Antidote: Oliver Burkeman (2011)

Positive thinking, Optimism, hankering over Self Esteem etc are all bunk, says Oliver Burkeman. 

They are no keys to everlasting happiness, he says. Sure they pep you up a bit and make you feel good ephemerally; but when the chips are really down and you are staring down the barrel, platitudes on Optimism and Positivity fall flat. And therafter, he says, it’s a downward spiral.

Burkeman suggests an alternate path to happiness in his ‘Antidote’; the book claiming to be a bracing detox for the self-help junkie’. It draws heavily from the Stoics, new age guru’s like Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts.
The path suggested is sometimes thought provoking; but is it something radical and off the clichéd path?

He starts off radically enough, with an alternative take on happiness:

Is happiness really a goal worth pursuing?

There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of ‘seeking happiness’ is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place? Religions have never placed much explicit emphasis on it, at least as far as this world is concerned; philosophers have certainly not been unanimous in endorsing it, either. And any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that evolution has little interest in your being happy, beyond trying to make sure that you’re not so listless or miserable that you lose the will to reproduce.

Interesting.

But the Author doesn’t pursue this thought. Happiness is a worthwhile goal, he decides. And the book is all about an attempt to chalk out a path to happiness. 

Stoics

He starts with the Stoics take on happiness.                                                               


Live virtuously in accordance with reason, said the Stoics.

This will lead to inner tranquility - ‘a state of mind, marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy’.

And how do you achieve tranquility? Not by strenuously chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one’s circumstances.

One way to do this, was by turning towards negative emotions and experiences; not shunning them, but examining them closely instead.

The Stoics say it is not people, situations, or events that make us sad, anxious, or angry. These external ‘events’  are not ‘negative’ in itself – In fact, nothing outside your own mind can properly be described as negative or positive at all.

As Shakespeare had Hamlet say ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.

The Stoics propose a radical methodology to deal with the possibility of things going wrong. Rather than struggling to avoid all thought of worst-case scenarios, they counsel: Just face it; stare it in the face.

They termed this methodology as ‘the premeditation of evils’.

By doing so, you will begin to savor things that you love. Thinking about the possibility of losing something you value shifts it from the backdrop of your life back to centre stage, where it can deliver pleasure once more.

Epictetus proposed that ‘Each time you kiss your child goodnight, you should specifically consider the possibility that he/she might die tomorrow.’

This, Epictetus says, will make you love your child all the more, while simultaneously reducing the shock should that awful eventuality ever come to pass.

But for all their rationality, the Stoics had their own idiosyncratic form of religious belief.
They held that the universe was God; that there was a grand plan, and that everything was happening for a reason.

‘Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul,’ says Marcus Aurelius. ‘Whatever happens at all, happens as it should.’

So when a Stoic asks you to live ‘according to reason’, it essentially meant acting in accordance with this ‘Universal Plan’.

If you however, are unwilling to accept that stuff happens for a reason or that there is a ‘Grand design’ behind it all, then things sort of come unhinged.

But not for Burkeman though. He has become a convert.

The author says that even if you cannot accept the Stoic notion of a ‘Grand Plan’, you could still accept that ‘Each one of us clearly has very little individual control over the universe.’

But then in his amplification, the author sinks further; from ‘little individual control’ to ‘no control’.

To quote: ’….We habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is. Even such personal matters as our health, our finances and our reputations are ultimately beyond our control; we can try to influence them, of course, but frequently things won’t go our way. And the behavior of other people is even further beyond our control.’

‘….In better times, it’s easy to forget how little we control: we can usually manage to convince ourselves that we attained the promotion at work or the new relationship, or the Nobel Prize, thanks solely to our own brilliance and effort. But unhappy times bring home the truth of the matter. Jobs are lost; plans go wrong; People die. If your strategy for happiness depends on bending circumstances to your will, this is terrible news’.

‘…Those things lie beyond the individual’s control; if you invest your happiness in them, you’re setting yourself up for a rude shock.’

Actually Burkeman lost me there. There is a contradiction in what he says.

The Stoics are consistent when they harp on ‘equanimity whatever be the circumstances’, because ‘it’s all part of a Grand Plan’ and things 'unfold the way they are for a reason.’ Akin to ‘Destiny’ or ‘Fate’ or ‘Karma’. No problem there.

But when Burkeman takes the high road and disagrees with the notion of a ‘Grand Design’, as he found the idea difficult to swallow as a ‘modern secular mind’, the entire philosophical edifice of the Stoics come crashing down.

If as Burkeman maintains ‘Stoically’, that individual efforts do not matter, then what is it that matters?

If there is no ‘Grand Design’ and stuff just happens, who decides what should happen?

If there is no Cosmic Agency out there, nobody to decide what is to happen in my life, what should unfold in my piffling existence on Earth, then why should anyone stop me from doing my two bit to improve my miserable existence?

Burkeman says individual effort matters little. But how do you decide that? How do you come to the conclusion that individual efforts do not matter? If there is no Cosmic Agency to decide how things should unfold, then who says my efforts do not matter?

Empirically speaking, it’s difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion. Burkeman may be right or he may be wrong. Individual efforts might or might not matter. But it makes more sense, in the absence of a ‘Cosmic Divinity’ or a ‘Heavenly Script Writer’(if you accept Burkeman’s postulate), to believe that what you do matters.

If there is really nothing out there, no Karma or destiny, all the more reason for you to chin up and do something about your life, isn’t it?

Maybe what you do is the only thing that matters or at best influences circumstances to your benefit.

Burkeman believes that your individual effort may come to naught and cause you grief if things don’t go your way. So he props up the Stoic theory to brace yourself against the pitfall of things going wrong.

Winning and losing, I believe, are simply the mundane ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of life and I do not see this as a case to decry individual effort here.

You put in effort. You win; then good, if not buckle up and carry on I guess.

Non-Attachment

Burkeman narrates his experiences at the ‘Insight Meditation Centre’ in Massachusetts, where he practices the Buddhist ‘Vipassana’ variant of meditation.

This involves attempts to observe the mind; to learn to view passing thoughts and feelings as if one were a spectator and not a participant. The aim is to achieve a kind of Non-Attachment; the mind is seen to be akin to the sky: the sky does not cling to good or bad weather conditions, the sky just is. Similarly the mind just is, with all kinds of thoughts and emotions flitting on it.

But why Non-Attachment at all?

What purpose does it serve?

In the Author’s words- ‘It’s not clear why the rest of us should want to emulate him (Budddhist monks). Attachment,…is the only thing that motivates anyone to accomplish anything worthwhile in the first place. If you weren’t attached to things being a certain way, rather than another way- and to feeling certain emotions, rather than others - why would you ever attempt to thrive professionally, to better your material circumstances, to raise children, or to change the world?’

Burkeman, interestingly connects Non-Attachment to avoiding procrastination and sees it as a rigorous practical way of accomplishing worthwhile activities:

'You are probably already much too familiar with the truth that most anti-procrastination advice just doesn’t work, or at least not for very long. Motivational books, tapes and seminars might leave you feeling briefly excited, but that feeling soon fades. Ambitious lists of goals and systems of rewards seem like a great idea when you construct them, but feel stale the next morning; inspiring mottos on posters and coffee-mugs swiftly lose their ability to inspire.’

‘…..The problem with all these motivational tips and tricks is that they aren’t really about how to get things done at all. They’re about how to feel in the mood for getting things done. ‘If we get the right emotion, we can get ourselves to do anything!’

‘…..The problem is that feeling like acting and actually acting are two different things. A person mired deep in procrastination might claim he is unable to work, but what he really means is that he is unable to make himself feel like working.’

‘…..Most motivational techniques are really designed to change how you feel. They’re built, in other words, on a form of attachment - on strengthening your investment in a specific kind of emotion.’

‘Sometimes, that can help. But sometimes you simply can’t make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you can act.
……The subtext is that if you can’t make yourself feel excited and pleased about getting down to work, then you can’t get down to work.’

‘Taking a Non-Attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realise that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated, or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it, you can note the procrastinatory feelings, and act anyway.’

‘It is illuminating to note, here, how the daily rituals and working routines of prolific authors and artists - people who really do get a lot done - very rarely include techniques for ‘getting motivated’ or ‘feeling inspired’. Quite the opposite: they tend to emphasise the mechanics of the working process, focusing not on generating the right mood, but on accomplishing certain physical actions, regardless of mood.’

‘….Rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motivation or inspiration happens to be present. They let people work alongside negative or positive emotions, instead of getting distracted by the effort of cultivating only positive ones.’
‘Inspiration is for amateurs’ the artist Chuck Close once famously observed. ‘The rest of us just show up and get to Work.’

So ‘Passion’, ‘Motivation’ and ‘Getting in to the mood’ etc are desirables to get going; but not mandatory.

Makes perfect sense. Just do it. Whatever it is that you want to do. And the world takes care of itself.

But where does that leave  Happiness? Does this attitude of ‘doing sans thinking’ leave room for your emotions? I think not.

Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle is quoted at length in the book. The basic premise of Tolle’s philosophy is akin to  Advaitic or Buddhist philosophy, i.e Quelling of the Ego.

‘When we identify with the inner chatter(of our mind)’,Tolle suggests, ‘when we come to think of it as ‘us’…..The sense of Self that we construct from identifying with our thoughts is what Tolle calls the ‘ego’. And by definition, living in the service of the ego can never make us happy.’

‘Why can the ego never bring happiness? Tolle’s argument here echoes the Stoics, who concluded that our judgments about the world are the source of our distress. But he takes things further, suggesting that these judgments, along with all our other thoughts, are what we take ourselves to be. We’re not only distressed by our thoughts; we imagine that we are those thoughts. The ego that results from this identification has a life of its own. It sustains itself through dissatisfaction – through the friction it creates against the present moment, by opposing itself to what’s happening, and by constantly projecting into the future, so that happiness is always some other time, never now.’

‘..The way out of this trap is not to stop thinking’ ‘…but to stop taking your thoughts to be you,to realise that ‘you are not your mind’.

So far so good.

Then Tolle sinks into Advaitic theory:

‘Sit like a cat at a mouse-hole, Tolle advises, ‘waiting to see what your next thought will be’. ‘When you listen to a thought,’ he  explains, ‘you are aware not only of the thought, but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self- behind or underneath the thought, as it were.’

The sceptic Burkeman does not buy this:
‘ …He(Tolle) seems to assume that when you stop identifying with your ego, you discover who you really are – that you discover your ‘deeper self’ or your ‘true Being’, which was hiding behind the fake self all along. But this kind of talk rightly makes more mainstream philosophers nervous. Just because you have succeeded in dismantling the conventional understanding of the self, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’ll find the ‘real’ one.’

Burkeman dismisses the core of Tolle’s philosophy but latches onto the underlying thought:
’….The optimism-focused, goal-fixated, positive-thinking approach to happiness is exactly the kind of thing the ego loves. Positive thinking is all about Identifying with your thoughts than disidentifying from them. And the ‘cult of optimism’ is about looking forward to a happy or successful future, thereby reinforcing the message that happiness belongs to some other time than now.

‘…Most humans are never fully present in the now, because ‘unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more ‘important’ than this one. But then
you miss your whole life, ‘which is never not now’.

What Eckhart Tolle expounds is ancient wisdom of the Orient.

But what if Eckhart’s theory of an ‘Inner Reality’ or ‘True Self’ is incorrect, and there is no underlying ‘Truth’? Are we simply a ‘bundle of perceptions’ as Hume puts it and is there no ‘deeper’,‘truer’ meaning to who or what we are?

Don’t know. No one does actually.

But to focus, in a limited sense, to the topic at hand of achieving happiness, it will be apparent that the core philosophy to happiness as suggested by philosophers down the ages, all hinge on some sort of ‘Inner Reality’. Whether it be the Stoics, Buddhists or Eckhart Tolle.

True, Burkeman derives important takeaways from each school of thought, maintaining his ‘modern sceptical mindset’. But is there something missing something here?

Is Happiness a Worthwhile Goal?

Burkeman got it right initially, to my mind. That ‘Evolution has little interest in your being happy’.

As a ‘Modern Secularist’, Burkeman would obviously be at ease with the Evolution theory. So why doesn’t he simply focus on cues provided by the Science of Evolution on Man’s true nature?

As a ‘Sceptic’, he should have focused on cold hard science facts instead of nebulous theories.


Consider what we know:

Man is today at the pinnacle of the evolutionary curve and have remained the dominant species for long. In that sense, ‘Man’ and not the ‘Lion’ as we romantically presume, is the true ‘the King of the Jungle’. Can any other species stop our march?

How have we maintained our dominance over other species?

We are dominant because Evolution has wired us differently.

Animals are wired to satisfy their ‘Physiological urges’ only. So an animal will be content to just eat, breed, sleep throughout its life; 

Just survive-that’s all.

Man is wired differently however.

Apart from Physiological urges, he has ‘Psychological urges’ too.

This ‘Psychological Wiring’ is what makes Man unique. It sets us apart from animals.

The base state of Man on account of this ‘Psychological wiring’ is ‘Restlessness’.

Man is a ‘Restless’ Animal.

Observe even a newly born baby and the truth is evident.

Man is born ‘Restless’ and remains so till the day he dies.

This is Man’s true nature. Of course the alternate theories expounded in the Orient, by Stoics or Guru’s like Eckhart Tolle talk of an ‘Inner Reality’ and do not see man as just another animal. 
But ‘Modern Secularists’ like Burkeman surely would see Man as just another animal trying to survive.

Unlike what the Buddha propounded- Desire is not the root cause of misery.

We are ‘Restless’ or ‘Miserable’ by nature, and hence we ‘desire’ to get rid of  ‘Restlessness’ or ‘Misery’.

And there is no ‘Nirvana’ or escaping being a ‘Restless human’ till the day you die.

What does ‘Restlessness’ make a Man do? Well, a Man seeks Peace. Till the day he dies. That is his nature. Period.

And Man will do anything to get rid of this ‘Restlessness’ or ‘Misery’.

Maybe create beautiful music, make great works of art, build bridges, fight wars, give to charity, become an Eckhart Tolle…

To paraphrase Schopenhauer:
“Pain(Restlessness) is its basic stimulus and reality(of life), and pleasure is merely a negative cessation of pain”.

Hence the crux:

There is no ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’. Nature does not recognize ‘Happiness’ or ‘Sadness’. Only the ‘Restlessness’ in you, is the reality.

Religions which propagate 'eternal happiness' are talking of a state which is not ‘human’.

For one, it is not possible to be eternally happy (or sad for that matter). Secondly it is not desirable also.

I suspect the day we are able to rid ourselves of this ‘bug’ of ‘Restlessness’, we will lose our evolutionary edge or at the very least as Kant says:

‘Men might …. lead an Arcadian shepherd life in complete harmony, contentment, and mutual love; but in that case all their talents would have forever remained hidden in their germ.’

The Antidote is an interesting read. It provide practical insights for life; as to how to stride along the path where we eternally strive for peace and blissfulness.