How Does One Get Invited on a “Monastic Vacation?”

February 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In the cloister

As a follow up to my recent post about my Monastic Vacation at a 13th-century monastery in Italy with the Servants of the Lord, my friend, the Professor of Political Science and host of the Research on Religion podcast series, Tony Gill, interviewed me about that vacation. Please visit their page to hear the podcast and learn more about the numbers of religious vocations in the U.S. and worldwide, as well as details about everyday life inside of a monastery.

How much does it cost to take a monastic vacation? Tony asked. Nothing. Most religious orders live off of donations, so donations will be accepted but they are not required. How can this be? “The love of God is free,” one person told me. So it won’t empty your pockets to take a monastic vacation, but I’d be surprised if you didn’t come away from it inspired to give more freely your own time and love to help other people.

In addition to the podcast, I suggest you watch this video interview with Father Miguel Buela, the founder of the religious family the Instiutue of the Incarnate Word, to which the Servants of the Lord belong.

Short Update on my Happiness Project

I’m continuing the Happiness Project I wrote about last week. This week, I decided to work on one of Gretchen Rubin’s resolutions of her happiness project: Order. So each night I started journaling about order in my life: when I do it well, when I don’t do it well, and how I feel when I do it well. The first problem with this part of my happiness project was that I couldn’t find the journal where I was keeping my notes about order. In fact, I had 3 journals floating around 3 places–my bedside, my desk and my purse. So, to have more order, I wrote a big title on each journal and only used each one for one task: bedside (order journal), desk (work tasks), purse (personal tasks).

Putting order into my order journal certainly helped. So what did I fill that order journal with? Well, I realized that having order in my day allowed me to be productive and on-task so that if I had to stop what I was doing to help someone, I could. I realized that if my classroom time is ordered, then my students know what to expect and can be more creative, so we all have more fun. I realized that order is not about obsessing over every little detail in our homes, cars, or purses, but about structuring our lives and our days so that we can cooperate with others. No order, no cooperation.

Another one of my my big insights from my happiness project was that we can find happiness in our own kitchen. Now that I appreciate my kitchen, I finally hired some folks to tear down a wall between my kitchen and living room, tear off the ugly wallpaper, paint the cabinets and walls, and put in new countertops. I never realized that a week of not having a kitchen could make me so miserable. No kitchen means no coffee in the morning, no warm meal waiting at night, no regular consolations from food and drink. No kitchen, no happiness.

What will my happiness project bring next? I’m both excited but nervous to find out…so stay tuned!

 

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My Happiness Project

February 6, 2013 By 10 Comments

When I first started read Gretchen Rubin’s best-selling book, The Happiness Project, I thought, “Wow, she does a great job of summarizing tons on research on positive psychology in a way that is accessible and engaging. But, I mean, her life is so bourgeois! She has a happy marriage already, two lovely kids, and she lives comfortably in NYC. How applicable is her happiness project to my life or my students’ lives?”

Since I’m teaching some texts from positive psychology this semester, I asked my students to read Rubin’s book and to follow her lead and do their own happiness project. To set a good example, I started my own happiness project.  My dubiousness about Rubin faded as I realized two things. First, my own life often sounds (or is) just as bourgeois as Rubin’s. Second, her explanation of research in positive psychology and her practical tips for being happier helped me personally more than I if I had just read her book but not practiced anything new.

For starters, since I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the last few months, I kept a gratitude journal that focused on relationships—such as meaningful conversations, kind gestures, and warm feelings towards family. I enthusiastically wrote in my journal every night for a week about my friend Laura’s hospitality, my student Samantha’s cheerfulness, and all the people who make my work engaging.

Keeping a gratitude journal about the special people in my life definitely lifted my mood—the downs were still there, but the ups were more frequent. To borrow Barbara Frederickson’s terminology, my gratitude journal increased my attention and appreciation for the positive in my life and hence increased my positivity ratio—the ratio of positive emotions to negative emotions I felt. I didn’t find, however, that my negative emotions went away, but I was more equipped to deal with negative emotions because I had more positive emotions.

Further into Rubin’s book, I was inspired by her heartfelt rendition of the lessons she learned from Saint Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography Story of a Soul. Although Saint Therese is one of the most celebrated Catholic saints of recent times, and tons of Catholic writers have extolled her virtuous little way, the big-minded, bourgeois over-achiever in me just didn’t think I was called to holiness through little things. Clearly, as a college professor, I’m called to great things, right? (Oh my God, how bourgeois and self-important I sound when I’m honest about my thoughts!)

Rubin, who is not Catholic and not even particularly spiritual, not only read Saint Therese’s Story of a Soul and loved it, she read 17 biographies of Saint Therese. (If you think I’m exaggerating, she says it on p. 210 of The Happiness Project). Why was Rubin so obsessed with St. Therese? Rubin writes:

“I’d started my happiness project to test my hypothesis that I could become happier by making small changes in my ordinary day. I didn’t want to reject the natural order of my life—by moving to Walden Pond or Antartica, say, or taking a sabbatical from my husband. I wasn’t going give up toilet paper or shopping or experiment with hallucinogens. I’d already switched careers. Surely, I’d hoped, I could change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen [emphasis mine]. Everyone’s happiness project is different. Some people might feel the urge to make a radical transformation. I was vicariously exhilarated by these dramatic adventures, but I knew they weren’t the path to happiness for me. I wanted to take little steps to be happier as I lived my ordinary life, and that was very much in the spirit of St. Therese.” (pp. 210-211, The Happiness Project).

Reading Rubin’s words inspired me to the next phase of my gratitude journal: to give thanks for the little things in my life, such as the happiness I find in my kitchen, my living room, or my seemingly unimportant daily activities. The next day, I followed my regular routine: morning prayer, work, lunchtime gym break, shower & change, and back to work, all the while trying to be thankful for little things.

As I settled in for my twice-weekly routine of hairdrying and hairstyling my long, dark, thick and often unruly hair, I realized how anxious and unhappy I normally feel as I assemble all the tools I need to beat my hair into submission and look nice. I lined up my super-duper powerful Italian hairdryer, my boar’s head brush, my Bumble & Bumble heat protection spray, and then pointed a giant fan at me to deflect the heat from the hair dryer from overheating my whole body. “Uggh, this is so time consuming and hard!” I thought (as usual).

“God gave me beautiful hair”

About halfway through the hair-drying ritual, as my hair turned straight and fluffy and started to take shape, I thought, “God gave me beautiful hair. Be thankful for that Margarita!” So for the rest of those 30 minutes under the heat, I just repeated, “God gave me beautiful hair. God gave me beautiful hair.” Funny enough, when I went to my favorite coffee shop a few hours later, someone told me what great hair I have. When I went to Best Buy that night, someone else told me, “You have awesome hair.” My whole life, other people, and especially hairdressers, have told me I have awesome hair because it is thick, voluminous, and will do almost anything you want it to if you have the right tools and enough time. But I had never told myself, “I have great hair,” and given thanks for it.

Here are some other “little” things I gave thanks for this week: the sound of wind and birds in the morning; the smell of coffee; my pink shiny nail polish; my awesome gym and energetic workouts; sitting around a campfire and roasting smores; singing joyfully at Mass; singing the National Anthem at a UNC basketball game (and being especially thankful when I sang “the land of the free”); dancing wildly in the stands at the UNC basketball game to songs like “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Jump, Jump” and “Sweat.”

Okay, so my happiness project does sound rather bourgeois. But my gratitude journal for the “little things” did what Rubin said it would do (according to positive psychology studies): by increasing my awareness of and attention to little things, I enhanced my enjoyment of little things. Rubin and Saint Therese are right: we don’t have to leave our kitchens to find greater happiness. In fact, for most of us, happiness lies precisely in this little trick: really, deeply appreciating the little moments of every day.

Thanks to St. Therese, Rubin, and positive psychology for showing me this insight. Rubin and I do not have the virtuous life of St. Therese, but we can all be happier in the lives we are called to. And if we are happy, then we can spread happiness, and perhaps even become virtuous. Although happiness and virtuousness are not synonymous, virtuousness that is unhappy won’t attract any followers. Just look at Saint Therese, whose virtuous life was undoubtedly a joyful life.

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Can Suffering Lead to Flourishing?

January 16, 2013 By 3 Comments

Can bad things really lead to good things? Is it possible for suffering to lead to flourishing?

I’m sure many of us have wrestled with these questions either in our own personal lives, in trying to be compassionate with others, or in our academic work. The transformative power of suffering was a major theme of my book Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora, yet the topic of suffering, and whether or not suffering can transform people or societies, is largely untouched by much social science.

For example, Martin Seligman, one of the founders of the positive psychology movement, explained to me that since he had spent 30 years studying depression and learned helplessness, he initially wanted to get away from bad experiences and feelings and only study good experiences and positive emotions.

The result, however, was that positive psychology too often became conflated with “happiology”–or the science of feeling good all the time. Hence, at a recent meeting with Seligman, numerous sociologists around the table argued that a robust understanding of flourishing must encompass the possibility that undergoing suffering can produce personal and common goods.

Seligman stated, “It is so refreshing to hear people talk about suffering. I worked on suffering for 30 years; I felt like suffering needed no advocates.” He further explained that quite often it is the awful things in life that influence what people choose. For example, meaning, one of the five components of Seligman’s PERMA scheme of human flourishing, often arises out of awful things.

In his forthcoming work on human flourishing, sociologist Christian Smith makes a similar point: we can’t really understand flourishing or the good unless we examine evil or the bad.

Although my work focuses more on how suffering transforms individual persons’ lives, Yale sociologist Phil Gorski also pointed out that prophets, people like Martin Luther King, have intense moral suffering because they have very wide circles of empathy with other human beings. Their suffering is not only personally transformative but also socially transformative–suffering is key to empathy, compassion, and social solidarity expressed in word and action.

Does today’s generation of college students understand suffering as potentially transformative? It’s hard for me to imagine so, as suffering has moved so far out of our popular narratives which focus on happiness or flourishing as feeling good all the time, comforting ourselves, and cutting ourselves off from anyone or anything we don’t like. Although I’m a big advocate of boundaries, and I have no desire to excuse the wrong actions that can cause suffering, I’ve come to see there is no life that will be free of suffering. Rather than seeing suffering as a pure loss, we are better off if we can transform our suffering into good.

The study of flourishing need not promote suffering, but it also need not be not anti-suffering. Avoiding or minimizing suffering will be counter-productive. For most people, some form of involuntary suffering is unavoidable. In other instances, suffering or voluntary sacrifice is inherent to the exercise of mastery and acquiring skills.

Chris Peterson, another leader of positive psychology, argues that take home point of positive psychology is that simply that other people matter.  If it’s true that other people matter, then no amount of self-mastery or striving for personal PERMA will suffice to flourish–for loving others always requires some sacrifice of our own self-interest. The highest PERMA or the most flourishing life, one could thus argue, is one with a proper balance between pleasure and suffering.

Seligman repeats again and again that the study of flourishing has to get away from monism–the tendency to name one highest human good. I’m not saying that suffering is the highest human good nor the only one, nor am I even saying that suffering is good, but I am saying that any study of flourishing must leave room for the goods produced by suffering and sacrifice.

Think about it: Is it possible to develop courage without suffering? What about patience? Perseverance? Developing almost any virtue that comes to mind seems to require some amount of suffering or sacrifice, doesn’t it?

So why don’t most social theories address suffering? There is something to be said for rejecting the idea that suffering is actually good. Evil is not good. But most sociological theories are based on premises from Enlightenment thinking that the purpose of identifying suffering and evil is to manage, control and eliminate everything we don’t like. This narrative of a society without suffering, of good without evil, is part of what philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre calls the most powerful narrative of contemporary society–that we live in a bureaucratically managed society where everything in our lives and in the social and material world can be controlled, predicted or mastered.

Suffering shows that we don’t always believe in the bureaucratically managed society. Suffering is a cry out against evil, a sign that we are created for something greater than we empirically observe. As such, suffering can be transformative of one’s own life and quite possibly suffering can transform society. Think of any great figure who has transformed society for the better–Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa–and you will see a figure of suffering whose life was a witness to hope for a better world.

 

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Starting Points for Positive Sociology

January 9, 2013 By 8 Comments

With Martin Seligman

Ever since I met Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, at his home near Philadelphia last fall to discuss what movement for positive sociology might look like, I’ve been pondering:

What unique opportunities exist to build a new positive sociology movement focusing on human flourishing and the common good? How can positive sociology build on the successes and shortcomings of positive psychology? What are the next steps in launching in a positive sociology movement?

To delve into these questions, in November of 2012, I convened a group of eight sociologists (and one psychologist) to meet with Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.

The positive psychology movement sought to redress the dominant psychological focus on disease and illness by developing a research agenda on positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (Seligman’s PERMA). Similarly, in recent decades, sociology has focused on the deficits that preclude human flourishing and the common good. Although sociologists have generated important knowledge about the causes and consequences of social inequalities, describing social problems is not the equivalent of describing the conditions that promote human flourishing or foster the common good. Similar to how positive psychology shifted the focus from disease to wellbeing, positive sociology will study of the social preconditions of human flourishing and the common good.

Rather than seeing the human good as reducible to one main component (philosophical monism), positive psychology sees human goods as plural, and thus there are many versions of a flourishing life. Similarly, sociologists can describe great variation in culture, traditions, and narratives that influence what flourishing and the common good consists of.

Both psychologists and sociologists debate whether there is a common human nature and, if so, what its properties are. Positive psychology did not try to resolve the nature-nurture debate in psychology; yet positive psychology studies what free people choose to do. Similarly, positive sociology can reflect on human personhood in order broaden without having to resolve philosophical debates about personhood. For example, acknowledging that human nature is influenced by social structures and culture does not necessarily require relativistic standpoint regarding human flourishing or the common good. In fact, without some concept of a shared human nature and human freedom, the very concepts of human flourishing and the common good would not make sense.

Furthermore, acknowledging external influences and constraints on human behavior and consciousness does not have to eradicate human freedom. Without some concept of human freedom to resist or change social structures, it would be hard to imagine future-oriented behavior that would lead to social transformations.

Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach to development describes human freedom as both a means to well-being and end in and of itself; similarly, some degree of human freedom as a means and end is implicit in both positive psychology and positive sociology. Despite containing some assumptions about human freedom, like positive psychology and the capabilities approach, positive sociology is not a rigid ideology about persons or societies. However, to become a field of study, positive sociology should contain a set of paradigmatic principles to guide a research agenda about the social preconditions of human flourishing and the common good.

Positive sociology can complement the work already being done by positive psychology in numerous ways. Although PERMA certainly describes many components of a flourishing life, other components of flourishing cannot be reduced to the implicit individualist and de-contextualized PERMA scheme. Sociologists have long emphasized that social forms are not simply the aggregation of individual behaviors or beliefs; social forms are entities in their own right with important causal influence on human flourishing and the common good. For example, institutions of democracy, civil society, religion and family cannot be understood without paying attention to culture, social relationships, institutions, traditions and narratives.

Because positive psychology sought to redress the dominant focus on studying disease and mental illness, positive psychology was often perceived as celebrating hedonism and discounting any suffering as part of a flourishing life. Positive sociology will seek a more balanced approach to pleasure and pain in understanding human flourishing and the common good. Even if suffering itself is not a human good, positive sociology can nonetheless explore the conditions under which suffering transforms persons or societies in positive ways. Furthermore, social units of families, communities and nations are difficult to imagine without some level of voluntary sacrifice, as the common good often requires some people freely giving up an individual good in order to benefit others. It is often through suffering or sacrifice that one’s capacity to do good and experience good increases.

Positive sociology will build on positive psychology and the capabilities approach while also deepening reflection on how the sociological tradition contributes to the study of the social preconditions of human flourishing and the common good. For example, positive sociology aims to recover the lost goods in much classical sociology, notably that of Durkheim, Marx and Simmel, each of whom were keenly interested in describing human flourishing and the common good. Similarly, much contemporary sociological work on successful societies, real utopias, and collective rituals implies a keen interest in human flourishing and the common good.

Positive sociology will thus unite various subfields in contemporary sociology and unite current sociological work with a deep historical understanding of the sociological tradition itself. Furthermore, in describing the causes of social inequalities, much contemporary sociology focuses on the past. Positive sociology will encourage a future-oriented sociological imagination that builds on Simmel’s concept of the person as purpose-driven and future-oriented.

Although positive sociology acknowledges Max Weber’s point that that values influence the formation of research questions and the interpretation of research results, positive sociology also holds that social science can describe the world as it is. Hence the goal of positive sociology is to create new knowledge about the social preconditions of human flourishing and the common good; this new knowledge will inform public policies but the definition of those policies rests on values and ideologies which positive sociology cannot define.

During 2013, we aim to expand the network of scholars interested in launching positive sociology—the study of the social preconditions of human flourishing and the common good. Positive sociology will be both methodologically pluralistic, drawing on rich sociological traditions in ethnography, comparative-historical sociology, and survey analysis. The questions positive sociologists ask may be informed by various ideologies, values and worldviews.

UNC’s Barbara Frederickson

This spring, I will introduce positive psychology and positive sociology in my two undergraduate classes by teaching important works by positive psychologists such as Martin Seligman, Barbara Frederickson, and Chris Peterson. I will also introduce students to the important work being done by sociologists Chris Smith, Philip Gorski, Nicolette Manglos and myself on theorizing the common good using sociological theories and tools.

What articles or books have you read that would be instructive for students and academics working in positive sociology? What do you see as the strengths and potential pitfalls of the positive sociology movement? Would you like to join the new network of positive sociologists?

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