About 15 years ago, I started to undertake an amateur study and develop an interest in the concept of ‘happiness’.
I put that in speech marks because it's such an extraordinarily huge subject and such an extraordinary ethereal object that is something that's almost impossible to capture.
I started to look into happiness, and things existential, when my children were very young, perhaps initially for me, but certainly also for them.
I've written about it in these pages hundreds and hundreds of times, and when I see something which appears to run down this track, I generally follow it to see whether it adds to the knowledge or understanding or insights that I've had in the past.
And so, in a crazy turn of events, I was sent this YouTube video by Arthur Brooks (someone I'd not come across before), but I was actually sent it because the person who had seen it thought he looked a little bit like me!
So the only reason I ended up looking at this video was because of a coincidence of appearance.
Well, I could write many blogs about this now. Having gone down a rabbit hole with the Arthur Brooks material (not all of which I agree with or understand), there are some points and concepts in this which have taken my understanding or my appreciation of the pursuit of happiness much further on than anything has in the last few years.
I would encourage you to watch the video, but you'll need a cup of tea in 20 minutes of your time.
First, a disclaimer, though: Arthur Brooks is a conservative, an American conservative who has been an advisor to the American government, particularly Republican, but he is also a devout Christian who talks a lot about Christianity.
I'm not a devout Christian, and I don't talk a lot about Christianity, but I do have a fundamental belief that it's possible to replace your worship of a faith with your worship of a purpose, and I think sometimes that people who have a great faith cannot understand that people who don't can also have a great purpose and live a ‘Christian’ existence.
And so on to the content.
Arthur Brooks is a professor at Harvard and Vanderbilt universities in the United States, and studies and teaches the science of happiness.
He's very clear about what he understands happiness to be and the questions that he asks his students at the start of their studies, but more importantly, he explains the difference between types of problems that humans have, that humans are forced to solve or try to solve in terms of neuroanatomy.
Very simply, Brooks suggests that the left side of the brain deals with complicated problems and the right side of the brain deals with complex problems, and these are entirely different concepts.
A complicated problem is something that is fixable with complicated knowledge, for example, a broken-down car, as stated in the video.
That is a left-brain problem, and it is something that we are forced towards every time we open a screen.
Screens, phones, and digital content activate the left side of the brain.
The right side of the brain, which is deactivated in the use of screens, phones, etc, deals with complex problems.
Complex problems are things like love, meaning, and the understanding of relationships.
These are problems which it is almost impossible to solve.
In a very funny turn in the video, he talks about the complexity of marriage with his Spanish wife.
This is a metaphor for happiness and the pursuit of happiness based around digital content and the loss of meaning.
But at the end of the video, in case you do not get to watch it, Brooks has a very insightful, short conclusion, which suggests that
Number one, we should use material things but not worship them,
Number two, we should love our friends and family.
And number three, we should worship our God.
(See above for my definition of my God: Purpose)
It seems very clear to me that this, in part, is what we're missing.
People have substituted purpose, whether it be religious or otherwise, for the pursuit of short-form video on their phones.
It's no wonder the world is sad; no wonder the world seems fu**ed.
Love your friends and family.
Worship your purpose.
But just use material things; don't worship them.
Blog Post Number - 4651