I'm grateful because I know that I could easily be a negative person. I tend to be more of a realistic visionary, refusing to be told I can't. And my poor wife, when I get my mind on something it's like a steel trap, and she has to hear about it until the idea becomes a reality or until the realistic part kicks in. Over time I've learned to give up when the idea simply distracts me from things I know are more important to me and my family. I can understand how people can be negative. Life is hard. For me, the hard makes it good. Don't get me wrong, though. While I won't judge a negative person (usually), I can only take so much before I feel the life sucked out of me. I know when to move on. Again, usually.
Because I had a hole in my head or some other neurological disorder I kept on reading The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett even after drudging my way through the first few pages. I felt the need to contrast it with Rosamund and Benjamin Zander's The Art of Possibility (AOP) because the two books illuminate the same world from completely different perspectives. One book is all about why you can, and the other why you can't. Guess which is which and which one I like better.
AOP kills me as it NAILS all the things that are wrong with The Spirit Level. The Spirit Level is all about measuring misery in the world and claiming some undefined sense of Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. So The Art of Possibility opens with some perspective on this measurement world.
All the manifestations of the world of measurement - the winning and losing, the gaining and acceptance and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair - all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness. The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through - surviving in a world of scarcity and peril. Even when life is at its best in the measurement world, this assumption is the backdrop for the play, and ... it keeps the universe of possibility out of view.
Life in the measurement world seems to be arranged in hierarchies: some groups, people, bodies, places, and ideas seem better or more powerful than others. Lines appear, dividing an inside from an outside: some people, races, and organizations are safer and more desirable to belong to than others. There are only so many pieces of the pie.
Many people's lives are in daily jeopardy, and they must and do concentrate on staying alive, as any one of us would if held up on the street or lost at sea. That is not the same as survival-thinking, which is the undiscriminating, ongoing attitude that life is dangerous and that one must put one's energy into looking out for Number One.
True scarcity and scarcity-thinking are different phenomena as well. There are regions of the world where resources are locally scarce, where people lack for their most fundamental needs. However, scarcity-thinking is an attitude as prevalent among the well-heeled as among the down-at-heel, and remains unaltered by a change in circumstances. It is a fatalistic outlook, as profiled by the English economist Thomas Malthus in his 1798 'Essay on the Principle of Population' that predicts that supplies - which appear fixed and limited - will eventually run out. This attitude prompts us to seek to acquire more for ourselves no matter how much we have. Scarcity-thinking and real scarcity are interactive in the simple sense that the frenzied accumulation of resources by some leaves others without enough, in a world that has the means to supply the basic needs of everyone. They are correlated in that the indiscriminate use of the earth's resources, at a rate faster than the earth can regenerate, leaves the next generation with shrinking reserves.
So I'm asking myself, "Do people really live their lives with this mentality?" Enter The Spirit Level. Page 1:
It is a remarkable paradox that, at the pinnacle of human material and technical achievement, we find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, worried about how others see us, unsure of our friendships, driven to consume and with little or no community life. Lacking the relaxed social contact and emotional satisfaction we all need, we seek comfort in over-eating, obsessive shopping and spending, or become prey to excessive alcohol, psychoactive medicines and illegal drugs.
How is it that we have created so much mental and emotional suffering despite levels of wealth and comfort unprecedented in human history? Often what we feel is missing is little more than time enjoying the company of friends, yet even that can seem beyond us. We talk as if our lives were a constant battle for psychological survival, struggling against stress and emotional exhaustion, but the truth is that ht luxury and extravagance of our lives is so great that it threatens the planet.
Sheesh. I don't have a clue who the "we" is that the authors keep talking about. In fact they use the term throughout the book without ever identifying them. All I know is that I'm glad I'm not one of them. No wonder they feel mental and emotional suffering. If I were them I'd find new friends.
Back to The Art of Possibility. Well, how is Possibility?
Let us suppose, now, that a university of possibility stretches beyond the world of measurement to include all worlds: infinite, generative, and abundant. Unimpeded on a daily basis by the concern for survival, free from the generalized assumption of scarcity, a person stands in the great space of possibility in a posture of openness, with an unfettered imagination for what can be.
We speak with the awareness that language creates categories of meaning that open up new worlds to explore. Life appears as variety, pattern, and shimmering movement, inviting us in every moment to engage. The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again.
The action in a universe of possibility may be characterized as generative, or giving, in all senses of that word - producing new life, creating new ideas, consciously endowing with meaning, contributing, yielding to the power of contexts. The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the people and things themselves. Emotions that are often relegated to the special category of spirituality are abundant here: joy, grace, awe, wholeness, passion, and compassion.
Now that's the way to live life. One life. Two very different philosophies.
C'mon, though. I mean, you gotta be realistic.
Well, for one, I've been living my life realistically positively for 41 years. And I ain't changing my mind now. Too many people in this world need too much help for one more person to go negative on them. Secondly, here are both views in action with the backdrop of the President's recent State of the Union speech. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw evaluates in a February 12, 2011 New York Times OpEd the President's State of the Union phrase, "Win The Future"
More troublesome to me as an economist, though, is that calling on Americans to “win the future” misleads us about the nature of the policy choices ahead. Achieving economic prosperity is not like winning a game, and guiding an economy is not like managing a sports team.
To see why, let’s start with a basic economic transaction. You have a driveway covered in snow and would be willing to pay $40 to have it shoveled. The boy next door can do it in two hours, or he can spend that time playing on his Xbox, an activity he values at $20. The solution is obvious: You offer him $30 to shovel your drive, and he happily agrees.
The key here is that everyone gains from trade. By buying something for $30 that you value at $40, you get $10 of what economists call “consumer surplus.” Similarly, your young neighbor gets $10 of “producer surplus,” because he earns $30 of income by incurring only $20 of cost. Unlike a sports contest, which by necessity has a winner and a loser, a voluntary economic transaction between consenting consumers and producers typically benefits both parties.
Listening to the president, you might think that competition from China and other rapidly growing nations was one of the larger threats facing the United States. But the essence of economic exchange belies that description. Other nations are best viewed not as our competitors but as our trading partners. Partners are to be welcomed, not feared. As a general matter, their prosperity does not come at our expense.
Both of these worldviews really do drive people's thinking on a day-to-day basis. I'm sure views along the continuum between these two ends are also held by many. For me, life is much too rich and rewarding an experience to let someone else tell me how awful it is. My personal experience invalidates their premise.