The Influence of a Friend

In Sunday School this past Sunday we discussed some stories from the beginning of the Book of Judges. While discussing the story of Deborah, we talked about the influence and importance of friends. We all know how much of an effect our friends have on us. I began thinking about the friends I've had. I then realized that two of the best decisions in my life were with respect to the friends I chose.

Sometime around the age of 14 I changed the friends I spent most of my time with because they were having quite a negative effect on me. Then, when I returned to BYU last January, I sought out friends who would help me maintain a level of spirituality most similar to what I had while on my mission in Chile. They changed me in a lot of ways, entirely for the better. And most of all, if it hadn't been for that, my wife and I would never have started dating.

After writing those thoughts down in a notebook, I remembered a study which came out about 18 months ago. It found that happiness was contagious up to three degrees of separation (a friend of a friend of a friend) over long periods of time.

A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographical separation.

On a side note, it is interesting to note that in this study happy coresident spouses only increased someone's possibility of becoming happy by 8%, compared to 34% by a next door neighbor. We must be really disconnected from our spouses in this country. Perhaps that sheds more light on high divorce rates.

I like the following quote which The Washington Post shared in their story:

"For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product," said Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who co-authored the study. "But our work shows that whether a friend's friend is happy has more influence than a $5,000 raise. So at a time when we're facing such economic difficulties, the message could be, 'Hang in there. You still have your friends and family, and these are the people to rely on to be happy.'"

What Makes People Happy?

CNN has a religion blog which recently had an entry titled What Makes People Happy?. They asked five "faith leaders" to answer that question.

The first two, an expert in mind-body healing and a humanist chaplain, agreed that happiness comes from helping others. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. The rabbi agreed too, but he also added, "Happiness results from the fullest utilization of your talent." When I'm slacking, I certainly don't feel as happy as I normally do. I'm sure that's one reason why I'm much happier now than I was in High School.

Two Christian pastors responded and both made a distinction between happiness due to external circumstances and long-lasting happiness which comes from the soul. I agree with those distinctions. I have never been happier in my life, but I didn't feel happy when I read and saw pictures of the plane that crashed in India.

Jonathan Falwell, a Baptist pastor from Lynchburg, Virginia, continues, "The happiness that springs forth from the heart and soul is the only path to true satisfaction in life. And I believe that kind of happiness is found through a personal relationship with God accomplished through the sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus Christ. He is the source of soul satisfaction." That is where I have found the most happiness. Faith in Christ rings true with something deep in my soul. The closer I grow to God, the more I feel at home, and the happier I am.

What makes you happy?

Thoughts on Sam Harris's TED Talk

Almost two months ago I read an article on CNN about Sam Harris. It linked to a talk he gave at a TED conference. He spoke about how science can answer the most important questions in life, moral questions, questions about human wellbeing and human suffering. Shockingly, I agreed with much of what he said.

If questions affect human wellbeing then they do have answers, whether or not we can find them. And just admitting this -- just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish -- will change the way we talk about morality, and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future. ...

Whenever we are talking about facts, certain opinions must be excluded. ... How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius even? How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count? How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering? Does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering? No. How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human wellbeing?

So, this, I think, is what the world needs now. It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing, and morality relates to that domain of facts. It is possible for individuals, and even for whole cultures to care about the wrong things: Which is to say that it's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discourse about morality. ...

We live in a world filled with destructive technology, and this technology can not be uninvented, it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. It seems to me therefore, patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human wellbeing, than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes. We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers. Thank you very much.

I agree that questions of morality are some of “the most important questions in human life,” and that they do have answers. I also agree that moral expertise exists, and therefore certain opinions on morality are better than others. And I accept that science can provide the answers to some of these questions, but even Sam Harris admitted that science is not guaranteed to provide all of the answers. If a system of morality does exist, would it make sense for the source of knowledge on such a matter to be incomplete?

Sam Harris's spectrum of morality is based on human wellbeing and human suffering. The correct answers to moral questions promote wellbeing, and incorrect answers cause suffering. However, according to science, why do we care about the wellbeing of others? I do not mean to imply that I don't care, or that I see no reason to care, just that I don't know anyone who cares because science told them it was morally correct.