Conditional happiness and conditioned misery

Anthony De Mello says that the first step toward awakening is to realize that you don’t want to awaken. And the first toward happiness is to realize that you don’t want to be happy.

That last made no sense. Me, not want to be happy?

Then he explained.

Then I got it.

Conditional happiness

People are willing to be happy, he explains, but only conditionally. “I’ll be happy, but only if I get this. I’ll be happy, but only if they do that.”

People don’t want to be happy. They want what they want, and they’ll be miserable if they think it will get them what they want.”

People believe that conditional unhappiness is beneficial.

We think that because we’ve been taught to use unhappiness to control ourselves.

We’ve learned to punish ourselves to help ourselves. We’ve learned to torture ourselves to control ourselves.

De Mello says:

All I can do for you is help you to unlearn. That’s what learning is all about where spirituality is concerned: unlearning,

I’ve learned how to be conditionally happy. Now I need to unlearn it and learn just to be happy.

Examples abound

If I write this blog post, then then I will be happy.

No, if I write a post every day, for many days, then I will be happy.

No, I’ll only be happy if I write very high-quality posts in great abundance and people love them.

I’m willing to be conditionally happy. Why not be unconditionally happy?

If I can set the conditions for happiness, why not remove those conditions?

I’m not alone in wanting only conditional happiness.

If my wife/husband/son/daughter/friend stops doing that annoying thing, then I will be happy. Well, maybe not happy. Perhaps just a bit happier. Because they have this other annoying thing that they do. If they stopped doing all those things, then I’d be happy.

If my co-workers stop doing stupid things, then I’ll be happy.

If Donald Trump loses(or wins) the election, I’ll be happy.

In every case, De Mello points out, we are holding happiness hostage. Being happy does not depend on any of these things, so why make a condition? We can just be happy.

I can be happy whether or not I write a blog post.

You can be happy whether or not the people around you are acting like idiots.

We can even be happy while Donald Trump is…well, it’s a stretch, but it’s possible.

De Mello says:

Some people make awakening a goal. They are determined to get there; they say, “I refuse to be happy until I’m awakened.”

That was me. Unhappy until I’m awakened.

How did we learn

I came to believe that conditional happiness (and unhappiness) was useful.

I learned to believe that the way to get what I want is to hold my happiness hostage—to refuse to be happy unless I get it.

I’ve used what you might call purposeful unhappiness to get what I want.

Everybody says it. No pain, no gain.

Want gain? Have some pain.

Pushing ourselves

We who want to improve believe that pushing ourselves is the route to success. We could push ourselves joyfully, but that’s not what we’ve been taught. We’ve been taught to torture ourselves to get better.

We don’t think about it as torture.

Torture: the action or practice of inflicting severe pain or suffering on someone to force them to do something

Want to get better? Make yourself suffer for not doing it.

Our parents taught us initially. We continue to refresh the lessons.

How we learned

It started this way.

When we did something that our parents didn’t want us to do, they physically stopped us. They controlled us. And at the same time, they showed unhappiness or even anger.

Like Pavlov’s dogs, we associated their emotions with control. Soon they didn’t have to touch us. They could give us a stern look or talk to us in a certain tone of voice. They conditioned us to obey.

My parents did it to me. I did it to my kids. Sorry, kids.

Kids become conditioned to respond to the unhappiness of adults around them.

That’s a starting point.

Teaching the happy to be unhappy

Children are naturally happy. They will happily track mud into the house, happily throw food on the floor, happily bop another kid on the head. When parents reprimand kids for such behavior—and they should—they demand that the kids demonstrate understanding.

Words are not enough.

If a parent remonstrated a happy kid for tracking mud into the house, and the kid apologized but remained happy, most parents would assume (maybe correctly) that the kid didn’t get it, and the apology was not genuine.

The real test of understanding would be: did they track mud in the next time? But no one can wait around for that. So parents train kids to show them that they understand. Unhappiness after a reprimand is acceptable evidence of understanding.

So kids are trained.

“Wipe that smile off your face!”

“This is no joke.”

Punishment

When parents deem that some level of expressed unhappiness is insufficient evidence of learning, then—with the best of intentions—and I mean that without irony—parents punish us. If they were to punish us—say by sending us to our room or depriving us of a favorite toy or activity—and we did not demonstrate enough distress, they’d find something that made us more unhappy.

The greater the offense, the greater the required degree of misery. All for our own good.

What our parents learned, they taught. They’d learned to punish by being punished. And by punishing us, they taught us to punish ourselves.

Anticipating reprimands and punishment

They taught us to anticipate their reprimands and punishment and restrain ourselves from doing things they wanted us not to do.

We learned to reprimand ourselves before the fact and punish ourselves—with guilty feelings—after the fact.

That’s what was done to me. And that’s what I did to my kids. Sorry, kids. If I ever have more kids, I’ll do better.

Do unto ourselves

We learn to get ourselves to do things that we find hard to do by doing to ourselves as was done unto us. We might start by asking ourselves. We might argue with ourselves. And if that doesn’t work, we threaten ourselves, criticize ourselves, punish ourselves, torture ourselves until we do what we want. We might also promise ourselves a reward. But for most people, threats, criticisms, and punishment are important motivators.

If we reach a satisfactory level of success—whatever that might be—we’re happy to relax into a routine. And why not? Things are good.

The road to greater success

We know that the way to greater success is more self-threats, self-criticisms, self-doubt, and punishment. We’ve had enough, thank you very much. And please don’t criticize us for not wanting to go further!

If our level of success is not satisfactory, we know why. We didn’t threaten ourselves enough. We didn’t force ourselves enough. Not enough torture. Not enough gain? Must have been not enough pain.

Another way

I believe that there is another way.

That way is through awareness and understanding.

De Mello says:

That still leaves us with a big question: Do I do anything to change myself? I’ve got a big surprise for you, lots of good news! You don’t have to do anything. The more you do, the worse it gets. All you have to do is understand.

What can I say here?

I like what De Mello says:

One cannot say anything about happiness. Happiness cannot be defined. What can be defined is misery. Drop unhappiness and you will know. Love cannot be defined; unlove can. Drop unlove, drop fear, and you will know.

 

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Do your job, (redux)

Jordan Peterson says that we don’t understand ourselves as well as we think we do. If we observe ourselves, we may learn something that we didn’t know about ourselves.

The other day I learned something important about myself: I do my job.

A projects guy

Years back, I realized that I couldn’t just call someone up and “catch up on life” the way some people can. I relate to people mainly through projects. Give me a project, and I’m happy to talk. No project? Not so interested. Want to have a relationship with me? Find a project.

“I’m a projects guy,” is how I framed that idea about myself. And I wrote a blog post about it.

I do my job

The other day I realized something else about myself.

I do my job.

I may procrastinate and do my job at the last minute, but if it’s my job, I’ll do it.

Here’s the story of how I came to this insight (this time), why it’s important, and why I think it’s going to stick

How I got here

I’ll start the story two days ago, as I was considering a fundamental existential question: of what value is my existence?

In other words: why should I continue to live?

My ADD had been in full rage. I was not getting things done that I wanted to get done. I was frustrated and angry and becoming depressed. And I was becoming too tired to try.

I was not suicidal. I’ve been through this cycle often enough to know this will pass.

But still.

What’s the use of living that sort of life?

When shit like that happens to my brain, I’ve found one reliable way through it.

I pull out a computer or a notebook, and I write and write and write.

Eventually, my thoughts clear, and I can get on with life.

This time they got very clear.

Does my life have value?

What’s the value of my continued existence? I asked.

I know that Bobbi and the kids (including the kids-by-marriage) would suffer loss if I were not around.

For there to be loss, there must be value.

So my life had value—to them, if not to me.

I wanted my life to have a different kind of value, and it did not. But that didn’t matter. It had value to them, and it was my job to preserve that value.

It was my job to keep living for them, if not for me.

How should I live?

I could keep living the way that I was at that moment, miserable and frustrated. Or perhaps I could find a way to be happy.

If I continued to live in misery and hid it from the people who loved me, I would be dishonest. And I place a high value on honesty.

If I continued to live in misery and revealed it, I would make the people who loved me unhappy. I’d be spreading misery.

So this thought arose: it was not only my job to live, but to be happy.

It was my job.

Sometimes, it’s hard to be happy. So what?

Flashbulb memory. I remember sitting in a bookstore, in a sunny place, reading a book of quotations. One, my memory tells me, said something similar to what I had just concluded: that it’s our job to be happy.

When things are going well, it’s easy to be happy. And when things are going badly, it’s hard.

But if it’s my job to be happy, the fact that it’s hard doesn’t matter.

It might take a lot of work. I might try and fail. That’s happened before.

But I can’t think of a realistic situation where I’ve been able to bring about a better outcome by being miserable than being happy.

(To be clear, by “happy,” I don’t mean tra-la-la laughing and giggling. I mean with a calm and aware mind, looking forward to acting to improve whatever situation currently exists, with hope for something better.)

And I think well of myself—or anyone—who works at a job that’s not easy if it’s the right thing to do.

It’s my job

So, I concluded, being happy may take work, but it’s my job.

And just like that, my attitude changed.

I had a job to do.

I remember a favorite scene from “Person of Interest.” John Reese, one of the story’s heroes, has been drinking himself to death. Harold Finch another leading character says:

Finch: I don’t think you need a psychiatrist or a support group, or pills…

Reese: What do I need?

Finch:: You need a purpose. More specifically, you need a job.

Thinking of being happy as a job changed my mind.

That surprised me.

It made me happy.

That also surprised me.

I thought about it for a while and realized in addition to being a “projects guy,” I’m a “do your job guy.” Doing hard things when it’s my job has been a pattern in my life.

Being an extravert was my job

In my working years, I had a lot of public-facing roles. In meetings, I expressed my views. At trade shows, I was quick to start a conversation with a passer-by who might be a customer. On a customer visit, I was happy to be the center of attention. I had little hesitation speaking in front of an audience.

People who knew me in a professional context were often surprised when I said I was an introvert.

“You, an introvert?” I was asked more than once. “You don’t seem like an introvert.”

“I know,” was my answer. “I’m an introvert on my own time. But when it’s my job to be an extrovert, I’m an extrovert. I do my job.”

And that was it for me. I did my job.

Frustrating and loving

Later, after reading Martin Seligman’s book, “Learned Helplessness,” I realized that it was my job as a parent not just to support our kids, but to frustrate them. The idea was to help them learn to deal with frustration so they wouldn’t grow up helpless. I did my job. I wrote about it here.

Still later, after the kids became independent and sometimes behaved in ways that I intensely disliked and thought would harm them in the long run, I realize that part of my job was loving them, without regard to that behavior. I wrote a little about that here (“From Spark to Post”).

I take doing my job seriously.

When I was raising my kids, I sometimes loved them because they were cute and loveable. But sometimes they were awful and unloveable. Still, I loved them. Because it was my job.
So I did my job and did not let my feelings about their behavior get in the way of loving them.

Will the insight stick?

So being happy is my job. Interesting insight. Will it stick?

This blog records other insights that I’ve had and decisions that I have made. Some have stuck. Others have dropped out of working memory. (Fortunately, my blog makes up for my memory failures.)

I’ve had other insights not recorded here—though it might be useful for me to do that—and there’s a pattern to the ones that have stuck.

I’ve written about this idea before:
here (The Stoic Challenger).

I learned that being a father and a husband were jobs that I had. What my kids did or what my wife did was not something I could control. What I could control is what I did, and not always that. But it was my job to do my best.

and here (Do your job!), it hasn’t stuck yet.

I think this is different.

It feels different. But I could be wrong.

We’ll see.

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Looking for a miracle

This morning, talking to Bobbi, I thought about the way that misery cascades through society—and through each of us.

I have a friend who hates Trump. My friend is easily triggered by Trump, and after he’s ranted for a while, I start to get mad at him.

My friend’s anger solves nothing. It wastes my time. It hurts my equanimity.

I feel compelled to either get mad at Trump—which solves nothing—or to defend Trump—which I don’t like doing, and which also solves nothing. So I get mad at my friend, which solves nothing.

And then then I get mad at everyone else who is making everyone else mad.

Fuck them!

Which solves nothing.

And makes things worse.

I can’t do anything about Trump. I can’t do anything about my friend. And I can do almost nothing about myself. And that pisses me off, too.

Almost nothing is still something

“Almost nothing” is still something. But it takes so much time and so much effort to change myself. And the changes reverse themselves so fast. And that pisses me off. And that doesn’t help.

And if I can’t do anything much about myself, who am I to criticize my friend for being what he is?

And who am I to criticize Trump for being what he is?

Somewhere on the internet, I read this: “…remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

You can’t believe everything you read on the internet, but that seems like good advice.

There’s more than one beam in my eye, and they are so fucking hard to remove.

I know they can be removed. Years of meditation, therapy, Scientology, yadda yadda have taught me that I can remove them.

When I put in enough work, I can get all the beams that are currently in my eyes out, along with the bad thoughts that are in my brain.

When I do that, I discover the tranquility that was always there.

My experience has taught me that everything that is my mind—even the bad shit—is there for a good purpose—or it was at one time.

I have yet to find a truly bad impulse in myself.

Under anger, I’ve always found love.

Under fear, I’ve always found serenity.

Always.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking for bad shit, and when I find it and confront it, it always turns to good.

I am confident that with enough work, I can move from any bad place to The Good Place (I mean the real Good Place.)

But has always been so much work to get from a bad place to a good place.

And it never lasts.

What do I want?

I told this to Bobbi, and I said: “I know what I want. I want to get to that good place and live there always.”

“But,” I continued, “it seems like it would take a miracle for that to happen.”

And that’s when I realized: that’s what I want: a miracle. And that’s the miracle that I want.

About a year ago I wrote about a book I’d found called “A Course In Miracles.” I’ve been reading it. Even took a swing at doing the course—but never really buckled down and got serious.

But today, I realized that I might be able to get the miracle that I want if I did the work.

I want the miracle of my mind being whole and at peace and the miracle of my mind staying there, no matter what happens.

I want that miracle for myself, and I want it for anyone else who would like that miracle.

Including you, reader.

If that’s a miracle that you would like, I hope it will come to you.

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Wrong again, learned helplessness is not learned

I like knowing things.

Part of the process of knowing is discovering when something that knew is wrong. Oddly, I like it when I find that I’ve been wrong.

Learned helplessness is wrong

I’ve explained ‘learned helplessness” to a lot of people. If I’ve told you about it, and you believed it was correct, sorry.

Bobbi and I used this theory to raise our kids. The good news: even though we had the wrong theory, our practice was consistent with the correct theory. Yay.

Helplessness is not learned. It’s innate

The correct theory: helplessness is not learned. It is innate. We are helpless by default.

The opposites—initiative, empowerment, and causality—are what has to be learned.

Fortunately, to keep them from learning helplessness, we taught them resourcefulness. And boy, are they resourceful.

Martin Seligman and learned helplessness

I learned about learned helplessness from a book, oddly titled “Learned helplessness,” by Martin Seligman around the time that Dana was a year or two old.

Learned helplessness is the idea that creatures—including kids—can be taught to respond passively to unpleasant situations.

I’ve since read several other books by Seligman including “Learned Optimism,” “Authentic Happiness.” and “What you can change and what you can’t.“ All recommended.

Learned helplessness made a difference in the way we raised Dana and her sisters.

Seligman’s experiments

Here’s how one of Seligman’s experiments demonstrated learned helplessness:

A shuttle box is a piece of apparatus used in animal learning experiments. It is divided into two halves. In Seligman’s experiments, a dog is put in a shuttle box and given a shock. A normal, untrained dog, when given a shock, jumps to the other side.

Seligman showed that dogs could be conditioned so that they don’t do that. Dogs that get shocks and have a way to stop the shocks jump in the shuttle box like normal dogs. But dogs that have no way to control the shocks behave differently. When they are later placed in a shuttle box and shocked, they lie down and take it. In Seligman’s formulation, the dogs had learned they are helpless.

Seligman and others have shown that rats and humans can be conditioned similarly. Humans are not put in shuttle boxes, but they can be conditioned toward passivity. Humans who have learned that they are not in control in experimental situations behave in ways consistent with the helpless-seeming behavior of dogs and rats.

Learned helplessness and kids

Seligman argued that kids raised with too strictly enforced rules or without rules could end up behaving as though they are helpless.

The kids raised with too consistently enforced rules learn that challenging rules is hopeless and learn to stop trying.

Kids raised with no rules never have an opportunity to learn to challenge the environment. So they end up helpless.

Raising our kids, we usually enforced the rules that we set, but we also let them disagree with us and argue with us. We never punished them for challenging us. We might still enforce the rules we had set, but sometimes we gave ground and negotiated a different rule. And sometimes we let them have their way.

We wanted them to learn that they could challenge any situation and were never helpless.

The correct theory?

Seligmans’ new paper is impressive.

It’s impressive that he went back and falsified the theory that initially brought him fame. And the techniques he and his coauthor used to support the new theory are also impressive.

His original collaborator, Steven Maier, switched fields and retrained as a neuroscientist. The paper traces the brain regions that are activated or inhibited during the conditioning and identifies the neural pathways built in the process. They provide a bottom-up explanation of dog, rat, and human behavior.

The bottom line:

The mechanism of learned helplessness is now very well-charted biologically and the original theory got it backwards. Passivity in response to shock is not learned. It is the default, unlearned response to prolonged aversive events and it is mediated by the serotonergic activity of the dorsal raphe nucleus, which in turn inhibits escape.

Right. I had always suspected that the dorsal raphe nucleus was involved.

This passivity can be overcome by learning control, with the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex, which subserves the detection of control leading to the automatic inhibition of the dorsal raphe nucleus. So animals learn that they can control aversive events, but the passive failure to learn to escape is an unlearned reaction to prolonged aversive stimulation. In addition, alterations of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex-dorsal raphe pathway can come to subserve the expectation of control.

Right! The good old mPFC inhibits the DRN. And the vmPFC gets in there as well.

H/T to Mark Manson

I found about this in Mark Manson’s weekly newsletter, MINDF*CK MONDAYS, to which I subscribe, and which I recommend along with most of what Mark writes.

I think that Mark is one of the better philosophers philosophizing these days. Many people would argue that Mark shouldn’t be called a philosopher because real philosophers don’t say fuck as often as he does.

I judge someone a philosopher (or not) based on the quality of their thinking and their love of wisdom.

So anyone who doesn’t think he’s a philosopher should go fuck themselves.

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