Friday, December 23, 2005

The fault is in our stars...not in ourselves



Adaptive Preference (pdf file)

I am now finishing the 9th or so revision of a paper on "adaptive preference" in response to comments from half a dozen referees which has morphed from a snappy little APA number to a 29 page monster. The original short version is linked.

I argue against Martha Nussbaum and others who cite cases where, allegedly, deprived individuals' adapt their preferences to their circumstances such that satisfying them does not benefit them as counterexamples to informed preference accounts of wellbeing. But leave the details aside--what vexes me at the gut level about Nussbaum's argument is the idea--which figures in a variety of contexts--that we do ourselves in: that we miss out on getting what is best for us because we are brainwashed, psychologically damaged, neurotic, self-defeating or simply confused, that correcting the external conditions of our lives will not by itself make things better, that we need consciousness-raising and therapy.

This is a pernicious lie. It is a lie because it suggests that a relatively rare pathology is the norm. There are some people whose problems are psychological--schizophrenics who are too flipped out to hold down a job or function socially and mental defectives who are just too dumb. But they can't be helped by talk therapy or consciousness raising anyway. For the rest of us, all that's required for the good life are the externals--money, leisure and entertainment.

However we have been bamboozled by the literati and the therapy industry, and convinced that the externals are not enough--that money can't buy happiness, that getting what we want will turn into dust in our mouths, that human beings by their nature are on a quest for Meaning and, perhaps most importantly, that the very idea that the simple, obvious material goods are either necessary or sufficient for the good life is hopelessly crude and naive. At the perfectly awful college for rich underachievers I attended we were constantly taught that divine discontent was noble, that crude materialism was bad, and that the goodies we had were "empty." We were encouraged to "find ourselves" rather than making decisions about further education and employment. We were coddled and petted, given extensions, incompletes and sympathy by faculty when we complained about broken relationships, writing blocks or identity crises, and taught to look down on blue collar kids going to state factory schools for mere job training.

Rhetoric aside, thinking about this as I revise my paper, rereading stories about illiterate, impoverished Indian women who would be delighted to have clean water, micro-credit loans to set up micro-businesses and primary school education for their children I am furious at the decadent rich kids I went to school with, striving after the wind, dissatisfied with goods beyond the wildest dreams of most of the human race, and worst of all, congratulating themselves on their dissatisfaction, on their superior virtue and discernment. And I'm furious at myself too because I was one of those kids--worrying about the Meaning of Life, whining for incompletes and congratulating myself.

I hope I know better now. I have everything I've ever wanted, everything that by my lights matters: a secure, interesting job; a beautiful house; leisure; the opportunity to travel; enough money to get pretty much anything I seriously want; a husband and children; and a really nice computer. That is it--that is all there is to life and it's good enough. The only serious moral problem in the universe is seeing to it that everyone gets that good stuff and the only tragedy is that we die and so can't enjoy it forever. The fault is in our stars: fix the external circumstances of peoples lives, get them that stuff and nothing else matters.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I agree with you that the image of the miserable rich is a cliche that is propagated with the main purpose of allowing the poor to feel not quite so miserable about themselves as they otherwise might, and that yes, it's better to have a full belly than an empty one, it seems to me that you're too quickly pooh-poohing the possibility of anybody ever having a legitimate metaphysical hole as long as all their physical needs are being met.

Correct me if I'm misinterpreting your post, but you seem to be saying that any angst, malaise, ennui, regret, emptiness, etc. (plug in any term you'd like to stand in for that hole in the soul) felt by someone who has all of his or her physical needs met is a whiner, pure and simple, and they should shut up, suck it up, and stop bitching about it.

I can understand the impetus to look at those with silver spoons in their mouths and grumble. "You have everything and I have nothing," we say to ourselves. "How can you dare pretend to be unhappy? You've got to be lying." But true unhappiness can exist even in those with high bank balances, and it seems wrong to deny it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed that "The very rich are different from you and me," to which Ernest Hemingway supposedly replied "Yes, they have more money." I agree.

Which is why I think it's wrong to say of material goods, as you did in the last line of your post, "Get them that stuff and nothing else matters." Well, get them that stuff and we will have cured them of certain ills and undoubtedly lengthened their lives, but some of them will still be cursed by the other ills that are common to us all, rich and poor -- nagging thoughts such as, "Am I loved?," "What's the point of it all?," "Is that all there is?," and so on. Material wealth doesn't exempt one from being unsettled by those questions. After all, they're the ones that philosophers have been wrestling with since the beginning of time.

Unknown said...

I'm not suggesting that rich malcontents are lying but that in most cases angst, malaise, ennui, etc. are iatrogenic--therapists, self-help authors, existentialist "philosophers," and others who cater for the idle rich promote the doctrine that the ordinary good things of life--not only or primarily material things in the narrow sense but even more importantly intellectual stimulation, the freedom to organize your day as you wish, etc.--aren't good enough. After all, if the idle rich shut up, sucked it up and stopped bitching the therapists and gurus would be out of a job.

It's the problem of expensive tastes. Intuitively, we think it's illegitimate, and crass, for a person to want vast wealth or to complain that he doesn't have have a stock of expensive luxury items. We certainly don't think it's meritorious to cultivate the taste for expensive consumer products. We don't say, "I thought that I was happy with my old Toyota but realize now that I was just unreflective and superficial--I realize that a person can only be truly happy with a Mercedes. And I have set myself to get one."

So why do we say this sort of thing for, e.g. love or "meaning" in ones life? You don't have people saying, "I'm ok with my relationship--it's not so hot but I'm not fussy." We don't congratulate people on their greed for material possessions but we do congratulate them on their greed for good relationships, the so-called virtues and the quest to make sense of things in the Big Picture. Why is greed for, e.g. good relationships, for "making a difference" in the world or for answers to the Big Questions meritorious while greed for expensive cars is crass?

It's just greed for things that most people can't get, some of which in fact may simply be ungetable, and it's just as objectionable as greed for material goods way beyond what most people can get. And the gurus, therapists, and literati who suggest that the ordinary good things--money, material possessions, the avoidance of drudgery, etc. isn't good enough but that people should search for Meaning, want to "make a difference," have good relationships, etc. are in the same game as advertisers who create bogus needs by telling people that their ok stuff isn't good enough and selling them on glitzy gadgets and expensive luxuries.

Anonymous said...

Are you arguing that we should understand the set of objects [house, car, palm pilot] as the same set of psychological / spiritual / personal needs when we are establishing criteria for what is properly desired. We can't get everything we want materially, so we can't get everything emotionally.

It seems to me that there are three sets of desires here. One is a desire for everything to be perfect, complete, or finished, or just so. Then there is a desire for more. And there is a desire to make things better. It seems that you are saying that there is some point where it is proper to say "enough."

Unknown said...

I'm saying that we overestimate people's needs for "psychological" and "spiritual" goods. Moreover on the the account of wellbeing I assume there is no such thing as "properly" desired--there are no standards for the propriety or impropriety of desires. What's good for you is satisfying your (informed) desires--whatever they are.

My guess is that as a matter of empirical fact most people don't want or need much by the way "psychological" or "spiritual" intangibles. Material things are all most people want or need to be completely happy, and the few people who have enough money, leisure, opportunities for recreation, and fancy gadgets to play with but still aren't satisfied are whining spoiled brats who need a kick in the pants or neurotics who should be medicated.

Anonymous said...

Hey, can we see the new monster version? I'd like to read it.

Unknown said...

Here is the monster version--draft, in progress, comments much appreciated.

Unknown said...

Oh--the substantively new part starts on p. 15, at "The Ruined Maid"

MikeS said...

So are you a closet determinist, or is 'the future in our stars' a sort of ironic crie du coeur?
Personally I struggle to reconcile the inevitability of the universe with the necessity of choice, but I don't prostitute my intellect, whatever that is, by thinking I can change the world. Silver spoon or starving frozen tent - I did not make it and can only presume to try and help, with no conviction that my cognition has any meaning at all. Pace Protagoras I suggest that man is the measure of nothing, and that the universe will do its stuff regardless of our emergent narcissism.

Unknown said...

Oh no closet about it atall--I'm a determinist: usually compatibalist but toy with hard determinism.

But this issue here isn't the freewill/determinism dispute but whether the most effective way to make people better off is by improving their attitudes/inner states or by improving the external circumstances of their lives. That's an empirical question. But the idea that how we do in life is largely or even to a significant degree determined by attitude or other inner states is a complete fantasy. If you're female there is a whole range of jobs that you just won't get, regardless of your attitude, regardless of your competence, regardless. And if you're an ugly female there are even more jobs you won't get--no matter how good you feel about yourself, how well you dress, how self-confident you are.

If you didn't go to the right schools, if you're a member of the wrong sex or race, or if you just weren't in the right place at the right time you will not do well. Some things can be fixed--you can get a suitable wardrobe and improve your accent. But what needs to be fixed are these externals--character means nothing. And there is just so much you can fix because we are stuck with our race, sex, height and basic appearance.