Ten years ago, the largest class at Harvard was Ec 10 -- the Principles of Economics. Now, I'm told it's a class on Happiness. Just by perusing through Academic Earth (yes, I'm obsessed), it's clear to see that there's a yearning for a deeper understanding on how to live a good, happy life.
I watched my second Yale psychology video in two days, both taught by Paul Bloom. Called "The Good Life: Happiness", this lecture ended the academic year and pulled together themes from previous lectures; looked at "does therapy really work?" (his answer, unsurprisingly, is yes); and the psychology of happiness.
I became intrigued by the idea of a happiness "baseline", which it seems that humans tend to return to needless of circumstances. For instance, one person can win the lottery and another person can become paralyzed, both resulting in exceeding highs and lows of happiness. However, when interviewed one year later from each instance, psychologists have found that people in both categories tend to return to the same baseline of happiness they had previously. It seems that humans have an uncanny ability to acclimate and adjust to the new norm.
More fascinating, however, are the few areas that psychologists have found where people do not return to the same baseline. One of these is noise. That's incredible, really. We can acclimate to awful traffic, bad weather, divorce, and even paralysis... yet we as humans cannot acclimate to noise. Living next to a construction site (or in the middle of Delhi!!) continues to be a source of stress, and thus unhappiness, no matter how many days, months, or years you live there. I'm not sure whether this makes me feel better or worse, but certainly helps to explain the rage I continue to feel every time a car honks at me at point blank.
I had a dream the other night that cars blew bubbles instead of horns... if only!
I watched my second Yale psychology video in two days, both taught by Paul Bloom. Called "The Good Life: Happiness", this lecture ended the academic year and pulled together themes from previous lectures; looked at "does therapy really work?" (his answer, unsurprisingly, is yes); and the psychology of happiness.
I became intrigued by the idea of a happiness "baseline", which it seems that humans tend to return to needless of circumstances. For instance, one person can win the lottery and another person can become paralyzed, both resulting in exceeding highs and lows of happiness. However, when interviewed one year later from each instance, psychologists have found that people in both categories tend to return to the same baseline of happiness they had previously. It seems that humans have an uncanny ability to acclimate and adjust to the new norm.
More fascinating, however, are the few areas that psychologists have found where people do not return to the same baseline. One of these is noise. That's incredible, really. We can acclimate to awful traffic, bad weather, divorce, and even paralysis... yet we as humans cannot acclimate to noise. Living next to a construction site (or in the middle of Delhi!!) continues to be a source of stress, and thus unhappiness, no matter how many days, months, or years you live there. I'm not sure whether this makes me feel better or worse, but certainly helps to explain the rage I continue to feel every time a car honks at me at point blank.
I had a dream the other night that cars blew bubbles instead of horns... if only!
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