normblog

Why people give

According to this piece, giving - giving to charity, giving blood, etc - makes people happy. The writer assembles some evidence for it. He then goes on to ask why giving makes people happy.

The surprising conclusion is that giving affects our brain chemistry. For example, people who give often report feelings of euphoria, which psychologists have referred to as the "Helper's High." They believe that charitable activity induces endorphins that produce a very mild version of the sensations people get from drugs like morphine and heroin.

Even if it's true about the brain chemistry, there's something insufficient in that answer. Adapting an example from Robert Nozick (for a summary, scroll down to 'Feelings and More Feelings' here), let us suppose there was a tablet that could be taken by those intending charitable donation and which would give them exactly the same feelings of happiness as would their making the donation. I don't know precisely how many, but plenty of them would want to go ahead with the donation rather than opting to take the tablet. Either there are other features of their being made happy than the brain chemistry changes caused by the sheer act of giving, or they have other reasons for giving than just wanting to be made happier. (Thanks: E.)

On the one hand, on the only hand

At its annual meeting, held recently in Chicago, the Modern Language Association of America had before it a resolution '... defend[ing] the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.' Scott Jaschik reports:

The resolution made no mention of the right of others on campus to embrace Zionism or Israel or to hold middle-of-the-road views or any views other than being critical of Israel and Zionism.

In the event, a substitute resolution was approved by 63 votes to 30:

[This] noted that the "Middle East is a subject of intense debate," said it was "essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue," and urged colleges to "resist" pressure from outside groups about tenure reviews and speakers and to instead uphold academic freedom. [The] resolution did not identify one side or the other as victim or villain in the campus debates over the Middle East and said that academic freedom must apply to people "to address the issue of the Middle East in the manner they choose."

Supporters of the original motion apparently found this substitute resolution too 'even-handed'. (Thanks: DG.)

'You end up giving up'

Those are the words of Alexander Mudewe after his experience at Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo. Alexander and his wife Perpetual are both HIV-positive. This piece from the LA Times on the near collapse of Zimbabwe's health system describes their plight and that of others:

321,000 people need antiretroviral medicines,... according to the World Health Organization, and only 91,000 have access to them.

Against resolutions?

Made any resolutions for 2008? If not, maybe you should hold off till you've read Boyd Tonkin. He's recommending a bit less consistency. Much good has come of people changing their minds: breakthroughs in science and art, revolutions in philosophy, medical improvements. Anyway, changing your mind is good if you've come to the conclusion that you're wrong. Why not opt therefore, Tonkin asks, for some new year's irresolution?

You can see what he's saying. But there's a difficulty. In planning for irresolution, should we decide ahead of time in what area to be irresolute? Can I choose what I'm going to change my mind about in 2008 without already having changed it on that subject now, in 2007? Even deciding merely to change my mind about something - something as yet unspecified - if I go ahead and do so, won't I have proved myself too resolute in that respect? Must I not change my mind about changing my mind?

I leave these questions with you.

A dance to the music of time

This is the time when everybody and her cousin is showering you with lists of the best and the worst of what's happened during the past year and with predictions or anticipations concerning the year to come. Do I want to add to this mountain? Readers, I do not. Instead I shall emphasize certain patterns of recurrence, focusing on the shapes we give to time. And I shall do this with a musical accompaniment.

Here goes

1. Tanya Tucker sees in the first month of the year with 'The Jamestown Ferry': 'It's not a hot day in January...'

2. Nat King Cole understands the general concept in 'Shine On Harvest Moon': 'I ain't had no lovin'/Since January, February, June or July.'

3. Next we're on to the 'Winds of March': as in 'You came like the winds of March...'

4. Ella Fitzgerald celebrates 'April in Paris': she 'never missed a warm embrace/Till April in Paris...'

5. Pat Boone offers you some 'Friendly Persuasion': 'More than the buds on the May apple tree' he loves thee.

6. In 'June Is Busting Out All Over', you'll find that June is busting out all over - and over.

7. Sinatra and Crosby take us into the second half of the year with 'Well, Did You Evah?': 'Have you heard? It's in the stars/Next July we collide with Mars.'

8. Two other guys sing about an 'August Day': yup, that's an August day.

9. Here's Sinatra again, with a younger and hairier companion, on 'September Song': the days 'grow short when you reach September'.

10. U2 follow up with 'October': it's when 'the trees are stripped bare', October.

11. And, next thing you know, it's 'November Rain': cold November rain.

12. I'll give Merle Haggard the last word in this run-through of the months. He's singing 'If We Make It Through December': if they make it through December, he's 'got plans to be in a warmer town come summer time'.

Talking of which, let me now take you through the four seasons

13. The logical place to begin is in winter. Johnny Mathis is in a 'Winter Wonderland'.

14. If winter comes, can spring be far behind? 'Spring Spring Spring' (five and a half minutes in).

15. Then it's 'Hot town, summer in the city'.

16. And Ol' Blue Eyes again, as only he can, with 'Autumn Leaves'.

From the shape of the year to the shape of the week

17. 'Splish splash, I was taking a bath/Long about a Saturday night'

18. 'Sunday mornin' comin' down'

19. 'Monday Monday, can't trust that day'

20. 'Stupid bloody Tuesday'

21. 'I'd be there on Wednesday night'

22. 'Thursday night your stockings needed mending'

23. 'I got to Kansas City on a Frid'y'

The shape of the day

24. 'Gonna rock around the clock tonight'

25. The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

26. Good Morning

27. That'll Be The Day

28. Sunny Afternoon

29. Twilight Time

30. Some Enchanted Evening

31. Fred and Ginger dance one: Night and Day

And then some

32. Yesterday

33. Today I Started Loving You Again

34. Tonight

35. Tomorrow

36. In The Early Morning Rain

37. It's Late

38. 'We may never never meet again, on that bumpy road to love...'

39. 'Sometimes I wonder why I spend/The lonely night dreaming of a song...'

40. You Were Always On My Mind

41. Forever Young

It's a musical extravaganza, friends - assembled by me, just for you. Happy New Year!

Something is better than nothing

Here's Galen Strawson:

If, in any normal, non-depressed period of life, I ask myself whether I'd rather be alive than dead tomorrow morning, and completely put aside the fact that some people would be unhappy if I were dead, I find I have no preference either way.

Strawson allows that there are many people who will find this absurd, but others, he says, will think it obvious. While I won't say it's absurd, I stand with those who would prefer to be alive tomorrow morning, as well as the morning after and the one after that. Assuming no calamities overtake me, I'd even prefer to be alive towards the end of next year. Unless I've misunderstood him, Strawson's contrary view rests on the contention that by dying he would lose nothing:

My future life or experience doesn't belong to me in such a way that it's something that can be taken away from me. It can't be thought of as possession in that way. To think that it's something that can be taken away from me is like thinking... that something is taken away from an existing piece of string by the fact that it isn't longer than it is. It's just a mistake, like thinking that Paris is the capital of Argentina.

But if this is the premise and Strawson's non-preference for being alive tomorrow morning the conclusion, I fail to see how the conclusion follows from the premise. Let me concede, therefore, that my (possible) future is not a possession such that it can be lost. Why, now, can't I prefer the state in which I am, a state in which I can take a hot bath, eat an orange, read, and listen to Lyle Lovett, to a state of nothingness? Though it isn't part of his argument, Strawson refers to Epicurus's thought:

You don't mind that that you didn't exist for an eternity before you were born, so you shouldn't mind if you don't exist for an eternity after you're dead.

No, I don't mind that I didn't exist in 1893 or 1792; and I don't mind that I won't exist in 2091. But the question here isn't about what I mind, it's about what I prefer. And, other things equal, I definitely prefer that I should be alive tomorrow. To have that preference, I don't think I need to claim that I own a future in which Norman Geras still exists on 30 December 2007; all I need to be able to do is compare the two states, me-being-alive and nothingness (for me). I suppose it could be said that I'm not in a position to make the comparison since, in the nature of things, I have no experience of nothingness. But I only need to know that the experience of being something feels good whereas nothingness (for me) has a certain emptiness about it, in order to be able to prefer the former.

Imagine that someone who was in a position to do this offered you the choice between falling into a dreamless sleep for seven months and a more or less normal bundle of the activities and experiences (including ordinary sleep) that make up your life as it is now. Then, assuming that your life isn't marked by great suffering or unhappiness, it doesn't stretch credulity to think that you'd forego the seven month blot-out.

Take-down

Is the internet killing our culture? No, it isn't. (Via.)

On lying and remembering

Four (or five) rules for being happy, seven reasons why we all lie - this according to psychologist Paul Ekman:

We lie to avoid punishment, to get a reward, to protect others, to escape an awkward social situation, to enhance our egos, to control information and to fulfill our job descriptions...

Here's a possible eighth reason from William Maxwell:

What we... refer to confidently as memory - meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion - is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.

And yet, as much truth as there is in this, some remember better than others.

Accept your troubles, thank your lucky stars

Tal Ben-Shahar wants to help us all towards being happier people in 2008. He's offering four key ideas drawn from 'rigorous academic research' in the field of positive psychology. Idea number one is not being too hard on yourself. If you experience painful emotions like 'anxiety, sadness, fear, or envy', you should understand that it doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. You're only human: 'we need to accept our emotions as we do other natural phenomena'. Idea number four tells us to focus on the positive: we should appreciate the good things in our lives, be grateful for them on a daily basis.

I have no particular quarrel with either of these admonitions, but I wish Dr Ben-Shahar had added a fifth key idea: learn how to balance different guidelines to happiness in a sensible way.

Promoting democracy and promoting rights

Earlier this year a report on democracy promotion was issued by Canada's House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. The title of the report was 'Advancing Canada's Role in International Support for Democratic Development', and it is discussed at length in an article by Jennifer Welsh in the December issue of the Literary Review of Canada.

Professor Welsh assesses four arguments for making the promotion of democracy an aim of Canadian foreign policy, considering points in their favour as well as some caveats and reservations. In summary the four arguments are these. (1) Democracies tend not to go to war with one other and so the spread of democracy is the best means to securing international stability. (2) Canada has some special capacities suiting it to a role in the export of democracy. (3) Canada has the desire to make a difference and thereby gain visibility in the international arena. (4) Democracy has been central to the country's history; it is an aspiration of Canadians and inspires people around the world living under repressive governments.

Welsh says that the fourth argument is the one to which she is most sympathetic, and I just want to note one oddity that strikes me in the presentation of it. There is focus group evidence, she notes, that a section of the Canadian public is uncomfortable about the idea of democracy promotion, as being 'too preachy' and 'too American'. She wonders if the source of this might be a sensibility concerning value pluralism. In any case, mindful of that concern, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Welsh goes on to say, 'argues that Canada should adopt an approach that places democratic development under the banner of universal human rights':

In short, the goal here is liberal democracy, which requires not only participation by the governed in decision making, but also a set of civil, political, social and economic rights that supports and protects the role of individuals in the democratic process. Such a broad conception of democracy, the committee believes, will alleviate Canadians' concerns about the political nature of democracy promotion.

My puzzlement about this arises because the very same objection that can be raised against democracy promotion in the name of value pluralism or worries about preachiness and (in effect) US hegemony, can also be raised against universal human rights - against their universality specifically. One of the principal arguments for democracy indeed (as is implicit in Welsh's support for point 4 above) is a human rights argument. It is strange to me that Canada's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development should see the rights-based case as less 'political' than the democracy-based one.

(On this subject, see also the exchange between Jeff Weintraub and Taylor Owen, 'Is promoting democracy a good idea?')