Unhappy with the Happiness Rankings?
A Sacred Chain story
The new World Happiness Report was just released, and no surprise: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden lead the way. I have often looked longingly at these Northern European countries that always end up at the top of the list. They have more socioeconomic equality, lots of social services, and the highest GDP per capita. Their citizens do not suffer much, and they say they are happy.
In the last part of my book — the Challenge of Pain — I wonder whether we’re meant for something more than happiness. Paul Bloom is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. He has written a book called The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. In it he reveals that those countries high up on the happiness list don’t score very high on a different list: the most meaningful lives. The countries at the top of that list are Sierra Leone, Senegal, Laos, and Cuba—places with little wealth or security and a comparatively low GDP. These are places where life is a struggle.
Why is it that life in difficult countries, or even tragedies in otherwise easier places to live, gives rise to joy and meaningfulness that go beyond the happiness born of security? Is there something about being subjected to less than ideal circumstances that does something to us? Perhaps some degree of hardship gives rise to something we can’t get in midst of peace and security?
In that last part of my book, I’m not intending to solve the age-old problem of evil. That seems to be setting the bar a bit too hight, since we humans have been grappling with that for as long as we have records. But I do feel like I need to be able to say something about it, particularly since lots of people seem to think that evolution makes the problem of evil harder. I claim that understanding the natural history of the world and our species through the theory of evolution gives us a better (though perhaps not ultimately conclusive) way of understanding the history of pain, suffering, and death that we now know has occurred in the natural world for millions of years.
I’m not suggesting that suffering is good in and of itself. And I don’t think most people, even when given the statistics on happiness and meaning, would choose to live in places where the likelihood of suffering is higher. But at the same time I’m finding it increasingly persuasive that suffering, adversity, and struggle can do something to us that might be beneficial. Could it be that God intentionally placed our ancestors—even the prehuman ones—in an environment that would induce some pain and suffering so they would develop the capacities necessary for being God’s image bearers: cooperation, empathy, and love?
There is good science now that shows our species gained a competitive advantage not by being the strongest, fastest, and most brutal. Rather, we were the species that learned to cooperate and care for each other. In the fossilized bones we’ve discovered of ancient humans, there is a surprisingly high incidence of broken bones, deformities, and disease. That seems to attest to a world that was dangerous and painful. But even more surprising is how many of these fossilized injuries occurred years before the person died. That means there was a community around those people who were caring for them and keeping them alive. That’s hardly the “survival of the fittest” strategy we’ve been told is the hallmark of evolution.
Years ago I heard (or maybe I read it on a T-shirt?) that families who camp together stay together. I don’t mean the kind of “camping” where you get an RV that is nicer than your house and “rough it” with air-conditioning and satellite TV. That’s not what builds strong families. No, I’m talking about the one-room tent with no electric hookups, no water, and an outhouse for a toilet.
At the time we received this pearl of wisdom, my wife and I had two little boys ages four and one, which is probably not the sweet spot for camping, but we decided to give it a go. We borrowed a tent from some friends and set off for a park in New Hampshire. We found our lovely campsite in the woods by a lake, got the tent set up, and said to each other, “Yes, this is pretty cool. We can see how this would be a good experience for families.” And then reality set in.
Our four-year-old just wanted to play in the fire, without having any idea of how dangerous it could be. The one-year-old wandered around the campsite looking for bugs to put in his mouth. Then it rained. Our borrowed tent wasn’t as waterproof as we had been promised, and we constantly had to shift things around in the tent so they wouldn’t be soaked. The kids cried all night. It was awful.
Driving home, we started talking about how we’d do things differently the next time. Wait . . . what? Next time? Why didn’t we vow then and there never to subject ourselves to this again? I don’t know. There is something about a challenge, I guess.
With these ideas, we can begin to understand that the world is the way it is because it was intended to make us the way we are. Our ancient ancestors’ responses to difficult circumstances helped form the capacities that would eventually become moral maturity in us. But there is still a troubling implication of this, namely that God created a world that had those difficult circumstances already in it. Must we say, then, that God created pain and suffering?
That will be the topic of my final post before the book is released. We’re getting close! Thanks for reading.
Oh, man this is something we often contemplate, while camping, in the rain, which happens nearly every trip with our kids. What made this even more funny, odd, intriguing, is that I’m pretty sure that camp picture in the rain is of our exact tent…So, I read much of this to my people this morning as we started on our school stuff (for our last year of homeschooling-maybe).
Wow, I didn't anticipate this! Thoughtful and intriguing!