Evolving Dichotomies, or not; Happiness vs Depression, Strict vs. nurturing parent, masculine vs. feminine, positive psychology vs. pathology oriented psychology, punitive masculine religions at war with women vs. feminine, liberation theologies, written and printed word civilizations vs oral cultures.
We are beginning to see the emergence of an interesting collection of dichotomies
There is a reasonable amount of research which shows that happiness and depression do not "balance each other out," and that they are separate "parameters" not linked directly to each other on the same continuum. More happiness does not necessarily relieve depression, and vice-versa.
On the other hand, I believe that positive experiences act as
a hybrid combination as ballast and gyroscope to stabilize and
dampen the gyrations and swings of emotional state and attitude. I
include the recovery from adversity and the facing of challenges--
either successfully mastering the challenge or adversity or
successfully recovering from them-- as important varieties of
positive experience. Having collected thousands of anecdotes of
positive experiences, I can say that it is extremely rare for
people to describe experiences that do not fit with Peterson's and
Seligman's description of the core patterns and virtues (Character
Strengths and Virtues
)
.
So, for example, while we all enjoy a great meal at a fine restaurant, this is not the kind of experience that people include when they are asked to describe the positive experiences in their lives. They talk about the categories I've listed in my KPEI (Kall Positive Experience Inventory) http://www.futurehealth.org/kpei.htm
Positive experiences become inner resources, particularly if they are effectively integrated into the self. They become a dynamic part of the conscious perceptual filtering process and influence deeper levels of pre-conscious filtering as well.
Positive experiences are THE primary building blocks upon which inner strength, the dimensions of character and virtue, the capacity for happiness, to love, to face adversity, to embrace challenges are built upon.
It makes sense then, that building skills in all dimensions of positive experience is a core aspect of consciously nourishing a life that is fertile and ready for planting the seeds of happiness.
And where do those seeds come from? If a person has done the preparation of the "garden" to shamelessly borrow from Jerzy Kosinski's Chaunce the Gardener's collection of metaphors (Being There,) then life is filled with "seeds" that can, acting as stimuli or calls to adventure, yield, on a daily basis, bountiful harvests of happiness.
I've found that people who are depressed often block or blind themselves to these opportunities to tap the fertile fields within themselves. Others have no energy or vibrance to respond with.
My model proposes that happiness is both a quiet inner bearing and energy that one carries and, at the same time, a response which emerges as a reaction to what happens in the world. I emphasize the energy, because it takes energy to detect the opportunities to engage with the world. And it is an inner bearing because at times when opportunities for positive experiences do not present themselves, or when adversity is present, then the person with positive experience skills will deal with the situation with greater equanimity and confidence.
This raises the interesting question if this concept can also
be applied to a culture. We have seen some very different
responses to the 9/11 WTC attack. Some people feel that the way to
deal with the aftermath is to wage war. Others feel that we must
reach out and build bridges. George Lakoff, author of
Moral Politics
and
Don't Think of an Elephant, suggests that there are
two kinds of families that produce liberal or conservative
adults-- strict parents produce conservatives and nurturing
parents produce liberals.
The strict parents are more likely to look for and identify negative behaviors and to use punishment. The nurturing parents are more likely to look for and reinforce positive behaviors, to reward good work.
I would expect that people raised by nurturing parents would be more likely to respond to positive psychology and to a more holistic non-reductionist approach to healing and wellness, aimed at moving toward optimal functioning and that people raised by strict parents would be more likely to respond to a more reductionist, pathology elimination model aimed at getting rid of symptoms and labeling disease and what is wrong.
Lakoff's model suggests that these patterns are developed very early in life. I wonder if the field of positive psychology will be able to exert as much of an influence on the strict parent segment of the population as upon the people raised in nurturing parent families.
I feel that part of the roots of the strict parent family draw upon strict religious models-- the hellfire, brimstone and damnation that is preached in some churches, as exemplified by Jonathan Edwards preached,
"The bow of God's wrath is bent, and His arrows made ready upon the string. Justice points the arrow at your heart and strings the bow. It is nothing but the mere pleasure of God (and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all) that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood."
And later in his fiery sermon he says,
"Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and, if God should let you go, you would immediately sink, and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf; and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. . . .
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet 'tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. . . .
"O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! 'Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of fire and of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. . . . "
"It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible, misery. . . .
"How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh! that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!"
It's a long excerpt, but it is also the same message that Mel Gibson gives in his most recent blockbuster movie success-- Passion of the Christ-- that people should be grateful for their lot in life and accept their own suffering considering the hellish misery Christ went through so they could be "saved" from the life Edwards described, by following the path of the obedient child, obeying the "father" be that parent, priest or pope.
It is also the same message that is preached in tens of thousands of churches every Sunday. I'm sure some preachers mix it with some positives, but it is a dark threat that hangs over the heads of such a major part of our population and culture.
And yet, there is another, very positive vision of Christianity, one embraced by people who preach liberation theology, which the pope, Ratzinger in particular, has banned. This approach is full of light and positivity. Read more about it here http://www.opednews.com/lower031504_bush_religion.htm
Liberation theologist Matthew Fox, who was a Dominican Priest, defrocked by Ratzinger for teaching liberation theology, writes, in a description of his new book, A NEW REFORMATION, " we are in fact confronted with two churches: one expressed by the image of the Punitive Father, personified by a rigidly hierarchical church structure, repression of the feminine, spreading of homophobia and the elimination of internal dissent; and the other expressed by the feminine figure of Wisdom, personified by a Mother/Father God of justice and compassion. It is time for Christians to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary god or the loving open path of wisdom."
In the last 15 years, women's rights activists and mythologists and linguists have discussed and explored the ways that modern culture has literally been at War against Women (the title of a 1993 book) and against the archetypal feminine. Robert A Johnson has written about this extensively, from a Jungian and mythological perspective as have other Jungian psychologists who have explored the decline of the "goddess" role in culture. One writer, physician Leaondard Shlain, wrote The Alphabet Versus the Goddess , describing how the onset of writing changed humanity to a more male dominant, linear, hierarchically oriented "civilization." Other writers, such as Walter Ong, have, separately, described how the written and then printed word have changed the mind of humanity.
I believe that there are important links between positive psychology and conventional pathology oriented psychology, the strict vs nurturing parent model, the masculine and feminine archetypes, the effect of the written and printed word on civilization and the two versions of spirtuality Fox so aptly describes.
I'm not sure there are continua for any of these, as the original question of depression and happiness raised. But I believe there are commonalities that these four ways of looking a mind, perception, culture and human existence share, and that by exploring them, and the ways they interconnect, we can extend our understanding of the human condition beyond its current level.
A
