By Max Fawcett
In the article, The Perils of Positive Thinking, Max Fawcett plumbed the depths of the self-help industry to make the comment that self-help doesn’t always equal self-improvement. In the article Fawcett interviewed one Neel Burton. Holding degrees in medicine, philosophy and neuroscience the Oxford based teacher and writer’s latest book, The Art of Failure: An Anti Self-Help Guide is a withering criticism of the self-help industry and exploration of what success really is.
Unlimited sat down with Burton (via email) and explored the issues covered in the Perils of Positive Thinking in a little more detail.
Q: You’ve titled your latest book “The Art of Failure.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
A: The title is, in fact, ironic. Today, we spend most of our time and energy chasing ’success’, such that we have little left over for thinking and feeling, being and relating. As a result, we fail in the deepest possible way. We fail as human beings. ‘The Art of Failure’ explores what it means to be successful, and how – if at all – true success can be achieved.
Q: What, in your estimation, is true success, and how does that definition differ from the one that guides the lives of the average person? Most people would think that, at worst, self-help is a waste of time and money, but you think that it’s capable of doing real harm. Why is that, and how does that harm present itself?
A: Most philosophers do not care for fame, power, or wealth. The question as to whether the philosophers are right are wrong to disdain these worldly things barely seems worth entertaining. In the past 50 or 60 years, real term incomes in countries such as the UK and USA have increased dramatically, but happiness has not kept apace. In fact, people today are considerably less happy than back then: they have less time, they are more alone, and so many of their number are on antidepressants that trace quantities of a popular antidepressant have been found in the water supply. Although economists focus on the absolute size of salaries, several sociological studies have found that the effect of money on happiness results less from the things that money can buy (absolute income effect) than from comparing one’s income to that of others, and particularly to that of one’s peers (relative income effect). This is an important part of the explanation as to why people today are no happier than people 50 or 60 years ago; despite being considerably richer, healthier, and better trained, they have only barely managed to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
But there is more. If I am to believe everything that I see in the media, happiness is to be six foot tall or more and to have bleached teeth and a firm abdomen, all the latest clothes, accessories, and electronics, a picture-perfect partner of the opposite sex who is both a great lover and a terrific friend, an assortment of healthy and happy children, a pet that is neither a stray nor a mongrel, a large house in the right sort of neighbourhood, a second property in an idyllic holiday location, a top-of-the-range car to shuttle back and forth from the one to the other, a clique of ‘friends’ with whom to have fabulous dinner parties, three or four foreign holidays a year, and a high-impact job that does not distract from any of the above.
There are at least three major problems that I can see with this ideal of happiness. First, it represents a state of affairs that is impossible to attain to and that is therefore in itself an important source of unhappiness. Second, it is situated in an idealised and hypothetical future rather than in an imperfect but actual present in which true happiness is much more likely to be found, albeit with great effort. Third, has largely been defined by commercial interests that have absolutely nothing to do with true happiness, which has far more to do with the practice of reason and the peace of mind that this eventually brings. In short, it is not only that the bar for happiness is set too high, but also that it is set in the wrong place, and that it is, in fact, the wrong bar. Jump and you’ll only break your back.
Q: North Americans have been hooked on various forms of self-help for over 40 years now, yet it seems that every year more people are choosing to take some sort of anti-depressant or other mood-altering medication. What’s going on here, and is there a relationship between these two trends?
A: I think that this has much to do with the nature of modern societies, which have become increasingly individualistic and divorced from traditional values. For many people living in our society, life can seem both suffocating and far removed, lonely even and especially amongst the multitudes, and not only meaningless but absurd. By encoding their distress in terms of mental disorder, our society may be subtly implying that the problem lies not with itself, but with them. Unfortunately, thinking of human distress in terms of an illness can be counterproductive, as it can prevent people from identifying and addressing the important life problems that are at the root of their distress. This is not to say that the concept of depression as a mental disorder is bogus, but only that the diagnosis of depression has been over-extended to include far more than just the mental disorder.
Q: If hitting the gym and sharpening our social skills isn’t the path to personal satisfaction and contentment, what is?
A: This question is akin to the question of the ‘meaning of life’, and it is not a question that can be answered in a few sentences. In trying to think what our purpose or meaning might be, a good place to start, I think, is with Aristotle’s ‘Nicomachean Ethics’. In this book, Aristotle tries to discover ‘the supreme good for man’, that is, the best way for man to lead his life and to give it purpose and meaning. For Aristotle, a thing is best understood by looking at its end, goal, or purpose. For example, the goal of a knife is to cut, and it is by grasping this that one best understands what a knife is; the goal of medicine is good health, and it is by grasping this that one best understands what medicine is (or ideally should be). If one does this for some time, it soon becomes apparent that some goals are subordinate to other goals which are themselves subordinate to yet other goals. For example, a medical student’s goal may be to qualify as a doctor, but this goal is subordinate to his goal to heal the sick, which is itself subordinate to his goal to earn a living by doing something useful. This could go on and on, but unless the medical student has a goal that is an end-in-itself, then nothing that that he does is actually worth doing. What, asks Aristotle, is this goal that is not a means to an end but an end-in-itself? This Supreme Good, says Aristotle, is happiness.
All well and good, but what is ‘happiness’? Recall that, for Aristotle, it is by understanding the distinctive function of a thing that one can understand its essence. For example, one cannot understand what it is to be a gardener unless one can understand that the distinctive function of a gardener is ‘to tend to a garden with a certain degree of skill’. Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants and have sentience like animals, their distinctive function, says Aristotle, is their unique capacity to reason. Thus, the Supreme Good, or Happiness, for human beings in to lead a life that enables them to exercise and to develop their reason, and that is in accordance with rational principles. In contrast to amusement or pleasure, which can be enjoyed even by animals, happiness is not a state, but an activity, and it is profound and enduring. Aristotle acknowledges that our good or bad fortune can play a part in determining our happiness; for example, he acknowledges that happiness can be affected by such factors as our material circumstances, our place in society, and even our physical appearance. Yet he maintains that, by living our life to the full according to our essential nature as rational beings, we are bound to become happy regardless of our good or bad fortune. For this reason, happiness is more a question of behaviour and of habit – of ‘excellence’ and of ‘virtue’ – than of luck. A person who cultivates reason and who lives according to rational principles is able to bear his misfortunes with equanimity, and thus can never be said to be truly unhappy.
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.I’d like to know how Dr Burton’s life differs from the ones described in his book as enjoying or aspiring to middle-class felicity. Could he describe the way his life choices allowed him to avoid the many traps presented by such an ideal?