Prozac patent was no longer in force as of
August 2, 2001.] After the patent expires, other companies will flood
the market with generic Prozac at a fraction of its current cost. So the
scientists at Eli Lilly are working hard to create a new antidepressant
that will work even better.
In the Brave New World of 2002 it appears that soon we can take a
capsule or a tablet that makes us happy, in the same way we can buy
eye glasses that let us see with 20/20 vision. With advances in our
mapping and understanding of the brain and advances in constructing
new drugs, true happy tablets that have few side effects will make the
transition from science fiction to science fact.
For example, scientists now believe that happiness comes from the left
side of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. People with higher than
normal activity in their left prefrontal cortex experience more positive
moods. One the other hand, people with more activity in their right
prefrontal cortex are inwardly directed, withdrawn, shy, anxious, and
depressed. A drug that stimulates electrical activity in our left
prefrontal cortex might induce a more buoyant, outgoing optimistic
attitude. Just when this new mapping of the brain is taking place,
researchers are discovering more about how anti-depression drugs
work. Apparently they simulate the brain to grow new "dendritic"
branches in the brain. The result is better electrical conduction and an
increase in the electrical activity of the neural networks underlying
mood, emotional response, and perhaps happiness.
The danger Mr. Braun sees in this is that as these anti-depression
drugs get better and better, the drug companies, motivated to pay
back the enormous costs of drug research, will encourage us to
believe that we should treat every feeling of unhappiness with a tablet
or a capsule. The problem with this is that our emotions, both pleasant
and unpleasant, evolved to the way they are today because they served
useful functions in the past. According to Darwinian psychiatry,
depressive moods are to our mental life what pain is to our physical
life. Depressive moods are telling us that something is wrong with our
relationships, our work, or another aspect of our life. The decrease in
energy and the withdrawal from social interaction may have evolved
from a time when our distant ancestors needed to be deterred from
pursuing hopeless goals such as chasing after game that is too fast, or
attempting to mate with a person who is not a good match, or trying
to achieve dominance over a rival who is physically superior. The
depressive response would prevent further wasted energy, and
encourage a reconsideration of goals. Completely wiping out our
capacity for depression with drugs could be as dangerous as wiping
out our capacity to feel pain.
I think Stephen Braun has a point here. He is saying that if we fall and
cut ourselves, the pain we feel is useful in encouraging us to stop the
bleeding, clean the cut, and get stitches. In the same way depression
can be useful in encouraging us to care for ourselves. However, Mr.
Braun is not a pharmacological Calvinist. He is not suggesting that
we should never use antidepressants. If we fall and cut ourselves, few
of us would argue that we should not use a painkiller and make it
easier for ourselves while the doctor sews us up. In the same way
using antidepressants is appropriate while we do what we can to try
to understand and fix the issues that caused the depression. If we are
born with poor eyesight, using corrective lenses to improve our vision
is appropriate. In the same way, if we are born seriously depressed,
using medications to treat depression is appropriate.
So scientists have made three major discoveries regarding happiness
in the last ten years.
- We now have hard scientific evidence that after we meet our
basic needs for shelter, food and security, more money does
not buy happiness. We can increase our happiness by
cultivating our friendships, by physical exercise, by getting
enough sleep, by doing meaningful work, and by going to
religious services. Nevertheless, after meeting our basic needs
neither more money nor more status will make us happy.
- We now have hard scientific evidence that our genetic make-
up, partly determines happiness and depression by our biology.
At least one researcher believes that our happiness is 80
percent determined by our biology and 20% determined by
how we chose to live our lives.
- And we know that the existing anti-depressants are
enormously popular, and that much more effective ones will
be available in the next few years. Therefore if we are
seriously depressed we should seek medical help.
However, we should not expect to be happy always. For happiness
cannot exist without a context, a background, and a contrasting field.
If we can remember a time when we were hungry, then we are more
likely feel happy eating a meal.
If we can remember the pain of hard work or of a long hike, then we
are more likely to feel happy when we lay down in a soft bed to rest.
If we can remember the struggles along our path, then we are more
likely to feel happy when we achieve a goal that we have set out to
accomplish.
If we can remember the silence, then we are more likely to feel happy
when we hear the sound of beautiful music.
And if we can remember a time when we were lonely, then, we are
more likely to feel happy when we come into a community of friends
such as we have here today.
Office@CedarLane.org
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