(2004-03-30) Seligman On Edge

Martin Seligman in EdgeOrg. Coming out this month as part of the DSM is a classification of strengths and Virtues; it's the opposite of the classification of the insanities. When we look we see that there are six Virtue-s, which we find endorsed across cultures, and these break down into 24 strengths. The six virtues that we find are non-arbitrary - first, a Wisdom and Knowledge cluster; second, a Courage cluster; third, virtues like love and humanity; fourth, a Justice cluster; fifth a temperance, moderation cluster; and sixth a Spirituality, transcendence cluster... So just to review so far, there is the Pleasant Life - having as many of the pleasures as you can and the skills to amplify them - and the Good Life - knowing what your signature strengths are and recrafting everything you do to use them a much as possible. But there's a third form of life, and if you're a bridge player like me, or a stamp collector, you can have eudaemonia; that is, you can be in Flow State. But everyone finds that as they grow older and look in the mirror they worry that they're fidgeting until they die. That's because there's a third form of Happiness that is ineluctably pursued by humans, and that's the pursuit of Meaning. I'm not going to be sophomoric enough to try to tell Edge viewers the theory of meaning, but there is one thing we know about meaning: that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The self is not a very good site for meaning, and the larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life... There will likely be a pharmacology of pleasure, and there may be a pharmacology of positive emotion generally, but it's unlikely there'll be an interesting pharmacology of flow. And it's impossible that there'll be a pharmacology of meaning.

There's an enormous range of things that are larger than us that we can belong to and be part of, some of which are prepackaged. Being an Orthodox Jew (religiion), for example, or being a Republican are prepackaged ones. Being a teacher, someone whose life is wrapped up in the growth of younger people, is a non-prepackaged one. Being an agent is a non-prepackaged one — it's a life in service of the people you conceive of to be the greatest minds on the planet. And they wouldn't do their thing without agency. You can convert agency into the idea that "I'm just doing it for all the money I make," and then it's not a meaningful life. But I don't think you wake up in the morning raring to make more money; it's rather in service of this much larger goal of the intellectual salon. Being a lawyer can either be a business just in service of making a half million dollars a year, in which case it's not meaningful, or it can be in service of good counsel, fairness, and justice. That's the non-prepackaged form of meaning.

Read the whole thing - excellent.