HAPPINESS IS DISSENT - THE TRUTH ABOUT 'LOOKING AFTER NUMBER 1'

Internal Barricades

While anti-globalisation protestors face police barricades, truncheons and bullets in Seattle, Gothenburg and Genoa, some of the biggest obstacles to dissident actions are much closer to home - in our heads. Two questions, or versions thereof, regularly induce paralysis in many otherwise well-meaning people. They are as follows:

- What can I, as an individual, hope to achieve against a vast world of institutionalised greed and cruelty? How can I hope to make a difference in a world of 6 billion people?

A second, closely related, question is:
- Why on earth should I, as a finite being seeking personal happiness, sacrifice my own pursuit of pleasure and happiness for the sake of global injustice?

It is tempting to imagine that these questions are somehow inherent to the human condition, that they are inevitable and unavoidable (and perhaps unanswerable) responses to the human condition. But this is not so. Instead these questions are the product of human life as experienced under, and massively influenced by, corporate capitalist society. Remarkable though it might seem, for other societies these questions would have been absurd and even unimaginable.

The reason is that in many non-Western societies the motivation to act for the benefit of others has long been understood to be founded in the obvious fact that doing so is the key cause of our own happiness. The ninth century sage Shantideva, for example, summed up the attitude of a large portion of Asian civilisation over many centuries when he wrote:

"All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself."

In other words, when we work solely for our own benefit we cause immense suffering, not just to others but also to ourselves; and when we work to help others, everybody benefits, ourselves included.

This is the exact antithesis of everything corporate capitalism needs us (and trains us) to believe. Victor Lebow, a retail analyst, explains corporate priorities:

"Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... We need things, consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate." (my emphasis)

The psychologist Erich Fromm wrote of how our vision of human nature as being focused around sex and consumption has been distorted by the cultural environment into which we are born:

"Both the 'economic' man and the 'sexual' man are convenient fabrications whose alleged nature - isolated, asocial, greedy and competitive - makes Capitalism appear as the system which corresponds perfectly to human nature, and places it beyond the reach of criticism."

Evidence for Shantideva's assertion is all around us. Climate scientists are now warning that the world's giant forests, which have so far absorbed a large proportion of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, will soon be saturated. As a result, this great natural brake on global warming will begin to be released, and temperatures will begin to rise much more rapidly. One consequence will be that rainfall patterns over great carbon sinks such as the Amazon rainforest will likely be disrupted, making them arid and vulnerable to fire - around the world the giant carbon sinks that have so far protected us, will die back and burn, becoming giant pumps spewing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. This in turn may cause temperatures around the Arctic Ocean to increase by as much as 8 degrees, such that warming seas unleash billions of tones of methane hydrates lying frozen on the seabed. Methane is sixty times more warming than carbon dioxide - the result would be simply catastrophic. As climate scientist Peter Cox says, "It's difficult to know what in the world around us could survive this kind of warming."

This apocalypse could happen within our lifetimes and certainly before the end of the century.

Though many of us are good and kindly people, there has never been a global collection of human societies as rapaciously acquisitive, greedy and selfish as our own, if only because no previous set of societies has had the technology to indulge their greedy impulses to our super-human extent. Can we doubt that it is our own "wanting pleasure for oneself" suckled at the global hyper-market, nurtured by greedy elites, that is the root cause behind the disaster approaching us?

We have been manipulated and controlled, but not merely by denying facts and figures of state and corporate rapacity and wrongdoing. We have been deceived by endless propaganda, both explicit and implicit, promoting the idea that happiness is, of course, "wanting pleasure for oneself", while working for others is a tiresome chore - a source of satisfaction and self-righteous pride perhaps, but nothing much to do with real happiness. The propaganda has been so successful that many of us can truly not imagine how working for the benefit of others could possibly be related to our own benefit and peace of mind. Helping an old lady across the road, or donating to Oxfam, are fine things to do, but they're hardly pleasure-drenched sex with a gorgeous partner, they're not skiing through fresh powder under a blazing sun; they're not making a million and having the world at our feet.

One reason we have been encouraged to 'go for greed' is that it pacifies us. Haitian Governor Charles Metcalfe explained the rationale in 1840:

"To make them [Haitians] labour, and give them a taste for luxuries and comforts, they must be gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human labour. There was a regular progress from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what were once luxuries, gradually came...to be necessaries. This was the sort of progress the Negroes had to go through..."

It is ideal, from the point of view of those who benefit most from the acquisitive status quo, that we should seek freedom in precisely that which enslaves us - greed.

Science Meets Sage

Remarkably, modern science is beginning to confirm truths long familiar to ancient sages and modern dissidents: happiness is achieved by transcending, not indulging, self-centredness. Consider some of the scientific evidence that is beginning to affirm this truly revolutionary idea.

In a 30 year study of 427 married women, researchers at Cornell University were able to conclude that regardless of number of children, marital status, occupation, education, or social class, women who engaged in volunteer work to help other people at least once a week lived longer. Likewise, in a survey of thousands of volunteers across the United States, Allan Luks discovered that people who helped other people consistently reported better health than peers in their age group. Many also said that their health markedly improved when they began volunteer work.

A study of 700 elderly adults by C.E. Depner and Ingersoll-Dayton found that presence or absence of concern for others had a decisive effect on the ageing process. They found that "the effects of ageing had more to do with what they contributed +to+ their social support network than what they received from it." (My emphasis)

In a study of heart disease in 600 men, Dr. Larry Scherwitz found that people who were more self-obsessed had more severe coronary disease than their less self-involved counterparts. Scherwitz studied patients hospitalised for suspected heart disease or after a heart attack by monitoring how often they used 'I', 'me', 'my', 'mine', or 'myself' during a structured interview. He found evidence, that he considered incontrovertible, that patients with more severe disease were more self-focused, less concerned with others. This is Scherwitz's prescription for physical health:

"Be more giving, listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to others, let others have their way; do things for reasons other than furthering your own needs."

In a study conducted by Dr. David C. McClelland at Harvard University, participants were shown a short film of Mother Theresa tending to the needs of orphans in Calcutta, an exhibition of profound compassion and love. In those participants, the levels of the immune system marker SlgA (Salivary immunoglobulin antigen) increased. McClelland has termed this the "Mother Theresa effect". Interestingly, subjects demonstrated this effect regardless of their intellectual response - admiration, irritation at the religious overtones, or bored indifference - to what they saw. Dr. McClelland has also studied people who reported themselves to be "in love". Their blood chemistry also indicated increased immune system activity.

Elsewhere, in preliminary studies on Therapeutic Touch, Dr Janet Quinn measured immune function increase in both patient and practitioner and found that the giver had the same benefits as the receiver. It is well known that recovery rates improve for patients tending animals and even plants. Research has also shown that laboratory rabbits that were regularly held and stroked thrived despite experimental conditions that often harmed their non-nurtured kin. Dr. Dean Ornish concludes:

"Anything that promotes a sense of isolation often leads to illness and suffering. Anything that promotes a sense of love and intimacy, connection and community is healing."

Reviewing evidence of a link between altruism and health, Dr. Herbert Benson, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School concludes:

"One of the healthiest things you can do for yourself is to volunteer to help your community, backing away from too much self-worry and fretting. Focusing our attention away from our own problems by helping others, we can experience physical benefits, instead of passively absorbing a deluge of bad news, panic and fear - the physical transformation of which is very damaging."

Just as caring for others promotes our own physical and mental well being so, as Shantideva also argued, hostility towards others destroys health and happiness.

In a study of lawyers whose scores in a 'Ho' (hostility) test had been in the highest quarter of their class twenty-five years earlier, Dr John Barefoot found that nearly 20 percent were dead by age fifty; in contrast, only 4 percent of those with 'Ho' scores in the lowest quarter had died.

Describing research conducted on doctors, Redford Williams of Duke University reports:

"As they aged from twenty-five to fifty, those doctors whose Ho scores had been in the upper half at age twenty-five were four to five times more likely than those with lower scores to develop coronary heart disease and nearly seven times more likely to die from any cause... In addition to contributing to higher death rates via increased coronary rates, hostility might also be contributing to increased risk of cancer as well."

Williams leaves us in no doubt about the effect of hostility on health:

"Getting angry is like taking a small dose of some slow-acting poison - arsenic, for example - every day of your life."

Not only is lack of concern for others - as exemplified in the extremes of hostility and hatred - detrimental to physical health, it is catastrophic for mental well being. Psychologist Oliver James, author of Britain on the Couch, writes:

"To the lay person it may not seem intuitive but aggression and depression are closely linked. A man smashing his fist into another man's face does not immediately bring to mind the image of a person sitting haggard and bowed in a curtained room, sobbing with melancholy. The two appear poles apart yet, psychologically, they are close blood relatives. The depressive is paralysed by a self-loathing which is distinguishable in its hatred and anger from the violent person's only by its target - the self."

The closeness of the two, James argues, is shown by numerous studies "proving that violent men and boys are also more likely to be depressed and paranoid as well." Conversely, depressed people are more hostile and aggressive to their close friends and family. Convicted homicides and violent men in general, James writes, are more likely to commit suicide than non-violent criminals. In one British study, one third of convicted homicidal men subsequently killed themselves.

Other destructive mental traits are associated with a lack of concern and love for others. James reports that "aggressive boys and violent men as well as depressed people are significantly more likely than normal people to be paranoid - to attribute malign intentions to neutral actions of others."

As a group, hostile people are unhappy. Timothy Smith, a University of Utah researcher, and his colleagues have found that college students who score high on the Ho scale report "more hassles and negative life events, along with less social support".

Summarising the link between hostility and health, Redford Williams concludes:

"Altruism may help you to live longer. Extending yourself to interact with others is associated with longevity."

Speaking from a much older, but no less impressive tradition of wisdom, the Dalai Lama gives this advice for anyone seeking happiness today:

"If you have to choose between your own interests and the welfare of others, their interests come first. In short, if you put yourself at the disposal of others, you will find happiness in this life... Not only is your own happiness and suffering related to others, but the more you help them, the happier you will be. Therefore, sacrificing your own interests for the sake of the majority is the more intelligent approach."

The Dalai Lama calls this "enlightened self-interest". The authors of the Tibetan classic, Path of Heroes, write:

"The process of self-mastery is the process of learning to subdue self-centred concerns and give to other beings +no matter how great the sacrifice+. The teachings point to this one aim; when we accomplish it, the destructive emotions lose their hold, and true happiness can arise."

Buddhists are not impressed by Western hedonism. They recognise that, for all our technology, gadgets, power, and far-flung travel in search of exotic pleasures, we are not good at making ourselves happy. Oliver James agrees, citing a study showing that the proportion of Americans suffering from serious mental illness in the early 1980s was between fully 40% and 60% of the population. Other studies show that three-quarters of the population suffers from one or more "unreasonable fears, spells of panic or general nervousness".

Similarly, it is estimated that in the region of a third of the British population is afflicted by depression at any one time. In 1995, 5.6 million prescriptions were made for anti-depressants in Britain. "For once," James writes of these mental disorders, "it is no exaggeration to use the word 'epidemic' in describing a social trend."

In European nations suicide rates have increased, with rates among young men rocketing (especially in Britain, where they have trebled since 1970). Violence against the person has also increased fivefold in the United States and in England and Wales by an average of 10% a year since 1950, accelerating sharply since 1987.

Unrestrained hedonism, relentless consumption, "greed is good", "the 'me' culture" - all of it has failed, horribly. It doesn't necessarily feel like it has failed. Facts and figures, and even personal misery aside, it is in the nature of greed that it blinds us to the negative consequences of our selfishness - the advertisers and political servants of corporate society are forever on hand to give any doubters a persuasive leg-up.

We can choose to continue to be deceived if we like, but it won't make any difference - we will not find happiness in self-obsession. Meanwhile we will continue generating the global environmental conditions that will quickly increase our suffering to a point where denial will no longer be possible. The choice is ours: we can either begin seriously experimenting with the benefits of working for the well being of others, or continue trudging the neon-lit boulevard to personal and global disaster. It looks pretty, but as buddhists also tell us, it is merely "honey on the razor's edge".

Dissidents do a wonderful job of bombarding the public with the truth of state-corporate horror, injustice and criminality in hopes of shocking the selfish, complacent and indifferent into action. This material certainly does change and motivate people; compassion does displace some of the selfishness that maintains the status quo. But perhaps it is time we recognised that a vital motivation for action is also the understanding that working for the benefit of others is also the best way to ensure our own happiness, well being and peace of mind. In complete contradiction to what the corporate propagandists would have us believe, the best way to 'look after number one' is to work with all our might for the happiness of every other 'number' thereafter.

David Edwards, August 2001