Immerse In Happy Ever After: Escaping Narrative Traps About How To Live By Paul Dolan Offered As Printed Matter

sind gängige Narrative für ein perfektes Leben
Du musst viel Geld verdienen, heiraten, Kinder zeugen usw,
Doch was sagen echte Studien darüber Sind diese Etappen im Leben eines Menschen wirkliche GlücklichMacher Selbstverständlich nicht!
Dieses Buch zeigt vielmehr, dass man sein Leben so führen sollte, wie man es selbst für richtig hält und nicht auf die Art und Weise wie es die Gesellschaft von einem erfordert.

Falters in places, but Dolan does a good job of using available research to show why unquestioning adherence to certain narratives of what will make us happy he looks at wealth, success, marriage and kids, altruism undermines our happiness and makes sure we're never satisfied with what we have.


Some surprising challenges in here to received wisdom higher education doesn't make you any happier, single women without children are the happiest subgroup of the population, and selfinterested altruism can be more impactful than selfless giving.
It is a source of immense frustration to many social scientists that people rarely do what those scientists think they should, They have come up with lots of theories as to why people do things they shouldnt, The most famous is Karl Marxs notion of False consciousness, which held that “members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their genuine interests within the social relations of production under capitalism.
” In other words, workers would all be Marxists if only they werent duped by the bourgeoisie, Thankfully they had Marx to tell them what they really needed,

A more recent attempt comes from Paul Dolan, a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, In his recent book Happy Ever After: A Radical New Approach to Living Well, Dolan sets out to explain, like Marx, why people do things he thinks they shouldnt.


Take the famous Easterlin Paradox, for example, Based on data for incomes over time and surveys of selfreported happiness, this finds that happiness does not trend upward as income continues to grow.
If we are poor, more money makes us much happier, but as we get richer the extra happiness brought by each extra dollar declines, eventually becoming negative in some tellings.
If this is true, why do people keep on pushing to earn more money when it wont make them any happier

Dolan argues that it is because we are slaves to “social narratives” that is, cultural assumptions

and expectations that tell us how we ought to be have.
Among these is the idea that money brings happiness, Recognizing these social narratives and their flimsy foundations is the basis of Dolans radical new approach to living well,

But, often, Dolan seems to be simply trying to swap one social narrative for another, For example, he argues for higher taxes on the rich with the revenue raised to be redistributed to the poor, But, theoretically, if you are successful in breaking the hold of the social narrative and people stop flogging their guts out to earn more money, there will be no tax revenue to be redistributed.
The book falls several times into the same confusion many contemporary advocates of higher taxes on the rich do: are these higher rates supposed to fund greater transfer payments or deter people from becoming rich in the first place It is either one or the other, but it cannot be both.


And how empirically rigorous is all this Take the Easterlin Paradox, for example, the origin of this field, Investigating the relationship between subjective wellbeing and income, the economists Daniel W, Sacks, Betsey Stevenson, and Justin Wolfers found that:

within a given country, rich individuals are more satisfied with their lives than poorer individuals and we find that richer countries have significantly higher levels of average life satisfaction.
Studying the time series relationship between satisfaction and income, we find that economic growth is associated with increases in life satisfaction,

If true, trying to earn more money makes sense from a happiness perspective, It is a reasonably logical thing to do, We do not need to concoct the specter of “social narratives” to explain why people do it anymore than Marx needed to invent false consciousness to explain why impoverished workers like consumer goods.


Dolan implies that higher taxes on the rich, used to fund expanded transfer payments, would make society happier, But, looking at the relationship over time between government spending and selfreported happiness, economists Helen Johns and Paul Ormerod find that:

Public expenditure, whether represented by absolute levels or growth rates, is not correlated over time with happiness.
After allowing for inflation, betweenandpublic spending in the USA almost doubled, In Britain, it rose byper cent, Yet in both countries recorded happiness was a mereper cent higher,

Nor do they find any relationship between selfreported happiness and income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient,

This is not to suggest that Dolan is simply playing to a progressive gallery, One of the narratives he has in his sights is that why people give to charity is more important than that they do, Another is that we should prioritize our health above anything else, Instead, Dolan rightly sees that there are trade offs, that extra health is bought at a cost, say, never pigging out on ice cream ever again.
That cost, too, brings benefits if you like ice cream, so all a fixation on health means is trading one set of benefits for another.
In the context of Covidand policy making, this is admirably brave,

There is a lot of value to be had from the books summary of various pieces of research: I learned that darker rooms are more conducive to creativity than brighter rooms.
Happy Ever After is a rewarding read, if not a convincing one, Можливо освіта і здоровя не корелюють із відчуттям щастя. Але вони точно вносять свій вклад у зростання благополуччя і соціального капіталу, хоча автор на це не звернув увагу. Dolan writes about how the “dominant social narratives” restrict our idea of what we have to do with our lives, and suggests that sometimes happiness is to be found outside of them.
His topics include education, wealth, marriage and children, Some of the statistics he quotes are truly arresting, e, g. “twice as many people in the US compared to the UK are seemingly willing to be miserable in order to be wealthy, ” “Social narratives can trap us, and those around us, We will often fail to notice them, and even when we do we will find it really hard to accept that the narratives weve heard since childhood can be the source of widespread misery.
. . we need to look past our preconceived ideas about what a good life should like like and consider how these ideas play out in practice”

Paul Dolan breaks down the evidence behindsocial narratives were told will bring us happiness wealth, success, education, marriage, monogamy, children, altruism, health and free will and challenges us to question whether we would prefer to obtain the standard set by these narratives or actually be happy.
In a lot of cases the evidence doesnt support these narratives, or is mixed, and this gives us permission to think about creating a life with a little more space from crushing external pressures as a singleyear old woman the children narrative is looming large.
. . !. I mostly enjoyed it pop science on human behaviours focusing on and challenging 'traditional' life goals and the hierarchies around them,
The author is an authentic working class voice and also discusses the impact of social class and percieved success which is always a win.
I think perhaps a look into how social class when linked to other discriminating characteristics such as sex, gender or race would have provided an extra emphasis!
Didnt agree with all of it but it did challenge thinking! Dolan allegedly misunderstood the American Time Use Survey.
Women reported lower life satisfaction when marked with "spouse absent", This didn't mean that their husband was out of the room, as Dolan thought, it meant the husband was out of the household entirely,

Vox cites further complaints here: sitelink vox. com/futureperfect/
اين كتاب از ٩ فصل تشكيل شده است و هر فصل با سوالي آغاز شده و نويسنده با به چالش كشيدن ذهن ما بحث را شروع ميكند
مثلا فصل ثروت با اين سوال آغاز ميشود:
كدام زندگي را انتخاب ميكنيد:
١: شما ثروتمند هستيد اغلب احساس بدبختي ميكنيد
٢: شما ثروتمند نيستيد به ندرت احساس بدبختي ميكنيد
,
نويسنده اين سوال را در مورد مباحث متنوعي از جمله ثروتتحصيلات موفقيت ازدواج فرزند آزادي سلامتي و غيره پرسيده و نتايج نظر سنجي هاي خود را نيزدر انتهاي هر فصل آورده است.
موضوع اصلي اين كتاب در مورد " به قدر كفايت بودن" برخي چيزهاست و اينكه بسياري از مواردي كه براي حس خوشبختي ضروري ميدانيم ارتباط چنداني با آن ندارند.
.
قسمتي از كتاب:
هر چه مردم با رويكرد به قدر كفايت بيشتر قانع شوند بيشتر احتمال دارد موادمصرفي خود را محدود كنند و توزيع مناسب منابع را از سنگيني سمت ثروتمندان به سمت تهيدستان بكشانند. در گذشته سياره زمين پنج بار دستخوش تغيير شده است و تنوع حيات تغيير كرده است. احتمال انقراض انسان خردمند نيز وجود دارد واين احتمال در صورتي كاهش مي يابد كه بتوانيم از افتادن در اين تله دوري كنيم كه ثروت موفقيت تحصيل رشد و مصرف بيشتر به خوشبختي بيشتر مي انجامد. .