5 How To Lead An Ethical And Happy Life When The World Around You Is Difficult (But Manageable)

Many cultures and religions look back with longing to what they believed was a golden age. Perhaps the most famous was the Garden of Eden, where there was no pain and suffering, and where survival was not dependent on hard work. In China, many believed there had been an ancient golden age, presided over by a benevolent monarch. Some Tibetan Buddhists look forward to a golden age that will come about when the karma causing degenerate times will be exhausted. (The Tibetans believe this golden age may have already existed in the past and has been lost because of so many evil deeds.)

Some writers have envisioned perfect societies called utopias, where people live in peace with one another and enjoy prosperity. Some of these utopias are permissive and allow great personal freedom. Others, such as that described in the novel Brave New World^[1], are dystopian (the opposite of a utopia), where personal freedom is considered a threat to one’s own happiness and that of others.

Our world in the 21st century is certainly not a golden age nor a utopia. Yet up to now at least, and with the (hopefully) passing of the virus and slowing of climate change, it is possible to live a decent life, not harming others, and achieving some degree of happiness. In this chapter, let’s consider some of the best ways of doing this. We will begin by taking a look at how some philosophers of the past envisioned a good life. Then we’ll discuss current problems that threaten health and happiness around the world.

Epicurus lived from 341–270 BCE. He was born on the island of Samos in Greece and taught in Athens. He was a materialist who held that all certainty must be based on sense experience. He did not believe in God, nor in an afterlife. This led him to state that there was no punishment for one’s sins after death.

Epicurus believed that much of the suffering in life was due to the fear of death. In his Letter to Menoeceus, he wrote that this fear was irrational: “Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;… Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”^[2]

Many people have the idea that Epicurus advocated a wild life, filled with orgies and feasts. His view, however, was quite the opposite. Although he identified good with pleasure (specifically the absence of suffering), and evil with pain, he believed the perfect life was one of balance. For example, we all look forward to a Thanksgiving feast. In my family, everyone is known for a special dish, which each brings. Mine is chocolate nutmeg cream pie. Your arteries curl just looking at it. But imagine having to eat that dinner once or twice every day. You would soon feel sick and your health would suffer. You can only enjoy that feast if you have it on rare occasions.

He believed that intellectual pleasures offered more lasting benefits than physical ones. He never married, knowing that married life is often filled with great difficulties. He said, “The pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning.”^[3] To him, a good piece of cheese was just as enjoyable as a great feast. And the greatest pleasure was to be found in good company, friendship, and in intellectual pursuits such as the study of science and philosophy.^[4]

Epicurus founded a school in Athens called “The Garden,” where he taught these ideas. The school was opened to women (as well as courtesans), and even included one slave. Kindness, temperance, and friendship were encouraged. How far from the misunderstanding that led people to label Epicureanism a philosophy for pigs!

Epicurus considered certain kinds of desires dangerous, such as the desire for power, wealth, and fame, because one always craves more and is never satisfied. The ultimate goal was to achieve ataraxia, a state of mind that is completely untroubled.

Had Epicurus discovered the secret to a happy life? Maybe. It seems happy life in The Garden was dependent on the availability of simple good food, comfortable though not luxurious living conditions, and a healthy body and mind. The friendship of good people was also considered essential, as were intellectual pursuits because engaging the mind was thought to be one of the greatest of pleasures.

Aristotle 384–322 BCE

Aristotle was born in the small town of Stagira in northern Greece. His father was the doctor of King Amyntas of Macedon. In his early twenties, he moved to Athens and became a student at Plato’s Academy. He stayed in Athens for twenty years, writing and teaching philosophy, political theory, and science. He left after the death of Plato in 347 BCE.

In 342 BCE, he became tutor to Alexander, the son of King Philip II of Macedon. (Alexander later became known as Alexander the Great.) In 335 Aristotle returned to Athens where he stayed until the death of King Philip. There were anti-Macedonian forces in Athens that made it prudent for him to leave in 322 BCE. He later died on the island of Euboea. Aristotle did not think of pleasure as the key to a happy life. He did see it as good because it is the opposite of pain, which was bad. But to him, pleasure, such as eating, was good because it was a process towards fullness; it was not a good in itself.^[5]

Until the end, when he met with dangers from political enemies, Aristotle’s life was on the whole peaceful and prosperous. One could say that in his own terms, he had been happy: “Success in life, the best possible good for man, is … living one’s whole life in a rational way, under the guidance of the best virtues of the rational soul.”^[6] Let us unpack that statement.

Aristotle divided beings into the animate (alive) and the inanimate (like a rock). All living beings had souls. (By soul he meant that which gives that being its power.) Plants had the power to grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals had these powers and could also move about by themselves. Humans (rational animals), could also think and will things to be and to be otherwise.

To be fully human, according to Aristotle, one had to be virtuous, which meant living “excellently,” in terms of fulfilling one’s potential. Each form of animate life had its own virtue. An apple, for example, would be excellent if it were colorful and juicy. A cheetah if it could run quickly. A human if he or she could think well and make rational decisions.

For Aristotle, living a virtuous life was finding a balance between extremes. Courage for example, was the mean between being reckless and being a coward. What were considered the best virtues? Those which characterize a rational being were the intellectual virtues. For Aristotle, reasoning should lead us eventually to contemplation of the eternal. In this, he was a true student of Plato.

It is not clear what Aristotle meant by the eternal. Some scholars interpret his ideas about the prime mover, as a belief in gods. The argument goes like this: Things are naturally at rest (we now know this is not true), therefore there have to be prime movers to start the world moving. The American philosopher John Herman Randall disagreed with this interpretation and believed Aristotle thought of his prime movers as natural objects, such as the fixed stars.^[7]

To return to the virtues, since humans have these special abilities (intellect, and will), Aristotle claimed that each person should develop potentialities to the fullest. This could be interpreted as choosing wisely between many different careers or choosing that which one is best suited for by nature. This type of choice comes up in our daily lives. For example, what if a young person is a brilliant mathematician or chess player? Perhaps his or her parents are hoping for fame and fortune if their son or daughter becomes top in the world. However, this young person may prefer to play music in a rock band. Is this necessarily a lesser choice?

There is also the competition factor. Sometimes young people do not like to compete in the field for which they have great talent. They just want to enjoy what they do. (Check out the movie “Searching for Bobby Fisher” for a sensitive study of this problem.)

Aristotle himself seems to have thought of the contemplation of the highest truths as the most satisfying, for we can contemplate the truth more continuously than anything else. He must have thought of this when he was forced to end his days on an island far from his friendships and intellectual pursuits in Athens.

He held that the nature of man was to live in a political community. This is similar to Marx’s view that man is a social animal. But he did not think that a big state like Persia was a true community or polis, because people were too far removed from one another and from the government. But even in a small state, it is not easy to live happily. Aristotle thought it required practical wisdom. (what is good or bad for us at the highest level). This includes political wisdom. Similar to Confucius’ ideas on government, Aristotle argued that a good state provides an environment that encourages virtue among rulers and subjects, and in young people in particular. If young people do not have their characters formed correctly by those who raised them, they are unlikely to be happy or virtuous.

He believed lip service to virtues is not enough: “It is possible to have the right values without knowing how to achieve them in practice, a sort of moral clumsiness”^[8] An example of this is a popular criticism of people who “knock people over the head with their peace signs.” I had an etiquette teacher in high school who said, “You can say anything to anyone if you say it the right way.” It’s an exaggeration, surely, but indeed, framing the content of what you say in a skillful way can make all the difference.

Finally, Aristotle was aware that fortune plays a significant role in happiness: “A man will be a happy man if he lives his life virtuously, and enjoys moderate good fortune, and is destined to do so until the end of his days.”^[9] Recall the example from the introduction, where a man who dedicated himself to his beloved son’s happiness, only to discover on his deathbed that his son had always despised him. Of the perils of Fortune, Aristotle said, “One swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day.”^[10]

Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Let’s move to our own age and the scientific examination of happiness. The neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki talks about how to use the body and the mind together to have a peaceful, healthy, and happy life. I first encountered Dr. Suzuki when I just happened to wake up at three in the morning and turned on Channel 13. Suzuki, a distinguished neuroscientist at New York University was addressing a group of mostly elderly women. She told them how at the top of her very successful career, she realized that she was very unhappy. Her relationships with people were strained and painful. She was overweight and not in good health. She decided to turn her scientific expertise on her own problems, and discovered, after experimenting both with humans and lab animals, that exercise energized the test subjects and also increased their ability to solve problems. Many members of the audience did not have access to a gym or exercise equipment but she taught them a fifteen-minute routine that could be done in a living room. She had discovered that these exercises if done every day, would increase their flexibility and health, and claimed she had proven that if the exercises were done with positive thoughts, the benefits were even greater.^[11]

Fascinated, I bought her book. In addition to what she had said on the program, she provided details of the scientific experiments that led her to these results. Her lab is concentrated on the impact of exercise on the brain, trying to determine what amount and type of exercise is needed to maximize brain activity for learning, remembering, focusing, and keeping a positive mind.^[12] So far, she has discovered that intense aerobic exercise, even for fifteen minutes daily, can improve the part of the brain that causes personality development, the prefrontal cortex. Even traumatic brain injury can be helped through exercise, combined with positive thoughts about oneself and others. This can also enhance patients’ cognitive abilities.

Dr. Suzuki is working with a group of scientists to discover exactly what amount of exercise is needed to enhance the brain. They are concentrating on changes due to exercise, that affect learning and mental well-being. They have discovered that both meditation and exercise increase brain health and have positive effects on attention.

But it is not only our bodies and minds that we need to nourish in order to live a happy life. We need to nourish the world around us.

Sustainability

One important factor in global health is a sustainable population. There is a limit on how many people the planet can maintain. Think for a minute about exponential growth. Here is a famous example: Imagine there is a pond that is filling with algae. It will do this for 100 days. Every day the amount of algae in the pond doubles in size. On what day will it be only half full? You guessed it. The 99th day.

Now imagine a country that has an average of nine children per family. How soon do you think the country will not have enough room for everyone? What to do? The ecologist Garrett Hardin suggested we view this in an analogy with a lifeboat.^[13] A cruise ship sinks, and the lifeboat is full. If any more people are taken aboard, the lifeboat will overturn and all of the passengers will drown. Should we push away the people who are trying to board the lifeboat? Similarly, should we let people in overcrowded countries starve to death rather than feed them, thus preventing them from having more children? No.

Many countries, such as Germany and Italy, have restructured society in such a way that people will choose not to have so many children. They are concerned about not having enough children. How did this happen?

Population

Ways of reducing population without harming anyone

One way is to reduce deaths of newborns and infants. This may seem counterintuitive, but it leads to a decrease in the number of children people think they need to have. Parents in some countries fear that they may not have children to care for them in their old age because so many children die as babies or toddlers. Health care for children will enable them to advance to adulthood, and be there to care for their aging parents.

In countries like Switzerland, there are lovely places for the elderly to live. These are state-financed. People living in these homes do not need children to support them.

When women become educated about the possibility of using birth control techniques, they usually have fewer children. This is especially effective when there is no religious ban on such practices. In Italy however, a Catholic country in which the church forbade contraceptive techniques such as pills and condoms, the population rebelled and used them anyway.

Climate

The Challenge of Climate Change

Another issue affecting global health is climate change and its connection to food production. The warming of the oceans and the climate due to carbon emissions, is causing icebergs to melt and water levels to rise. Some countries will soon become uninhabitable due to flooding. Other areas of the earth facing unprecedented drought are becoming incapable of growing crops. The result has been mass migrations, causing further upheaval and political conflict.

There are many practical and ethical solutions to these problems that only require political will, public participation, and good governance.

Agriculture is the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, after the energy sector. Our current method of growing crops involves soil tillage, which releases tons of carbon into the air. One solution, no-till agriculture, represents one of the most effective carbon capture techniques available. (This practice has actually been in use since 3,000 BCE.) Over one hundred million farmers across the world currently engage in no-till agriculture. It not only prevents more carbon from being released from the ground, as part of a regenerative farming system of crop rotation and other time-tested techniques, it is very effective at sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. Estimates of how much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere from no-till and regenerative farming, range from 322 billion tons to one trillion tons.^[14] (See the film “Kiss the Ground” for more information on this topic.)^[15]

The philosopher Peter Singer said that we are not in a lifeboat. We are in a luxury yacht. If we grow food in a sustainable way and control climate change, there would be enough food for everyone.

Industrial animal farming also contributes to climate change. Cows and pigs emit tons of methane, which is 25 times more powerful than CO2, in terms of global warming. A natural grass diet in lieu of corn (which leads to e Coli infections in cows), can cause them to emit less gas and live a happier life by grazing.

Aside from being the primary cause of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels in factories also creates air pollution. This is a threat to a healthy and happy life for hundreds of millions around the globe. There are new methods of industrial carbon capture, such as a technology that seizes the carbon emissions as they leave the smokestacks and turns them into usable protein. These methods are expensive, however. This practice also does not reduce the CO2 emissions that arise from the extraction, transportation, and refining of fossil fuels before they are burned.

A more straightforward method is reliance on wind energy, which has become less expensive and is widely used in states like Texas and Kansas. There is enough wind energy potential in three U.S. states to power the entire country^[16], and there are enough wind-rich states to meet the nation’s energy needs sixteen times over.^[17] An article in The Economist from March 14, 2020, illustrates just how widespread this method has become, even with some political opposition:

Curt Morgan, the CEO of Vistra Energy, one of Texas’s biggest electricity firms, which both generates and sells electricity, says his firm has moved from relying on coal for around 70% of its generation to less than half that now. All of Vistra’s new investments are in renewable energy, and the firm now backs a carbon tax, which Mr Morgan says is the best way to incentivize firms like his to move away from polluting carbon.^[18]

Solar energy and developments in battery storage^[19] are also growing exponentially in the U.S and around the world. Global solar panel production is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050,^[20] and the U.S. has enough solar energy potential to generate 100 times the energy we currently currently consume.^[21]

While there are emissions associated with the production of solar panels, the levels are lower than that of fossil fuels. Similarly, the pollution caused by battery production may be a necessary byproduct on the road to combating climate change while more ecological batteries are in development.^[22]

Young people, such as Greta Thunberg are leading the call for improved environmental regulations, arguing that children’s rights to a safe and sustainable future are being threatened. Children around the world are suing their governments for the right to a clean environment.^[23] They are too young to vote or hold office, but the judicial systems are open to them. If they win these suits or succeed in exerting enough political pressure on elected officials, policies addressing climate change will have to be implemented.

There are also many organizations, led by children and adults alike, who are planting millions of trees to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan activist, won a Nobel Prize in 2004 for organizing the planting of over 30 million trees,^[24] and nine-year-old Felix Finkbeiner founded a tree-planting organization that has planted millions of trees around the world, and aims to plant a trillion more.^[25]

Global interdependence: Is free trade a hindrance to global health and happiness?

It is a good thing for countries to interact with one another; many historical examples indicate that if countries have financial stakes in each other, it will be beneficial for keeping the peace. The European Union is an example of this. The main problem is that free trade has allowed large corporations to benefit from low wages and poor working conditions in other nations. Apple’s use of Uyghur slave labor in China and maquiladoras in Mexico are examples of this. Free trade has weakened union bargaining power and depressed wages in the U.S. It has also taken a toll on the local economies of other participating nations. Many farmers in other nations, for example, often can’t compete with cheap^[26], agricultural products introduced from America. This threatens local agriculture and food security in those countries. In such cases, global interdependence may do more harm than good.

It seems there must be a political global solution arising out of compassion and good conscience. Instead of nationalistic tariffs that cause political friction, we should seek global labor standards, and countries should support locally-produced goods.

So there is hope for the future. But while life is good for many of us, we must work very hard to protect those things that support health and happiness for all, and be wary of policies that undermine the public good.