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about how to behave.
24
It’s the last bit that sets us apart. We are made of the same stuff as the
25
rest of the universe, but our stuff is assembled in just the right way that a
26
new way of talking about ourselves becomes appropriate. We have the ca-
27
pacity to contemplate alternatives and make choices. It’s not a mystical or
28
supernatural ability, giving us the right to flout the laws of physics; it’s a way
29
of talking about who we are that captures some of the power of the complex
30
systems we call “human beings.” And with great power comes great respon-
31
sibility.
32
Our ability to think has given us enormous leverage over the world
33
around us. We won’t be able to stave off the heat death of the universe, but
34
we can alter bodies, transform our planet, and someday spread life through
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01
the galaxy. It’s up to us to make wise choices and shape the world to be a
02
better place.
03
04
9. We Can Do Better Than Happiness.
05
06
We live at a time when the search for happiness has taken center stage as
07
never before. Books, TV shows, and websites are constantly offering point-
08
ers about how to finally achieve and sustain this elusive and sought- after
09
state of being. If only we were happy, everything would be okay.
10
Imagine a drug that would make you perfectly happy, but remove any
11
interest you might have in doing anything more than simple survival. You
12
would lead a thoroughly boring treadmill of a life, from the outside— but
13
inside you would be blissfully happy, romping through imaginary adven-
14
tures and always- successful romantic escapades. Would you take the drug?
15
Think of Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. Or Michelangelo,
16
Beethoven, Virginia Woolf. Is “happy” the first word that comes to mind
17
when you set out to describe them? They may have been— and surely were,
18
from time to time— but it’s not their defining characteristic.
19
The mistake we make in putting emphasis on happiness is to forget that
20
life is a process, defined by activity and motion, and to search instead for
21
the one perfect state of being. There can be no such state, since change is the
22
essence of life. Scholars who study meaning in life distinguish between syn-
23
chronic meaning and diachronic meaning. Synchronic meaning depends on
24
your state of being at any one moment in time: you are happy because you
25
are out in the sunshine. Diachronic meaning depends on the journey you
26
are on: you are happy because you are making progress toward a college
27
degree. If we permit ourselves to take inspiration from what we have learned
28
about ontology, it might suggest that we focus more on diachronic meaning
29
at the expense of synchronic. The essence of life is change, and we can aim
30
to make change part of how we find meaning in it.
31
At the end of the day, or the end of your life, it doesn’t matter so much
32
that you were happy much of the time. Wouldn’t you rather have a good
33
story to tell?
34
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l I S t E n I n g t O t h E W O R l d
10. Reality Guides Us.
01
02
In 1988, psychologists Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown coined the term
03
“positive illusions” to describe beliefs people have that aren’t true but that
04
make them happy. The average person thinks they are above average; we
05
tend to be much more optimistic about future events than past experience
06
would actually warrant. It’s part of our standard complement of cogni-
07
tive biases.
08
The effect is real: there is little doubt that certain illusions make us hap-
09
pier. We can even come up with evolutionary- psychological explanations
10
for why a bit of overenthusiastic self- regard might be helpful for our sur-
11
vival. One might imagine a program designed to make people feel better
12
through targeted falsehoods. But is that what we want?
13
While having such illusions might make us happier, very few people
14
knowingly seek out false beliefs. When we think we’re better than average,
15
it’s not because we’re saying to ourselves, “I’m going to consider myself bet-
16
ter than I am because it will make me feel better.” It’s because we really do
17
think that.
18
The upshot is that getting things right— being honest with ourselves
19
and others, facing up to the world and looking it right in the eyeball—
20
doesn’t just happen. It requires a bit of effort. When we want something to
21
be true, when a belief makes us happy— that’s precisely when we should be
22
questioning. Illusions can be pleasant, but the rewards of truth are enor-
23
mously greater.
24
We have aspirations that reach higher than happiness. We’ve learned so
25
much about the scope and workings of the universe, and about how to live
26
together and find meaning and purpose in our lives, precisely because we
27
are ultimately unwilling to take comforting illusions as final answers.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
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01
02
03
50
04
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Existential Therapy
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
My family and I were regular churchgoers while I was growing up.
It was probably my grandmother’s influence that enforced the
weekly discipline. Her parents had
been born in England, and
she was devoted to the Episcopal Church. We attended services at Trinity
18
Cathedral in Trenton, New Jersey; while not anyone’s idea of a leading ex-
19
ample of sacred architecture, it did boast high Gothic stained- glass win-
20
dows, which loomed impressively from the perspective of a young boy.
21
I liked going to church. Probably my favorite part was that we got to go
22
for pancakes afterward, at a local place that offered strawberry syrup— the
23
pinnacle of culinary excellence, if you had asked me at the time. But I en-
24
joyed the hymns, the imposing wood pews, even the ritual of getting dressed
25
up in the morning. More than anything else, I loved the mysteries and the
26
doctrine. Going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, trying to figure out
27
what it was all about. The most interesting part of the Bible was the Book
28
of Revelation, prophesying what was to come. I became confused when I
29
read somewhere that modern readers tended to find Revelation off- putting
30
and even embarrassing. As a kid it was the coolest stuff in the book. There
31
were angels, beasts, seals, trumpets; what’s not to like?
32
We stopped going to church after my grandmother died when I was ten.
33
I remained the kind of casual believer you find in many American house-
34
holds. My transformation to naturalism wasn’t dramatic or life- shaking; it
35S
just kind of crept up on me. It was a smooth phase transition, not a sud-
36N
den one.
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E x I S t E n t I A l t h E R A P y
Two incidents in particular stand out, however. The first happened
01
when I was quite young. We were at church and a couple of the volunteers
02
were chatting about recent alterations in the sequence of the service. They
03
were pleased with the new arrangement, because the previous version of the
04
liturgy required too much standing and kneeling, without enough breaks
05
to sit down. I found this to be scandalously heretical. How is it possible that
06
we can just mess around with what happens in the service? Isn’t all that
07
decided by God? You mean to tell me that people can just change things 08
around at a whim? I was still a believer, but doubts had been sown.
09
Eventually, I found myself as an undergraduate astronomy major at a
10
Catholic university, Villanova, just outside Philadelphia. By that point I
11
had thought enough about how the universe works that I had become a
12
naturalist by anyone’s definition, though I still wasn’t “out,” to myself or to
13
anyone else. Villanova had an enormous set of required courses, including
14
three semesters each of philosophy and theology. I was enthralled by the
15
former, and had a good time in the latter— my professors were incredibly
16
smart—and loved talking through the ideas, regardless of whether I per-
17
sonally believed in them.
18
The second incident was when I heard a song, “The Only Way,” from the
19
Emerson, Lake & Palmer album Tarkus. (The Villanova astronomy depart-
20
ment at the time was a hotbed of progressive- rock fandom.) In addition to
21
some nifty pipe- organ work from Keith Emerson, the song featured some-
22
thing I hadn’t ever heard: an unmistakable, in- your- face atheist message.
23
“Don’t need the word/ Now that you’ve heard/ Don’t be afraid/ Man is man-
24
made.” As poetry, it’s not that great. As a reasoned philosophical argument,
25
it falls well short. But this silly song made me think, for the first time, that
26
it was okay to be a nonbeliever— that it wasn’t something I should be
27
ashamed of, something I should keep hidden. For a shy kid at a Catholic
28
university, this was a big deal.
29
30
•
31
A number of atheists are driven to unbelief by a repressive religious upbring-
32
ing. Not me; my experience could not have been less repressive, at least once
33
they fixed the services so that there wasn’t so much kneeling. Our brand of
34
Episcopalianism was as mellow as churchgoing ever gets, and Villanova
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T H E B IG PIC T U R E
01
I was always curious about the world, and fascinated by science. We talk
02
about “awe and wonder,” but those are two different words. I am in awe of
03
the universe: its scope, its complexity, its depth, its meticulous precision.
04
But my primary feeling is wonder. Awe has connotations of reverence: “this
05
fills me with awe and I am not worthy.” Wonder has connotations of curios-
06
ity: “this fills me with wonder and I am going to figure it out.” I will take
07
wonder over awe every day.
08
Many things about our world are mysterious to us, and there is some-
09
thing seductive and exciting about mysteries. It’s a mistake to start embrac-
10
ing mystery for its own sake, and to take refuge in a conviction that the
11
universe is fundamentally inscrutable. It would be like buying a big stack of
12
detective novels and reading only the first halves of each of them. The real
13
attraction of mysteries isn’t that they represent something truly unknow-
14
able but that they promise an exciting journey to go figure them out.
15
Like Princess Elisabeth, I always thought it was crucial that different
16
aspects of the world fit together and make sense. Everything we’ve experi-
17
enced about the universe suggests that it is intel igible: if we try hard enough 18
we can come to understand it. There is so much we still don’t know about
19
how reality works, but at the same time there’s a great deal that we have
20
figured out. Mysteries abound, but there’s no reason to worry (or hope) that
21
any of them are unsolvable.
22
Thinking like this eventually led me to abandon my belief in God and
23
become a cheerful naturalist. But I hope I
never make the mistake of treat-
24
ing people who disagree with me about the fundamental nature of reality
25
as my enemies. The important distinction is not between theists and natu-
26
ralists; it’s between people who care enough about the universe to make a
27
good- faith effort to understand it, and those who fit it into a predetermined
28
box or simply take it for granted. The universe is much bigger than you or
29
me, and the quest to figure it out unites people with a spectrum of substan-
30
tive beliefs. It’s us against the mysteries of the universe; if we care about
31
understanding, we’re on the same side.
32
•
33
34
Here’s a story one could imagine telling about the nature of the world. The
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universe is a miracle. It was created by God as a unique act of love. The
36N
splendor of the cosmos, spanning billions of years and countless stars,
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E x I S t E n t I A l t h E R A P y
culminated in the appearance of human beings here on Earth— conscious,
01
aware creatures, unions of soul and body, capable of appreciating and re-
02
turning God’s love. Our mortal lives are part of a larger span of existence,
03
in which we will continue to participate after our deaths.
04
It’s an attractive story. You can see why someone would believe it, and
05
work to reconcile it with what science has taught us about the nature of
06
reality.
07
Here’s a different story. The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, un-
08
guided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupu-
09
lous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state
10
of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind
11
down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings.
12
Not a break- the- laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is won-
13
drous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures
14
could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite,
15
unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought
16
meaning and mattering into the world.
17
That’s a pretty darn good story too. Demanding in its own way, it may
18
not give us everything we want, but it fits comfortably with what science
The Big Picture Page 72