Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Interview with Broad Topics at LA Radio

Greetings!

Tonight I will be interviewed by Broad Topics at LA Talk Radio.  They have asked me to speak with them about Women and Happiness.

Thanks for joining us tonight at 8:00pm!

J.B.

If you miss the show, you can listen to it here.  My interview begins at 1:02:15  - one hour and two minutes into the show:

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Are We Less Happy?

In 2009, I came across a study about women and happiness in the American Economic Journal that stopped me in my tracks.* According to the study, since the early 1970’s women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.  This is true for women in most industrialized countries from all economic, social, religious, educational, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, no matter what age, marital or parental status.  

When I read the study, I thought, How is this possible?  The last forty years have brought about tremendous gains in equal rights and personal freedom for women all over the world.  Shouldn’t that bring us more happiness?  The puzzle consumed me.  I poured over the research, seeking every possible explanation.  At the time, writers and bloggers around the world wrote countless articles speculating and bloviating about why they felt women may be less happy.   No one had a clear answer.  And then, as quickly as the study emerged, the articles and concern abruptly stopped. Everyone forgot about it.  

Everyone, except me.  I couldn't stop thinking about millions of women around the world becoming less and less happy by the minute.  If women are primarily responsible for raising the world's future children, our planet will look very different in fifty years if we don't act now.  Studies show that lower rates of happiness lead to increased crime, war, anxiety, environmental destruction, illness and suicide for both men and women.   Happiness is not a luxury.  It is a necessity.  And so, I embarked upon a journey to learn everything I could about women and happiness.

Early in my research, I had a question about happiness that no one was asking.  Is happiness our natural state, or do we need to work at it?  It seems that most people assume happiness is something "out there" and if we take the right steps, work hard and follow all the rules, we'll be happy.  Self-help authors abound with lists of activities (10 steps to happiness, wealth, success, etc.) to propagate the idea that we must actively pursue happiness (which, by the way, can be found miraculously and conveniently at their $5,000 weekend workshops).  But what if they are wrong?  What if we can't pursue happiness?  What if happiness already exists within us and we don't know it's there because we're too busy, too stressed, or too tired to see it? 

I searched through thousands of pages of research to discover whether or not we are innately happy or if we're responsible for creating our own happiness.  The most effective way for me to answer this question was to strip away everything we know about modern life and study human beings in their natural habitat.  I began with hunter-gatherers.  I wanted to go back to the lives of our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years before society, before money, culture, laws, religion, complex tools, electricity, or anything we recognize as modern life.   After all, we have the same physiology (brains, hearts, emotions, instincts) as our early ancestors. Nothing biologically has changed.  Observing hunter-gatherers seemed an obvious first step in my quest to discover the truth about human happiness. 


What have I discovered thus far?


Hunter-gatherer groups have virtually no depression.  None.  As long as they have adequate resources and their basic needs are met (both socially and physically), hunter-gatherers report a very high sense of purpose and well-being coupled with frequent experiences of spontaneous joy.  All of them.   


So, what is happening to modern humans? With all the scientific, technological, artistic and social advancements we've made in the past few hundred years, why haven't we enhanced human happiness? We're naturally built for happiness as much as any other hunter-gatherer.  We have the same bodies, minds and hearts as they do.  And yet, happiness eludes us now more than ever.  Why?


In my next article, I will compare the lives of hunter-gatherer societies and modern humans.  The outward differences are obvious.  We have electricity, automobiles, heating and air conditioning, sanitation, schools, airplanes, cell phones, and many other modern conveniences.  They have nature, faith, and each other.  Is that all they (and we) really need to be happy?  Apparently, yes.  If we bring ourselves back into balance with nature, faith and each other, I believe our happiness will naturally emerge. The first step is to understand human nature so that we can create a happiness-friendly environment.  The good news is.... we already have all the tools we need. 


Stay tuned for my next article, The Happy Hunter-Gatherer.








*To read the complete women's happiness study, go to:
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic457678.files//WomensHappiness.pdf