Philosophy of Life
Mood Control
There are two aspects to a philosophy of life: How you interact with yourself and how you interact with others. How you interact with yourself is based on how you find comfort within, relying for help on the internal, positive part of yourself. According to Layard, some people call this positive entity God and Table 2 illustrates that people who believe in God are indeed happier.
How you interact with others is based on your interaction with society and the perceptions of the society within which you live. Research shows that people are happier if they feel that they live in a friendly and harmonious world. Furthermore, people who say they trust other people are happier and are in turn happier when surrounded by people who are trusting.
Decrease in Trust
Unfortunately, even though it is proven that people are happier in a trusting society, trust has been declining rapidly in Britain and the USA. Table 3 illustrates the decline of trust within Britain, whereas Figure 2 illustrates the situation within the USA.
Some possible factors for this decrease in trust may be increased mobility, increased family break-up, and decline in religious beliefs over the last 100 years due to Darwinian science. However, whatever the cause of this decline, within both countries each generation has started their adult life less trustful than their predecessors did. In order to fix this problem, Layard suggests the reimplementation of moral education in school curriculum.
Since individualism is now the dominating ideology in Western cultures it is very possible that this may actually be the primary culprit for the decrease in trust. The Smithian argument of economics states that the pursuit of self-interest will lead via the invisible hand to the social optimum, but in fact the pursuit of individualism and solely self interest is actually not a good formula for personal happiness and will merely lead to anxiety instead. People will actually be happiest when they also acquire happiness from the good fortune and benefit of others.
Therefore, economic teaching may indeed be problematic as well. A study performed by Robert Frank at Cornell asked students if they would report being undercharged for a purchase or if they would return an addressed envelope containing $100 that they found. Students were asked these questions at the beginning and the end of a semester and the research found that students who studied economics actually became less honest. In addition, when playing the Prisoners Dilemma game, economic students were the least likely to be cooperative out of all the students. This gap continued to widen as students continued to study economics. Since economic teaching is continuously seeping into our culture, the good effects are only being undermined by the justification of selfishness.
Overarching Principles
Layard claims that a good society is one in which people are happiest. In addition, the right action is the action that results in the greatest happiness; actions which promote the state of the society. Furthermore, he comes up with 5 propositions which he believes will settle all conflicts between principles.
- 1. It is in our nature to be happy.
- 2. We also want out relatives to be happy, a parent’s love being the strongest example.
- 3. Regarding relationships outside the family, humans are innately sociable and in varying degrees helpful to each other. We know genes are involved in this because twin studies show that the trait of cooperativeness is partly heritable. This trait provides the emotional support for the development of a moral theory.
- 4. We have an inbuilt sense of fairness, which requires at the very least the equal treatment of equals.
- 5. To these ingredients, we bring the power of reason, which reasons about moral issues in much the same way that it reasons about the working of the natural world. In both cases, a unified theory is sought.
Natural Traits
Implementation of these propositions should be quite easy, since humans naturally seek the good of more than themselves; they also seek the good of their kin. This is advantageous as natural selection will choose cooperative people and will also choose societies which educate their citizens to be cooperative. If economic teaching is eliminated from the picture and we follow the natural traits of humans when playing the Prisoners Dilemma game, people who were initially cooperative would do best.
These traits can be refined by upbringing and values we have been taught by parents and teachers. Thus, our “natural” traits are actually a product of nature and nurture. Humans therefore cooperate because it makes us happy. During the Prisoners Dilemma game, monitoring of the brain showed that cooperative moves produced pleasurable signs. People who are made to be cooperative like that are liked more by other people (natural sociability) and their cooperative nature furthers their advancement and happiness. Due to our upbringing though, we are also trained to protect our backs. For example, people who behave badly get punished and some people who cooperate do so partly from fear of being caught. Generally speaking however, humans have an inherited instinct for fairness. In addition, Layard believes that each person values their own happiness as equally as they value the happiness of other people.
"'Create all happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.'"
Source
Layard, Richard. Lecture 3: What would make a happier society? 5 March 2003.
