I would agree with you as to the need for balance in human flourishing, but those who argue that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history are largely ignorant of the human condition prior to its introduction. It is almost an anthropological constant that atavistic humans considered outsiders non-human, a threat to be eliminated at the earliest possibility. The only real exception was children, who were often saved for the childless of the tribe.
There is one exception, it is not the one which most would imagine, in their infinite naivety. It was not the garden paradises which produced altruism towards the stranger, but rather environmental conditions so elementally inimical to human life that our ancestors were inspired to cooperate just to survive. Jungles intent upon eating and tearing human flesh, where insects inject you with their young. Frozen tundra where shitting outside would kill you most of the year. Mountain heights so remote and so lacking in food supply that the only reason people chose to live their was to escape the predations of other human beings. These are the places that produced the only altruistic human beings in nature. Everywhere is it was the spear, the arrow, the club aimed at bashing in your skull.
Yes, there is ample evidence that hunter gatherers had better diets, but only because nature eliminated all but the strong. The only other innovation which ranks alongside the invention of agriculture is the printing press- it finally taught human beings the ability to slowly learn to grasp what it might mean to live in another's shoes. Unfortunately, this second epochal innovation also acted as an amplifier for all our worst tendencies.
Long is the road and steep is the climb lifting up to human salvation.
There is a great series which was produced by BBC Four a few years ago. It featured Dr James Fox.
I can't exactly be sure exactly which series it was, but in all probability, it was the Art of Japanese Life. In it he documents the tendency of the French Impressionists for collecting Japanese Wood Block prints. Oceans apart, and divided by culture, both civilisations had found themselves by a mournful and wistful sadness for the loss of epic nature in all its grandeur. Yes, the conditions in cities were squalid. Yes people were generally still malnourished. But overall, they tended to be warmer, more secure from the elements and better fed than they were before- and even the worst conditions are preferable to the great lie of traditional farming- which, without the benefit of modern machinery, is more aptly called subsistence.
You don't need to convince me: I think pining for hunter-gatherer days is profoundly misguided. To wish away the revolutionary leaps forward in both peak human accomplishments and total human numbers is to occupy a moral universe that's totally alien to me.
Perhaps Brink was referring to the rise of the agricultural civilization which often extracted the surplus of food for elites. Were the common people were worse off relative to hunter-gatherers (I am not sure about that), but agriculture was a necessary step toward industrialization as it freed some people from the farms, enabled them to specialize, move to cities, and exchange ideas faster.
The intermediate period between the development of farming and the formation of states is fascinating, and I believe there was wide variety in forms of social organization. When states started forming, their ability to squeeze revenue out of the populace certainly added to misery at the bottom. But the main driver of mass immiseration wasn't the state, it was old Dr. Malthus: the productive superiority of agriculture led to population increases that eventually drove most of the population to subsistence. Anything that eased conditions at the bottom would get zeroed out in a few generations by the increase in mouths to feed.
The bylaws governing the City of London are interesting in this regard. If, as a serf fleeing the mastery of the Manor Lord, you could make it to London, live there and support yourself for an entire year, your lord no longer had a claim upon you. The reason? London helped fill the King's coffers.
I don't disagree about agriculture, after all clearly we wouldn't be here now without it, but to say that HG diets were better (they objectively were) because "nature eliminated all but the strong" does not even make sense. Only the strong could benefit from meat and bone marrow? Rather it was in evolutionary adaptation to agricultural grain heavy diets and higher population density that only the strong (or those with genetic advantages eg against communicable diseases) survived!
I meant other factors eliminated the weak. People tend to think of Native Americans when they think of hunter gatherers, but they had agriculture (recently certain chefs have resuscitated certain types of corn from near extinction). But in most areas there simply wasn't the ability to leave convenient crops situated along the migration route, because of competition.
The sick, the elderly, the lame- most would have been left behind. Interestingly, this also dates the beginning of early *supplementary* agriculture to well before the Holocene. Recent evidence from the Mideast shows that early plant cultivation began far earlier than previously thought, around 23,000 years ago. But the absence of evidence is not the proof of absence.
Look at it this way, are we really to believe that the man (only a man could obsess so much over the maternal form) who carved the Venus of Hohle Fels wasn't once an honoured hunter who was probably forced retirement by lameness inflicted by a hunting wound. He might have been lucky- one of a rare few who was injured close to the place of winter retreat. And by agriculture, I mean little more than planting rather than cultivation.
But for most who were injured or became sick on the migratory trail, the fate was not so fortunate. Even as late as the 1890s parents were putting infants out into the snow when there were too many mouths to feed over the winter months.
The weak would have been eliminated by pressures other than diet on the migratory trail. Sorry if I wasn't that clear in my original post. Besides, the vulnerable always die when food is scarce. They are always the ones first taken by epidemics and/or in periods of famine. Even plants are subject to these selection pressures- it's one of the dangers of monocultures and a too selectively breed population- the Neanderthals probably died out through a lack of immunological diversity, and Coleman's Mustard wouldn't exist if not for their seedbank in Norwich, England.
I think the point is that there is a survivorship bias. Only those with the best access to food survived and this is the sample from which we draw dietary knowledge.
I enjoyed this article very much. When I think about individual human flourishing, I always go back to Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. Logotherapy is based on the idea that what most motivates people is to find meaning in their lives. And as Brink writes, relationships, experiences, and projects are the arenas in which most of us find meaning. It's funny, I was in Crown Heights, Brooklyn not too long ago, and for those who don't know, it's a major center of Hasidism in America. At any rate, I happened upon a well-known rabbi and thought leader, a Lubavitcher, and he was giving a talk to a group of non-Orthodox "tourists". I overheard him ask them, "what gives you meaning in life?", and I thought to myself, that is indeed the question! Many of them struggled to answer his simple yet clever question, and when I posed the question to myself, I realized that I'm still in the process of figuring this question out myself. I understand why people have spent millennia thinking and writing about what constitutes the good life. But the fact that that group of folks struggled to answer the question, and that I myself can only give a partial answer, means that on the macro level, this question deserves far more of our collective attention than many of us give it. I work in public education, and we've gotten better at teaching kids how to talk about and regulate their emotions; how to be information and media literate; how to think about good nutrition and exercise, etc., but there's not really a formal avenue for discussing "what makes life meaningful" in many public school settings. (I choose public schooling because this is by far the largest public, citizen-shaping experience most Americans have to pass through.) Don't get me wrong; many people do have a handle on this topic, but I still feel that human flourishing and the making/seeking of a meaningful life are vital topics to which young people (and others) should be given more explicit exposure. Unsure how that would happen, however.
What a great reply and I've been thinking the same thing. (Philosophy in the schools might be a way to discuss "what make life meaningful" - I wonder at what grade you could start with "what is happiness"?)
So yes, one of my questions is where and how does "meaning in life" fit in to Brink's project-process. Brink has laid out this time a kind of sine qua non for societies which will allow groups and individuals flourish (reminds me a bit of Maslow's hierarchy, but taken to a collective level.) The three avenues make a lot of sense: there's an instinctual and satisfying completion there that bodes well for moving forward. It's also intriguing in that it seems to take a different tack from the political philosophy I'm familiar with, similar to Maslow's look at happiness/fulfillment from the perspective of basic, generic requirements.
So then, under what external conditions can and do humans search for "meaning in life" - are there basic requirements that must be met before someone can begin the journey? Frankl indicates perhaps not, but he encountered the camps with a great deal of what we might call intellectual capital under his belt, and subsequently developed logotheray while treating we don't know what kinds of patients.
What kinds of broad social infrastructure would foster flourishing in a society? To what extent would its elements merely have to be preventative and responsive to forces that thwart flourishing: ensuring health; protecting families; preventing discrimination; making people safe; fostering resilience, etc. On the other hand, would there be roles in education, religion and other institutions for coaching people along their own journeys towards flourishing. Education and religion (to name my two favorites) offer the tools for thinking about life. Speaking at the utopian, well-resourced level, those institutions would seemingly arise spontaneously according to individual and sub-culture preferences.
But then, what extent does the WALL-E onboard spaceship community meet the criteria for flourishing? They're normally called "lazy" and fat-shamed (by our culture) but didn't they have perfect leisure? How do we know there weren't competing schools of philosophy or sophisticated media analysis, clubs of all sorts, and who knows what else flourishing below decks? And if there weren't, would that mean humans are doomed to degenerate if they are not goaded and prodded into exploring their higher natures?
I'm guessing that some high schools must offer something like "history of Western thinking", and if they don't, they should. Juniors and seniors would be capable of going on such an odyssey. As for questions like "what makes life meaningful?", I have no idea where that might start. Since young children are in Piaget's pre-operational stage or concrete operational stage, I think such an abstract question as ours would probably fly right over most of their heads. I'm thinking middle school would be an appropriate place to start such discussions. If you're a "believer" in Meyers-Briggs typology, roughly 80% of the population would fall under the aegis of the "Guardians" or "Artisans", and both of those types tend to be more concrete than abstract thinkers, even as adults. I think there's some merit to MB, so it helps convince me that middle school would be the appropriate place to start.
You pose many interesting questions, but I'm only going to address two of them.
First I'll speak to the question "under what external circumstances can and do humans search for "meaning in life"? To that I can respond that I've known kids who've grown up in adverse circumstances, for example, in the local housing projects where drugs, violence, and "broken" families are ubiquitous, and yet these children have learned to thrive despite many obstacles set against them. 2 of them were often homeless during their high school years. And yet they learned to make meaning with their lives and then thrive as a result. These kids were unwittingly following in the footsteps of the Stoics; these kids focused on what was within their control to make their lives better, and they often thrived in the face of hardship as a result. Not everyone can do this, as everyone's circumstances are different, but I've certainly seen it be done by people facing some truly adverse life situations.
Next, you ask what kinds of broad social infrastructure would foster flourishing in a society? We know that strong families and strong schools (especially public schools) are key. Brink has opined before about the importance of religious organizations (churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc.) in helping communities flourish. Of course, many liberal Christian and Jewish denominations are hemorrhaging members, as many folks with lots of formal education, as well as younger people, are leaving organized religions. Let's not forget the growing number of atheists and agnostics. Religious groups aren't a likely fit for them, so those other groups probably have to look a bit harder than their religious neighbors do when trying to find a community that welcomes them.
There are also all manner of civil society groups people can join, and they can also create their own communities should they find that no one's addressed their need. That said, while I know many people who volunteer their time for different causes, I'm not sure how much stock I put in this since many of us are "bowling alone" (https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/1982130849/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KGRX5APK5KQ6&keywords=bowling+alone&qid=1687382277&sprefix=bowling+alone%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1). People actually have to want to get together and work on some common project, and since the pandemic started, I've anecdotally noticed fewer people being interested in activities outside the home other than work. So that's a challenge.
Challenges galore! Good thing we're all in this together!
What role, what responsibility, does the consumer play in this economic system? What would the Pagan philosophers have to say about our culture? What does rational thought and reason say about our system, our culture? Ask Abraham or Jesus or the Buddha to take a gander at our system. Ask
Augustine. and his theory of "free-will" to explain our faults. This ain't rocket science folks. Our systemic failures all have their start and stop with the individual. Ask Dante where he might locate the consumer in the Inferno. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" "Here" is the world of free-markets and the consumer. The consumer is the polar opposite of the ascetic monk. The individual consumer has no limits placed on his desires. It is the job of the seller, the supplier, to satisfy the desires of the consumer, the end user of the product. We all participate in a system where "greed is good." It is a snake that eats its own tail. We, the individual, have failed democracy in our free-market, capitalist, consumer economy. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"
"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
We have been "looking for love in all the wrong places." We won't find it on Fox News, MSNBC, the internet, or from the mouth of a politician. They encourage our denial. They give us excuses to deny our responsibility to ourselves . We have yet to begin our journey. We have yet to feel the desperation Dante felt. Charon awaits us. Dante's story is our story. It has been acted out again and again throughout history. You can't return from hell with its wisdom if you don't first pass under the gate where there is no hope. We ain't there yet.
I disagree that systemic failures start and stop with individuals (but yes: this has been mostly ignored by Abraham, Jesus and the Buddha, although I think Paul had a practical inkling about how ungovernable even small groups could become.) Culture arises from humanity's evolved collective institutions—in other words, its vast systems: cultural, governmental, political, ideological etc.
Government systems are fueled by competing internal motivations, the primary one (like all human systems) being to survive, but then come the departments' internal functions, the individual motivations of the employees (they want to keep their jobs but they are also dedicated to health, or defense, or fair employment, or efficient buses or whatever.) Government thus needs its many subcultures to operate: military mindsets, public health mindsets, pro-business, altruistic, etc. Each of those subcultures is extremely difficult to swing around if it gets out of hand.
Private enterprises are likewise hemmed in by stockholders, competition and survival. And as for politics, people can be manipulated by individuals, but there are also the collective decisions of elected officials across the country, balancing having the power to do something vs. staying in office long enough to do it.
Individual commitment and action won't do the trick and never have (except maybe for revolutions, and how do those usually turn out.) We need to figure out how to nudge society's massive institutions by pitting one against another in the direction of global well-being. (Just one example: market forces are currently favoring sustainable energy sources, but the feds are also providing incentives for to bring manufacturing of sustainable technology back to our shores.)
The examples of the founders of our great religions, Augustine and Dante are aimed at individual virtue. The question is, how can cultural institutions arise that are capable of embodying **systemically** the kinds of ideals that guide our individual lives. It would be a kind of bootstrap situation if it weren't for external forces like war, famine, pestilence and drought: we need "hearts and minds" to change our systems, but our systems have to change before our hearts and minds do.
You appear to be a "trickle-down" anthropologist while I'm more Jeffersonian, or Epictetus.
"The question is, how can cultural institutions arise that are capable of embodying **systemically** the kinds of ideals that guide our individual lives. " And so, it seems, that all the religions and all the philosophies contributed have been failures. Maybe the allegory of the resurrection which depicts death before rebirth holds truth. History seems to hold that truth. No Empire wanted to die so it could be reborn. Jesus didn't want to die so he could be reborn. "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"
Brink, you threw me for a loop here: "It’s now generally accepted that the average welfare of human beings declined as a result of the switch to a sedentary farming life: people had to work harder for less food and poorer health, and furthermore were subjected to burdensome and demeaning structures of oppression."
My understanding is, and perhaps you were referring to, the rise of the agricultural civilization which often extracted the surplus of food for elites. Perhaps the common people were worse off relative to hunter-gatherers (I am not sure about that), but agriculture was a necessary step toward industrialization as it freed some people from the farms, enabled them to specialize, move to cities, and exchange ideas faster.
My understanding is that current evidence shows that hunter gatherers were generally better fed than peasants (they were taller) and that they probably had to work less hard. But faced with that bullet, I'll bite it without hesitation: the huge growth in population, and the revolutionary surge in technology and social organization, make the Agricultural Revolution very much worth celebrating.
Thanks Brink for another intelligent and thoughtful essay. Your gift of distilling and disentangling complex and timeless notions is remarkable and no doubt reflects much hard work on your part.
I've been following your posts with particular enthusiasm since Part I - An Exercise in Definite Optimism. In a time of dark shifts toward illiberalism, anger, and folly, I am profoundly thankful for your vision. It speaks to me; it is compassionate, complex, and intellectually serious. Yours is a voice of urgent wisdom that I hope breaks through the cacophony of current discourse. Enjoy your break.
This was really thoughtful and honest. Thank you Brink. You might be interested in the views contemporary philosophers sometimes call "neo-aristotelian." On these views, flourishing for an individual organism is excellence — doing the characteristic things that members of the kind do, and doing them well. Virtue was the word Aristotle used to described what that biological flourishing consists in for us rational animals.
Focusing more on virtue rather than preference-satisfaction as the thing that constitutes flourishing could help to avoid some of the individual-collective problems you point out. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a bit about this too in his classic "After Virtue" and the communitarian strain in political philosophy that it helped spawn remains an important intellectual challenge to classical liberalism.
“It is not enough to cheer progress while ignoring the social disintegration plaguing ordinary people outside the elite. And it is obtuse to stand against suffering while dismissing or actively opposing scientific and technological progress. We must prioritize inclusion because, for most people most of the time, the perennial problems of avoiding suffering and seeking belonging are paramount. And we must prioritize dynamism because of our reverence for the best that lies within us — our capacity to explore and experiment and create, our endless curiosity, our drive to reconnect to the cosmos through greater understanding — and because, in the long run, facilitating the flourishing of creators and innovators gives all of us our best chance for a better life.” Outstanding summary, Geary. It would be positively brilliant if translated into a more accessible language for a broader audience.
I would agree with you as to the need for balance in human flourishing, but those who argue that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history are largely ignorant of the human condition prior to its introduction. It is almost an anthropological constant that atavistic humans considered outsiders non-human, a threat to be eliminated at the earliest possibility. The only real exception was children, who were often saved for the childless of the tribe.
There is one exception, it is not the one which most would imagine, in their infinite naivety. It was not the garden paradises which produced altruism towards the stranger, but rather environmental conditions so elementally inimical to human life that our ancestors were inspired to cooperate just to survive. Jungles intent upon eating and tearing human flesh, where insects inject you with their young. Frozen tundra where shitting outside would kill you most of the year. Mountain heights so remote and so lacking in food supply that the only reason people chose to live their was to escape the predations of other human beings. These are the places that produced the only altruistic human beings in nature. Everywhere is it was the spear, the arrow, the club aimed at bashing in your skull.
Yes, there is ample evidence that hunter gatherers had better diets, but only because nature eliminated all but the strong. The only other innovation which ranks alongside the invention of agriculture is the printing press- it finally taught human beings the ability to slowly learn to grasp what it might mean to live in another's shoes. Unfortunately, this second epochal innovation also acted as an amplifier for all our worst tendencies.
Long is the road and steep is the climb lifting up to human salvation.
There is a great series which was produced by BBC Four a few years ago. It featured Dr James Fox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fox_(art_historian)
I can't exactly be sure exactly which series it was, but in all probability, it was the Art of Japanese Life. In it he documents the tendency of the French Impressionists for collecting Japanese Wood Block prints. Oceans apart, and divided by culture, both civilisations had found themselves by a mournful and wistful sadness for the loss of epic nature in all its grandeur. Yes, the conditions in cities were squalid. Yes people were generally still malnourished. But overall, they tended to be warmer, more secure from the elements and better fed than they were before- and even the worst conditions are preferable to the great lie of traditional farming- which, without the benefit of modern machinery, is more aptly called subsistence.
You don't need to convince me: I think pining for hunter-gatherer days is profoundly misguided. To wish away the revolutionary leaps forward in both peak human accomplishments and total human numbers is to occupy a moral universe that's totally alien to me.
I would have to agree.
Perhaps Brink was referring to the rise of the agricultural civilization which often extracted the surplus of food for elites. Were the common people were worse off relative to hunter-gatherers (I am not sure about that), but agriculture was a necessary step toward industrialization as it freed some people from the farms, enabled them to specialize, move to cities, and exchange ideas faster.
The intermediate period between the development of farming and the formation of states is fascinating, and I believe there was wide variety in forms of social organization. When states started forming, their ability to squeeze revenue out of the populace certainly added to misery at the bottom. But the main driver of mass immiseration wasn't the state, it was old Dr. Malthus: the productive superiority of agriculture led to population increases that eventually drove most of the population to subsistence. Anything that eased conditions at the bottom would get zeroed out in a few generations by the increase in mouths to feed.
The bylaws governing the City of London are interesting in this regard. If, as a serf fleeing the mastery of the Manor Lord, you could make it to London, live there and support yourself for an entire year, your lord no longer had a claim upon you. The reason? London helped fill the King's coffers.
That is an interesting tidbit that seems like a legislative attempt to thread the needle between the King's interests and the interests of the Lords.
At least a warrior elite meant that everyone in the tribe didn't have to fight.
I don't disagree about agriculture, after all clearly we wouldn't be here now without it, but to say that HG diets were better (they objectively were) because "nature eliminated all but the strong" does not even make sense. Only the strong could benefit from meat and bone marrow? Rather it was in evolutionary adaptation to agricultural grain heavy diets and higher population density that only the strong (or those with genetic advantages eg against communicable diseases) survived!
I meant other factors eliminated the weak. People tend to think of Native Americans when they think of hunter gatherers, but they had agriculture (recently certain chefs have resuscitated certain types of corn from near extinction). But in most areas there simply wasn't the ability to leave convenient crops situated along the migration route, because of competition.
The sick, the elderly, the lame- most would have been left behind. Interestingly, this also dates the beginning of early *supplementary* agriculture to well before the Holocene. Recent evidence from the Mideast shows that early plant cultivation began far earlier than previously thought, around 23,000 years ago. But the absence of evidence is not the proof of absence.
Look at it this way, are we really to believe that the man (only a man could obsess so much over the maternal form) who carved the Venus of Hohle Fels wasn't once an honoured hunter who was probably forced retirement by lameness inflicted by a hunting wound. He might have been lucky- one of a rare few who was injured close to the place of winter retreat. And by agriculture, I mean little more than planting rather than cultivation.
But for most who were injured or became sick on the migratory trail, the fate was not so fortunate. Even as late as the 1890s parents were putting infants out into the snow when there were too many mouths to feed over the winter months.
The weak would have been eliminated by pressures other than diet on the migratory trail. Sorry if I wasn't that clear in my original post. Besides, the vulnerable always die when food is scarce. They are always the ones first taken by epidemics and/or in periods of famine. Even plants are subject to these selection pressures- it's one of the dangers of monocultures and a too selectively breed population- the Neanderthals probably died out through a lack of immunological diversity, and Coleman's Mustard wouldn't exist if not for their seedbank in Norwich, England.
I think the point is that there is a survivorship bias. Only those with the best access to food survived and this is the sample from which we draw dietary knowledge.
I enjoyed this article very much. When I think about individual human flourishing, I always go back to Viktor Frankl's logotherapy. Logotherapy is based on the idea that what most motivates people is to find meaning in their lives. And as Brink writes, relationships, experiences, and projects are the arenas in which most of us find meaning. It's funny, I was in Crown Heights, Brooklyn not too long ago, and for those who don't know, it's a major center of Hasidism in America. At any rate, I happened upon a well-known rabbi and thought leader, a Lubavitcher, and he was giving a talk to a group of non-Orthodox "tourists". I overheard him ask them, "what gives you meaning in life?", and I thought to myself, that is indeed the question! Many of them struggled to answer his simple yet clever question, and when I posed the question to myself, I realized that I'm still in the process of figuring this question out myself. I understand why people have spent millennia thinking and writing about what constitutes the good life. But the fact that that group of folks struggled to answer the question, and that I myself can only give a partial answer, means that on the macro level, this question deserves far more of our collective attention than many of us give it. I work in public education, and we've gotten better at teaching kids how to talk about and regulate their emotions; how to be information and media literate; how to think about good nutrition and exercise, etc., but there's not really a formal avenue for discussing "what makes life meaningful" in many public school settings. (I choose public schooling because this is by far the largest public, citizen-shaping experience most Americans have to pass through.) Don't get me wrong; many people do have a handle on this topic, but I still feel that human flourishing and the making/seeking of a meaningful life are vital topics to which young people (and others) should be given more explicit exposure. Unsure how that would happen, however.
What a great reply and I've been thinking the same thing. (Philosophy in the schools might be a way to discuss "what make life meaningful" - I wonder at what grade you could start with "what is happiness"?)
So yes, one of my questions is where and how does "meaning in life" fit in to Brink's project-process. Brink has laid out this time a kind of sine qua non for societies which will allow groups and individuals flourish (reminds me a bit of Maslow's hierarchy, but taken to a collective level.) The three avenues make a lot of sense: there's an instinctual and satisfying completion there that bodes well for moving forward. It's also intriguing in that it seems to take a different tack from the political philosophy I'm familiar with, similar to Maslow's look at happiness/fulfillment from the perspective of basic, generic requirements.
So then, under what external conditions can and do humans search for "meaning in life" - are there basic requirements that must be met before someone can begin the journey? Frankl indicates perhaps not, but he encountered the camps with a great deal of what we might call intellectual capital under his belt, and subsequently developed logotheray while treating we don't know what kinds of patients.
What kinds of broad social infrastructure would foster flourishing in a society? To what extent would its elements merely have to be preventative and responsive to forces that thwart flourishing: ensuring health; protecting families; preventing discrimination; making people safe; fostering resilience, etc. On the other hand, would there be roles in education, religion and other institutions for coaching people along their own journeys towards flourishing. Education and religion (to name my two favorites) offer the tools for thinking about life. Speaking at the utopian, well-resourced level, those institutions would seemingly arise spontaneously according to individual and sub-culture preferences.
But then, what extent does the WALL-E onboard spaceship community meet the criteria for flourishing? They're normally called "lazy" and fat-shamed (by our culture) but didn't they have perfect leisure? How do we know there weren't competing schools of philosophy or sophisticated media analysis, clubs of all sorts, and who knows what else flourishing below decks? And if there weren't, would that mean humans are doomed to degenerate if they are not goaded and prodded into exploring their higher natures?
I'm guessing that some high schools must offer something like "history of Western thinking", and if they don't, they should. Juniors and seniors would be capable of going on such an odyssey. As for questions like "what makes life meaningful?", I have no idea where that might start. Since young children are in Piaget's pre-operational stage or concrete operational stage, I think such an abstract question as ours would probably fly right over most of their heads. I'm thinking middle school would be an appropriate place to start such discussions. If you're a "believer" in Meyers-Briggs typology, roughly 80% of the population would fall under the aegis of the "Guardians" or "Artisans", and both of those types tend to be more concrete than abstract thinkers, even as adults. I think there's some merit to MB, so it helps convince me that middle school would be the appropriate place to start.
You pose many interesting questions, but I'm only going to address two of them.
First I'll speak to the question "under what external circumstances can and do humans search for "meaning in life"? To that I can respond that I've known kids who've grown up in adverse circumstances, for example, in the local housing projects where drugs, violence, and "broken" families are ubiquitous, and yet these children have learned to thrive despite many obstacles set against them. 2 of them were often homeless during their high school years. And yet they learned to make meaning with their lives and then thrive as a result. These kids were unwittingly following in the footsteps of the Stoics; these kids focused on what was within their control to make their lives better, and they often thrived in the face of hardship as a result. Not everyone can do this, as everyone's circumstances are different, but I've certainly seen it be done by people facing some truly adverse life situations.
Next, you ask what kinds of broad social infrastructure would foster flourishing in a society? We know that strong families and strong schools (especially public schools) are key. Brink has opined before about the importance of religious organizations (churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc.) in helping communities flourish. Of course, many liberal Christian and Jewish denominations are hemorrhaging members, as many folks with lots of formal education, as well as younger people, are leaving organized religions. Let's not forget the growing number of atheists and agnostics. Religious groups aren't a likely fit for them, so those other groups probably have to look a bit harder than their religious neighbors do when trying to find a community that welcomes them.
There are also all manner of civil society groups people can join, and they can also create their own communities should they find that no one's addressed their need. That said, while I know many people who volunteer their time for different causes, I'm not sure how much stock I put in this since many of us are "bowling alone" (https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/1982130849/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KGRX5APK5KQ6&keywords=bowling+alone&qid=1687382277&sprefix=bowling+alone%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1). People actually have to want to get together and work on some common project, and since the pandemic started, I've anecdotally noticed fewer people being interested in activities outside the home other than work. So that's a challenge.
Challenges galore! Good thing we're all in this together!
What role, what responsibility, does the consumer play in this economic system? What would the Pagan philosophers have to say about our culture? What does rational thought and reason say about our system, our culture? Ask Abraham or Jesus or the Buddha to take a gander at our system. Ask
Augustine. and his theory of "free-will" to explain our faults. This ain't rocket science folks. Our systemic failures all have their start and stop with the individual. Ask Dante where he might locate the consumer in the Inferno. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" "Here" is the world of free-markets and the consumer. The consumer is the polar opposite of the ascetic monk. The individual consumer has no limits placed on his desires. It is the job of the seller, the supplier, to satisfy the desires of the consumer, the end user of the product. We all participate in a system where "greed is good." It is a snake that eats its own tail. We, the individual, have failed democracy in our free-market, capitalist, consumer economy. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"
"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
We have been "looking for love in all the wrong places." We won't find it on Fox News, MSNBC, the internet, or from the mouth of a politician. They encourage our denial. They give us excuses to deny our responsibility to ourselves . We have yet to begin our journey. We have yet to feel the desperation Dante felt. Charon awaits us. Dante's story is our story. It has been acted out again and again throughout history. You can't return from hell with its wisdom if you don't first pass under the gate where there is no hope. We ain't there yet.
I disagree that systemic failures start and stop with individuals (but yes: this has been mostly ignored by Abraham, Jesus and the Buddha, although I think Paul had a practical inkling about how ungovernable even small groups could become.) Culture arises from humanity's evolved collective institutions—in other words, its vast systems: cultural, governmental, political, ideological etc.
Government systems are fueled by competing internal motivations, the primary one (like all human systems) being to survive, but then come the departments' internal functions, the individual motivations of the employees (they want to keep their jobs but they are also dedicated to health, or defense, or fair employment, or efficient buses or whatever.) Government thus needs its many subcultures to operate: military mindsets, public health mindsets, pro-business, altruistic, etc. Each of those subcultures is extremely difficult to swing around if it gets out of hand.
Private enterprises are likewise hemmed in by stockholders, competition and survival. And as for politics, people can be manipulated by individuals, but there are also the collective decisions of elected officials across the country, balancing having the power to do something vs. staying in office long enough to do it.
Individual commitment and action won't do the trick and never have (except maybe for revolutions, and how do those usually turn out.) We need to figure out how to nudge society's massive institutions by pitting one against another in the direction of global well-being. (Just one example: market forces are currently favoring sustainable energy sources, but the feds are also providing incentives for to bring manufacturing of sustainable technology back to our shores.)
The examples of the founders of our great religions, Augustine and Dante are aimed at individual virtue. The question is, how can cultural institutions arise that are capable of embodying **systemically** the kinds of ideals that guide our individual lives. It would be a kind of bootstrap situation if it weren't for external forces like war, famine, pestilence and drought: we need "hearts and minds" to change our systems, but our systems have to change before our hearts and minds do.
You appear to be a "trickle-down" anthropologist while I'm more Jeffersonian, or Epictetus.
"The question is, how can cultural institutions arise that are capable of embodying **systemically** the kinds of ideals that guide our individual lives. " And so, it seems, that all the religions and all the philosophies contributed have been failures. Maybe the allegory of the resurrection which depicts death before rebirth holds truth. History seems to hold that truth. No Empire wanted to die so it could be reborn. Jesus didn't want to die so he could be reborn. "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"
Brink, you threw me for a loop here: "It’s now generally accepted that the average welfare of human beings declined as a result of the switch to a sedentary farming life: people had to work harder for less food and poorer health, and furthermore were subjected to burdensome and demeaning structures of oppression."
My understanding is, and perhaps you were referring to, the rise of the agricultural civilization which often extracted the surplus of food for elites. Perhaps the common people were worse off relative to hunter-gatherers (I am not sure about that), but agriculture was a necessary step toward industrialization as it freed some people from the farms, enabled them to specialize, move to cities, and exchange ideas faster.
My understanding is that current evidence shows that hunter gatherers were generally better fed than peasants (they were taller) and that they probably had to work less hard. But faced with that bullet, I'll bite it without hesitation: the huge growth in population, and the revolutionary surge in technology and social organization, make the Agricultural Revolution very much worth celebrating.
Thanks Brink for another intelligent and thoughtful essay. Your gift of distilling and disentangling complex and timeless notions is remarkable and no doubt reflects much hard work on your part.
I've been following your posts with particular enthusiasm since Part I - An Exercise in Definite Optimism. In a time of dark shifts toward illiberalism, anger, and folly, I am profoundly thankful for your vision. It speaks to me; it is compassionate, complex, and intellectually serious. Yours is a voice of urgent wisdom that I hope breaks through the cacophony of current discourse. Enjoy your break.
This was really thoughtful and honest. Thank you Brink. You might be interested in the views contemporary philosophers sometimes call "neo-aristotelian." On these views, flourishing for an individual organism is excellence — doing the characteristic things that members of the kind do, and doing them well. Virtue was the word Aristotle used to described what that biological flourishing consists in for us rational animals.
Focusing more on virtue rather than preference-satisfaction as the thing that constitutes flourishing could help to avoid some of the individual-collective problems you point out. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote a bit about this too in his classic "After Virtue" and the communitarian strain in political philosophy that it helped spawn remains an important intellectual challenge to classical liberalism.
Mr. Lindsey....
I am grateful for your "project"....the creation of this series.
Rex McDaniel
“It is not enough to cheer progress while ignoring the social disintegration plaguing ordinary people outside the elite. And it is obtuse to stand against suffering while dismissing or actively opposing scientific and technological progress. We must prioritize inclusion because, for most people most of the time, the perennial problems of avoiding suffering and seeking belonging are paramount. And we must prioritize dynamism because of our reverence for the best that lies within us — our capacity to explore and experiment and create, our endless curiosity, our drive to reconnect to the cosmos through greater understanding — and because, in the long run, facilitating the flourishing of creators and innovators gives all of us our best chance for a better life.” Outstanding summary, Geary. It would be positively brilliant if translated into a more accessible language for a broader audience.
I've always found it helpful to think of human flourishing in terms of probability theory, game theory and knot theory.