I just completed Jonathan Haidt’s book Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Haidt says in the book. Haidt regularly draws insights about happiness from the Bible and other world religions, even though he self-identifies as agnostic. The strength of Haidt’s book comes from the breadth of his research, spanning studies in neurobiology to sociology. Haidt does best when he’s describing cognitive distortions or citing research that correlates mental well-being with a certain behavior or perspective. I consistently find that many of the books about cognitive therapy suggest remedies that overlap with biblical wisdom. The following excerpt is a great example of this. It comes from Chapter 7 of Haidt’s book entitled “Love and Attachments.“
In the late nineteenth century, one of the founders of sociology, Emile Durkheim, performed a scholarly miracle. He gathered data from across Europe to study the factors that affect the suicide rate. His findings can be summarized in one word: constraints. No matter how he parsed the data, people who had fewer social constraints, bonds, and obligations were more likely to kill themselves. Durkheim looked at the “degree of integration of religious society” and found that Protestants, who lived the least demanding religious lives at the time, had higher suicide rates than did Catholics; Jews, with the densest network of social and religious obligations, had the lowest. He examined the “degree of integration of domestic society”—the family—and found the same thing: People living alone were most likely to kill themselves; married people, less; married people with children, still less. Durkheim concluded that people need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives: “The more weakened the groups to which [a man] belongs, the less he depends on them, the more he consequently depends only on himself and recognizes no other rules of conduct than what are founded on his private interests.”
A hundred years of further studies have confirmed Durkheim’s diagnosis. If you want to predict how happy someone is, or how long she will live (and if you are not allowed to ask about her genes or personality), you should find out about her social relationships. Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders. It’s not just that extroverts are naturally happier and healthier; when introverts are forced to be more outgoing, they usually enjoy it and find that it boosts their mood. Even people who think they don’t want a lot of social contact still benefit from it. And it’s not just that “we all need somebody to lean on”; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help. We need to interact and intertwine with others; we need the give and the take; we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.
Seneca was right: “No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility.” John Donne was right: No man, woman, or child is an island. Aristophanes was right: We need others to complete us. We are an ultrasocial species, full of emotions finely tuned for loving, befriending, helping, sharing, and otherwise intertwining our lives with others. Attachments and relationships can bring us pain: As a character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit said, “Hell is other people.” But so is heaven.
Jonathan Haidt and Emile Durkheim’s observations fit with the picture of community found in the Bible. The Apostle Paul uses the metaphor of a human body to depict the interconnectedness within the church.
“The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit…
“Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part…If the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body?” If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it…
“Some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary. And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, while the more honorable parts do not require this special care…This makes for harmony among the members so that all the members care for each other. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad” (1 Corinthians 12:12-26).
As modern Western people, we long for this picture of connection. Yet our modern conception of freedom erodes relationships. As a culture, we view freedom as the highest good. This has always been important in our society, but now it’s ultimately important.[1] Modern freedom is the freedom of self-assertion. I’m free, therefore I can do whatever I want.
Philosophers make a distinction between positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from –refusing any constraints on our choices. Positive liberty is freedom for –using your freedom in a particular way. Our modern culture’s idea of freedom is wholly negative –you are free as long as no one is constraining our choices.
But you can’t hold to the modern conception of freedom and enjoy the fulfillment that comes from deep relationships. By its very nature, a significant relationship requires you to restrict your freedoms.
If you’re married you can chose to exercise your freedom by spend your money however you want or to go on a vacation for three weeks without telling your spouse. However, doing these things will damage your relationship. You can’t be completely free in the contemporary sense of the word and simultaneously enjoy the benefits of deep relationships.[2]
In a significant relationship, the loss of independence goes far beyond logistics. If the other person falls into sickness or difficulty, it will require you to expend an enormous amount of time and energy. You cannot just go on unimpeded if the other person finds themselves in some kind of trouble or stress, nor would you want to if it’s a close relationship. Both persons must be willing to give up their independence to some degree or the relationship will become exploitative.
If, however, both parties habitually say, “You first. I’ll sacrifice my needs to meet your needs,” then neither party will exploit the other. This mutual sacrifice of autonomy leads to the kind of liberation that only love brings.