"Three Big Things" (and one huge misreading)

Beware formulae. And beware statements like: [Nietzsche said] "that there is no essence to life, so the secret is to have fun and not worry too much about it." !!

Arthur’s people, and mine

Arthur has come in for some harsh bashing lately, especially in The New Yorker. It’s not all undeserved. But I’m looking forward to his Vandy commencement and residency this year (a dear family friend is graduating) and appreciate his past contributions to happiness scholarship (and popularizing). And I share his positive feeling for ambitious and aspirational students. 

 “I was born to be a college professor and, in fact, have been on campuses since I was a baby: My dad was a professor. His dad, too. For me, academia is the family business, and mine as well since I took my first professorship nearly thirty years ago. The research is interesting and rewarding, but even more, the students are my people—ambitious strivers just starting out on what promise to be terrific careers and lives. They give me energy because they always are so inspired by ideas, so purpose-driven, and so enthusiastic.” — The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness by Arthur C. Brooks

Arthur C. Brooks to join faculty at Vanderbilt

https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2026/04/23/professor-bestselling-author-arthur-c-brooks-to-join-faculty-at-vanderbilt/

Anthropic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Religion Really the Answer?

In a public statement of its intentions for its Claude chatbot, the artificial intelligence company Anthropic has said that it wants Claude to be “a genuinely good, wise and virtuous agent.” The company raised the moral stakes this month, when it announcedthat its latest A.I. model, Claude Mythos Preview, poses too great a cybersecurity threat to be widely released. Behind the scenes, Anthropic has been trying to shore up the ethical foundations of its products, working with Catholic clergy and consultingwith other prominent Christians to help foster Claude’s moral and spiritual development.

Anthropic’s intentions are admirable, but the project of drawing on religion to cultivate the ethical behavior of Claude (or any other chatbot) is likely to fail. Not because there isn’t moral wisdom in Scripture, sermons and theological treatises — texts that Claude has undoubtedly already scraped from the web and integrated — but because Claude is missing a crucial mechanism by which religion fosters moral growth: a body.

While Claude might have a mind (of sorts) that can process information, it cannot meditate, fast, prostrate itself in prayer, sing hymns in a congregation or participate in other aspects of the physical life of religion. And this makes all the difference: According to the scientific literature, it’s the practice of religion — not merely the believing in it — that brings about its characteristic benefits.

There is robust data, for example, linking religion to greater health and well-being. But that link is not strong for people who merely identify themselves as believers. It’s only when people also practice a faith — attend weekly services, pray or meditate at home — that religion’s benefits become pronounced: The more people “do” religion, the happier and healthier they tend to be...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/opinion/ai-religion-morality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

We who “do” humanism are pretty happy & healthy too, btw.

This review will not make Arthur Brooks happy

How to Measure the Good Life

… Brooks's shift toward happiness was canny, and strategically timed: well-being, once the province of philosophers, had been thoroughly usurped by podcasters, data scientists, and influencers by the time he got his hands on it. Hellenistic thinkers, such as the Stoics, had once proposed, in the words of the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, that "philosophy heals human diseases, diseases produced by false beliefs"—in other words, that by understanding and living in accordance with our nature we could achieve eudaemonia, which translates roughly to "flourishing." Earlier thinkers, most famously Aristotle, had gone so far as to propose that eudaemonia was an inherently communal accomplishment, one that could only take root in the proper social and political context. But the social psychologists who catapulted to prominence in the early two-thousands were less interested in the richer concept of eudaemonia and more interested in a thinner, hollower, and vastly more individualistic enterprise of happiness, of simply feeling good. In 2006, two books by social psychologists—Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" and Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis"—set the latest wave of happiness studies in motion. But the written word was never the ideal medium for their particular message, and by 2026 innumerable podcasts had sprung up like mushrooms after a squall. There was "The Happiness Lab," with Dr. Laurie Santos; there was "10% Happier," with Dan Harris; and, inevitably, there was "Office Hours," with Arthur Brooks.

These days, the C.E.O. of Brooks, Inc., appears to be thriving. He has acquired a jaunty wardrobe of loud suits and colorful pocket squares, and he exudes an avuncular charisma in videos he posts on YouTube. With the brisk, competent manner of a doctor prescribing medication, he assures his audience that his six-step morning "protocol" helps him manage "the negative side" of his "affect profile," and expounds on "the science behind being good at leisure." He has so thoroughly expunged his image of any unsavory political taint that he has co-authored a self-help book, "Build the Life You Want" (2023), with Oprah—and, as he never tires of informing his readers, paid a number of visits to the Dalai Lama. As of January, 2026, he had joined CBS News as a contributor and become a columnist at the anti-woke outlet The Free Press. His metamorphosis into social scientist-cum-sage appears to be complete.

In "The Meaning of Your Life," he no longer trumpets free markets, extolls entrepreneurs, or praises work as "a blessing," as he did in earlier books. Now he claims that the ambitious professionals he calls "young strivers" lead superficial and unfulfilling lives. What they lack, in his view, is "the one thing that can never be simulated: meaning."

…

Becca Rothfeld https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/06/the-meaning-of-your-life-arthur-c-brooks-book-review
e

I Am An American Philosopher: Phil Oliver – Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

https://american-philosophy.org/i-am-an-american-philosopher-interview-series/i-am-an-american-philosopher-phil-oliver/

Why it pays to be bored

Arthur Brooks

https://youtu.be/ljVfXU45WGM?si=OeKVbU2Q0y5Ck6cD

NYTimes: Tell Us About How You Pursue Happiness

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/pursuit-of-happiness.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

What does your pursuit of happiness look like?*Whether it’s a club or daily activity or a recent achievement, we want to her about how this search is playing out for you.

    A day of happy pursuit begins for me with a mug of strong coffee and any good book (literary fiction, poetry, history, philosophy, science) offering perspective on life AND distance from the current national and geo-political morass. Then a bit of journaling, followed by a neighborhood walk with the dogs. Then the commute to school (I teach philosophy at Middle Tennessee State University). Class begins with a glance at this day in history (onthisday.com), and then at NYTimes.com. Engaging constructively with students is a big part of my pursuit of happiness, as is quality family time with my wife of nearly 33 years and adult daughter and son-in-law. Watching baseball, promoting American philosophy (I'm president of the William James Society, wjsociety.org), and enjoying friends also contribute to my happiness.

Do you feel like this pursuit is something you are able to engage in? Are there restrictions or roadblocks that you feel exist for you?* 

    I refuse to let the woes of the world and the depravity of present politics and governance deprive me and my family and friends of our one opportunity in this life to pursue happiness... especially at this later stage of life.* Of course it is possible to envision "roadblocks" but we'll cross those when we must. Meanwhile, each dawn of day is a fresh opportunity to flourish in our finite and fleeting lives. We must never cease to marvel at the gift of life, and to make of it all that we can.

...





...

a marvelously rich panorama

"I would not call myself happy--no man can be quite happy in the midst of the poverty and suffering that still survive about him today; but I am content, and inexpressibly grateful.

Where, in the last resort, does my treasure lie?--in everything. A man should have many irons in the fire; he should not let his happiness be bound up entirely with his children, or his fame, or his prosperity, or even his health; but he should be able to find nourishment for his content in any one of these, even if all the rest are taken away.

My last resort, I think, would be Nature herself; shorn of all other gifts and goods, I should find, I hope, sufficient courage for existence in any mood of field and sky, or, shorn of sight, in some concourse of sweet sounds, or some poet's memory of a day that smiled. All in all, experience is a marvelously rich panorama, from which any sense should be able to draw sustenance for living."

— On the Meaning of Life by Will Durant
https://a.co/01SShLe1

Already “justified”

The happiest people after 70 aren't the ones who found purpose — they're the ones who stopped demanding that every day justify itself, and that permission to exist without producing, achieving, or proving was the thing their happiness was waiting behind the entire time.

https://www.threads.com/@evavila99/post/DVhhu7rk50d?xmt=AQF0A4_OgjNNMFNpRtxQYxsljFjCS6mshEoqDifzDBHNH63B3uz_if9ZeqDQUXsp8h1WIjw&slof=1

Now is Better | Stefan Sagmeister | TEDxPorto

https://youtu.be/Ox6JOa8lJIQ?si=HDkJ_0SZJdyp6KBE

The Happy Show - MOCA LA... Novus TV

Fun and the importance of play

"Anthony Clare and I were planning to write a book together about happiness, but then he died. (There is quite a lot of death in the pages that follow, but don't let it get you down. As Shakespeare reminds us: All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.') This book includes all that I learnt from Anthony Clare and what I have discovered since. And what are my credentials? They don't amount to much. I am a former European Monopoly Champion and the founder of the National Scrabble Championships. I have been interested in 'fun' and the importance of play and playfulness for a long time. I am a former chairman and now vice-president of the National Playing Fields Association—which is how I came to meet the Duke of Edinburgh. (There is a word of advice from him in here, too.) Play, sport and recreation contribute to happiness, for sure."

— The 7 Secrets of Happiness: A Reluctant Optimist's Journey by Gyles Brandreth

A Reluctant Optimist's Journey by Gyles Brandreth
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074PHJSTW?ref_=quick_view_ref_tag

Pollan's happy place

 Michael Pollan's new book on consciousness, A World Appears, was released Tuesday. He announced it on Substack.* I was pleased to be able to express there my appreciation and gratitude:

Enjoyed the opening chapter on my commute from Nashville to Murfreesboro this morning. Excellent! And may I offer a much-belated thanks, Michael, for your having taken the time back in '99 [or maybe a bit earlier] to respond with constructive comments to the unsolicited draft chapter of my Vanderbilt dissertation on William James and consciousness. It was such a generous act on your part, and came for me at the most opportune moment. And now I'm president of the William James Society (wjsociety.org) - thanks in no small part to your kind encouragement.

That's not idle flattery. Michael's positive reinforcement was a shot in the arm at a time when I needed one. We corresponded after the publication of his second book, A Place of My Own, and discovered our mutual interest in the permeable boundaries of nature and culture (and of John Dewey's exploration thereof). I'm still envious of Michael's "place":

 

How to Stop Ruminating and Reclaim Your Mind | Michael Pollan

*https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelpollan/p/a-world-appears-appears?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

“You must not give up on being happy”

She Survived Mass Rape. Now, She's Speaking Out to Build a Better Future.

…Her story, perhaps, offers victims a different path for survival. Her message, she says, is not that they can forget everything, but "you can choose what to do with it all." The title of her book, in French, is "The Joy of Life."
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/gisele-pelicot-interview-hymn-to-life.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Conditions

"To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set your own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances, instead of being conditioned by them."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Epicureans knew this too

"We've all experienced it: that Sunday evening moment when you emerge from an hour of phone scrolling with nothing to show for it but a vague hollow feeling. Not quite anxiety, not quite sadness—just the sense that something essential is missing. This feeling, paradoxically, defines our era of unprecedented abundance.

We live with more information, entertainment, and choices than any generation in history. Yet loneliness, anxiety, and existential confusion continue to rise. The question pressing on so many minds isn't "How do I get more?" but rather "What's it all for?" The convergence of ancient Buddhist wisdom and contemporary psychological research offers surprising—and surprisingly similar—answers

What Eight Decades of Research Reveals

Since 1938, Harvard researchers have tracked 724 individuals through their entire adult lives, conducting thousands of interviews and hundreds of medical assessments. Now continuing with their descendants, the Harvard Study of Adult Development represents the longest scientific investigation of happiness ever conducted. After 85 years, the conclusion is remarkably straightforward: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Not wealth, not fame, not achievement—the quality of our connections with others predicts both physical and mental wellbeing as we age.

This finding would have resonated deeply with the Buddha, who identified tanha—the endless craving and reaching toward the next thing—as the root of human suffering 2,500 years ago. Without research grants or brain scans, he recognized our fundamental confusion about where happiness actually resides…"

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertwaldinger/p/beyond-the-scroll?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Humanism and the Great Conversation

From David Brooks's farewell column:

...Trump is that rare creature, a philistine who understands the power of culture. He put professional wrestlers onstage at the last Republican convention for a reason: to lift up a certain masculine ideal. He's taken over the Kennedy Center for a reason: to tell a certain national narrative. Unfortunately, the culture he champions, because it is built upon domination, is a dehumanizing culture.

True humanism, by contrast, is the antidote to nihilism. Humanism is anything that upholds the dignity of each person. Antigone trying to bury her brother to preserve the family honor, Lincoln rebinding the nation in his second Inaugural Address, Martin Luther King Jr. writing that letter from the Birmingham jail — those are examples of humanism. Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs singing "Fast Car" at the Grammys — that's humanism. These are examples of people trying to inspire moral motivations, pursue justice and move people to become better versions of themselves.

Humanism comes in many flavors: secular humanism, Christian humanism, Jewish humanism and so on. It is any endeavor that deepens our understanding of the human heart, any effort to realize eternal spiritual values in our own time and circumstances, any gesture that makes other people feel seen, heard and respected. Sometimes it feels as if all of society is a vast battleground between the forces of dehumanization on the one side — rabid partisanship, social media, porn, bigotry — and the beleaguered forces of humanization on the other.

If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.

 

One of the most exciting things in American life today is that a humanistic renaissance is already happening on university campuses. Trump has been terrible for the universities, but also perversely wonderful. Amid all the destruction, he's provoked university leaders into doing some rethinking. Maybe things have gotten too preprofessional; maybe colleges have become too monoculturally progressive; maybe universities have spent so much effort serving the private interests of students that they have unwittingly neglected the public good. I'm now seeing changes on campuses across America, from community colleges to state schools to the Ivies. The changes are coming in four buckets: First, a profusion of courses and programs that try to nurture character development and moral formation. Second, courses and programs on citizenship training and civic thought. Third, programs to help people learn to reason across difference. Fourth, courses that give students practical advice on how to lead a flourishing life...

 

nyt

NYTimes: The Peculiar Magic of a Winter Snowstorm

Nice meditation on winter, snow, and spirit from our Fall Lyceum (and Happiness class) guest Megan Craig.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/opinion/winter-snow-storm.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Staff Meetings

On our conference room bulletin board…

The Mattering Map

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, The Mattering Instinct: how our deepest longing drives us and divides us

Happy aging

The 7 factors that most reliably predict happiness and health as we age are:

• Don't smoke
• Limit alcohol
• Eat well
• Exercise regularly
• Keep learning and stay mentally curious
• Have a practiced way to deal with suffering
• Love

Arthur Brooks
https://www.threads.com/@arthurcbrooks/post/DTq49UUElNg?xmt=AQF0LSQF0pZk6SVYuA1azex4cPeaoyp1ge5Ghj8azwu113qBM2KpMMZNL-UWDhqw7vxNMxCd&slof=1

Spotted at Parnassus

Just takes one.

A proposal

Ihave a proposal to make: 2026 should be the year that you spend more time doing what you want. The new year should be the moment we commit to dedicating more of our finite hours on the planet to things we genuinely, deeply enjoy doing – to the activities that seize our interest, and that make us feel vibrantly alive. This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life… Oliver Burkeman 

We’re #32

Americans like to boast that "we're No. 1." But a careful new study suggests that in quality of life, we rank No. 32. And we're slipping. This study should be a wake-up call. Nick Kristof

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/opinion/america-quality-of-life.html?unlocked_article_code

As Newsroom's Will McAvoy said…

Now or never

Ralph Waldo Emerson: there is no mythical future where you'll be a perfectly happy person; all we ever have is now...

"These roses under my window," Emerson writes in his 1841 essay, Self Reliance, "make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence...

"Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike.

"But man postpones, or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with a reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time."

https://www.threads.com/@philosophybreak/post/DTdUj9YDALS?xmt=AQF0pt6wi77Rylliq8_z5yWVQXtH5dtcpGjgtKL8Wl5tGhQ-yyQS7FfKTwdTiYlog6QCBQI&slof=1

Arthur Brooks’s 5 steps

Make a routine. Get physical. Get metaphysical. Live with your grandchildren. And never, ever go to a work dinner. Read all about the five small steps Arthur Brooks took to get happier.

https://www.thefp.com/p/arthur-brooks-five-steps-to-a-happy-life?link_source=ta_thread_link&taid=6967773de96061000177d381&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_source=threads

“strange in-between creatures”

"Our inability to live entirely in the present (like most animals do), combined with our inability to see very far into the future, makes us strange in-between creatures, neither beast nor prophet. Our amazing intelligence seems to have outstripped our instinct for survival. We plunder the earth, hoping that accumulating material surplus will make up for the profound, unfathomable thing that we have lost."
— Arundhati Roy, Listening to Grasshoppers; Field Notes on Democracy, 2009

On the Transitory Nature of Happiness and Why It Doesn't Matter

https://open.substack.com/pub/rebeccanewbergergoldstein/p/on-the-transitory-nature-of-happiness?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

Beyond happiness

The philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived life.

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/01/the-mattering-instinct-rebecca-newberger-goldstein-book-review/685536/?gift

Eat your ice cream, build your relationships…

And don't be a schmuck.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/dr-ezekiel-emanuel-eat-ice-cream-and-other-tips-for-a-long-and-healthy-life/

Seek wisdom

"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul."

— Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Inside the world’s first happiness museum

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0922rw5/inside-the-world-s-first-happiness-museum

Pluribus

Apparently this is a show about happiness. I haven't seen it.

"Why is Carol so unhappy? Well, first of all, she is created that way. Vince Gilligan deliberately set out to have a protagonist who is the "unhappiest person in the world". The brilliance is how he challenges many assumptions about happiness. People ask what made her unhappy, well here goes…"

https://www.threads.com/@calmrev/post/DTBrhjKEzgR?xmt=AQF0HE0LBvKf-gPTtxzD_lR2wgMSs4D0LRGqXodiKOHDkAby7odmJVxuFNQis2cVJLwSnjJE&slof=1

Happiness equals love

We're Living Through the Great Detachment

America is becoming more loveless: less dating, less marriage, less friendship, less patriotism. But love outside of self is what makes life meaningful.

"Happiness equals love — full stop." You don't have to commit to any single one of the attachments, even marriage, but if you want to flourish, you do have to prioritize loving attachments over individual autonomy, and over the past few generations, our culture has forgotten that core truth.

David Brooks

Happy in MN

Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota), a Central Division past president, discusses happiness and flourishing on MPR News. (audio) https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2025/12/17/what-does-it-really-mean-to-be-happy