Happiness and Mere Experiences
I visit the philosophy blog at the New York Times with trepidation, but the following is a key insight for our time, and it's exciting to hear someone (besides myself) put their finger on it:
There’s an important difference between having a friend and having the experience of having a friend. There’s an important difference between writing a great novel and having the experience of writing a great novel. On [a Matrix-like] machine, we would not parent children, share our love with a partner, laugh with friends (or even smile at a stranger), dance, dunk, run a marathon, quit smoking, or lose 10 pounds in time for summer. Plugged in, we would have the sorts of experience that people who actually achieve or accomplish those things have, but they would all be, in a way, false — an intellectual mirage.
What the author, a prof named David Sosa, says about the poverty of mere experiences dovetails nicely with my longstanding critique of 'senses of' things rather than the things themselves. But he gives the game away a little by summing up the shortcoming as an intellectual one. That might be the key point from the perspective of a certain kind of philosophy, but I'm more interested in the way that we try to enjoy experiences without enduring the costs of the real-life things that produce them. We seek to experience a sense of friendliness, for instance, to avoid the burdens of being and having a friend.
I think we're a lot more knowledgeable about the tradeoffs here than Sosa implies or that some culture critics (and, admittedly, we ourselves) might like to admit. There's some uncomfortable truth we're acknowledging every time we shy away from the world of real things and indulge in the world of mere experiences -- a truth about which sorts of awkwardness, disappointment, and even suffering we want to face, and which sorts we don't. Behind the intellectual mirage is a perhaps harsh emotional fact: the psychological economy of mere experience comes along with all-too-real, all-too-human downsides -- downsides we accept and endure no less than the encumbrances of life lived, so to speak, in the raw. I'd say that bespeaks a profound disillusionment, on the level of our culture in general, at the point where our hopes, our fears, and our expectations about happiness in the real world meet.
Note: by 'our', I don't mean YOURS and MINE so much as those belonging to the vibe in our society that seems to hold sway. That's to paint with a pretty broad brush, but you know what I'm getting at, right? Sosa is right that, today, we're deeply threatened by the idea that real things outside ourselves might make us "fall short" in the happiness department, even if we "do everything we can to live happily," with "all the right thoughts and feelings." And he's right that instead of simply feeling threatened (or heaven forbid medicate away the attendant anxiety), "we should be brave." But he totally misses the mark, I think, to close with a call for "intellectual courage." A willingness to recognize, confront, and overcome tragedy as a real feature of real life involves some sort of intellectation, I suppose...but it also involves a lot less, and a lot more.
- Comment (24)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (2)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Hm. Can't follow you all the way into those deep waters, but may I stick my toe in and wriggle it, asking a couple of questions? What about watching sports? Does that represent an unconsciously sly attempt to have something of the experience of playing, say, football without having to suit up and get hit? Or--a real ethical problem, I think--what about Prozac and the growing category of medicines that can enable people to feel good by simply downing a pill? Without having to confront underlying causes of guilt or unhappiness? Ought we to feel queasy about that sort of thing?
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
That reminds me of a poem by Wallace Stevens: "Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself".
You're right that doing the thing itself, rather than experiencing it, sometimes takes a lot... less.
My main life-chore right now is to help a close relative take care of a dying ancestor, a difficult dying ancestor who, when I was younger, would have provoked in me an excess of thoughts and feelings -- of experience.
Now, despite the closeness of this dying ancestor, despite all the ways, good and bad, he has influenced the whole family's life, I don't think or feel -- experience -- much at all. I just do anything necessary that I can do. That's it. That's the best way I can help.
If I were to critique my situation, I'd see that the whole thing falls short in the happiness department, for any number of reasons. So I don't critique. It's not bravery on my part, either.
Still, the e-friendliness of Ricochet, even if it's partly illusory, makes a nice change from the rather affectless job of being a family member during this time rather than simply "experiencing family".
May '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
I just don't follow you James. Can you cite examples of this phenomenon? Is this something Sosa (and you?) see as a modern dilemma? A technology-driven phenomenon? Is this a commentary of life well-lived versus "going through the motions?" Help me out here because I'm missing a beat.
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
I think these pharmaceuticals do pose problems -- they're probably over-prescribed or mis-prescribed a lot of the time (certainly when you have a specific discomfort that could be directly treated, but instead you get a pill to just make you feel vaguely better about your discomfort, you have been ill-served). Nor are these medications necessarily effective long-term.
I also think there are advantages, moral, physical, and psychological, to confronting the underlying problems where possible.
But not all of the underlying problems are soluble (in this life, at least). When they're not, perhaps a ruthless cost-benefit analysis is in order: Sure, it may be a personal moral achievement to get through life without the "happy pills", but at what cost to your productivity and to the lives of those around you?
I suspect "happy pills" can be a real blessing in our imperfectible world.
May '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
To be fair, psychopharmas don't really make you feel "happy" so much as "even." The "happy" pills are illicit, which I suspect is a different topic.
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Midget Faded Rattlesnake: I don't think or feel -- experience -- much at all. I just do anything necessary that I can do. That's it. That's the best way I can help.
If I were to critique my situation, I'd see that the whole thing falls short in the happiness department, for any number of reasons. So I don't critique. It's not bravery on my part, either.
Still, the e-friendliness of Ricochet, even if it's partly illusory, makes a nice change from the rather affectless job of being a family member during this time rather than simply "experiencing family". · Oct 6 at 10:33pm
A professor of physics once intructed me that I would do well to distinguish between effective and affective love.
And then, I remember a quote by Leon Bloy (about whom I know little): "Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence."
Jun '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
So which is better, being a drug addict or experiencing drug addiction?
Which is worse, being cruel or experiencing cruelty?
Lastly, if a tree falls in the woods does it have to fall on me for me to wxperience it.
The above assumes nothing about whether it makes a sound.
Jun '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Cas Balicki:
Oct 7 at 1:24am
Edited posted twice.
Edited on Oct 7, 2010 at 1:27amAug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
What an interesting question about the intersection of technology and real life. I'm surprised Mr. Sosa did not mention Neil Postman's Technopoly or Entertaining Ourselves To Death in his column. Postman, writing in the 80s and early 90s, criticized our culture's tendency to adopt and accept technology without reflecting on the costs carried with its use. Examples are myriad, some benign, some not so: Automobiles killed public transportation in small towns and cities, air conditioning killed front porch visiting in the South (plus it enabled too many Yankees to move down here). Now, with social networks, we are enabled to have what we see as benefits of friendship without the burdens of friendship. If one doesn't like what his "friend" has to say, one can "de-friend" the offender. Long term, does that diminish our ability to enjoy true friendship which entails bearing with the idiosyncrasies of our friends and they, ours?
Postman argues television transformed our society from word-based thought processes to image-based thought processes, with bad results. An un-reflective adoption and embrace of virtual-reality technologies may very well do the same: virtual sex, virtual friends, etc.
May '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
I'm still not sure that's what the post means, but assuming Matthew is smarter than I am, I will address this point. Perhaps this says something about me, but I feel the conversations conducted here in virtual conservative-land are more honest than many of those I would have with "real life" friends where I am more keen to avoid conflict (and perhaps this is the real meaning of the post?). I'm never going to babysit someone's child on Ricochet when they are out of town or bring them dinner when a family member is ill, but the experience seems no less authentic to me -- only different. It's frictionless to be sure, but very real. (And not only because I've met Kenneth in person.)
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Maybe I read too much into the original article. Nevertheless, "So, would you plug in?" is Sosa's rhetorical question to which James adds "There's some uncomfortable truth we're acknowledging every time we shy away from the world of real things and indulge in the world of mere experiences -- " which is my point of departure, the ever increasing effort to technologically indulge in the world of mere (apparent?) experiences.
My concern with virtual reality is a generation of youth and children MAY be rising who cannot really engage with flesh & blood reality. They are children who more at home in self-created and self-regulated virtual worlds than the concrete world in which they must inhabit. If that is true, what are the consequences to culture?
Undoubtedly, such conversations can be, (and to some extent, I feel the same way). But I doubt many Rico regulars flee from reality to here.
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Great comments. Wallace Stevens is a titan and everyone should check him out. Yes, Trace and Matthew, I've got pretty standard concerns about What The Internet Is Doing To Kids (and Adults!), but I'm also softer on technology than a lot of traditional conservatives I know. The conversations we can and do have on Ricochet (for instance) are actual conversations. They're different from what we do face to face, and they might very well be substitutes for the conversations we can't have face to face with people spread across the country (and the world!), but they're not substitutes for face to face conversations that we can have but avoid because there's something about them that's less threatening, risky, or demanding than in-person interaction.
May '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Guilty.
May '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
I, too, found the post puzzling. When I first read the quote, I associated it with the personalist notion of lived experience. Being conscience selves, we don't simply do and act and feel and suffer, but live through our doing and acting and feeling and suffering. This adds a personal depth dimension to reality. Happiness isn't not just an objective condition, it's a personal experience.
But then, James, you seem to contrast reality and experience---as if experience were a synonym for "simulation". That seems to me a entirely different point.
A cocaine-induced high may simulate happiness and well-being. It's not the real thing. But a person on cocaine can't be said to be "experiencing happiness". He's experiencing a drug-induced high.
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Cas Balicki: So which is better, being a drug addict or experiencing drug addiction?
Which is worse, being cruel or experiencing cruelty?
Lastly, if a tree falls in the woods does it have to fall on me for me to wxperience it.
The above assumes nothing about whether it makes a sound. · Oct 7 at 1:24am
Well, to ask these questions is to open a window onto why art and acting figure so hugely into our culture. Our culture doesn't particularly like the idea that some experiences are for the few -- that there's an unequal hierarchy of experiences. At the same time, our culture is firmly prejudiced against bringing certain experiences -- like that of being a crackhead or a serial killer -- into the real world. Acting gives everyone a way of experiencing even what's forbidden in reality. Of course, the line between acting and not-acting is blurring away even offline, as Lady Gaga and The Hills and lots of other pop culture phenomena demonstrate. That's not a coincidence or an accident.
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
Right, but I'd say take a step back and consider the person who turns to cocaine to help fuel breakaway moments from lives that aren't offering them very much happiness at all. I think more than a few people who have used cocaine in this way would attest that this behavior is often part of an attempt to 'steal' experiences of happiness under conditions where the reality of happiness seems out of reach. And I bet at least some of them would try to argue that this is better -- "for them" -- than the seemingly available alternatives.
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
James Poulos, Ed.
[...]
an attempt to 'steal' experiences of happiness under conditions where the reality of happiness seems out of reach. And I bet at least some of them would try to argue that this is better -- "for them" -- than the seemingly available alternatives. · Oct 7 at 8:26am
And oh -- the thrust of my original point was that it characteristically takes something much more or much different than 'intellectual courage' to break away from this kind of way of life.
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
And here we turn to the idea of mimesis, I think, and the Platonic concerns with drama (art) and its effect on reality... whew.
I wholeheartedly agree. The ease of avoidance concerns me. And what of those conversations we can have but don't because its easier chatting online with distant avatars than going to the bar and engaging in conversation.
Sep '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
In answer to Peter Robinson's question on sport
Aug '10
Re: Happiness and Mere Experiences
James Poulos, Ed.
James Poulos, Ed.
[...]
an attempt to 'steal' experiences of happiness under conditions where the reality of happiness seems out of reach. And I bet at least some of them would try to argue that this is better -- "for them" -- than the seemingly available alternatives. · Oct 7 at 8:26am
And oh -- the thrust of my original point was that it characteristically takes something much more or much different than 'intellectual courage' to break away from this kind of way of life. · Oct 7 at 8:30am
Do you mean the constant pursuit of altered reality? For the coke addict, the altered reality is reality, is it not? Not to condone the use of illicit substances, I will point this out:
[God] causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;
And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart. Psalm 104:14-15.
Just a theological point that the altered reality may, at times, be the reality intended (if not downright needed!)