
What Makes Us Happy - fogus
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/happiness/
======
cojadate
One of the most striking parts of this article came right at the end: the
mention of all these successful, well-adjusted people's amazing capacity to
lie to themselves:

"In 1946, for example, 34 percent of the Grant Study men who had served in
World War II reported having come under enemy fire, and 25 percent said they
had killed an enemy. In 1988, the first number climbed to 40 percent—and the
second fell to about 14 percent. “As is well known,” Vaillant concluded, “with
the passage of years, old wars become more adventurous and less dangerous.”"

It's a scary and uncertain world we live if we can't even rely on our own
memories to tell us the truth. Makes me think I should keep a diary.

I was also slightly frustrated with the author's apparently uncritical
acceptance of Vaillant's theory of adaptations. Any actual verifiable evidence
for this theory?

"Strenuous defenses, I came to see, are no mere academic theme for Vaillant,
who has molded his life story like so much clay. Consider the story of his
father’s suicide and his own delight in going through the 25th-reunion book
[of his father's school] as a 13-year-old. When I asked Vaillant if the
experience of paging through the book had been tinged with sadness, he said,
“It was fascinating,” and went on to describe his awe and wonder at
longitudinal studies. If he were observing his own case, Vaillant himself
would probably call this “reaction formation”—responding to anxiety (pain at
grasping a father’s violent departure) with an opposite tendency (joy at
watching men, quite like him, develop through time)."

Is "reaction formation" really the only explanation for this? It seems a very
likely one but maybe Vaillant just has a brain which, due to its biological
programming, doesn't react strongly to death. Maybe his fascination with the
reunion book was simply because of his perplexity with the mystery of his
father's death (as opposed to a way of substituting a painful emotion with a
manageable one, as Vaillant's theory would have it).

I found this strange because at other points in the article, the author seemed
aware of the gap between psychoanalysis as genuine science – unverifiable
speculation and verifiable testing – and yet here we have a theory being
talked about as if it were a proven fact.

And, finally, I liked this quote very much:

"Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad
for diagnosis and too immortal for bound journals" - George Vaillant

Though I hope that doesn't stop people trying to bind them up in science,
because it's the only way we'll ever know the truth about human nature.

~~~
coglethorpe
Their memories might be just fine, but over time they might have realized the
glory came from living through danger and not from shooting someone.

------
bootload
_"... positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason
is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate
payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of
distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper
connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because,
while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to
the common elements of rejection and heartbreak. ..."_

Don't worry about your Startup, it will probably fail. Celebrate every
milestone, have fun.

------
mcantor
I found this passage absolutely chilling. I have never read fiction, classic
or otherwise, that captured so well the tragic vulnerability of the human
condition; the tenuous moment-to-moment insanity that makes us happy and
irrational. It quite literally brought a tear to my eye:

To illustrate his point, he told a story about one of his "prize" Grant Study
men, a doctor and well-loved husband. "On his 70th birthday," Vaillant said,
"when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his wife got hold of his
patient list and secretly wrote to many of his longest-running patients,
'Would you write a letter of appreciation?' And back came 100 single-spaced,
desperately loving letters--often with pictures attached. And she put them in
a lovely presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to him." Eight
years later, Vaillant interviewed the man, who proudly pulled the box down
from his shelf. "George, I don't know what you're going to make of this," the
man said, as he began to cry, "but I've never read it."

"It's very hard," Vaillant said, "for most of us to tolerate being loved."

------
pope52
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=605207>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865853>

Old, but still a very good read.

------
dejb
What would make me happy is to read articles that start of with a good summary
of the answer to the question they pose in the title. That way I can know
whether it is worth investing the time into reading the rest of it.

Articles that force you to read someone's life storey before getting to the
point don't make me happy.

~~~
basugasubaku
To be fair, the article is about Valiant the person almost as much it is about
his research, though the title is a bit misleading.

Anyway, I read it a few months back and this is the part that still sticks
with me:

Vaillant was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?"
Vaillant’s response: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your
relationships to other people."

~~~
dejb
So do you think it is reasonable to have to read through 4 pages of an article
just to find out that isn't really about what the title said? I understand
that a lot of people enjoyed the article but does that make this deception
excusable?

