The New Art of Living

The New Art of Living Towards a logic of peace and well-being for a worthwhile and happy life

Gerbert Bakx

Adrian Borda - Life is a dance in the rain

© Gerbert Bakx, 2018 Translated from Dutch by Paul Holdsworth

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

Even in a room that has been in the dark for many years, lighting a candle takes only a fraction of a second.

CONFUCIUS

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Table of Contents Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... 3 Preface .......................................................................................................................................... 7 PART 1 - Living and surviving ........................................................................................................ 12 1.

The brain and consciousness ................................................................................................ 14 1.1

The scientific story ........................................................................................................ 14

1.1.1

The old brain: the automatic pilot ......................................................................... 14

1.1.2

The new brain: from signs to language .................................................................. 15

1.1.3

The imaginary order .............................................................................................. 17

1.1.4

A dynamic balance ................................................................................................ 20

1.1.5

Dealing more consciously with the brain ............................................................... 22

Aside N° 1: About dualities ................................................................................................... 23 Aside N° 2: The plasticity of the brain ................................................................................... 24 1.2

1.2.1

The brain as a representation machine ................................................................. 26

1.2.2

Self-awareness and the ‘I’ ..................................................................................... 27

1.2.3

With which ‘I’ am I dealing? .................................................................................. 29

1.2.4

Stories: order out of chaos .................................................................................... 31

1.2.5

Don Quixote welcomes you! ................................................................................. 35

1.3 2.

The Existential Story ..................................................................................................... 25

Freedom and human nature ......................................................................................... 36

Life patterns ......................................................................................................................... 40 2.1

Possibilities and realities ............................................................................................... 40

2.2

Patterns of experience .................................................................................................. 41

2.3

The image of man ......................................................................................................... 43

2.4

Patterns of experience at work ..................................................................................... 45

2.5

The logic of well-being and ill-being .............................................................................. 47

2.6

But I am so negative... .................................................................................................. 53

2.7

Disruptive experiences.................................................................................................. 56

2.8

Instant well-being ......................................................................................................... 57

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2.9

Concrete inspiration ..................................................................................................... 58

2.9.1

Existential positions .............................................................................................. 58

2.9.2

From drama triangle to growth triangle ................................................................ 60

The growth triangle as a positive mirror image ..................................................................... 65 2.9.3

Byron Katie and the Power of Reversal .................................................................. 66

2.9.4

The strategy of happiness ..................................................................................... 67

PART 2 – The tragic consciousness ............................................................................................... 72 3.

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The pain of being.................................................................................................................. 73 3.1

The struggle for life....................................................................................................... 73

3.2

Inequality and competition ........................................................................................... 74

3.3

Ill-being and cognitive dissonance................................................................................. 75

3.4

Suffering as punishment ............................................................................................... 77

3.5

Social ill-being............................................................................................................... 80

3.6

Consequences of ill-being ............................................................................................. 81

The hunger of the soul ......................................................................................................... 83 4.1

Depression ................................................................................................................... 83

4.1.1

The scientific logic ................................................................................................. 84

4.1.2

An evolutionary pattern ........................................................................................ 89

4.1.3

Newer perspectives .............................................................................................. 92

4.1.4

The existential logic .............................................................................................. 93

4.1.5

The depressive logic .............................................................................................. 98

4.1.6

Meaninglessness ................................................................................................... 99

4.2

Addictive behaviour .................................................................................................... 107

4.3

Self-chosen life termination ........................................................................................ 115

PART 3 - The art of living - the worthwhile life............................................................................ 120 5.

6.

Peace as a starting point .................................................................................................... 122 5.1

The need for peace ..................................................................................................... 122

5.2

The source of peace .................................................................................................... 123

5.3

Peace as a therapeutic principle ................................................................................. 125

Peace and the logic of well-being ....................................................................................... 128

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6.1

7.

8.

9.

Insights and skills ........................................................................................................ 128

6.1.1

Mindfulness ........................................................................................................ 130

6.1.2

Compassion ........................................................................................................ 132

6.1.3

Forgiveness ......................................................................................................... 134

6.1.4

Nonviolent communication ................................................................................. 136

6.2

Strategy ...................................................................................................................... 142

6.3

Motivation: wanting what you want ........................................................................... 144

Happiness, Utopias and Happiness Machines ..................................................................... 150 7.1

Socrates’ utopia .......................................................................................................... 150

7.2

Aristotle and middle way excellence ........................................................................... 152

7.3

Epicurus’ art of living .................................................................................................. 153

7.4

The stoic art of living................................................................................................... 155

7.5

The Buddhist art of living ............................................................................................ 158

7.6

Spinoza’s art of living .................................................................................................. 161

7.7

The utopia of John Stuart Mill ..................................................................................... 166

7.8

Friedrich Nietzsche’s art of living ................................................................................ 166

7.9

Existentialist art of living ............................................................................................. 170

7.10

The art of living of ‘the little prince’ ............................................................................ 176

7.11

Robert Nozick and the experience machine ................................................................ 180

7.12

The neoliberal happiness machine .............................................................................. 182

Nourishment for the soul ................................................................................................... 186 8.1

Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the other .............................................................. 186

8.2

Viktor Frankl and resilience ......................................................................................... 189

8.3

The good as an art of living ......................................................................................... 191

8.4

A society without a human face .................................................................................. 194

8.5

Is society to blame for everything? ............................................................................. 196

8.6

Towards a society with a human face ......................................................................... 197

The art of living, in three relationships and three words ..................................................... 202 9.1

Enchantment and re-enchantment ............................................................................. 205

9.2

Meaning or the experience of purpose ....................................................................... 209

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9.3

Empowerment, trust, resilience .................................................................................. 214

By way of an epilogue ................................................................................................................ 217 Index.......................................................................................................................................... 220

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Preface It is of course a cliché when an author claims to have written the book that he would himself like to have read. Yet that is the only excuse I can put forward for writing yet another book about the art of living. The art of living is simply about the questions that people have always asked themselves and which keep on being asked, albeit in different guises. It is indeed about the art of life, and art is simply never resolved or completed. Unlike science, there are no definitive answers that make the previous answers irrelevant. Anyone wishing to delve into art will inevitably still have to learn about ancient Greek and Roman art, which remains relevant today. Likewise, anyone who wants to study the art of living will have to take note of the achievements of thinkers from earlier times.

Nothing is as practical as a good theory. A theory should help us gain insight and thus increase our freedom. The theory in this book is therefore intended as a practical philosophy, a reflection on the important life questions that I also addressed in my previous books. In many cases it involves dismantling forms of magical and mythical thinking, that often come wrapped up in scientific jargon. Consciousness, language, freedom and maturity are important themes, as is the relationship between culture and nature, between reason and intuition, between science and poetry, between objectivity and subjectivity; between rationality and emotion, between understanding and accepting, between simplicity and complexity, and between control and surrender.

The world that really matters to people is not the distant world of science, but the living world of meanings and values. The metaphors of the journey of life, of the relationship with life and of the existential dance are therefore never far away.

If we compare life to a journey, two elements are important: a motivated traveller and a useful map. Philosophy shows a general map of the possible paths and destinations in life. But philosophy cannot tell us where to go or which roads to take. That is a choice that we all must make for ourselves on the basis of our personal value compass. No one can walk your path.

It is often claimed that I present things very simply and that real life is a lot more complicated.

That is understandable. Yet my aim is not to offer simple solutions to complex problems; my aim is not to deny the complexities of life, but to bring insight to bear on them. To be useful, a map must be simple enough to make possible the journey through complex reality. A map cannot solve everyday difficulties, but should provide a clear view of the possibilities so that the direction through complexity remains clear at all times and that travellers can make choices using the compass of their personal values. That is traditionally the purpose of philosophy. Psychology, on the other hand, is about the individual, about the specific traveller, and about the many reasons,

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alibis, or excuses travellers can think of for believing that this or that way may or may not be possible or desirable.

However, nowadays, any traveller who gets lost is soon told that the problem lies with himself and that he must seek ‘professional psychological’ help. It is suggested that problems which are in fact existential problems are the result of a problem in the brain. Indeed, we live in a world dominated by science and technology, and in the current state of affairs, it is much easier and more satisfying to examine the brain scientifically and objectively than to attempt to understand the endlessly complex and ever-elusive individual subjective experience of life. Yet the subjective perception is the real reality of humankind, and in many cases the problem is that the traveller does not possess a good map. If someone with a map of their home village walks around and gets lost in Paris, there is nothing wrong with that person as such and she definitely does not need to go see a psychologist or psychiatrist. Her problem is also not that she walks too much (or ‘thinks too much’ as is claimed not only by some patients but also by certain ‘professionals’). The solution is simple: she needs a better map. Many people travel with an inadequate map, simply because they were never provided with a better map in their youth. Moreover, nowadays there are many opportunities to relax during the trip, to eat delicious food or to have a good time. However, this does not contribute to a more valuable journey.

Through consciousness, humans have managed to free themselves from the compelling grip of their surroundings. They are no longer dependent on a certain environment. They can manipulate the environment and can therefore survive almost anywhere. However, this also means that they can no longer attribute their well-being or unwellness to that environment. They have become responsible for themselves. The same consciousness becomes, as it were, the internal environment that will determine their experience. Hence the need for the art of living, the art of creating a valuable internal environment in which it is good to live.

So this book is also not about change or improvement in society. It is not about changing the circumstances of others so that we can be happy. That would be easy, but in most cases it is not an option. It is more about experiencing happiness in the circumstances as we find them. This book is certainly not a systematic manual, but a journey through the vast area of the art of living.

Certain noteworthy elements are constantly revisited from different angles, just as the key themes recur in a symphony.

Writing about happiness and the art of living is like putting together a puzzle. We can’t help but look at the pieces and examine them one by one, but the result, the overall picture, only becomes clear once all the pieces have fallen into place. Moreover, the puzzle concerns the most difficult things in existence, while language is often imperfect and inadequate, so that just about any statement can give rise to discussion and controversy. I must therefore ask the reader for compassion and benevolence. The art of living is a never-ending story!

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Can we make people happy? Karl Popper noted that people who wanted to bring Heaven to Earth have invariably brought Hell as a result of ‘intolerance, religious wars and saving souls through the Inquisition.’ He said it is our duty to help those who need help, but it cannot be our duty to make them happy because that is not within our power and will often lead to intrusion into the private world of the people for whom we have such noble intentions.

My aim is therefore not so much to convince the reader, but rather to be clear and to propose inspiring ideas that readers can take, or not, based on their own insights. Not only can an insight into reality in itself be one source of happiness, but whoever understands it can also play with it and vary it. Only by mastering the notes and the fingering of a piece of music can one devote oneself to phrasing, style and interpretation. I hope the reader will enjoy playing just as much as I. Part One describes why life and survival seem so challenging, confusing and difficult. A happy life is indeed not self-evident, because that was simply not important in our evolution. Humankind was mercilessly and inexorably selected for survival and procreation, not for finding peace, truth or happiness.

Part Two describes the tragic life. Tragedy is the suffering that affects good people. That is precisely why it is necessary to study and practice the art of living. The source of unwellness lies in evolution and therefore also in ourselves. A special form of contemporary unwellness is the hunger of the soul.

Part Three deals with the art of living in terms of a worthwhile and happy life. The first step to well-being is peace of mind: the peace of the mind. This part also discusses a number of concrete forms of the art of living and care for the soul, so it can also be considered as a source of inspiration. A philosophical or humanistic art of life project is about living a good life without resorting to miraculous interventions, a religious framework of meaning or truths revealed by God. It therefore has a place in the broader cultural-historical context of Western philosophy. The main focus is on the line from ancient Greek Philosophy, via the Enlightenment with Spinoza, to Nietzsche, existentialism and late modernism. Buddhism is also briefly discussed. Contemporary neoliberal society, on the other hand, seems to be struggling, along with consumerism, to determine a content and a direction. The choice I have made is necessarily very incomplete and consequently very debatable, but was mainly guided by the practical relevance of an art of living to modern people. In the last chapter, the art of living is described as an existential dance.

The insights from my earlier books have further matured and developed, but in this book, as Montaigne put it so beautifully, I have also brought together many flowers that I have found among others, in a bunch of which only the string is mine!

I thank my wife, Mia Jansen, for the endless patience with my unavailability while writing this book. I am also indebted to Lieve De Brabandere, Veerle Tibax, Bart De Meutter, Gert Cluyts, Veerle Follens, Ives De Saeger and Saskia du Rosel de Saint Germain for the useful comments during the full or partial reading of the manuscript. I thank Minister of State Herman Van Rompuy

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and Prof. Piet Nijs for their forewords. I also thank the publisher, Dirk Demuynck, for his trust and for encouraging me time and again to finish the book.

Gerbert Bakx, Leuven, 2019

The mind is the master over every kind of fortune: it acts in both ways, being the cause of its own happiness and misery.

LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA

Happiness and suffering are dependent upon your mind, upon your interpretation.

They do not come from outside, from others.

All of your happiness and all of your suffering are created by you, by your own mind.

LAMA ZOPA RINPOCHE

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PART 1 - Living and surviving Happiness is undoubtedly the highest good, the ultimate human value. Everything humans do, both individually and collectively, is ultimately an expression of their will to live and their pursuit of happiness. The will to live is not a personal choice, it is a statement of fact. Everything that lives wants to live and whoever lives also wants to live a ‘good life’. Living well or ‘being happy’ is an intrinsic value, an end in itself, not a means to achieve anything else. People want to be happy for no other reason than to be happy.

It therefore seems paradoxical that everything that man has achieved in the course of history has led to more insight, knowledge, technological skills and, as a result, more material wealth and comfort, but not to more lasting happiness. The messages that our society gives us about how to become happy hardly ever turn out to be true. To understand this, it is enough to take note of the ever-increasing figures for depression, fatigue, addiction, self-mutilation and suicide. The many forms of socially undesirable and even delinquent behaviour are also ultimately the result of unhappy people.

The fact that human history has always been characterized by arrogance, corruption, fraud, sexism, racism, witch hunts, crusades, slave trade, deportation, colonialism, imperialism, exploitation, oppression, genocides, wars and other forms of the exercise of power, domination and violence that have reappeared and continue to cause untold human suffering in all cultures indicates the ineradicable, evolutionary nature of these phenomena. Enormous sums are spent and huge resources are invested in armaments. With every so-called ‘victory’, whether in a war, in political manifestations or in recreational activities such as football or song competitions, we see again and again the same primitive scenes of hysterically incited screaming crowds, waving clenched fists and other aggressive body language. Whether on the football field (fighting to ‘win’), in illness (fighting and ‘overcoming’ cancer) or even at the end of life (‘fighting for his life’ or ‘losing the battle’), the metaphor of the fight and military rhetoric are rarely absent. We cannot avoid it: violence fascinates us.

Similar forms of arrogance, dominance, exclusion and exploitation can also be found in many men towards women, many whites towards non-whites, many privileged, well-born and well-to-do citizens with money and power (which they ‘honestly deserve’ and ‘have earned by hard work’) towards less well-born, unfortunate and poorer fellow citizens (‘losers’ who ‘have themselves to blame’), and in the attitude towards the elderly, the sick and the weakest in society. A similar pattern exists in the attitude of privileged rich countries and regions towards poorer countries and regions, of the rich West towards exploitation and slavery elsewhere in the world, towards plants and animals and towards the planet. What are the patterns that make this possible?

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Indeed, life has always been life in competition for limited resources; not only competition with other forms of life, but also competition with individuals of the same species. As a species becomes more successful and there are more and more members of it, the competition for limited resources becomes even more intense. This is especially true for humans, the top predators who have no natural enemies except themselves and who are not tied to a particular biological niche but can live almost anywhere. This explains why a capitalist economy feels natural and almost inevitable to humankind, but also why it is often accompanied by violence. The capitalist model is characterized by an obsession with endless growth, private property, rivalry, competition, cheap labour exploitation and the overproduction of cheap and superfluous disposables, resulting in waste of raw materials and an increase in waste and pollution. This has led to a situation where a minority controls virtually everything while many have virtually nothing, with the need to deploy police and military personnel to prevent the poor from getting a crumb from the rich. After all, one must refrain from possessing others, unless one can take it with impunity. When the rich steal from the poor or from society, it is called ‘doing business’; but when the poor steal from the rich, it is called ‘crime,’ as Victor Hugo described in ‘Les Misérables’. In reality, however, man comes into the world naked and with nothing and will also leave the world naked and with nothing. In between, he believes in the curious illusion of growth, profit, ownership and property. Couldn’t it be better than this?

Man comes into the world naked and with nothing and will leave the world naked and with nothing.

In between, he believes in the curious illusion of profit, growth and property.

People often resort to the fantasy world of consumption and entertainment, because they find it difficult to face the real world. Fortunately, there are also signs of freedom and emancipation from the law of the jungle, with the right and dominance of the fittest, towards a more human civilization based on the unique human values of serenity, compassion, tolerance and peace.

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1. The brain and consciousness What distinguishes humans from the world of the animals from which they originated is their unique ability to be happy and unhappy. In a way, animals are naturally happy. Humans, however, seem to have forgotten this simple, natural happiness. Clearly, however, this is due to the fact that humankind has in fact acquired something new: consciousness. Through this consciousness, humans have gained unprecedented powers that give them many possibilities that are unavailable to animals, but it has also enabled them to be uniquely happy and unhappy. This unique awareness has to do with humans’ unique brain. The study of well-being and unwellness has to start here.

1.1 The scientific story Descriptions of reality that can be empirically confirmed (or at least not contradicted for the time being) are called science. The scientific story is about the brain and what can be established within scientific logic on the basis of objective research. Scientific disciplines concerned with the brain include anatomy, neurology, hemophysiology, electro-encephalography (EEG) and the rapidly developing field of medical imaging (brain scans).

1.1.1 The old brain: the automatic pilot Before becoming Homo Sapiens, humans were invertebrates for nearly 500 million years, mammals for about 300 million years, and have been primates for only 65 million years. So humans have been animals that survived and reproduced for much longer than they have been animals that talk and produce ideas. Humans therefore carry a significant evolutionary heritage.

The oldest part of the human brain (the animal, subcortical brain) evolved, was selected and programmed in response to the problems of survival and reproduction in the wild. It therefore has, built-in, hard-wired reaction patterns and strategies, that have been tried and tested by evolution, such as the well-known flight, fight or freeze response. After all, surviving is an ongoing challenge, but it only takes one second of inattention, foolishness or bad luck and you’re dead. So our brain is also especially fascinated by invisible dangers and possible disaster scenarios, because the early humans’ world was full of enemies: wolves, hunger, cold, neighbouring tribes. These strategies are still present in modern humans and explain such phenomena as fear of speaking or social phobias, but also blushing or goosebumps: examples of automatic responses that indicate

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emotional arousal. These strategies therefore do not need to be learned: they manifest themselves automatically. It is this part of the brain that keeps us fighting and waging wars, but also, for example, keeps us seeking closeness with possible partners with a view to reproduction.

Since females always choose the dominant male, in many animal species the dominant male gets all the females in the group while the other males only occasionally mate. That too can be the cause of a great deal of strife and aggression.

The old brain is like an autopilot, which in most cases is extremely handy and reliable, and greatly simplifies life. After all, 90% or more of life consists of recurring routine actions that do not need any special attention. The oldest parts of the brain therefore store a lot of intelligence and thinking capacity of which we are not aware and which we therefore simply cannot consciously influence. In popular parlance, this intelligence is often attributed to ‘the unconscious,’ ‘the body,’ or ‘intuition.’ The old brain can moreover acquire new patterns and skills through conditioning, imitation, experience and repetition (trial and error): one learns to avoid certain places, persons or activities and to seek out others. One also learns to ride a bike, play tennis or play the piano. One learns a language by repeating words. One learns to dance by imitating the movements of a dance teacher. The repeated ‘pretending’ eventually gets more and more real and eventually becomes automatic and unconscious. You fake it until you make it.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1.1.2 The new brain: from signs to language Humans not only have what is in evolutionary terms an old brain (the reptilian brain or mammal brain), which animals have, but also have a newer brain (the primate brain, the cortex, especially the prefrontal cortex). It is this new structure that essentially set humans apart from animals and which brings completely new possibilities such as language, nuance, logic, communication, abstract thinking, argumentation, discussion and planning.

If the timescale of cultural evolution is compared to that of natural evolution, the question arises how the extremely rapid, almost explosive development of cultural achievements such as science, technology and art was ever possible. Most researchers agree that language played a decisive role in this. After all, language and writing have made it possible to continue to develop knowledge and insights by building on the knowledge and insights acquired in previous generations and passed on orally or in writing. It is also generally agreed that human language must have developed from animal sign language, although it is not clear how to understand this mutation. Animals do not have real language but communicate with signs. Human body language is also not a language, but

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a system of signs. Signs are messages with the aim of achieving or obtaining something here and now. A sign is, as it were, stuck to the thing that it indicates. A red light is a sign that it is necessary to stop here and now. It is a stimulus and response phenomenon, like in Pavlov’s dog. However, a real language consists of words that are symbols. They are more than a signal to do something, they refer to something that is not necessarily physically present here and now and therefore cannot be pointed to, but which can be thought and discussed. The jump from sign to symbol marks the transition from ape to man, from nature to culture, from food to gastronomy and from mating behaviour to eroticism.

Language is an example of an emergent phenomenon, that is, a phenomenon whose properties cannot be understood from the elements of its constituent parts, just as the properties of H2O cannot be understood from the properties of the elements H and O. Although language originated from the world of signs, it cannot be understood from it. It is a mutation to a higher level. In a word, there is a mental distance from the thing that is indicated, a space in which the thing can be imagined and become the subject of a story. The development of the articulated, symbolic language gave rise to a whole new space and a whole new capacity, namely the extraordinary imaginative power of the newer brain. In this space, things are evoked and represented by thinking or saying certain words. The image of the Eiffel Tower can be evoked by thinking the phrase ‘Eiffel Tower’ and the name of a friend is enough to bring to mind the idea of being together with them. In this way, in addition to the material, objective world of present things, emerged an entirely new subjective world of imagined, internal representations (ideas), as a kind of reflection of the outside world. Humans can, as it were, import (‘download’) the external environment in the form of a virtual, imagined, internal environment. However, this never happens ‘purely’ true-to-life, but it is inevitably always accompanied by a certain colouring, a certain distortion and even mistakes. Humans can even imagine the whole cosmos. We can also combine various elements by bringing words together into stories. Human consciousness is therefore a linguistic consciousness.

Moreover, the articulated, symbolic language, which would have co-originated with Homo Sapiens about 150,000 years ago, is incredibly flexible. An almost infinite number of words and sentences can be formed based on a limited number of sounds. This makes it possible to name, organize and categorize a huge and almost confusing amount of information by connecting them to words.

Abstract concepts such as past or future can also be evoked in this way and combined with each other. As a result, the information in question can be extremely easily visualized and other words and concepts can be linked to scenarios and stories in the safe environment of consciousness. Our main stories are, of course, related to survival, society, relationships and cooperation. This is the process of thinking. The ability to come up with new solutions to problems is the basis of fiction and creativity. Thus, humans have deliberately invented and designed tools instead of simply stumbling upon them by trial and error, as animals do. Humans have invented mechanical tools and aids as an extension of their own limbs, motors as an extension of their own strength and information technology as an extension of their own information-processing mind. Because of

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their great ingenuity and ability to work together efficiently, people have been able to escape the grip of the natural environment. Unlike animals, they can survive almost anywhere.

Animals learn collectively, because the least well-adapted individuals simply die. They are either eaten or killed. For example, city cats as a group become smarter because the least intelligent are soon run over, so that only those who have understood the city remain. This is a hard evolutionary logic. But it is also an extremely slow process because animals can only pass on very limited information to each other and therefore cannot learn significantly from each other.

However, man can learn individually. Unlike animals, which always have to start over and repeat the same mistakes, humans can learn not only from their own mistakes but also from the mistakes of others and from those of previous generations, because they can quickly and easily take in knowledge acquired by predecessors or contemporaries and integrate it through language into their internal environment. This makes humans capable of culture. Culture is a cumulative process, a structure that is continued by successive generations. As noted earlier, this explains the almost exponentially fast cultural evolution after a long period of slow natural evolution. According to Confucius, there are three ways of learning: by imitation, which is the easiest; by experience, which is the bitterest; and by thought, which is the noblest. Michelangelo said, ‘I already saw the angel in the marble and all I had to do was remove the excess marble to free him.’ Hemingway said, ‘You shouldn’t make all the mistakes yourself; give the others a chance too.’ The great philosopher of science Karl Popper noted that people have awareness so that their ideas and scenarios can perish without they themselves having to perish, just as a pilot learns to fly in the safe environment of a flight simulator.

Thus, humankind is the only living being that can escape the biologically determined law of the survival of the fittest. They can consciously make the transition from the argument of force (overcoming) to the force of argument (convincing). Because of their unique brain, humans are able to consciously pursue values such as justice, compassion, tolerance, responsibility, peace and love, which do not occur in the wild. Love is indeed a value, unlike infatuation, which is an emotion. Love is a function of the newer brain, as opposed to falling in love, which is a function of the old brain (animals also show love behaviour).

Humans can make the transition from the argument of force to the force of argument.

1.1.3 The imaginary order

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This development of symbolic language and the discovery of a special kind of entities, namely abstract entities, that exist only in the imaginary space of the imagination, created an almost endless expanse of fiction. This includes myths, gods, religions, nations, laws, human rights, property, borders, marriage, money, public limited companies and countless other concepts and narratives. Material objects have an objective existence, whether one believes in them or not.

Imaginary objects have a subjective existence: they only exist for those who make them exist by believing in them. For example, abstract concepts such as wounds, injuries, vulnerability, scars, insults, damage to the soul, but also willpower, resilience or (self-) confidence are also considered as entities with a real content, which are not often even regarded as causes of certain behaviours.

This is a particularly remarkable form of magical thinking, cleverly packaged in a kind of scientific vocabulary.

However, humans can also imagine things, events or persons that have not been there for a long time or that have not been there at all. They can imagine that they are not here and now but somewhere else in some other time, in the past or in the future. This allows humankind to escape what no other animal can do: escape the direct grip of the immediate external environment. The major evolutionary advantage is that humans can foresee possible dangers and risks, as in a flight simulator, and that they can devise all kinds of scenarios and strategies and try them out or practice them virtually without having to test them in reality.

The downside, however, is that people can lose direct contact with objective, external reality and come to live in a subjective, imaginary, internal reality, while the old brain always remains convinced that it lives in the external reality, here and now. This allows people to get caught up in a cultural environment that they have created themselves. This greatly confuses the poor old brain. The old brain was selected to respond quickly and efficiently to images that in the past always came from the outside world. The old brain has long been the sole ‘resident’ of the brain.

But now this resident has suddenly acquired an upstairs neighbour who has started constantly sending all kinds of messages, stories and images to the downstairs neighbour, who is suddenly flooded with stories and images, some of which turn out to be ‘fake news’. This is a completely new issue for which the old brain was simply not prepared. The old brain can only continue to do what it had done for millions of years, namely to respond as it had always done: here and now.

After all, the old brain was not equipped at all to distinguish between the image of a charging mammoth in the environment and the image of an charging mammoth in the imagined, virtual inner world. As a result, the upstairs neighbour, the internal environment, becomes the most ‘real’ reality for the old brain, a reality that will determine emotions and behaviour. Most of the emotions we experience are therefore not primary survival emotions resulting from an external threat, but cognitive emotions resulting from a representation or idea in the internal space. For the old brain, the idea of an impending divorce or impending bankruptcy is just as threatening as that of an attacking mammoth. The old brain always reacts here and now and cannot do anything with abstract concepts such as ‘elsewhere’, ‘past’ or ‘future’. The old brain is like a child who is told ‘this won’t hurt’; what the child hears is: ‘Be careful! Pain! Here and now!’

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Because of this newer brain, humans are capable of supple collaboration in much larger groups than was possible in the wild. Animals only show collaborative behaviour with individuals who ‘know’ and ‘recognize’ them because they grew up together. However, people can come up with stories and narratives which large groups of people can believe in and through which they can feel connected (for example religious or social projects), so that a large partnership (culture) becomes possible. Historian Yuval Noah Harari (b. 1976) writes in ‘Homo Sapiens’: ‘The cognitive revolution, which is the ability to create and believe in an imaginary reality in words, enabled man to change and adapt his behaviour very quickly. People with the same genetic basis can create very different imaginary realities, even under similar circumstances. Individuals, families and groups can work together in larger contexts through a mythical connection (common myths, narratives, imaginary order). Man can cooperate with people he has never met and may never meet, but with whom he can still feel ‘connected’ through a shared story. For example, thousands of people worked on the Apollo project that brought a human to the Moon. That is one of the keys to humans’ success as a species. In addition to this ability to work together and to control violence, the internal cohesion in the group can also be strengthened by stories that describe ‘the other’, ‘the stranger’, ‘the unbeliever’ as an enemy infused with devilish intentions, which consequently must be fought and destroyed. As a result, man has not only become the most successful, but also the most violent species.

Man is born a first time as a biological being and a second time as a human being by the ability to think and to create and believe in stories and narratives. As a result, humans stepped into a kind of evolutionary slingshot that has taken them much further, in comparison with the other animals.

The French philosopher Jean D’Ormesson (1925-2017) wrote ‘The origin of thought is most certainly the most important event in the history of the universe since it came out of nowhere. It may be said that the world was created a second time.’ As a result, there is no longer any natural way of life for humans. There are only cultural possibilities left and man always has to deal with two realities: the physical and the imaginary. There is no way out of the imaginary order!

The famous allegory of Plato’s cave therefore takes on its full significance here. After all, humankind is locked up in this world of experience, which is like a cave in which projections can be seen on the walls, partly coming from the outside world, but often coming from the imaginary space of the upstairs neighbour. Humans mentally live in a bubble, in a virtual space. This explains many of the states of unwellness that we will discuss later.

Through all these unique abilities and skills, man has created a culture that, in the long run, may jeopardize not only his own survival but also that of other forms of life and that of the planet.

More and more people are starting to show disturbing symptoms such as the many problems of civilization, not only of a physical nature, such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or obesity, but also of a psychological nature such as burnout, addiction, depression and suicide. Indeed, the use of the new cognitive brain remains difficult, and while in some cases humans do indeed prove capable of exceptional forms of cooperation and collaboration, the archaic, self-centred, biological

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impulses of the old brain are still evident in many circumstances. After all, in evolution humans were not selected for abundance and convenience to live fairly or to pursue higher values such as happiness and truth, but to survive and reproduce in difficult and challenging circumstances.

People often find it difficult to cope with current circumstances where they have an abundance of time, attention, power, money and comfort. Their minds get restless and unfortunately they all too often regress into archaic behaviour characterized by fear or arrogance and dominance. Even in a state of stress, people often switch to the proven, quick strategies of the old brain. After all, stress is interpreted as a threat to survival, where no time can be wasted on the new brain’s nuanced, slower thought processes. Humans often resembles a self-driving car, equipped with a brain, an automatic system, which is perfectly equipped by evolution to keep it alive and get it to its destination, but not aimed at making it a pleasant ride.

Humans can behave reasonably, but are not reasonable by nature.

1.1.4 A dynamic balance Daniel Kahneman uses the more neutral terms ‘system 1’ and ‘system 2’ for the old and the new brain, respectively. Both systems process information and thus ‘think’, if thinking is defined as information processing. System 1 acts as a kind of protective immune system. It constantly scans, evaluates and interprets the environment for signs of potential danger and disaster, as well as for unexpected opportunities. Therefore, the brain continuously makes predictions on the basis of earlier experience, which can lead to phobic reactions, for example. This means that attention constantly, randomly, darts back and forth between past, future and present, like a thief constantly exploring his territory to track down both enemies and prey. System 1 does this extremely quickly and tirelessly and cannot be switched off. You may experience System 1 if, for example, you find that you cannot avoid understanding the words you are reading or that are being spoken to you. System 1, however, works unconsciously and communicates the result of its information processing in the form of impulses, inclinations and sensations (feelings) that encourage us to conduct certain behaviours. Emotions are therefore also a form of (pre-) judging and are certainly not irrational but have their own rationality, which is aimed at survival and reproduction. Emotions are accompanied by bodily sensations called ‘feelings,’ just as pain, cold, or hunger are bodily sensations or feelings. Emotions can also be purely linguistic and cognitive, without any physical sensation, for example in the case of resentment. Emotions are the driving force of our behaviour and guide us most of the time.

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Emotions too are a form of thinking.

Emotions are not irrational, but have their own rationality.

In complex situations in which the automated system 1 does not know what to do (for example in a sudden unexpected situation, a moral dilemma or an existential question) the upstairs neighbour, the newer system 2 is called in to help. System 2 is much slower, but is aware. It can also get tired and even switched off. You can experience system 1 if you find you cannot prevent yourself from understanding the words you are reading now (system 1). You can experience system 2 if you find that you can refuse to think about it any more, because you are too tired, for example, or just don’t feel like it. Kahneman himself gives the example of the calculation 17 x 24.

You cannot prevent yourself from recognising the symbols, you cannot prevent yourself from ‘knowing’ that you could do that calculation, but you can decide not to do it because you do not feel like doing something so ‘tiring’. System 2 is what people commonly call ‘thinking.’ After all, people are not aware of the unconscious ‘thinking’ of system 1 and people therefore often mistakenly think that emotions are different from thinking. Animals also ‘think’, but only man is aware of his thinking, that is: he can think about his thinking. So consciousness is a kind of metathinking.

Both systems are also clearly evident in the famous marshmallow test developed by Walter Mischel in the 1960s. A child is offered a marshmallow and can choose to eat it immediately or to be patient and get two. Children appear to be able to do this from the age of approximately four years. Further research shows that the skill of delaying immediate gratification (system 1) is crucial for a successful and enjoyable life. Self-control (a function of system 2) is not only predictive of good school performance and social functioning, it also helps with everyday challenges such as coping with stress or painful emotions, maintaining weight, quitting smoking, heartbreak and retirement planning. Life constantly presents us with such choices, each time allowing the child in us (system 1) or the adult (system 2) to consider them.

So there is a dynamic equilibrium in the brain: a balance between the two systems, between the continuous alertness of system 1 and the cognitive abilities of system 2. System 1 simply has to be alert all the time, 24/7. That is its function. In certain cases, system 1 can ‘hijack’ the entire brain.

As I said earlier, man has created a culture, an artificial environment with an abundance of stimuli, for which his brain, in particular system 1, is not equipped. It responds as much to the beep of an incoming message on the smartphone as to the rustling of a predator in the bushes. System 1 is also constantly stimulated by images and stories in imaginary space, which may be the cause of the experience of stress. Stress is beneficial for it enables us to respond quickly and appropriately to the environment without the intervention of the slow system 2; system 2 is then put in standby mode. Like most animals, humans can easily cope with natural, short-term stress such as occurs in the wild, but not with the long-term cognitive stress that humans can experience in the modern world and of which they themselves are often the source (see Chapter 2, ‘Life patterns’). Chronic

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stress not only leads to unwellness, but ultimately also to the exhaustion of the stress reflex; that is burn-out. Traumatic experiences can lead to a contraction of system 1, resulting in phobic reactions and a permanent state of stress. These are the post-traumatic stress responses.

1.1.5 Dealing more consciously with the brain Understanding the dual structure of the brain makes it clear that there are two possible approaches to influencing the brain and immediate experience. On the one hand, the brain can be calmed down by creating peace in the body and in the environment so that the ever-watchful ‘system 1’ starts to believe that there is no longer a threat. This is possible through conscious active relaxation of the muscles and deliberate slowing of breathing, especially the exhalation that stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. This happens with practices such as meditation, mindfulness, tai chi or yoga, but also with more normal activities such as walking in nature. By deliberately bringing the body into a state of rest and relaxation, the body gives system 1, as it were, a non-verbal message of peace and relaxation. Physical contact in the form of the touch, caress or embrace of people or even of animals also has an immediate soothing effect.

On the other hand, system 2 can be actively stimulated, for example by consciously observing and naming the emotions present. After all, connecting a name to an emotion is a function of the linguistic system 2. By stimulating system 2, less attention is temporarily paid to experiencing that emotion. This also happens in practices such as Zen or mindfulness. By consciously adopting the attitude of the observer, without judging, an internal space of serenity is created, an environment of silence and tranquillity, and system 2 is also stimulated. After all, every form of awareness is a form of ‘thinking’ and requires the intervention of system 2. Remarkably enough, awareness of the body or of the emotions thus stimulates the cognitive functions of system 2, shifting the balance in the brain, and continuous alertness of system 1 decreases (see below ‘Insights and skills’).

One can therefore learn to respond actively to this balance. To maintain and ‘stay in’ a pleasant, desired experience, one should avoid thinking or speaking about it. On the other hand, if one wants to come out of an unpleasant or unwanted experience, for example because it is a painful reminder of a traumatic event, it is useful to put the experience into words and make it into a story. Where possible, a story should be created that brings peace and serenity, not a story that maintains an experience that is painful and traumatising in itself.

The often-mentioned seeming contradiction between reason and emotion can therefore be traced back to the presence of two forms of thinking, two kinds of thoughts or judgments in the same person. There is fast, unconscious thinking and slower, more thoughtful thinking. Emotions can be a way of becoming aware because they refer to underlying thoughts and thought patterns, because where there is a feeling, there must have been a thought to which that feeling is a response. If there is smoke, there must be a fire. There are therefore no irrational emotions, but

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there are irrational thoughts. Marcus Aurelius said ‘Let the judgment be “I am offended” and the insult is gone’, and with it the ‘hurt’.

Aside N° 1: About dualities So human beings are extremely complex. On the one hand, to the extent that they also have a material, physical dimension, they themselves are also an objective reality that can be explored by science; on the other hand, there is the dimension of the linguistic, subjective experience of meanings that escape scientific research. Humans are both ape and human, both nature and culture. If you like, you can se this as the age-old story of Yin and Yang. In the past it was often made into a normative story, as if the body and emotions were bad and reason and soul were good. Nowadays some present it the other way around. In any case, for science the body is ‘real’, and the soul is ‘only imagination’.

This conception of the dual nature of man shows a remarkable analogy with current views of matter.

After all, we are still dependent on two descriptions, two stories, two theories about matter: the theory of relativity on the one hand and quantum physics on the other. The first describes the macroscopic world of gravity. The second describes the world of elementary particles. Both stories exhibit great internal coherence and have great explanatory power. They have therefore proved extremely useful and have led to countless scientific and technological breakthroughs.

Yet this situation is intellectually unsatisfactory because the two theories are mutually incompatible.

They cannot be reconciled. Both cannot be true. After all, we assume that there can only be one reality.

Even at the beginning of the universe, at the Big Bang, there was only one reality, so everything must have been one. So both our stories cannot be true. Rather, they are ideas, stories, poems, haikus about a reality that appears to be as elusive as the ever-receding horizon. It’s like seeing people play a game we don’t know. The moves seem chaotic and incomprehensible. Only when we understand the rules of the game, does the pattern suddenly become clear and understandable. However, we do not yet have adequate concepts to think about and describe reality. So physicists like Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) searched for and are still looking for a so-called Unifying Theory, a Theory of Everything.

This duality in thinking about material reality is curiously reflected in the duality in thinking about humans. After all, we always have two stories about humans: a material, biological, scientific story, and a spiritual, existential story. The scientific story focuses on causal explanation, the existential one on meaning and perception. The scientific story is about the earth revolving around its axis, the existential story is about our ‘experience’ that the sun rises and sets. In concrete terms, we can view reality - and therefore also humans - as scientists or as poets. In both cases we use a different theory, a different view, and we therefore ‘see’ something different. There is no problem with reality, there can only be a problem with our description of reality. When we look at things differently, it is as if we look at different things.

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When we look at things differently, the things we look at change.

WAYNE DYER

Yet the human being is also an indivisible reality and we have only one single experience. But as soon as we want to investigate that experience in more detail or communicate something about it, we enter the conceptual duality because we are forced to use one of the two conceptual frameworks: the scientific conceptual framework of neurophysiology and neurotransmitters or the existential conceptual framework of ideas and the subjective experience. This leads to a story about neurotransmitters and receptors or a story about language, intentions and desires, respectively. Just as with nature, we do not yet have adequate concepts for humans to think in a non-dual way and we have to deal with formulations such as ‘the influence of the body on the mind’ or ‘the influence of the mind on the body’.

In reality, we don’t even know how to imagine ‘the body’ or ‘the mind,’ just as physics doesn’t even know how to actually imagine material reality. The historian Yuval Noah Harari (b. 1976) therefore writes that science mainly led to the discovery of ignorance, as opposed to the omniscience of a religious faith.

Science naturally also seeks to explain the existential reality of man and suggests, as I will discuss further, that it is the result of objectively observable and measurable phenomena. It is undeniably true that human subjective experiences and behaviours are always accompanied by neurophysiological phenomena. This applies to moods as well as to tennis, playing the violin or tango dancing. But it is not clear in which direction causality should be sought. In other words, it is not clear what are causes and what are effects. After all, a correlation is not a causality. Yet this is the starting point of biological psychiatry, which attempts to understand and even predict human behaviour on the basis of scientifically determined neurophysiological data. This is also the basis for considering certain undesirable experiences and behaviours such as anxiety, depression or addiction as diseases and ‘treating’ them with medicine (see chapter 4, ‘The hunger of the soul’).

Aside N° 2: The plasticity of the brain A relatively recent neurological development is the discovery of the plasticity of the brain. For example, of the approximately 100 billion (1011) neurons present at birth, only about 10% are connected. In adulthood, each neuron will connect to over 10,000 neurons (104), making a total of 1 million billion (1015) connections or synapses, of which around 90% were formed after birth. For example, a baby’s vision is known to be very limited and comparable to that of an adult only from about the age of five.

The stimulation of the eye by the environment is essential in this respect, so this development in children with early cataracts is very incomplete; it is also known that neglected children in Romanian orphanages have been shown to have a significant mental retardation. This shows that the contributions from nature and culture are impossible to distinguish. For example, in cases of severe, untreatable epilepsy in children, the only known treatment to date is to remove one of the brain hemispheres. However, these children usually develop into normal functioning adults. This also shows the enormous plasticity of the brain. The brains of taxi drivers, but also of pianists and mathematicians, for example, exhibit typical

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characteristics, which shows that neuronal plasticity is preserved into old age. In France, a case was discovered by accident of an adult who had been born with hydrocephalus and who as an adult only had a thin layer of brain tissue around an enormous accumulation of fluid; yet this person functioned perfectly normally, which shows that the anatomy of the brain (visible with, for example, NMR) says nothing about the functionality (visible with, for example, fNMR). The origin of certain functional details or problems cannot therefore simply be traced back to the structure of the brain. The ability to dance tango cannot be assessed on a brain scan, and this also applies by extension to the art of living. The demonstrable differences between men and women tell us nothing about the origins (nature? culture?) of these differences. The ideology of biological determinism is therefore not confirmed by recent research. Freedom is grounded in consciousness, in the ability to focus attention and explore possible scenarios.

1.2 The Existential Story A contribution to the discussion of psychology as a science was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour by Michael Muthukrishna, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, and Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Harvard University. The problem, according to the authors, is that psychology lacks a fundamental theory, which not only provides retrospective explanations, but can also make predictions that can be tested, as in the natural sciences. ‘If we continue to work without theory, we will get no further than predicting the future based on past results. That is the same as predicting a planet’s position based on its previous positions. What we need is something like a mechanics of the celestial bodies with which future planetary positions can be precisely calculated.’ There is no such theory yet. For the time being, psychology is essentially a descriptive discipline that can say on the basis of statistical research what a majority of people will do, but cannot predict what a particular individual will do. It is more of a beginning of a science, a protoscience, than a real science. It has been ‘scientifically’ established that men are bigger than women. However, that does not mean that all men are bigger than all women and there are many women who are bigger than many men. So science cannot say anything about the size of a particular individual. Scientific information, however interesting and fascinating, cannot say anything about the individual subjective world of experience.

Anyone who wants to learn tango dancing is therefore not helped by a scientific explanation about muscles and joints. Likewise, those who want to learn the art of living do not need a scientific explanation about biology or neurology, but an existential story and a reflection on subjective meanings and values. An existential story, in contrast to a scientific story, is not about the brain but about the spirit or the soul. The brain is in our skull, the mind can be anywhere. We do not experience our brain, we experience our mind. The relationship between the two is difficult to see as long as one continues to think in the usual terms of entities influencing or doing something to each other. The difficulty disappears as soon as one realizes that the mind is not a thing, not an

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organ, not ‘something’ that one could understand from a causal-scientific point of view, but an event, a momentary experience that can only be ‘grasped’ in the same way as a poem or a symphony can be grasped because it speaks to one. It is not about explaining in terms of causality, but about understanding in the sense of meaning-making. The mind is not a thing, but the experience of the activity of the brain, just as a dance is not a thing, but the experience of the activity of the muscles. Just as one can dance many dances with the same muscles, one can speak many languages and experience many spirits with the same brain.

This insight organizes the research perspective. Of course, there can be no dance without muscles.

In the same way, there can be no mind without a brain. But healthy muscles are not enough to be a great dancer, just as a well-functioning brain is not enough for a great mind or a successful dance with life. Those who cannot dance well can always think that it is probably a problem of the muscles. However, in most cases this is not the case. Likewise, a person who fails to deal with life elegantly may think there must be a problem with the brain. This might even be suggested by professionals using the concepts of ‘imbalance’ or ‘a missing substance’. That is certainly not impossible, but in most cases it is not so.

An existential story is not about facts, but about meanings and values. People, objects, actions, places and times are not only what they are objectively, but also have a subjective meaning, that is a meaning ‘for me’. The family home is a special place and mourning is a special activity with a special meaning. The Berlin Wall or Roman ruins are not piles of stones, but special ‘historical places’. This is the living world. People are not only rational beings, as Aristotle stated, but also beings of meanings and stories, of myths and rites. Man is a symbolic animal. He lives much more in and with the imaginary world than with objective reality. We do not live with reality, we live with our conception of reality and with its associated meanings, intentions, fears and expectations. We do not live with a partner, we live with our idea of that partner. We don’t even live with ourselves, but with a certain idea of ourselves that we call identity. It is these ideas, stories and meanings that determine our reactions and emotions.

What we experience is actually our state of mind projected outward onto a screen called "the world".

The ego projects films of fear, conflict and war.

Love projects films that unite and connect.

GERALD G JAMPOLSKY

1.2.1 The brain as a representation machine People can imagine the world not only as they think it is (the factual statements of science), but also as they think it should be. They can formulate all kinds of normative judgments and values

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and have expectations. Children have an intuitive expectation that everything revolves around them and that the world will ensure that they get everything they wish for. Humanity has also long had the idea that the earth and especially humankind was at the centre of the universe and that everything revolved around it.

The observation of a particular phenomenon is therefore not synonymous with objective knowledge of the nature of that phenomenon. A stick in the water may appear broken even though it is perfectly straight, and a leaf on a tree may turn out to be the head of a snake. A table can appear solid, although science knows that it consists of molecules that are mostly empty.

Reliable knowledge of reality can therefore only be obtained by a critical examination of the observation and by bringing together a large number of observations and experiences in welldesigned studies. Science is not a dogmatic system, but a method of obtaining sound, objective knowledge. However, science cannot pronounce on the private, subjective meaning of an event.

Many people who have experienced a life event (addiction, depression, burnout, relationship breakdown, death of a loved one) think that they have also acquired objective knowledge about the nature of that event itself. They call themselves ‘experts by experience’ and often believe that others cannot have adequate knowledge in this area. However, their ‘expertise’ refers only to their own experience at a given time and does not tell them anything about the experience of others. As such, the meanings of others can never be ‘understood’, they can only be accepted.

That is the human logic of compassion and love.

1.2.2 Self-awareness and the ‘I’ From a certain level of organization and complexity of the brain, the experience of self-awareness - that is, the ability to observe oneself and one’s own thinking - seems to be possible. Thus, selfawareness, like language, can be considered an emergent property that cannot be understood from the properties of its constituent parts, just as a painting cannot be understood from the properties of the paint or a symphony from the properties of the notes in the score. Selfawareness is a completely new and wonderful phenomenon in the evolution of life and is still one of the great unknowns in human knowledge. This doesn’t surprise us, simply because we are so used to it and have come to find it so ordinary. After all, self-awareness is the daily ‘experience’ that our actions seem to emanate from an imaginary character in us who is called ‘I’ and who has a certain ‘will’. We also assume that fellow human beings have a comparable self-awareness with an ‘I’ and a ‘will’, without however having proof of this. Even phenomena and sensations in the body are attributed to ‘the body’ as if that were also a kind of person with its own consciousness, own intentions and own will.

The same intuitive thinking also explains why complex phenomena in nature such as volcanic eruptions or earthquakes were formerly attributed to the ‘will’ of gods or higher powers, and why

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we have an almost irresistible tendency to give some somewhat complex devices some sort of self-awareness and even to attribute to them a ‘will’. For example, we say that a computer does not ‘want to’ print or that a car does not ‘want’ to start. We also easily attribute human emotions or intentions to animals. These are examples of anthropomorphism, such as a child who says the table hurt him or adults who think that young children ‘want to challenge’ them. The latter is a form of adulto-morphism.

Self-awareness is not a thing, not a ‘something’, not a fixed, unchanging reality with a certain localization in the brain, but a changeable and dynamic event, a process that has arisen at a certain moment in the course of human evolution as well as in the course of a human life. Brain scans show that, in certain circumstances, when sufficient zones of the brain are activated, including the language zones, the experience of self-awareness arises. Consciousness does indeed integrate the data from the different senses and the imagination into a single story and into a single experience that occupies our attention as in an internal theatre.

However, it is also possible to consciously focus attention on images from the environment with which permanent interaction takes place via the senses, or on bodily sensations. There is a kind of permanent ‘conversation’ with the body that expresses (‘speaks’) in sensations, feelings, inclinations and behavioural patterns. This is the so-called ‘listening to the body’, similar to listening to nature. Attention can also be focused on the newer brain, which ‘speaks’ in memories, images and thoughts. Many observations and much information processing, however, will not cross the threshold of consciousness, but will be handled by automatically running routines, usually without any problem. Consciousness, attention, only becomes active in the event of sudden, unexpected events in which people, as it were, wake up.

Self-awareness is a subtle and always changeable process based on a network of thoughts, beliefs and narratives. It is a story-telling instance like a kind of meta-structure, a kind of second-order thinking in addition to intuitive first-order thinking. It is therefore a process, a work in progress and as such cannot be ‘hurt’, ‘broken’ or ‘damaged’, just as a dance is an event and therefore cannot be hurt or damaged. One can also think of a candle flame; that too is a process that cannot be damaged or hurt; the flame can be extinguished, but it can also be lit again and again and then burns again just as bright.

Under the influence of certain circumstances, experiences or contexts (un) desirable or (un) productive conclusions or narratives can become more or less fixed habits that can maintain a more or less long-lasting vision of life that is discolouring, limiting or stimulating, just as incorrectly taught dance steps can become a stubborn habit. Such automatic or unconscious narratives can have a very far-reaching influence. In this way, children who are with adults, without the adults realising or intending it, can receive images and thoughts about themselves and about others, of course without being aware of this. For a child there is a big difference between hearing that he is ‘just as stubborn as his father’ and hearing that he is ‘just as big a go-getter as his father’. This leads to a completely different ‘identity’ and can explain why certain circumstances lead to a

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discouraging vision and post-traumatic stress in certain individuals and in others to an empowering vision and post-traumatic growth.

1.2.3 With which ‘I’ am I dealing?

The structural duality of the human brain discussed above is also expressed in the remarkable experience of a dual personality, as evidenced by curious statements such as: ‘I would like to (for example), quit smoking. . . but I can’t’.

‘I do know that my behaviour (e.g. my phobia) is pointless, but it is stronger than me’.

‘When I did that, I was not myself’, or ‘I am looking for myself’ ‘I still have to work on myself.’

In these examples, there clearly seem to be two different instances of ‘I’ speaking, namely an ‘I’ who apparently wants something that is not wanted by another ‘I’. Based on the description given earlier, this can be understood as the ‘I’ of the old brain and the ‘I’ of the new brain. Sometimes this is also ‘the child’ in us and ‘the adult’ in us. The adult in us, the ‘I’ of the new brain, ‘knows’ that smoking is crazy or that a phobia is nonsense, but that has no significant impact on the child in us, the ‘I’ of the old brain. The old brain (system 1) does not understand language and is therefore not susceptible to linguistic reason, argumentation, or logic. The new brain (system 2) can therefore reasonably understand that certain behaviours are undesirable or even counterproductive, but this will not prevent the old brain from imperturbably continuing to conduct these behavioural patterns (for example addictive pleasure behaviours or phobic behaviour). The old brain, after all, manifests itself not only through sensations, desires and feelings, but also in some cases though symptoms such as phobic behaviour, addiction behaviour or post-traumatic problem behaviour. It is commonly said that the body ‘speaks’. Moreover, there is a self-awareness that can watch all this happening.

The dual nature of humans is aptly captured in the image of the charioteer trying to steer his horses, as described by Plato, among others. The horses represent the old brain, the charioteer the new brain. A horse is obviously much stronger than a person, but a person is potentially much smarter and can therefore easily guide the horse around the field by holding up all kinds of (imaginary) carrots and thus getting it to run in the desired direction. Plato therefore pointed out that horses are beautiful animals that we can enjoy. But, he said, ‘there is one thing you should not do and that is to let your horses decide where you are going.’ Horses are good servants but bad masters.

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According to Jonathan Haidt (b. 1963), moral psychologist and professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, the idea that feelings are a reliable guide in life is one of the great errors. It is also noteworthy that humans, who can make elephants work for them, and who are able to drive and even enjoy driving - huge machines (trucks, trains, giant airplanes, gigantic ships), are in many cases unable to control themselves - their own internal horses - and call it ‘difficult’. Certain problems (depression, burnout, addiction, suicide) have not been solved because they are considered diseases, which are consequently referred to the field of medical science, instead of being treated as skills to be learned. In the case of smoking, for example, it is known that a sufficient sense of urgency often arises when a cancer is diagnosed, after which quitting smoking suddenly turns out to be possible.

Here, too, there is a remarkable similarity between individual life and social events. Just as reason often has a hard time guiding and directing the organism in the desired direction (‘I want to.... but ...’), so politics, in particular democracy, has a hard time managing and steering the dynamics of globalized capitalism and the world market economy. These also seem to have their own will. The way in which we measure the success of a society, through growth and gross domestic product, clearly does not necessarily improve the individual quality of life and does not take environmental damage into account. Certain problems remain outside the scope of the economy and do not lead to a sense of urgency. Likewise, the way in which we measure the success of individuals, through fame and wealth, does not necessarily seem to lead to a happy life.

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1.2.4 Stories: order out of chaos Consciousness must initially have been an incredibly confusing experience. After all, how to give meaning to, how to deal with, the enormous complexity that humans found around themselves and of which they became aware? How to deal with the countless, incomprehensible natural phenomena? With other living things? With the cosmos? But also, how to deal with one’s own body, with illness, with death? What does it all mean?

In consciousness, the need must therefore have arisen for a manual, a logical structure, a useful mental map of reality in the form of a consistent, structuring and guiding story. So the brain works like crazy to discover patterns and laws in the chaos, just as one can see all kinds of patterns in a Rorschach test. The first results of that search are called intuitions. An intuition is a kind of first understanding, a first approach, a first story. Intuitions can provide interesting thinking patterns, but they should always be critically evaluated. For example, the brain seems to be able to ‘read’ nonsense texts without much effort.

The brain not only looks for a pattern behind the facts, but also often prides itself on recognizing a pattern behind the pattern, a game behind the game, an intention behind the intention and thus having more insight than other players. Some of these patterns can become hallucinations, because the brain will also want to see patterns where there are none, for example in the case of sensory deprivation. For instance, behind certain phenomena one can ‘see’ an evil intention, a hostile consciousness or the work of magical powers. Since our brain is selected for survival and reproduction and not, for example, for finding out the truth, a critical examination always remains

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appropriate. The brain is not only capable of turning nonsense into an understandable reality, but also of making utter nonsense of reality. After all, people can easily imagine all sorts of things, including things that are nowhere to be found. Does the sun rise because the cock crows? Or does the cock crow because the sun rises? Humanity has long thought that the Earth was flat and that it was the centre of the universe around which everything revolved. Such intuitions can be particularly persistent because they fit so well with the irresistible ‘perception’ that we are standing still and that everything is revolving around us. There is also the intuition that the universe must be controlled by some kind of supernatural intelligence and that deep within us there must be a solid ‘I’. Intuitions can be the start of a creative process and can lead to important discoveries, but can just as well be a total misrepresentation of reality. Karl Popper said that reliable knowledge, that is science, arises from the critical examination of intuitions and myths.

Few people will be able not to see a square in the adjacent figure. However, this Square only exists in the imagination.

Someone who doesn’t know what a square is wouldn’t see it.

However it is a powerful and insuppressible intuition, comparable to the intuitive idea of an ‘I’ in us or the idea of human freedom. Likewise, it is impossible not to ‘see’ that the sun rises and sets, since that is our ‘perception,’ even though we ‘know’ that in fact the Earth is rotating on its axis. We are always convinced that we see what is there, everything that is there and only what is there. That can set us on the wrong track.

This is especially true for the virtual character that we call ‘I’. This is the ‘I’ we identify with, the ‘I’ described above that can watch the thoughts and emotions that can arise in us, that can tell stories about us and about others and that can consciously decide on a certain behaviour. The ‘I’ was described by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett as our centre of narrative gravity. Just like a physical centre of gravity, the ‘I’ is always virtual and at the same time extremely useful.

After all, through consciousness, humans can consciously intervene in their patterns of behaviour, in their habits or even in their addictions. We can learn a new language or a new pattern of behaviour. As a result, humans can reprogram themselves and distinguish themselves from animals that exhibit fixed and virtually unchanged patterns of behaviour. We can consciously work for the choices we desire and against unwanted habits. As a result, man has become the very latest survival machine in evolution. Thus, as a programmable species, humankind is the only species that is not bound to a biological niche, but can settle and survive anywhere.

The ‘I’ is an abstract entity that cannot be positively defined. The ‘I’ can only be approached negatively by thinking away everything that is ‘not-I’, such as the place of birth, the past, certain events, body, education, language, categories, narratives, convictions, emotions or behavioural patterns. What remains after this spiritual practice is pure being, pure consciousness, the observer itself. Since this is not a substance, but an abstraction, there can be no talk of being ‘damaged’ or

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‘hurt’ by others or by events. What one is cannot be lost and cannot be hurt, damaged or taken away by anyone. These insights lead to greater mental transparency and to awareness of the radical contingency of every identity. After all, what a person is is a historical creation, not a necessity. There were alternatives and everything one is now could have not been. The understanding of this contingency is the basis for true tolerance and compassion.

What you really are, your mind, your soul, cannot be offended, humiliated or hurt.

Consciousness is untouchable, like a mirror that cannot be tainted or affected by what it reflects.

The only thing that can be offended or hurt is your ego, i.e. who you THINK you are.

ANON

Stories create experiences. They form the internal context that determines our experience. They hypnotize us. They brainwash us. Experiences are attributed to reality, but in fact are the result of a story about reality. We get anxious when we make certain ideas about the future. We get angry when we make certain ideas about the past. We get melancholy when we think of an unpleasant event and we are delighted when we think of holidays. In every case it is our ideas and stories that speak to our own internal source of well-being or unwellness (see below). The experience thus created is in turn considered to be ‘proof’ of the impact of reality. In this way, people are always ‘right’. After all, people think they ‘feel’ reality; they think they ‘know’ from experience. Reality occurs in the outside world and moves on; the story in the inner world remains. Often these ideas are actually conclusions that we drew as a child from events and experiences and that have ‘stuck’ in our brain. In some cases, however, an existing story can be disrupted in such a way that a new story has to be made in order to organize and ‘place’ our experiences. People often speak of ‘wounds’ and ‘injuries’, but in reality it’s a question of certain interpretations of reality. There are no real ‘wounds’ or ‘injuries’ at all. Although the memory of pain can be painful, it is of course not pain. Facts can’t be changed, but stories are changeable. Experiences can be deconstructed, changed and even transformed by changing the idea. For example, a certain ‘traumatizing’ experience can subsequently be re-interpreted as an important moment of insight.

Many problems with reality are therefore rather problems with our description of reality. There is the ‘I’ that experiences the world and the ‘I’ that tells stories about that world. Subjective experience is determined more by the story of the external context than by the external context itself. For example, people may believe that they are worthless and unworthy of love and can therefore lead difficult and unhappy lives. Such stories can remain as archaeological fossils buried in our psychic ground. It takes insight and attention to approach reality in a bit more ‘realistic’ way. A useful rule is that reality is what remains if one stops believing in it. Only through a

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process of awakening can one realize the formatting, discolouring and distorted influence of views and beliefs. That is the purpose of philosophy and of many spiritual practices.

Reality is what remains if you no longer believe in it.

A difficulty is that once one has found a plausible story, a useful mental map, one clings to it like a drowning man to a piece of wreckage. Moreover, one identifies one’s ‘I’ with certain narratives and defines oneself by means of a language, a place of birth, a profession, a religion, a sports club or a group. Such cognitive fixation can lead to a ‘we-against-them’ mentality, like in the story of the lion cub that had been lost and joined a herd of goats; there it came to believe that it was a kid like the others; when a lion appeared, all the goats ran off, including the lion cub; when the lion asked the cub why it started running, it answered that goats just run away from lions.

Narratives can often indeed be particularly persistent and modifiable, not only in personal life but even in science. In his Novum Organum (1620), the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) identified four idols ‘who not only inhabit the human mind so that the truth hardly ever comes to pass, but who also actively oppose the truth.’ These were the idols of the tribe (the ‘normal’ limited understanding of the world), the idols of the cave (learned beliefs), the idols of the market (in contemporary terms: emphasis on continued growth, profit and consumption rather than wellbeing and sustainability) and the idols of the theatre (religious dogmas, scientific ‘insights’).

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) also experienced this when he proposed his heliocentric model of the universe, as did Semmelweis (1818-1865) when he discovered the cause of maternity fever, Darwin (1809-1882) when he published the theory of evolution and Wegener (1880-1930) when

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he proposed the theory of tectonic plates and continental drift. Pasteur, Koch and Einstein also encountered considerable resistance in disclosing the results of their investigations.

In all these cases, there was a conflict between a new narrative and an existing narrative. This is a cognitive dissonance, a discord in consciousness, a state of psychological tension that is experienced as extremely irritating and annoying and that one can try to solve by declaring the new narrative to be laughable or invalid and rejecting it. Only after a more or less long period of opposition can the new narrative finally get through. This does not happen without a fight. We are not very good at recognizing the mistakes in our own story. For this we need good opponents and debate partners who understand that it is not a question of being right and doing away with the other, but a question of achieving a better vision together. After all, people are masters at finding excuses, and good arguments and motivations are needed to make a change of narrative acceptable to themselves and others. This is how science gradually makes progress. The same is true for political and social changes. For example, the feudal model of society was replaced in the French Revolution by the republican model based on human rights; the possession of slaves was once quite normal, but is now no longer considered acceptable. Contemporary political debates on the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, poverty reduction or nuclear energy are also about narratives.

We drink to the fullest the lie that pleases us, but only drink with little sips a truth that is bitter to us.

DENIS DIDEROT

1.2.5 Don Quixote welcomes you!

Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) described the world as a soup and our thinking, that is our language, as a fork. Another metaphor represents reality as an ocean in which we fish; depending on the net we cast, we will catch different kinds of fish, but we will never be able to catch the ocean itself.

Reality remains unknown. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) somewhat more philosophically said that we know reality through our mental categories, but that reality in itself always remains unknown.

Not only are there the usual optical illusions - the stick in the water that seems to be broken there are also the ambiguities in perception, when it is impossible to determine what is ‘real’ while one would swear to have seen what there is. After all, intuitively we are always convinced that we only see what there is and all that there is. However, this is flatly contradicted by further insight and research. Our perception is influenced not only by our needs (those who are hungry suddenly see food and restaurants everywhere) but also by a myriad of distortive effects, described as cognitive bias: cognitive dissonance, negativity bias, confirmation bias, consistency bias, premature cognitive fixation, the illusion of competence, wilful ignorance and the Pygmalion Effect.

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The Don Quixote effect is the remarkable fact that the narrative self imperceptibly takes the place of the experiencing self, as told in the famous story by Cervantes. Although childbirth is an extremely painful event for the experiencing self, the narrative self does not ‘remember’ labour as a painful, traumatic event, but as a happy one. It is like reverse trauma. On the other hand, it does not ‘remember’ a partner’s decision to break off a relationship as the choice of a free person, but as a ‘loss’, a ‘betrayal’, a ‘dagger in the back’, or a ‘world collapsing’. Ideological stories too can lead to a narrowing of the view. The social view sees an addict as a victim. The conservative view sees a failure and a weakness. The medical view sees a sick person. The nature of the gaze determines the perception.

There is also the remarkable and often laughable Dunning-Kruger effect or competence illusion: whoever is least hindered by knowledge speaks with the most certainty, while people with more knowledge speak more cautiously. Incompetent people also lack the metacognitive ability to recognize their incompetence, while competent people often underestimate their competence.

Charles Bukowski said, ‘The problem with the world is that intelligent people are all doubts, while foolish people are full of confidence.’ Umberto Eco said, ‘People who have studied very little are no problem, they know they don’t know anything. People who have studied a lot are no problem, they also know that they know nothing. The problem is the people in between: those who have studied a bit and think they know everything.’

1.3 Freedom and human nature The endless scientific and philosophical discussions about man’s ‘true nature’ and whether it is good, altruistic and noble, but corrupted by society (as claimed by some philosophers), or whether it is evil and selfish and must be forced by society to do what is right (as other philosophers claim),

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are hopeless and ultimately meaningless because man has no ‘true nature’. Popular essentialist assumptions about ‘the true nature of man’ are usually religiously or ideologically inspired.

The true nature of man is that he has no true nature - unless it is the biological will to survive and reproduce - but that he has a wide range of possibilities. Our choices and decisions come about through the action of many influences and factors that are evolutionary, social, intellectual, affective, spiritual, molecular, atomic, and even quantum physical. In themselves, all these factors can be deterministic in nature, while the result is still unpredictable. Rolling the dice is a set of completely deterministic processes, just as the weather is the result of a huge number of deterministic processes. However, these processes are so complex that the whole becomes completely unpredictable. In humans, we ‘experience’, and usually label, this as ‘free choice’.

Freedom is not an absolute given, not a black and white phenomenon, not an attribute or quality that people may or may not possess. With regard to freedom, one first thinks of freedom of choice, that is an awareness that arises in the course of a human life as it arose in the course of the evolution of humanity. At every moment of life, more or less conscious choices are made, by the individual or by others, that can be more or less final, and can therefore no longer be made.

So, for example, at some moment it was ‘decided’ whether someone would be a man or a woman, with which parents he / she would be born, what education he / she would receive, what school he / she would attend and many other things. It was also ‘decided’ how old he / she is now. All these choices can therefore no longer be made. But there are still plenty of other choices to be made at any time. This freedom is also not absolute: you can only make the choices that you know. You cannot choose a book that you do not know. You cannot take a street that you have not seen. The wider and more conscious the view, the more freedom someone has. A child has little choice, an adult has a lot of choice. Yet it is always true that people are free to do what they want, but not to want what they want. Freedom here means ‘being unhindered’, just as a stone in freefall can fall unhindered, but does not fall ‘out of free will’. In other words, one is free to act as one wishes, but one does not act of one’s own free will. After all, how could one do something other than what one wants? How could one have wanted anything other than what one wanted?

Humans can become aware of their possibilities and of society and in this way can liberate themselves to a great extent from the formatting influence of education and society. They can shape their lives in many ways and develop their potential. Therein lies their freedom. The downside is that they cannot escape the associated responsibility. They cannot continue to pretend they had no choice. A number of choices have, of course, already been made by one’s upbringing. A child never has a choice about that, but undergoes it. But an adult is, in the words of Sartre (1905-1980), ‘condemned to be free,’ that is, to make choices. Even not choosing is a choice, the choice to let chance decide. The only choice that one cannot make is the choice to not be free.

Freedom, again according to Sartre, is: ‘What we do with what is done to us.’ He thus repeats a wisdom of life that had already been proclaimed by the Stoics but which only received attention

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again with the Renaissance. In another famous phrase Sartre says: ‘Existence precedes essence.’

Man gets to know his possibilities in circumstances and contexts in which they are addressed. Man is authentic when he realizes that he has no fixed essence. His essence, his authenticity, is his freedom and his responsibility (see further: ‘Existentialist art of living’). So no one can know himself completely, because no one can claim to have been in every context. It is possible to know which of one’s possibilities have been discovered so far, but it is not possible to know what other possibilities there may still be. No one can know which languages he could speak. One only knows which languages one has learned so far.

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) put it this way: ‘If I kick a stone, it will fly a long way. I can calculate exactly how far it will fly: this is completely determined by the energy of my kick. If I kick a dog, it can fly a long way. My kick is also the cause of that physical event. But if the dog then turns around and returns furiously to bite me, it is not through the energy of my kick but through its own energy. My kick is not the cause of the aggressive behaviour, but only the trigger of it. The dog could have laid down or walked away. Aggression is not a fatality.’

A stone has no freedom of choice. A dog has a limited freedom of choice. A human has great freedom of choice. A stone reacts passively to the forces acting on it. A person does not react, but acts from a choice and of his own energy; he acts on the basis of intentions, desires and values; he responds to the circumstances of life. A stone undergoes, a person undertakes. His behaviour has no cause, but an intention.

Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), the Austro-British psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote: ‘There is a space between stimulus and response. Our ability to determine our answer lies in that space.

Our answer lies in our potential for growth. That is our freedom.’ And elsewhere he wrote: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Logotherapy sees responsibility as the real essence of human existence. The divide between good and evil that runs through every human being extends to the greatest depth and becomes evident even at the bottom of the abyss of the concentration camp.’

Words and stories create realities. That is the so-called performative mode of language. Some actions even consist exclusively of words, which are the so-called speech acts. Examples include: ‘I declare the session open,’ or, ‘I declare you man and wife.’ Saying the words will make reality come true. The words are the act itself. Marriage is accomplished by pronouncing words, just as a country’s independence is accomplished by pronouncing a declaration of independence.

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So words have a creative power. The prime example is the divine creative act described in the Bible: ‘In the beginning was the word.’ The creator accomplishes creation by uttering the words.

Also, in the sacraments, only words are uttered: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Another example is a promise. There, too, a reality is created by pronouncing words. A special example is a question: ‘Do you know what time it is?’ The question itself triggers something in the other person’s consciousness. Conversely, there are also actions with a symbolic meaning, whereby a conviction is made known without words being spoken. Examples include: parades, manifestations, certain clothing, silent protest, burning books, displaying or burning flags or other symbols.

This illustrates the social dimension of individual patterns of behaviour. Bateson said: ‘If you shout something at a flying stone, it will not change its movement. But if you yell something at a passing human, he will respond to it.’ The human brain apparently responds to words spoken. If we take this insight further, it follows that if the brain is sensitive to the voice of others, it must also be sensitive to its own voice and also to its own inner voice, i.e. to its thoughts. People can steer their brain by consciously formulating intentions and assigning tasks, that is to say by formulating thoughts, words and sentences and saying them, whether out loud or not. That is the basis of human freedom.

What we say has a performative influence on the attention and behaviour of others, and what others do and say affects our attention and our behaviour, although this can never completely take away our freedom. So one cannot just do anything publicly proclaim and then claim others may not experience anything because it ‘was not our intention’. The intention is only one side of communication. The meaning for the recipient is the other. For example, people can be disturbed or even insulted by words or behaviour. One cannot behave in any way and claim that it should have no effect on others because that ‘was not the intention’ and was ‘only done for oneself’.

Language, clothing, attitude and other non-verbal signs are carriers of a meaning according to a semiotics, a social and cultural code that is not private but public. They are statements that express something and they cannot be made to mean what they want. It cannot simply be said that things only mean what they ‘mean to me’. We are not Humpty Dumpty, who casually stated, ‘When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less.’

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2. Life patterns Life is about opportunities and realities. It is a process of continuously unfolding and realizing possibilities. At any given time, there is a multitude of possibilities, only a few of which can become reality. A person was born as either a man or a woman, with certain parents, at a certain place and time, they learned a certain language and received a certain education, they did certain studies, they met certain people, they were married or not. With every realisation, countless other possibilities are excluded: one did not have certain parents, one did not learn certain languages, one did not become an architect or a musician, there are many people one did not encounter. But every realization also creates new possibilities: every language learned offers opportunities, all studies offer new possibilities. According to A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947) only at death are there no longer any further possibilities: death is at any moment ‘the possibility of the impossibility of further possibilities.’

2.1 Possibilities and realities Life is not equilibrium, not rest and not indifference. Life is essentially disequilibrium, unrest and compassion. Life is a dynamic event, an endless dance of possibilities and realities. This explains the difficulty or even the impossibility of a science of life and, a fortiori, of a science of happiness.

After all, science is about unchanging, predictable laws, while life is always changeable and can be better described with concepts and images like a game or a dance. A dance is a dynamic balance between distance and proximity. Humans dance with possibilities and realities and, while dancing, in every moment are seeking a way between the infinity of dreamed-of possibilities and the finality of the reality they experience. The art of living observes from a higher viewpoint this flow and breath of life between existential experiences, between freedom and determination, between detachment and attachment, between enchantment and disenchantment, between asceticism and ecstasy. Pleasure is the pleasant alternation between the familiar and the new, between dream and reality. A life with too much reality and too few opportunities leads to the experience of dullness and of being trapped in finiteness and limitations. This can lead to a form of existential disappointment, disillusion, depression and ultimately existential death: which in medical jargon is called ‘depression’. Indeed, humans are more determined by their dreams and ideas about future possibilities than by actual events in the present or the past.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

ROSA LUXEMBURG

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Opportunities arouse enthusiasm and passion and mobilize vital energy. Romantic love is a form of enthusiasm resulting from the presentation of attractive possibilities on the basis of an essentially banal reality. But one can also lose oneself in an excess of possibilities, in utopian dreams, in transcendent fantasies out of touch with reality. That too can become a prison, which in medical jargon is referred to as ‘psychosis’.

Life events occur when circumstances are such that they occur. They are not ‘positive’ and not ‘negative’. They don’t aim to make us happy or unhappy. They are not ‘losses’ and are not an attack on our personal well-being. They are not insults and not ‘setbacks’. They are events of life.

Our ancestors experienced them. People all over the world experience them. They are essentially neutral. Why, then, can certain events be a source of suffering for some people? Because, as I stated earlier, man is never only a neutral observer, but also a giver of meaning. For man, perceptions are not only about facts and events, but always acquire a certain meaning. Depending on whether or not the events meet a desire or a need, they acquire the meaning of something favourable and desirable or something that is not favourable and undesirable. Because events are welcomed or rejected, patterns of emotion and behaviour arise. Emotions can be seen as symbolic patterns of behaviour that give the internal impetus to the outer patterns of behaviour.

2.2 Patterns of experience Experiences and emotions are usually considered to be very personal, but those who look closer can quickly see that emotions usually appear in fixed, well-established patterns. Everyone can laugh or cry. Everyone who is angry or anxious says more or less the same things. Everyone with depressed behaviour says roughly the same things; and everyone who is in love also makes very similar statements. In all these cases, these are more or less stereotyped patterns of behaviour in response to events, just as fever, sneezing or allergy are patterns of response. A child who bumps into a table and hurts himself thinks the table hurt him. An adult understands that the table has done nothing at all and that the pain is a physical reaction pattern due to being bumped into it.

The source of the pain lies in the person himself. The table was only the trigger, the context through which that reaction pattern occurred. Such patterns do not need to be learned: they are present from birth. We don’t need to teach a toddler how to laugh or cry, be anxious, or angry. It is clearly an evolutionary pattern that is present in everyone as a possibility and can be expressed in certain circumstances with its own dynamics and its own energy. The fact that people can react very differently in similar circumstances shows that those reactions are much more related to the person concerned than to the accidental external circumstances or events. Events, both in the outer world and in the inner world, have meanings that trigger the activation of fixed reaction patterns.

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Emotions are patterns of reaction in response to events in the outside world, in which the formation of meaning, i.e. the thinking, proceeds so quickly that it seems as if there was no thought and the emotion was directly provoked by the outside world. This is certainly useful in the event of a real danger. In many cases, however, emotions are responses to images in imaginary space. These are cognitive emotions. Every emotion that one can imagine as a possibility can also be experienced; and, in principle, one can experience any desired emotion at any time by imagining the circumstances in which that emotion would occur. Emotional patterns are activated by ideas and stories. Ideas create experiences. For example, people can ‘feel’ remarkable or special by identifying themselves with possessions, functions, beliefs, associations, religions or nations. They can ‘feel’ impressive and important because they own an impressive home or an impressive car, motorcycle or boat or because they perform an important function. They can ‘feel’ euphoric and feel they are a powerful victor because their sports club or their political party has ‘won’ and they can ‘feel’ they are a pitiful loser if their sports club or their political party has ‘lost.’

Ideas create experiences

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The idea that emotions are patterns of response that are always present in humans goes against our intuition that they are ‘given’ to us from the outside or that conditions ‘make’ them, just as the sun ‘gives’ it warmth or the rain ‘makes’ us wet. The idea of ’giving’ and ‘making’ is as intuitive but just as false as the idea that the sun revolves around the earth and that we see it ‘rise’ and ‘set’ as a result.

As mentioned earlier, in many cases where people experience emotional patterns such as fear or anger, they are reactions to ideas: imagined realities in imaginary space. Ideas are abstract and of course cannot ‘give’ or ‘make’ anything at all. They can only awaken responses in us. Seneca said ‘There are more things that frighten us than harm us, and we suffer more in our imagination than in reality.’ American author and humourist Mark Twain (1835-1910) said ‘My life has been full of dramas, most of which never happened.’ The past also exists only as an image of certain events in consciousness, while the future does not yet exist unless it is an image in consciousness.

Sometimes the emotions generated by it are therefore dismissed as ‘just imagination.’ That is a serious misconception.

As I stated above, emotions (the old brain) simply cannot distinguish between real realities that are present here and now and imagined realities, which ‘only’ exist as an idea in the imagination.

However, the emotions themselves are always real. Fearful images lead to ‘real’ fear, and erotic ideas lead as much to erotic arousal as ‘real’ situations do. For our old brain, and thus for our emotions, imagined realities are just as ‘real’ as ‘real’ realities. This explains certain emotional responses when certain past events or certain future possibilities emerge in our consciousness.

After all, ideas about past or future events are always accompanied by certain meanings and stories, and it is those meanings that are the cause of the emotional pattern, not reality per se.

My life has been filled with dramas, most of which have never happened.

MARK TWAIN

2.3 The image of man The complex phenomenon of the human being cannot easily be described. Therefore, it is convenient and almost inevitable to use metaphors. Metaphors are elegant ways to make complex phenomena easy to grasp and understand by comparing them to a simpler system. But comparisons are always flawed and metaphors are only partially true. They always contain something of the truth, but they also always become absurd if one pushes them too far. From the

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foregoing we get the picture of a human being as an ensemble of general human patterns of experience and possibilities that emerge in specific circumstances and contexts.

As I mentioned above, if we see man as a musical instrument with the patterns of experience as the strings, the language and the images are like the bow with which those patterns are brought to life; consciousness is the player who handles the bow, and the music produced is the experience itself. Is the small number of strings a limitation? Apparently not, because for an instrument like the violin, with only four strings, endless melodies have been composed and the possibilities are far from exhausted; new melodies are still being written. Similarly, millions of colours can be created from just three colours; and an endless number of words, sentences and stories can be written with an alphabet of just 26 letters. Likewise, based on a limited number of unchanging basic emotional patterns, we can compose an almost endless number of life experiences. To the extent that we become aware of this, we acquire emotional freedom and maturity and no longer need to blame others or hold circumstances responsible for our emotions and our life experiences. Some will ‘get the hang it’ more easily than others. Not everyone is a virtuoso in the art of living. After all, it is not enough to have a good musical instrument to make beautiful music! But anyone can learn to use their options more consciously, sensibly and better.

We can always only experience ourselves, our own possibilities, our own realities, and the consequences of our own colouring of events.

Even your worst enemy cannot hurt you as deeply as your own thoughts.

THE BUDDHA

The limitations mentioned above also apply to the metaphor of the stringed instrument. For man is not an unchangeable material instrument, but an ever-evolving biological organism. Other metaphors are therefore the monkey brain and the human brain, the child and the adult, the muscles and the dancer, Plato’s horses and charioteer, the traveller and the mental map, or the experiencing self and the narrative self.

Another interesting metaphor is the comparison with a management body and an executive body, an executive force. Consciousness is like a manager, who is powerless without his employees. The employees are the body, the muscles, the organs, but also the emotions, the habits. The employees always try to serve us and meet our wishes. They always want the best for us. Only occasionally is there a protest or a strike. Our employees have excellent survival skills, but don’t understand the modern world very well. That is why they need a competent leader. This metaphor makes it clear that it is important to care for and ‘listen’ to our employees, but that it is equally important to provide vision, leadership and direction and to understand that our employees always listen to us. Indeed, they are no bearers of deep truths. Unfortunately, we are not always

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aware of the messages we send. If we consciously or unconsciously send messages of danger and impending doom, our employees will immediately take appropriate measures in the form of stress. On the other hand, if we send messages of peace, our employees will relax and engage in useful and beneficial activities, including repair and maintenance of the body.

The metaphor of a vehicle is also often used: people can be seen as the driver of a bus, with the figures and events of the past as the passengers trying to influence the driver. Jean d’Ormesson describes life as a train one is travelling on, without knowing how one got there or where the train is headed. In his novel ‘Night Train to Lisbon’, Pascal Mercier, pen name of the philosopher Peter Bieri, describes life as a train journey: ‘I now live within myself as if I’m on a moving train. I have not got on it voluntarily, I had no choice, and I don’t know where we are going. One day in the distant past, I woke up in my compartment and felt the train moving. [...] I cannot change track or direction. I don’t set the speed. I can’t see the locomotive and I don’t know if the driver can be trusted. [...] The journey takes a long time. There are dreams in which I hope the journey will be endless. Those are rare, precious things. There are other days when I’m happy with the knowledge that there will be a last tunnel in which the train will finally come to a halt.’

Neither of these metaphors is very satisfying, and of course one always chooses a metaphor to support one’s argument. However, since none of these metaphors is completely true, there is always room for discussion if people focus on the absurd rather than what the metaphor makes clear.

2.4 Patterns of experience at work From an evolutionary point of view, humans, like all other animals, are set for survival reactions such as flight, fight or freeze. In animals, these reaction patterns are always ready to be quickly activated. That is understandable: an animal that was not fearful enough did not stand much chance in the struggle for life. A too gentle or peaceful approach could lead to a fatal lesson.

Survival is therefore set by evolution as the default setting, the factory setting. The battle axe is always ready.

These archaic, evolutionary patterns, which also remain like archaeological fossils in the ground of human psychology, are sometimes referred to as the metaphor of ‘the child’ within us. For ‘the child’ in us, any problem quickly becomes a threat to survival. For example, a child reacts with a pattern of panic when Mummy leaves the room and might even kick that ‘naughty Mummy’ when she comes back. After all, being abandoned is a threat to survival, for a child is in a state of real dependence and cannot survive alone, just as a young animal cannot survive if it is ejected from its nest. A child smiles and is happy when it gets what it wants and is angry when it doesn’t. Mummy

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is nice or mummy is naughty. While these patterns have been particularly helpful in our survival in the natural environment, they do not contribute to adult happiness in a cultural environment.

Growing up means learning to play these innate patterns in a different way. It means transcending the childish patterns of fear, neediness, ignorance, prejudice and aggressiveness to achieve a life based on reason, enlightened by compassion and love. It is like leaving the archaic cave, to use Plato’s metaphor. An adult must realize that he is no longer dependent on others and that he does not live in the wild but in a culture that is usually extremely secure and safe. It is therefore advisable to adjust and ‘personalize’ the default setting. The battle axe can be buried.

In order to achieve lasting happiness, it is necessary to deal with the existing existential reaction patterns in a more mature way and to arrive at a modus vivendi. After all, these patterns will not disappear and can always reappear. An adult can learn to see that being left is no longer lifethreatening, that he is no longer dependent in the same way, and that he is essentially always alone. An adult has already been left. Growing up is learning to be alone and no longer seeing childlike needs as demands or conditions, but as desires or wishes. No one came into the world to meet other people’s needs. Even in an intimate relationship, one is essentially always alone. An adult must learn to create more mature experiences. One has to learn to compose one’s music as an existential music, to learn to create it, just as one has to learn to ‘make’ love instead of waiting for it to overtake one and to ‘fall’ in love. A child waits for love to come. An adult creates love. An adult understands that reality is not ‘nice’ and not ‘naughty.’ The table didn’t hurt her, she just ran into it. An adult understands that sadness and pain are also patterns of reaction and that in principle one can always feel good. Those who live in love can always feel good without having to change anything or anyone.

In normal circumstances, the transition from a childlike world view to a more adult world view happens gradually, as childlike reaction patterns are exchanged step by step for more adult patterns. Every growing adult will eventually have to do what René Descartes (1596-1650) did for mankind: start over, doubt everything and wonder what he can still believe. This is how a child gradually discovers that Mummy is not always there for him alone and that Santa Claus does not exist, although these discoveries and developments can be gentle or more brutal, they can always be accompanied by unwellness and suffering. At best, a child will be able to count on guidance from adults when dealing with these unpleasant realities. This creates what is called a secure attachment, with a sufficient dose of confidence in the goodness of others and of life.

However, if the transition from childlike to adult patterns proceeds (too) brusquely and disruptively, without adequate guidance from benevolent and wise adults, so that the child is left to itself, the processing can be problematic, and allergic, phobic or even traumatic patterns can occur. These so-called ‘wounds’ and ‘injuries’ are like Pavlovian reactions. In reality, there are no wounds or injuries, but there are certain habits of thinking and cognitive patterns. A child bitten by a dog can continue to believe that all dogs are dangerous and can remain fearful. A child may also begin to believe that the others, the adults, or the entire world are a hostile area of constant

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danger. Such a child will behave like a fearful animal. This is the so-called insecure attachment.

The necessary confidence will have to be built up at a later age. Lessons to be learned later in life are usually much more difficult and painful.

However, the transition from childish to adult patterns can also be complicated by the fact that the child is ‘protected’ from all problems by overprotective parents and by society, thereby also depriving it of all learning opportunities. If the childish world view is not sufficiently challenged and disturbed, all kinds of immaturity syndromes can arise, such as neurotic or borderline behaviour. These are usually childish thinking habits and behavioural patterns that persist into adulthood.

Understanding the existence of emotional response patterns and how they can be activated greatly facilitates learning to deal with them in a different, more mature way. It gives us the opportunity to become the authors of our own lives. While it seems logical to try to ‘suppress’, ‘fight’ or even ‘overcome’ one’s anger or fear, this struggle and resistance is a kind of negative attention that will only increase the anger or fear. If one tries to ‘fight’ or ‘overcome’ a whimpering child, it will only whine more, in the end one will have to accept the child and give it the necessary attention. Only then will the child feel heard and no longer bother. We can also calm our emotions only by accepting them and paying due attention to them (so-called ‘listening to our emotions’).

My clouds, grieving in the dark, forget that they are the ones who keep the sun hidden.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE Even in a cup of coffee one can see the reflection of the sun ... and every puddle of dirty water still reflects the splendor of the sky ...

UNKNOWN

2.5 The logic of well-being and ill-being One cannot change the heart without telling a different story.

MARTHA NUSSBAUM

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I have already pointed to the completely new evolutionary fact that the old brain suddenly has to deal with images and stories in which it cannot distinguish between ‘facts’ in the ‘real’ world and ‘facts’ in the imaginary world. Both are equally real to the old brain. The ‘real facts’ are often long gone or have not even occurred. The imaginary facts are evoked in consciousness by words and stories. As mentioned before, an impending divorce or impending bankruptcy is just as threatening for the old brain as an onrushing mammoth. Thus we are dealing with the real sources of well-being and unwellness, which the Buddha already knew are deep within ourselves, but whose key is in the highest regions of the brain, especially in the imaginary space of consciousness. It is in this space that the language and logic of suffering and love are at work, subsequently creating the corresponding emotions and patterns of experience.

Not even your worst enemy can cause you so much distress as your own rash thoughts.

But once you master them, no one can help you better, not even your father or your mother.

THE BUDDHA

The source of suffering and ill-being is always triggered by a conscious or unconscious story, a philosophy, an ideology of non-acceptance, of rejection, resistance, conflict, resentment, hatred,

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war. All suffering is the result of a story with a no-logic in response to an event, a change or a surprise that one cannot or will not accept. To know the cause of suffering, one must ask with what one is in conflict, what it is that one refuses to accept, what one thinks one cannot accept or what one is at war with. This could be something in the present (a colleague, a family member, a neighbour), something from the past (an event, a person) or something imagined in the future (a death, a dismissal, the end of a relationship). Many people are also in conflict with themselves, with their body, with their emotions or with certain thoughts.

The source of well-being can be activated consciously or unconsciously through stories of acceptance, peace, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness and love. Those are stories with a yes-logic.

It is important to keep in mind that ‘acceptance’ is not the same as ‘approval’. Acceptance is merely becoming acquainted, without resistance, with the fact that there are people who do things that one does not necessarily agree with and that there are events that are not necessarily pleasant. It is knowing the world as it is, without resistance, not with indifference or resignation, but with interest, compassion and involvement. The world is full of beauty, although it is often a tragic beauty.

The choice of one or the other source is often made by consciously or (often) unconsciously speaking or thinking a single word to name the event. Often these are frequently heard words and social clichés such as ‘loss’, ‘insult’, ‘failure’ or ‘setback’, which are used thoughtlessly and inevitably evoke the corresponding experience. People are often convinced that it is a description of a fact, but in reality it is an opinion or a judgement. There is no discussion about facts. Facts exist whether they are believed or not. They do not depend on our belief. If it rains, that’s a fact.

Everyone will agree. But whether that is also ‘bad weather’ is open to discussion. After all, rain can be good weather for people with a garden. Something about which one can disagree cannot be fact but is an opinion, a meaning ‘for me’. Death is a fact but can be seen as a loss by some people and as a relief by others. A ‘loss’ is therefore not a fact, but an opinion. The same applies to ‘insult’, ‘failure’ or ‘setback’.

We do not have a choice about the words or thoughts that occur in us, but we do have a choice about our response to those thoughts. One can always choose to smile at what one used to believe, but which one no longer believes. In this way one can learn to smile at thoughts of setback, loss or failure. One can learn to replace that thought with other thoughts, which evoke other experiences.

For example, someone who has taken a delightful cruise among beautiful islands in the Aegean Sea or the South Pacific, does not believe at the end of that cruise that he has ‘lost his journey’, that they have been ‘taken’ from him or that he ‘had to give it up.’ On the contrary: many years later she still thinks back with gratitude to the beautiful journey. After all, a journey is not an asset one can lose, but an experience one can never lose. It would be a big step if we could also learn to see people as an experience, a gift. The facts are over, only stories remain and determine the experience.

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O, who can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or clay the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow by thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, RICHARD III, ACT I, SCENE 3

The true nature of suffering and the difference from pain is also evident in certain ritual contexts and initiation ceremonies in which particularly painful procedures are performed, including physical mutilations. Certain sports performances are also particularly painful. However, this is usually not experienced as suffering and as traumatic, because it is given a positive meaning.

People are prepared for it, they look forward to it, they are proud of it and they are praised by those around them. For the same reason, childbirth, which is nevertheless a particularly painful, profound and devastating experience, is not seen as suffering or a traumatic experience. Except in rather exceptional cases, no story of trauma is told. The experience of the painful event is blurred.

Only the memory remains and the memory is a story of a happy event and gratitude for the new life. Anyone witnessing a delivery without understanding what is happening would be outraged by so much almost inhuman suffering. If an unprepared, misunderstanding person happened on such an event, it would certainly be a serious trauma. But women are prepared for it for a long time; they look forward to it, they are surrounded by enthusiastic people, they receive gifts and are congratulated. There are many stories of people who have managed to keep a positive story in inhuman circumstances. One can think of well-known examples such as Nelson Mandela and Viktor Frankl. Facts pass, stories remain.

Facts pass, stories remain.

It is therefore sensible and important to become more aware of the stories we tell ourselves, because our ‘I’ is always listening. Wayne Dyer said, ‘If you believe something will work, you will see opportunities. If you believe something will not work, you will see obstacles.‘ Faith also gives reality value to abstract concepts such as vulnerability or resilience. People can believe in the existence of wounds or injuries that make them vulnerable as they can believe in a ‘wall’ or ‘armour’ to protect them from the ‘attacks’ of the hostile outside world.

Many believe the story that happiness can be achieved by meeting certain conditions: material conditions such as money and possessions, or more existential conditions such as being accepted, recognized or loved. Those conditions are based on the erroneous belief that man is not able to be happy by himself. This belief may go back to the first experiences as a baby who feels anxious and needy when left alone. The idea that people cannot feel good on their own but can only feel good

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through the attention and love of another person is in many cases at the core of self-esteem or lack thereof. It is therefore important to become aware of these automatic patterns, which are always aimed at gaining recognition and preventing rejection. These patterns cannot be ‘fought’ and will not disappear. It can be seen that these patterns do not define who we really are.

The real liberation is to identify with what we really are. We can only find out what we really are by thinking about everything we are not: our possessions, our status, our friends, our body whose cells are constantly being renewed, our thoughts that come and go, our emotions that come and go, our patterns of behaviour. What remains is mere consciousness. According to Buddhism, we are only a ‘knowing space’. The word ‘space’ indicates that there is no limit and ‘knowing’ is the only thing that can be said to be unmistakable. That is what we really are: consciousness. That is the real spiritual dimension.

Incidentally, there is increasing evidence that words and stories are still the most direct and powerful ways to influence the neurophysiology of the brain. Kind words or kind thoughts have an immediate effect on well-being and do more for the immediate feeling of happiness than antidepressants. Regularly remembering the many reasons for being grateful has been shown to decrease the concentration of the stress hormone cortisol, improve mood, increase resilience and energy and reduce anxiety. Neuroscientist Elizabeth Grimaud writes in her book ‘Beau, bien, bon’ that images of the beautiful, the good and the pleasant are followed by an increased secretion of the well-being hormones dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, in a way that is much more effective, targeted and cheaper, and is associated with far fewer side effects, than psychiatric drugs. This form of ‘treatment’ has been used in many forms of meditation and spiritual practice for centuries. The Philosopher Pierre Hadot (1922-2010), professor at the Collège de France and specialist on the ancient world, wrote: ‘A follower of Epicurus knows how to control his thoughts to remember mainly pleasant things, to recall memories of past pleasures, and to enjoy the pleasures of the present. We must understand how intense and satisfying such immediate pleasures are, and consciously choose relaxation and serenity. We should live in deep gratitude to nature and life, which provide us with continuous pleasure and joy if we know where to find them.’

Conversely, the presence in consciousness of stories and images of the ugly (hatred, anger, resentment, war, fighting, hostility, horror, envy, loss, pain, suffering. . .), of evil (which causes pain, suffering or death), of the senseless (meaninglessness, cynicism, despair) and of the unpleasant (disagreeable experiences and sensations), leads to a decrease in the release of wellbeing hormones and an increase in the release of stress-related hormones, resulting in unwellness, depression and possibly even suicide. This is the cave of suffering. Cultural pessimism, and a victimized vulnerability culture, are ubiquitous. Being negative about others, about society, about politics or about life, even if it seems justified, sows negativity in one’s own mind. Even being around negative and complaining people has an impact on one’s own well-being. Just as not only active smoking but also passive smoking is predictive of cancer, so active and even passive

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negativity is predictive of mental illness. What one does repeatedly leaves a trace in the brain. So: pay attention to what you tell yourself, because you are listening.

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2.6 But I am so negative...

Sometimes people think they have negative thoughts because they ‘are so negative’. This is the idea that an experience is the result of an abstract, imaginary property that one ‘has’, namely ‘to be negative.’ But if one then asks what proves that one has that property, the answer again points to behaviour. This is an example of the pattern of explaining a behaviour by an abstract property, which in turn is explained by the behaviour, ‘I do this because I am like this, and I am like this because I behave like this.’ Circular reasoning is frequently found in the sphere of the human psyche and mental care, for example in depression and addiction. The only thing that can be said meaningfully is, ‘I do this because I have not yet learned, or have not decided, or am not motivated, to do otherwise.’ It is a pattern that can only be ‘broken’ by a new pattern following a decision to think and act differently.

As I said earlier, the brain is indeed pre-programmed by evolution for negativity because it increased the chances of survival in the wild. Fortunately, the brain can be actively trained and formatted for positivity by consciously repeating desired patterns. Everything that is done repeatedly will become a new pattern. Socrates, later followed by, among others, William James (1842-1910) and Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), said that one should not fight old habits but devote all one’s energy to creating new patterns. To speak in terms of the metaphor of Plato’s cave: one should not tear down the old cave, one should just build a new cave with new projections. A simple way is to think about the good in your life every day or several times a day, preferably not just about easy things like flowers, sunsets or young kittens, but about concrete points that are relevant or difficult for your own life as it is now. When someone gets on your nerves, you can turn your attention to your personal power that cannot be controlled by that person. If a tragic event catches your attention, you can imagine that there are now possibilities that were not there in the past. If you don’t feel appreciated, you can think of your freedom to live a valuable life instead of trying to be popular. If you have eating problems, you can think of the tasty food you will be able to eat if you are really hungry and the good luck you have in choosing your food. When you feel lonely and isolated, you can think of the many ways you connect with people every day. You have the freedom to give to any feeling a dignified and mature response that increases your well-being. For example, doing this three times a day for six weeks will inevitably reprogram the autopilot. However, it is important to keep in mind that this too can be accompanied by a degree of fear. The old patterns have been instrumental in survival and changes can therefore be perceived as threatening. The exercise can in a way be compared to the Tonglen practice of letting go of negative thoughts by actively and consciously inhaling negativity (I have not progressed enough with my work, my boss is insufferable, my partner did not have time for me...), followed by the conscious exhalation of all those thoughts again, while sending kindness and compassion to all the ‘causes’ of that unwellness.

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What disturbs you is there to teach you patience.

Whoever leaves you is there to teach you how to fly with your own wings.

What irritates you is there to teach you compassion and forgiveness.

What you hate is there to teach you love.

What you fear is there to teach you courage.

What you cannot control is there to teach you acceptance.

What has power over you is there to teach you to take back your own power.

JACKSON KIDDARD

The above exercises may initially seem uncomfortable and ‘unreal’. After all, the old thinking patterns may make you think that doing this cannot outweigh the real negativity in the world. But after a while the positive patterns will start to feel as real as the negative ones. This then becomes the new cave, the new bubble, the new consciousness. It is also important to keep in mind that it is not a so-called gratitude exercise, or a relaxation exercise, although both are very valuable. But one need not be thankful or relaxed to be able to do the exercise, and it doesn’t have to be fun or enjoyable. It is about creating new patterns of living with the aim of improving the quality of life.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words; watch your words, for they become deeds; watch your deeds, for they become habits; watch your habits, for they will become your character; watch your character: that will be your life!

LAO-TZE

The old brain and body are our closest collaborators. They always try to serve us and to act on our messages and intentions. However, often these ‘colleagues’ are not well understood, because people are not sufficiently aware of the nature and impact of the messages that were given to these ‘colleagues’. Many of the words and stories we tell ourselves have been instilled in culture and have become social clichés through repetition. Words such as ‘danger’, ‘insecurity’, ‘enemy’, ‘monster’, ‘loss’, ‘disaster’, ‘wrong’, ‘break’, ‘insult’, ‘wound’, ‘injury’, ‘humiliation’ and others have the effect of an alarm signal on the old brain. The old brain, and thus the body, then reacts with an appropriate response in the form of stress, anxiety or anger. It is often said that one should listen to one’s body. That is certainly wise advice, but one should not forget that the old brain, and therefore the body, always listens to us and always responds to the words and messages that we give or that we unintentionally allow to be present in us. If we call a certain event a failure or a loss, the old brain will respond to it as such.

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The body always listens to us and responds to the words and messages we give it.

Well-being and ill-being therefore depend on the nature and quality of the stories we tell ourselves. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) said that a happy person sees the world in a very different way than an unhappy person, even if the facts are exactly the same for both. It is therefore good practice to master a form of self-observation and mindfulness and to constantly ask yourself which stories you tell and which messages you give yourself. Even calling something ‘difficult’, one of the most banal automatic responses, sends an important message and creates the experience of something ‘heavy’, ‘tiring’ and ‘difficult’.

Well-being and ill-being depend on the quality of our stories.

A very Godly rabbi lived very happily with his wife, who greatly admired him, and his two children, whom he loved very much. One day he had to travel for work. When he had just left, both of his children died in a serious car accident. Their mother, who was alone, suffered in silence. Because she was a strong woman and found support in her faith and confidence in God, she carried her grief and courageously.

How could she tell her husband the sad news? He, too, was a man of great faith, but he had had heart problems in the past, and the woman feared that the news would kill him. She had no choice but to pray, hoping that God would whisper to her what she could do best. The day before her husband would come back, she prayed for a long time and received the grace of an answer.

The rabbi came home the next day. They hugged and he asked where the children were. His wife told him to take a bath and rest first, not to worry.

A few hours later, the two sat down for dinner. She asked him all about the trip, and he talked about what he had been through, talked about God’s mercy, and asked about the children again. The woman replied awkwardly, ‘That’s for later. First I need your help because I have a problem. While you were gone, a friend of ours came to visit and left two precious jewels with me to keep. The jewels are of an unimaginable value. I had never seen anything so beautiful. He will pick them up again later, but I don’t want to return them because I am attached to them now. What do you think?’

The rabbi replied, ‘Listen, woman, I don’t understand your behaviour! You have never been vain.’ The woman replied, ‘But I have never seen such beautiful jewels. I couldn’t accept just losing them forever!’

The rabbi was strict: ‘You cannot lose what has never been yours. Keeping them would equate to theft.

We’ll return them and I’ll help you get over the loss. We’ll do it together today.’’

The woman said, ‘My love, the treasure has been returned already. Our children were those precious jewels. God gave them to us for safekeeping and came to collect them during your trip. They are. . .’ The

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rabbi understood. He put his arms around his wife and together they cried many tears. But he had understood the message and from that day on they carried the loss together.

(After Paulo Coelho in ‘Like a River. Thoughts and Impressions. 1998- 2005’, Workers’ Press)

2.7 Disruptive experiences Events that are objectively accompanied by little or no physical pain, such as a divorce, a layoff, or the death of a loved-one, can nevertheless be accompanied by years of suffering and trauma.

People can remain in suffering, as if in a bubble. Their awareness is like Plato’s cave, where traumatizing stories about unhealed wounds and injuries are projected over and over again, evoking the accompanying experiences. Not so long ago, the death of one or more children was part of normal life, now it is considered ‘insurmountable suffering.’ Monica Lewinsky’s experience was probably not exceptionally painful from an objective point of view, but was later found to have been experienced as traumatic and as suffering. In such cases, the environment will also look worrying. One wonders if one is at fault, if one could have avoided it, one hears stories about damage, wounds and injuries and wonders whether one is still normal and still has a future. The past is traumatizing as long as it is told as a catastrophic, traumatizing story. Words and stories create the subjective experience. Facts pass, stories continue.

Often consciousness is hijacked by so-called ‘negative’ thoughts in the form of frightening or threatening images and stories, to which the old brain reacts with fear or anger as if they were real realities. People who say they suffer from their past really suffer from their old brain’s reaction to images and stories about their past. After all, the facts themselves are long gone. What remains are the images and stories in the memory. Images or stories cannot be ‘obliterated,’ ‘eradicated,’ or ‘overcome.’ They can actually be held onto indefinitely.

Yet stories are not unchanging and people always start to feel better after a while. Earlier, I referred to the experiencing self versus the narrative self. Memories, that is, the stories of the narrative self, change over time. This is seen as ‘time heals’. In reality, however, time itself does nothing at all; it’s actually the memory; and in this context the commonly used metaphor of ‘save to hard disk’ is not correct at all. Whenever a memory is retrieved, in reality, it is always a reconstruction of the facts, that is to say: a story about the facts. When the memory is stored again, it is not the facts that are stored again, but the latest version of the story about the facts. As a result, the emotional charge will gradually decrease in most cases. This can be compared to the game ‘Chinese whispers’, in which a story is passed on from person to person, which ultimately makes it completely unrecognizable. The same happens with memories. This property is useful in various trauma, grief or phobia processing therapies, such as Ingeborg Bosch’s Past Reality Integration, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or even the use of certain drugs. These methods are based on the fact that it is not

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possible to focus attention on two things at the same time. If attention is focused on something else while storing a previously retrieved memory, such as the therapist’s moving finger in EMDR or the tapping of certain parts of the body in EPT, the activity of the emotional brain diminishes and becomes a less emotionally charged version of the story saved. A similar effect seems to be achieved by administering a particular medicine at the right time when the memory is stored again. Even playing a computer game like Tetris would have such an effect.

2.8 Instant well-being It is interesting that people can remember extremely clearly unpleasant, traumatic experiences and often even unwittingly remember them in so-called ‘flashbacks’, but they have much more trouble remembering pleasant moments. The memory of pleasant moments is of course not perceived as a nuisance and apparently disappears quickly from consciousness. In any case, people are not plagued by it and do not complain about it. Yet such memories are important.

After all, any moment of feeling good, in the present or in the past, even if it has been short-lived, refers to our internal source of well-being, for nothing can ‘give’ that experience. Just as ‘warm clothes’ cannot ‘give us’ warmth. We always experience our own body heat. Likewise, circumstances or others cannot ‘make us’ feel good. The good feeling always comes from one’s own internal source of well-being. Therefore, recalling a moment of well-being can help us get in touch with this source. After all, this source is always there, even if one believes that one has lost it or that it has dried up. Nothing or no one can take it from you.

If one vividly imagines such a moment, the associated emotion can also be fully present and experienced again. If, then, while holding onto the experience, the context and circumstances gradually fade and disappear, only the pure good feeling remains. That is the source!

To stick with Plato’s metaphor, we can always go to our internal cave of happiness. We do not have to wait until we happen to come into a context where we can experience a moment of wellbeing, but we can create it from within ourselves. An adult basically has the emotional intelligence and emotional independence to feel good always (see below, as well as my earlier book ‘The Strategy of Happiness’).

In this way, happiness becomes a personal competence that is always available and can be used everywhere, regardless of the circumstances, other people, or the context. The method of evoking a good feeling can also be of great therapeutic benefit to people with anxiety or phobia, such as fear of speaking, exam anxiety or fear of loneliness.

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Deep in winter, I finally learned that in me an invincible summer was present.

ALBERT CAMUS

2.9 Concrete inspiration Of course, one can always refer to examples such as the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Kahlil Gibran. However, one can also start with more abstract models or maps of reality, which one can imagine as a possible source of inspiration. Four such models or maps will be discussed here. In a way, they are step-by-step plans, algorithms that can be followed. But if you are wondering whether these are methods that will ‘work’ for you, you will be disappointed. These are definitely not methods that will work for you! After all, nothing will work for you, no ‘method’ and no therapist. Only you can work for yourself!

There is also no goal to achieve. There is only a path to walk. The goal of listening to music is the music itself, not reaching the last note. The purpose of dancing is to dance itself. The purpose of life is life itself.

2.9.1 Existential positions This model comes from the world of Transactional Analysis, a simple and very accessible personality theory developed by the Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne (1910-1970) to explain human behaviour based on human interactions. Against the recurring objection that reality is more complex, it can be argued that a simple map makes it possible to make that complex reality transparent and to orientate oneself in it. That is precisely the function of a map. That is also the function of a theory. Nothing is more practical than a good theory.

The model consists of two axes that together form a kind of existential playing field. The vertical axis is about the individual, the horizontal axis is about other people. An attitude of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, in the sense of accepting or not accepting them, can be taken both towards the individual and towards other people. In the original model, this was called OK or NOT OK. This creates four quadrants that form existential positions in the playing field. This is not about unchanging personality traits, but about existential life-positions in which people end up because of what they believe about themselves and about others. These are positions from which one can also derive an identity.

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In the bottom left quadrant there are people who are convinced that they themselves are not worth much, but neither are other people. Then of course there is not much left to feel like. That is the In the bottom left quadrant there are people who are convinced that they themselves are not worth much, but neither are other people. Then of course there is not much left to feel like. That is the depressive position.

In the bottom right quadrant are the many people who have come to believe that they themselves are not worth that much, but that other people are much better. That was traditionally called an inferiority complex. These are people who doubt their right to be there and who ‘do not want to disturb’ and ‘do not want to hurt others.’ These people are often praised in our society. They can be found in service professions: education, care, services. They are people who are often enthusiastic and committed to their work. However, they have a dual agenda: they need their work to gain the recognition and acceptance they cannot give to themselves. They hope that through their effort and good behaviour they will acquire a certain right to exist. This inferiority position leads to an almost permanent stress, which often makes them a candidate for burnout. The internal fire of enthusiasm becomes a blazing fire in which they perish themselves.

In the top left quadrant are people who think very differently. These people have no doubts at all about their own right to exist, but do have them about that of others. They assume that they have the right to have access to others at their discretion and to use them for their own purposes. This, of course, is the behaviour that we can observe among dictators like Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Ceausescu and others. It is the behaviour described by so-called psychopaths. But closer to us, it is also the behaviour that we can find in ourselves and in others when we get angry. After all, anyone who

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gets angry assumes that he is correct and the other is wrong, that he is right and that he must correct the other or teach them a lesson. That is a we-side logic, nowadays called polarization or even stigmatization. This is superiority behaviour.

This map makes it clear that people who play in the lower right quadrant can easily transition to the upper left quadrant. As mentioned, people have a double agenda at the bottom right: service on the one hand, but on the other the requirement to recognize their right to exist. If the latter is not forthcoming, they can easily accuse others of ‘taking advantage’ and of ‘abuse’. In other words, they are angry and therefore end up in the upper left quadrant.

On the other hand, people in the upper left quadrant also have a double agenda: they see themselves as superior because they are actually afraid that they are not good enough and will be rejected. It is popularly known that big bullies often have a ‘small heart’. For example, people can play in the top left quadrant at home and in the bottom right quadrant at work. Or vice versa.

This illustrates that it is not a question of a person’s fixed characteristics, but of existential positions that people can adopt. Since people can move back and forth so easily between the top left and bottom right quadrants, these two quadrants can in fact be considered as a single playing field: the field of what used to be called ‘neurotic behaviour’ and what is nowadays called ‘borderline’. The common element is the double agenda and the doubt about the right to exist.

Because of this never-answered question, life in this field is extremely difficult and gruelling. There is always the fear and therefore the stress of not being good enough and not being accepted. This emotional stress requires a lot of energy and these people regularly complain about the burden and fatigue of life. People in both quadrants are candidates for burnout.

This also makes it clear that the depressed position offers a way out for many, a solution to a life that is seen as a ‘daily routine’. Many of these people will eventually give up. Some also say that literally: ‘I made such an effort, sacrificed myself so much. I have given so much to the others, now I am completely drained and others have to take care of me’. It is clear that this cannot be a ‘solution’ to be recommended.

The recommended solution is in the top right quadrant. That is the quadrant of peace, wisdom and the art of living. It is based on a healthy respect for all life, including one’s own life, without judging and criticising. People in the upper right quadrant accept and value themselves and also accept and value others. They understand that there can be no definitive answer to the question of the right to exist unless the answer is that one has a right to exist by the mere fact that one is born. In this place we find the Buddha and other sages and experts in the art of living.

2.9.2 From drama triangle to growth triangle

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The drama triangle model also comes from the world of Transactional Analysis. The model was proposed by Stephen Karpman, student of the spiritual father of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung. He published this extremely useful model in 1968, winning the Eric Berne Memorial Scientific Award. It is a slightly different map, which sheds a slightly different light on the same reality.

The drama triangle is a simple representation of the complex dynamics of human communication, especially of the dysfunctional, nonviolent kind. The simple but very effective idea is that many instances of misunderstanding, argument and conflict can be understood as an interaction between three basic roles or scripts that can be represented on a triangle (Figure 5). The three corners of the drama triangle are occupied by the roles of the victim, the rescuer and the persecutor. These roles are like tailor-made suits. So it is not a question of personal characteristics, but of roles that people can play, just as an actor can play different roles. A characteristic of the roles in the drama triangle is that none of the participants has an ethic of responsibility. Each refers to someone else, perpetuating a vicious cycle of misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Victims, as the name implies, feel unfairly disadvantaged and ‘punished’ by the actions of (usually) one or more other persons, of events or of life. Victims look for a culprit for their ill-being. They complain, suffer, are hurt and describe themselves as vulnerable, helpless and hopeless. They have the impression that they have no choice (disempowerment) in a situation for which they are not to blame (not accepting responsibility). They often feel bullied. ‘Yes, but I have no choice’ and ‘I can’t help it’ are statements that fit the victim role. Children also spontaneously play the victim

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role, without having to learn it. A child who is hurt will always look around to see if someone has seen it, otherwise crying is of no use. Victims, however, are not always the classic eternal complainers, but can also play the role of the misunderstood genius (‘If only they would listen to me!’) or the ‘schlemiel’. This last variant is a shock to helpers and consists of a challenging and sometimes even mocking attitude towards those who try to help them and of whom they mercilessly expose the fundamental powerlessness (‘Try to help me!’). Victims often also call themselves ‘hypersensitive’ and complain that others do not recognize this and do not approach them with appropriate caution (empathy). This is the manipulative logic of their suffering that can go as far as self-mutilation or suicide. Ultimately, Victims are always right: no one can ‘help’ them (see also ‘Addiction Behaviour’).

Rescuers just want to ‘help others’ and try to find solutions to problems. They think that the other person is unable to take responsibility for himself and solve his own problems. But anyone who only gives a hungry fellow man a fish and fails to teach him how to fish creates dependence. This role is often played by people in the helping and service professions. If they find that they are not succeeding in their good intentions, they can switch to the Persecutor role or eventually even the Victim role.

Persecutors are outraged, dissatisfied, irritated, angry, and judgmental. They want to ‘correct’ the other and ‘teach them a lesson’. They want to deal with injustice, the ‘bad apple’. They are aggressive, dominant, offensive or hurtful. The others (the ‘victims’, the ‘bullies’) often refer to this as bullying behaviour. Persecutors who fail in what they consider to be their duties can also assume the role of Victim.

Like every game, this game also has a reward that explains why participants keep playing. It is indeed an addictive game whose intoxication, the reward, consists of attention and a certain identity: Victims feel special because of their heroically borne suffering; Rescuers feel special as missionaries of good in an evil world; Persecutors feel special as powerful and legitimate representatives of ‘right’. They want to tackle injustice and eliminate ‘bad apples’ from society.

In the current vulnerability culture, the victim role is particularly attractive. After all, even suffering has its advantages. Those who can present themselves as victims can derive a certain moral superiority from this. As soon as a person or a group can call themselves ‘offended,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘disrespected,’ or ‘bullied,’ the behaviour and freedom of speech of others is called into question.

‘Stigmatizing’ and ‘polarizing’ are the new stop words to make any further conversation impossible. In the name of ‘respect’ it is no longer possible to speak freely because no one should feel uncomfortable, insulted or hurt. It is then useless to argue further. This form of mediocre dictatorship, which is increasingly becoming the rule, illustrates what Nietzsche meant by the reversal of morals.

Suffering can also be an evolutionary (unconscious) pattern of behaviour to hit and punish the other person or society. It is like saying, ‘Look what you did to me, how you make me suffer, how

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you destroyed my life.’ To stop suffering would therefore mean that it was not really so bad and that the other person is allowed to go unpunished. That is unacceptable. This may also be part of the explanation for certain forms of self-harm, anorexia or bulimia. In reality, however, people suffer the most.

Indeed, short-term ‘pleasure’ is quickly overshadowed by long-term poverty, discomfort and the deadlock of dysfunctional communication. After all, a characteristic of the game, as with any addiction, is that there is no happy ending. No one gets happier, wiser or better by complaining or punishing others. The game usually ends in disappointment or conflict. This also makes it clear that it was a game. Especially in relational or counselling situations, the game can be played almost endlessly. People who for some reason are attractive (beautiful women or successful, rich men) do indeed always find a partner who wants to ‘save’ them. As a result, they learn not to take responsibility for themselves and can remain ‘stuck’ in a childish victim logic. After all, as long as one continues to tell the same story, one will create the same experience, which will then be seen as ‘proof’ of the correctness of the story. So one is always ‘right’. That is the pattern in many cases of relationship addiction, but also of many other addictions.

Both the role of the Rescuer and that of the Victim and the Persecutor are often expressions of a pattern of co-dependency, in which one purportedly wants to help the other, but in reality acts from one’s own need to be accepted and acknowledged. There is nothing wrong with that need in itself. The problem lies only in the double agenda, in the complicated and manipulative play of seemingly doing something for the other, when in fact it is one’s own need. It is simpler and fairer to assume that in reality people always act from their own logic, from their own needs. Even if you claim to do something for the other person, you are still doing it because you yourself consider it important to do it for them.

In all times and all cultures, people seem to be unconsciously able to settle into these stereotypical social roles or patterns. Even children seem to adopt these patterns effortlessly, without the need to learn them. The role that people play is not a fixed personality trait, but is a behaviour that can be maintained for years, depending on circumstances and needs, but can also change more or less quickly. In this way, people can present themselves as Rescuers in a conversation with their partner and take on the role of Victim a little later in a work situation. But even in the course of a single interaction, roles can switch. This shows that it is a question of ‘roles’ that are ‘played’ and not of the fixed characters of the persons involved. The insight that roles are ‘played’ does not mean that they are ‘fun.’ It just means that it is a structured interaction, like a chess game. For those involved, these are real experiences that can be tragic and usually involve suffering.

Suffering is always real.

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Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think.

HORACE WALPOLE

A typical example of such a dysfunctional interaction is a patient who turns to a therapist because he feels like a victim of the behaviour of others or past events. The therapist, full of good intentions to help (‘save’) the patient, provides advice. The patient ‘tries’ to follow this advice, but without much success, resulting in a new consultation and new advice. This doesn’t really work either (‘I tried but it doesn’t work!’). As in many addiction situations, the clients are very willing but not very able. If this goes on for a while, one side or the other will get impatient and angry.

The patient (the ‘Victim’) can accuse the therapist (the Rescuer) of being uncomprehending or ignorant. As a result, the ‘Victim’ changes roles and becomes a ‘Persecutor’ of the therapist. The latter is no longer a ‘Rescuer’, but becomes a ‘Victim’ himself and can complain to his colleagues about the ingratitude of the patient for whom he only wanted the best. It is precisely this changing of roles that makes it clear that it was ‘role-playing’ in a dysfunctional drama or neurotic game. A neurotic game can be defined as a game in which a role played is confused with reality, like an actor who comes to believe that he really is Hamlet. Neurotic games always end in conflict and illbeing.

This map or theory clearly shows the pitfall of any rescuer and the difference between a neurotic rescuer and a real rescuer. A neurotic Rescuer takes on the responsibility of the other. He adopts a patronizing attitude that places the other person in a position of dependence and inferiority: ‘You cannot handle that.’ The care provider continues to make himself needed and the care provision continues to drag on. If you only give a fish to someone who is hungry you create dependence, because the next day he is hungry again. Sooner or later, the other will rebel against it. The Rescuer then gets a kick instead of thanks. Many parents act as Rescuers of their children and do not notice in time that their help is no longer needed or welcome. They often get a kick. An interaction that ends with reproaches, conflict and unpleasantness must have been an incorrect interaction.

Of course, not all care is neurotic. Good care-giving is aimed at increasing the responsibility of the other person and making itself unnecessary. It’s not just giving a fish to someone who is hungry, but also teaching him how to fish. That is certainly not always easy, especially if those involved are not willing to give up their identities as Victims or Rescuers. Attempts to empower those involved are easily referred to as ‘victim blaming’ and ‘theory,’ ‘incomprehension,’ or ‘lack of empathy.’ As a result, the Victim actually becomes a Persecutor and the helper threatens to become a Victim.

Parents or counsellors often have a hard time making themselves redundant, because they might lose the ‘meaning in their lives’. As mentioned, any interaction that ends with reproaches is a neurotic interaction. The problem is that this is an ex-post criterion. It would be useful to have a criterion at an earlier stage to distinguish between a dysfunctional, neurotic and a functional, non-

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neurotic interaction. Unfortunately, there are no clear criteria for this and in every case it will have to be an individual assessment.

The growth triangle as a positive mirror image The drama triangle is useful for recognizing role patterns and scripts. The message boils down to avoiding it, as there is no happy ending. The drama triangle, with its ethics of irresponsibility, contrasts with the so-called winner’s triangle or success triangle, also referred to as the growth triangle, as a positive mirror image. This is based on an ethics of responsibility.

In contrast to the victim is a picture of the art of living. Where the victim undergoes, the life artist is an entrepreneur, a creator. He designs and creates his existence. He lives with enthusiasm and serenity, but also with compassion and gratitude. His strength is his wisdom and his awareness of invulnerability. His resilience is his teacher, or better yet his art of learning: the art of learning something in any circumstance and thus growing. He takes responsibility and directs his own life from a vision for the future.

In contrast with the Persecutor is the challenger. These are other people or society that annoy us and disturbs our ‘balance’. It is our ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’ that take us out of our comfort zone and encourage us to transcend ourselves. A ‘failure’ is an invitation to be less ignorant from now on.

In contrast with the rscuer is the coach, the mentor, the teacher. A coach listens and is involved and empowering. His question is: ‘I am curious to see how you will solve that!’ That makes him inspiring, emancipating and responsibility giving. A coach asks questions that the mind receives instead of giving advice and instructions. In this way he stimulates growth and thinking bigger. He constantly reminds you that you can always learn!

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2.9.3 Byron Katie and the Power of Reversal In her book ‘Four Questions That Change Your Life’, Byron Katie describes a purely cognitive approach. Her Four Questions are intended to approach stories and fantasies in the right way, and ultimately to bring about peace and well-being. The questions may seem simple at first sight, but they can lead to a profound change in life.

The starting point is any unpleasant thought. Then ask yourself: Is it true?

Is it true that your neighbour hates you?

Is it true that your colleague is a lazy sloth?

Is it true that your partner wants to leave you?

Is it true that you are vulnerable or hypersensitive?

Is it true that you still suffer from the past?

Is it true that you still carry wounds and injuries from the past?

Can you be absolutely sure it’s true?

Does your loved one really want to leave you? How can you know that with absolute certainty? You can’t look inside his or her head so how can you be absolutely sure it’s true?

Is it true that you still carry wounds from the past? Chances are you will think, ‘I can feel it!’ If you then ask yourself why you feel what you feel, you may think, ‘Because I still have wounds from the past’ but this is like thinking ‘I drink because I am an alcoholic’.

Some behaviour is explained by an abstract property, which in turn is explained by that behaviour (see also under ‘Addiction’). This is, of course, circular reasoning and no evidence at all that there are wounds! In reality, there are only unpleasant sensations as a result of certain thoughts.

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Who are you if you believe those thoughts?

How do you feel when you believe that your colleague is just looking out of the window instead of working hard? Are you feeling angry, jealous or frustrated? Chances are that you are unnecessarily bothering yourself about something that you have no influence over and even has nothing to do with you.

How do you feel when you believe that you have wounds and injuries, that you are hypersensitive or that you are vulnerable?

Who would you be without that story?

How would you feel if you believed that that colleague only seems lazy the moment you walk by, but you can’t find any evidence of laziness in the work he does? Maybe he was deep in thought?

How would you feel if you believed you had no wounds or injuries, but that you were whole and intact?

Who would you be if you believed that you were not vulnerable or hypersensitive and that you should not be afraid of others?

Then comes the strategic reversal: What would it be like to reverse that story?

If I believe that the other person needs more wisdom, then perhaps I need more wisdom myself...

If I believe that the other person does not respect me enough, maybe I do not respect myself.

If I believe I am vulnerable, what would it be like to believe that I am not vulnerable?

2.9.4 The strategy of happiness

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In my earlier book, I presented a strategy of happiness as a concrete step-by-step plan for dealing with difficult experiences and for making the transition from a No logic to a Yes logic.

Step 1: There is a problem, a disturbance, a suffering. People usually only really think or seek help when there is a problem. A problem shakes us awake.

Step 2: What emotion is it? It can be fear, anger, resentment, sadness. . .

Step 3: What thoughts or images have generated and / or sustained these emotions? What is the narrative? Where is the rejection, the resistance, the non-acceptance, the ‘No’ logic? What am I at war with? Where’s the cognitive dissonance? The ‘No’ logic is like a hard wall against which reality collides.

Step 4: How can I come up with a narrative of acceptance, compassion and peace instead? Any processing of trauma, loss experience, profound events or forgiveness is tantamount to moving from a No logic to a Yes logic. How can I put acceptance, compassion, serenity, or love first, taking them as a starting point? Lao-Tze (604-507 BC) said, ‘Do not give evil anything to turn against, and it will disappear by itself.’ The trick is not only to conceive and accept this new narrative, but to make it your own and to believe in it as strongly as in the old narrative. That new narrative must not only be stored ‘somewhere’

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on the hard disk as something I ‘know’, but it must also become part of the operating system, the operating system of life, so that it continues and is active throughout life . This takes practice and repetition. But there is no other way!

Step 5: Who am I with this new narrative? What emotion do I experience then?

Step 6: I am at peace, there is well-being!

The whole process is reminiscent of Albert Ellis’ REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy), of the previously mentioned Byron Katie, of Nelson Mandela, of Viktor Frankl, but also of what is called ‘reframing’ in NLP (neurolinguistic programming). That is quite good company!

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With every life experience or experience of an event one can ask the question: how did I succeed, how did I manage to feel the way I feel now? How did I give this incident a colour and a meaning?

What picture did I have in my head that made me feel this way? What did I think, what did I imagine and tell myself? What was my story? Which film did I project? Is this film about the present or about the past or the future?

Then one can ask oneself how one could create a different story about the event in order to achieve a more desired result in terms of experience. That’s the reverse of the usual. Instead of looking for a cause (or ‘guilty party’) in the outside world on the basis of a certain experience, an internal process is initiated to achieve a different and more desirable result. It is good to start with a kind of neutral attitude. Consider yourself a visitor to this planet, a researcher of some kind, an anthropologist. An anthropologist looks at the others with wonder and interest. However, a good anthropologist will not feel hurt or rejected by what those others are doing. It is not a question of her emotions but of understanding others. She is interested, investigates and asks for explanations if necessary.

If we can sense thoughts and feelings without aversion and without attachment, they can move through us, just like the changing weather.

Then we are free to feel them and can then move on, like the wind.

JACK KORNFIELD

In a further phase, a kind of reverse engineering strategy can be applied, taking the desired experience as a starting point. In addition, the Buddhist idea can be kept in mind that suffering is always the result of ignorance, of a misunderstanding. According to Buddhism, a wise man does not suffer. This, incidentally, is also the approach of ‘reframing’ in NLP. There is always a way (a ‘frame’) through which to view and ‘frame’ an event so that at the very least an interesting and educational experience is created instead of suffering. If there is such a way of looking at things, then I must be able to find it. Kahlil Gibran said, ‘Pain is breaking the shell around your understanding.’ In other words, pain can always be thought of as a spiritual birth giving life to a new insight. A delivery is experienced as a painful moment, but a birth is remembered as a happy event.

Such thoughts and questions put the brain into a creative mode and stimulate the brain to seek answers, as opposed to judgments that put the brain to sleep. If one affixes the label ‘setback’, ‘trauma’ or ‘loss’ to a certain event, the brain has nothing else to do: the verdict has been passed, the case has been settled and closed. But if one asks the questions described above (‘How did I manage to ...?’), the brain is stimulated to find an answer. This opens up curiosity and creativity.

Questions activate different areas of the brain, stimulate the imagination, exercise the memory and increase presence of mind. If we ask the question ‘who is the culprit who did this to me?’ the

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brain hears the command to look for a guilty party and will probably do it, and come up with an answer. However, if we ask the question, ‘How did I manage to ...?’, the brain will look for and find another answer. Finding a cause (or ‘guilty party’) in the outside world seems ‘more intuitive’ and is always easier than looking into your own heart. But by doing this we are like the man who went looking for his lost key under the street light, because that’s where there was light, although he knew he had lost the key in a dark alley. . .

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PART 2 – The tragic consciousness Eternal love is as absurd and unbearable as eternal spring or eternal music.

The changing of the seasons makes the year fascinating, and in the music the silences are just as important as the sounds.

ANON.

There are two ways to live life: the first is to think that nothing is a marvel, the second to think that everything is a marvel.

I believe in the latter.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

A certain course of events is called ‘tragic’ when it causes suffering and unwellness to good, supposedly innocent people. In this sense, every human life can be called tragic for various reasons. In the first place, every child is born in a place that it didn’t choose, into a body it didn’t choose, to adults and a society that it didn’t choose, but on which it is nevertheless entirely dependent. It will also learn to speak a language it didn’t choose. At the second birth, that is at the budding of consciousness, a person discovers in himself many fossils from the past in the form of beliefs, stories and memories that he didn’t himself choose. Even if he is not ‘guilty’ of it, he will still suffer the consequences and must take responsibility for it. In later life, choices will often have to be made on the basis of incomplete and imperfect insights; the person will also have to bear the consequences of this, even if he is not to blame.

The Greek tragedies were about whether man could take control of his own destiny and how noble people handled destiny. Sophocles’ tragedy of King Oedipus is well known. Oedipus, King of Thebes, who unwittingly killed his father Laius and married his mother Iocasta, suffered a tragic fate that was not his fault. When he was made aware of this by the Oracle of Apollo, and after the intervention of the seer Tiresias, he nevertheless took responsibility for the consequences. He put his eyes out, saying, ‘With sight, I was blind. Now that I am blind, I see’. Freud based the formulation of his famous Oedipus complex on this tragedy.

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3. The pain of being As I mentioned, animals can only fight and compete to resolve conflicts of interest. Aggression is one of the basic patterns of life and is therefore deeply anchored in our brain. Although humans can do better, we often see aggression in people. A child who doesn’t get his way starts kicking around, frustrated and furious, and shouts that Mommy is naughty. But frustration and anger can easily arise even when an adult does not get what he wants, or when he does get what he does not want. That is the basis of all aggressive behaviour and, by extension, of every conflict and war.

Any kind of suffering, from not accepting reality, can lead to conflicts, and possibly aggression.

3.1 The struggle for life Life always proceeds in a context of limited resources. Territory, food and the number of partners available are all limited. Life, then, is like solving an equation for evolutionary success:

Evolutionary success = survival x reproduction If either factor is zero in this equation, evolutionary success will also be zero. After all, evolutionary success means having offspring. From an evolutionary point of view, survival without offspring does not make any sense. Since resources for survival are limited, violence is an obvious solution to this equation. The other person is seen as a threat to one’s own survival. Only those who show sufficient dominance and strength to intimidate others acquire territory, food and prestige and are attractive to partners. Life is therefore often brutal and violent and even for humans aggression is a constant. We are even masters of it. According to Jonathan Haidt (b. 1963), a moral psychologist and professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, the rhetoric of competing and fighting is still one of the great human errors. Many forms of ‘relaxation’ and ‘recreation’, from Roman gladiators to Spanish bullfights and modern ‘games’ like football, but also many books and films respond to the fascination for competition and violence.

Fear is an emergency solution to the equation for evolutionary success. If the opponent is too strong, escape can be a life saver. But for an animal that is cornered and can no longer escape, only aggression remains. Fear is also a common cause of aggression in humans. Political rhetoric is largely a polarizing rhetoric of competition and fighting. Popular media features stories about good and bad people, people who drain your energy away and people who give you energy, and bad apples that are a danger to the good apples.

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At the base of every pattern of dominance (sexism, racism, colonialism and other -isms...) is this archaic-patriarchal pattern: big fish eat smaller fish, the hen on the higher perch craps on the heads of the hens beneath, and dominant males get all the females. In all these cases it is a question of an evolutionarily programmed old-brain behaviour, an automatic competition behaviour, an I-am-better-than-you need, which is also expressed in humans to the extent that this is not only tolerated but even socially sanctioned and rewarded. An ‘Abel’ and a ‘Cain’ lurk in every human being and in fraternal disputes, Ovid’s discordia fratrum, seems to be almost inevitable.

Contrary to certain romantic ideas, dominance and aggression are therefore not culturally learned behaviours, but are present in every human being. Everyone can become angry and aggressive in certain circumstances. Aggression always starts from the conscious or unconscious judgment: ‘I am right, the other is wrong. I’m good, the other is bad.’ Often such a judgment is wrapped up in scientifically sounding psychological diagnoses like narcissistic, manipulative, perverse, psychopathic. . .

3.2 Inequality and competition Inequality or shortage quickly leads to dissatisfaction, conflict and aggression. In the sixth century BC, the Greek writer Aesop wrote a fable about a disagreement between the organs of the body.

The feet thought they were more important than the belly. Time after time they bragged that they were by far the most important because they could carry the belly. To which it replied, ‘But you would never be able to do that if I did not provide you with food.’ Many authors, including Shakespeare, La Fontaine, Brecht, Marx and others, have repeated this fable in various forms. In a famous experiment with two capuchin monkeys, Frans de Waal showed that aggression arises as soon as one of the two monkeys notices that the other monkey gets a better reward than he did for the same task.

Competition behaviour in the form of hunting the largest mammoth, growing the best turnips, running the fastest, jumping the highest, earning the most money, but also winning the Queen Elisabeth competition or winning literary prizes or building the largest cathedral, seems an obvious reason for discontent and aggression. Our brain has not yet found a way to handle observing others who are doing better or looking better than ourselves. People are so constructed that we feel worse because of the successes of others, even if we only see those others on a screen.

On the other hand, the philosopher John Hobbes (1588-1679) argued that equality, which made its appearance with the enlightenment philosophers, must almost necessarily lead to aggression. In his book ‘Leviathan or the Matter, Form and Authority of Government’ (1651), Hobbes subjects man and his motives to ruthless criticism. He begins his anthropological analysis with a very

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modern sounding thought: ‘People are equal by nature, both in their physical as in their mental disposition.’ The conclusion he draws from this equality postulate, however, is remarkable: ‘From this equality in disposition flow the same expectations to achieve a goal. Thus, two people become each other’s enemies as soon as they both try to achieve something that only one of them can achieve. In order to achieve their goal, they strive to destroy the other or to submit to him.’

Hobbes therefore reduces rivalry between people to their equality, in other words to the fact that all people strive for gain, security and prestige. He saw man evolve in the emotional gravitational field of desire.

In 2009, scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published research showing that more equal societies function better than others in all areas. They argued that the magnitude of income inequalities determines the quality of social relationships and the degree of anxiety. In a society with large income inequality, the fear of being rated unfavourably by others increases. Inequality not only creates distance, less contact and less confidence, but ultimately resentment and hatred.

Oppressed groups and peoples will rise up sooner or later and hate the oppressors. When this hatred is mixed with or justified by religious motives, one speaks of fundamentalism or radicalism or even terrorism.

The sun and moon do not compete, they each shine when their time has come.

3.3 Ill-being and cognitive dissonance Inequality, ill treatment, insults. . . give rise to stress, dissatisfaction and ill-being. However, contrary to popular belief, these conditions are not the cause of aggression. After all, the real cause does not lie in the circumstances as such, but in the reaction of people to these circumstances. Seneca (4-65 AD) said: ‘It is not circumstances that disturb us, but our reaction to them.’ Just as physical pain is a reaction of the body, psychological pain (suffering, sadness) is a reaction of the psyche, that is, a cognitive pattern.

The real source of stress, dissatisfaction and suffering is always a friction, a tension between two irreconcilable thoughts, two incompatible contents of consciousness, as if one were simultaneously stepping on the accelerator and the brake pedal in a car. On the one hand, there is consciousness, the depiction, the descriptive thought of a certain event or a certain state of affairs; after all, something of which one is not aware cannot possibly cause suffering. On the other hand, there is the judgment, the normative thought, that this or that circumstance is undesirable and should not be there. This is a conflict, a rejection, a resistance, an internal ‘No!’ The fact that these two contents of consciousness cannot be true at the same time leads to an

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unpleasant tension, a discord, a cognitive dissonance. Stress and unwellness are always the result of an internal conflict between two images: there is something (in the world, in my past, in my body, in myself ...) that (I think) there shouldn’t be; or (I think) there ought to be something (in the world, in my past, in my body, in myself ...) that is not there. We are upset when certain people do not behave as we expected, when circumstances interfere with our plans, or when we do things that we know we should not do (for example, smoking). We get upset when the image we have of ourselves does not match the image we think others have of us. What upsets us is not those people or those circumstances, but our frustrated expectations. People with whom we have no expectations (with whom we do not have a so-called ‘emotional bond’) are less likely to feel upset.

The cognitive tension acts as an alarm signal that in the old brain evokes an automatic flight or fight response that is experienced as stress. For example, we experience anger. Even when people lie, there is a cognitive dissonance between the truth they know and the lie they tell. This is also the cause of the stress that can be demonstrated with a lie detector. As long as the internal conflict is not removed, the stress and unwellness will continue, just as unwanted weeds will grow back as long as the roots have not been removed. The only lasting answer to unwellness will therefore be the creation of inner peace, that is cognitive harmony.

As I said before, the prototype of suffering is a child who does not get what he wants and who throws himself screaming onto the ground or kicking out at the furniture and bystanders. It might even kick its mother and shout ‘naughty Mummy.’ This child is not a bad child, not a psychopath. It is only trying to get rid of its unwellness, its cognitive dissonance, by removing what it sees as the cause of its frustration and of its suffering, namely the external context. Suffering, however, is not a consequence of the external context, but of the fact that the child wants something and that his desire is thwarted.

‘Who hurt you?’

‘My own expectations.’

In some cases, the external cause of frustration and unwellness can indeed be removed. If a tiger sees in you his next meal, you may be able to hunt it down or to outrun it; those were particularly useful strategies in the wild where man originated, but this will often not be possible in society.

After all, in many cases we have to coexist with individuals with whom we may be annoyed but whom we cannot get rid of. We cannot make undesirable living conditions or drastic events such as a dismissal, a divorce, the end of a relationship or a death disappear, no matter how much we resist or ‘fight’ them. The idea of ’fighting’ against a terminal illness, against the approaching death or against ‘something in yourself’ is also essentially destructive. It is precisely the collision with reality, the resistance, the fighting, the non-acceptance, that is the source of suffering, not reality in itself. Many adults, however, behave like a frustrated child in such circumstances. They try to

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get what they think they need, and they try to get rid of what they see as the cause of their frustration. They kick out. As a result, they disturb the social order and their behaviour is seen as disruptive and unwanted or in some cases even criminal.

3.4 Suffering as punishment We want to punish people who disturb the social order or cause suffering. We want them to suffer in turn. They have to pay up. Errors and mistakes should not go unpunished. We are satisfied, happy, or relieved when someone receives his ‘just desserts’. Our society does seem obsessed with punishment, as if punishment is the only possible answer to inappropriate behaviour.

Punishing undesirable behaviour does not, however, eliminate the suffering caused. No legal proceedings or judicial interventions can mitigate the harm caused. Lifelong suffering does not disappear, it cannot be ‘better handled’ through the incarceration of the perpetrator. Moreover, punishment is no school or motivation for desired behaviour. Many people who are incarcerated are not incorrigible criminals, but ordinary people who have committed a mistake. In addition, prison is often a breeding ground for antisocial behaviour. If punishment had any educational value, there would no longer be any undesirable behaviour. After all, violence as an answer to violence is not peace, and the pedagogical usefulness of the current legal system therefore seems extremely limited. Rumi (1207-1273) says plants need rain to grow, not thunder.

Moreover, punishment implicitly confirms that violence is an acceptable method of getting what one wants if one has enough power. In this way, the seeds of violence are spread further. Is that the message we want to send? Are we morally better than the perpetrator? Do we want citizens who follow rules for fear of punishment, or do we want citizens who base their actions on ethical values and responsibility? What does it say about us when we answer inhuman behaviour with inhuman behaviour? Is reintegration into society possible after years of imprisonment and exclusion from that society, whereby the person concerned is constantly reduced to being seen merely as an offender? Prison is the garbage can of society and many believe that it creates time bombs with further violence as a result. Indeed, individuals can be imprisoned or punished, but ideologies cannot. Terrorists can be imprisoned, but terrorism or hatred cannot. Racists can be punished, but racism or stupidity cannot. You can fight a fever, but unless the cause is not removed, the fever will return. The cause of unwanted behaviour is a society marked by unwellness and suffering. Only people who themselves suffer also cause suffering to others. Happy people do not cause suffering. Punishment is answering suffering with suffering. In this way, the cycle of suffering and violence is maintained.

Seneca writes that there is no point in answering anger with anger. Whoever gets angry behaves like an ignorant person. It is pointless to kick a donkey back, or bite a dog back. Only an ignorant child thinks the table hurt it and gives it a kick. An adult knows better. The Buddha told the

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following story: ‘Suppose that one day you are rowing a boat on a beautiful lake and thoroughly enjoy the experience. Suddenly your boat is bumped from behind by another boat. Startled, annoyed and angry, you turn to the driver of the other boat to ask him what he is doing and point out his unacceptable behaviour. But then you realise that the boat is empty! It was a silly coincidence! What then happens to your anger?’ Many people are like an empty boat. They are ignorant. They did not target you but were simply adrift and bumped into you unthinkingly because you happened to be there.

Moreover, penalties inevitably pose the problem of determining the sentence. Since there are no objective criteria for assessing suffering, this can only be done on the basis of an emotional consideration, by the ‘feeling’ that the other person (the offender) has been ‘sufficiently’ punished. This emotional trade-off is usually called justice and people are sentenced to years of imprisonment without a problem. In reality, it is a question of emotional satisfaction, a polite word for revenge. But in cases where irreparable suffering has been inflicted, no punishment can be ‘sufficient’ to alleviate the emotional pain. Therefore, it makes no sense to ask the injured party (the ‘Victims’) whether they are ‘satisfied’ with the penalty awarded. After all, that will often not be the case, because revenge is endless; in the past it led to the pillory and lynching. The principle ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ was initially just a principle of moderation. It meant that the injured party should not cause more suffering than he had undergone himself.

It therefore seems necessary to take not only repressive but also pedagogical measures, in particular to promote socially desirable values and behaviour. Not only should we blow smoke away, we should also put out the fire that causes the smoke. A frustrated and angry child needs no punishment, but has to learn to deal differently with unwellness and frustration. Individuals who least seem to deserve our care, our humanity and our love need it the most. In ‘Les Misérables’ by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) it is not the stay in prison, but the meeting with Bishop Myriel that makes Jean Valjean realize that he can be more than a thief, that another life is possible, and that makes him decide to want to pursue such a life for himself. Goethe (1749-1832) said, ‘If you treat someone the way he is, you make him worse. If you treat him as he could become, you make him better’. Restorative justice therefore seems an interesting step in the right direction in relation to criminal law. It is not just about repairing the damage caused, but also about restoring the offender’s self-image and self-esteem, for he is not just an offender, but a person with complex thoughts, emotions and motives. An offender must also continue to live with the awareness of his act. Pedagogical and restorative measures belong to the domain of the paternal function to which, according to many researchers and authors, our society that is focused on consumption and pleasure pays insufficient attention. In church it was said: ‘One must be hard on the sin, but gentle on the sinner.’

As an example of an alternative approach is the prison island of Bastøy in the Oslofjord in Norway.

The island is only three kilometres long with a circumference of seven and a half kilometres. The prison opened in 1982 and, in addition to highly educated white-collar criminals, also takes

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dealers, junkies, bank robbers, sex offenders, and perpetrators of violence and murders. There is no fence around the island, but escape attempts are rare. The staff leave the island every working day at 3 pm. The prisoners are then left with only five guards. The prisoners are also responsible for the island’s affairs on weekends. Most prisoners live in detached houses in groups of six. They each have their own room that they decorate themselves and to which they have the key. There is a communal lounge, as well as a sauna, tennis courts and a riding stable. The premise of the prison is that most criminals can and will change if they are given their own responsibilities and are treated as equals. In the prison’s eleven years of existence, only two men have fled. Bastoy’s rate of reoffending is 16% against a European average of 70%. In 2014, the prison received the Major Reconciliation Prize for ‘promoting human values and tolerance.’

All this is obviously not a plea not to act appropriately in the event of improper or inappropriate behaviour. After all, it is not only necessary to get the individual concerned to think better, but also to protect society. To this end, the use of appropriate force may even be necessary, including deprivation of liberty in persistent cases. But protecting is quite different from punishing.

Protection is a reasonable consideration leading to appropriate action, not an emotional response leading to punishment. In addition to the educational measures just discussed, protective measures are therefore also necessary.

This is illustrated in the following story: A master saw a scorpion drowning in water and tried to save him. When he did this, he was stung by the scorpion. Because of the sting, the master let go of the animal so that it again fell into the water and was about to drown. The master again tried to rescue the scorpion from the water, but it stung him again.

A student who watched the event said to the master: ‘Master; why do you persist? Do you not understand that the scorpion will sting you every time you try to get it out of the water?’

The master replied: ‘It is in the nature of the scorpion to sting, but that will not affect my nature, which is to help’.

The master thought for a moment and used a leaf from a tree to take the scorpion out of the water and save his life.

Then he said to his Pupil: ‘Don’t let who you are depend on someone hurting you. Only take the necessary precautions. If life gives you a thousand reasons to cry, show that you have a thousand reasons to smile.’

Anyone who wants to pay attention to the other person should start by listening and not judging whether the other person had ‘good intentions’. The other person’s intention always has to do with them. Even if the other person tries to take you down, it is because they think it will make them feel better. They are always showing something of themself. If you squeeze a lemon, you get lemon juice. That lemon juice is not the result of external pressure, but was already present in the lemon. When you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. In the Zen tradition it is said: ‘The plum blossom gives its fragrance not because the other person deserves it, but because it is a giving being’.

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3.5 Social ill-being In cases of collective violence and delinquent behaviour, public attention tends to focus too easily on certain individuals and insufficient attention is given to the underlying dynamics that can explain how ordinary, ‘normal’ people can gradually slip into a continuum in which violence ultimately comes to be seen as a legitimate means for a particular politics, religion or ideology.

Historical and sociological research has been conducted for many years into collective violence such as the Holocaust, genocides and terrorism. Time and time again it turns out that it is not a question of a single offender who is a devil, an intrinsically evil inhuman being or a psychopath, but that the offence is much more the result of a process, an evolution in which countless people become more radical in their points of view, their social positions and their ultimate behaviour. In times of fear and malaise, people tense up, see countless threats, and seek support and reassurance from strong leadership.

Sociologist and Holocaust survivor Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) spoke of a ‘liquid society’ characterized by an increasing ‘liquid fear’. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ that the division between good and evil does not run between states, classes or parties, but through every human heart: ‘If only there were evil people who committed treacherous crimes somewhere, we would only have to separate them from the rest and kill them.

But the dividing line between good and evil runs right through the heart of every person’. If good and evil in the world were neatly separated, things would be much easier. But good and evil are present in every person: ‘Even in a heart that is caught in the grip of evil, stands a bridgehead of good. Even in the bravest heart there is a corner with untouched evil.’

Experts such as criminologists, social psychologists and sociologists often use the model of the 3 N’s: ‘Needs, Narratives and Networks’. ‘Needs’ is about very recognizable and generally human desires such as recognition, identity, quality of life, connectedness or meaning. These needs or requirements were clearly mapped out by Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) in his well-known hierarchy of needs. These are universal human needs or desires, but they can be met in very different ways depending on the context and the possibilities. For example, artists and delinquent young people have similar needs, but they strive to meet these needs in a completely different way. It is not the needs that are the problem, but the manner of interpretation. In the context of 1920s Germany, needs were met in a very specific way. This points to the importance of the other elements: narratives and networks.

‘Narratives’ is about the philosophy, the beliefs, the mental maps with which people try to achieve a goal, this is the fulfilment of a need. After all, reality is too complex to be included in consciousness without further ado. Man needs a simplified version, a narrative, a theory, a mental map in order to orient himself in that complexity. Such narratives are constructed socially. It is the

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often-unconscious stories, big and small, that build up our world view, our frame of reference, our reading schedule and ultimately determine our actions and make them acceptable or not.

Narratives can therefore be very different depending on the networks of which a particular individual is a part.

‘Networks’ is about the small and large social connections and structures (upbringing, education, meetings, friends, clubs, working environment, political parties, social media...) in which stories are created and shared. Opinions and beliefs are like viruses with which people influence and infect each other and which create a shared reality, and ‘normality’, often to the detriment of nuance, humanity and human rights.

In order to understand certain social phenomena and shifts such as radicalization and deradicalization, the underlying Needs, Narratives and Networks must be mapped. People can radicalize and can also deradicalize. Radicalization is usually understood as a consequence of the need for meaning, recognition and respect. A deradicalization programme will therefore have to answer these needs in the form of a structuring, meaningful but non-violent narrative. Preventing certain groups or even a larger mass from drifting into more extreme forms of thinking and acting requires recognizing and acting on these three dimensions. After all, evil is not in one person, even if a public figure, a government leader or a head of state has a major social impact. It is about the gradual slipping of collective consciousness away from responsibility, humanity and human rights, towards authoritarianism. It is about the gradual disintegration of the social fabric into a polarizing ‘we-side’ dynamic. If Adolf Hitler had not come to power in 1933, today it would not be the name of Hitler but perhaps that of Himmler (SS) or of Röhm (SA) that would symbolize ultimate evil.

After all, the underlying dynamics, the Needs, Narratives and Networks, would not have fundamentally changed.

3.6 Consequences of ill-being Animals that do not feel safe in an environment of threatening aggression and that fear for their survival do not eat, sleep or mate. They are watchful, alert and tense. They are in a state of stress, in which urgent survival functions are activated while less urgent functions such as eating, sleeping or procreating are postponed until better times. Fortunately, this stress in nature is usually shortlived, of the order of a few minutes or hours, after which the animal can relax again. In the wild, animals therefore do not suffer from stomach ulcers.

As I said before, man does not live so much in the external, objective context, but in an internal, subjective, imaginary context, where he can be constantly surrounded by ‘enemies’ whom he has to ‘fight’. For example, many people are involved in an endless conflict with family members, neighbours or colleagues. Some also live in disagreement with their past or with certain figures or

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events from their past. Such a ‘battle’ can go on almost endlessly. The constant ‘fighting’ takes a lot of energy and takes a heavy toll in the form of long-term stress that is exhausting and can be a major cause of irritability, anxiety, digestive disorders, chronic pain, difficulty concentrating, chronic fatigue and burnout. In many cases, burnout is indeed not so much the result of physical overload and exhaustion, but of emotional overload and exhaustion resulting from affective or relational conflicts. It is as if people forget to refuel in time. The obvious way out, both for ‘treatment’ and for prevention, is therefore more insight and wisdom about emotional patterns.

In an effort to escape persistent stress, people can resort to using all kinds of legal and illegal substances and resources. As will be discussed further, one is indeed not so much addicted to a substance as to the escape from a reality that is experienced as unbearable. This explains the forms of addiction that do not involve any substances at all, such as work, gambling, relationship or sex addiction. People with an addiction cling to a last straw, in a final attempt to escape from reality and achieve some form of well-being. If, however, that no longer offers any relief and the person concerned feels completely trapped in a hopeless struggle, the depressive pattern may come to the fore. Depression is a pattern of behaviour that can arise in humans, and even animals, if the belief is expressed that nothing makes sense anymore and that every action is completely meaningless. A final step is, of course, the decision to end life. These are the topics of the next hapter.

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4. The hunger of the soul The well-being paradox seems to become clearer and clearer: people in modern, prosperous societies, in which they seem to have everything they need to be happy, are more depressed and anxious than ever. In addition to eating disorders, addictions, self-mutilation and (attempts at) ending one’s own life, fear, aggression and depression are high on the agenda. Cultural pessimism and cynicism have become depressing social phenomena and every day distressed and lonely people ‘decide’ that there is no other way out of their despair than to take their own lives. Selfchosen life termination at an early age is, of course, an extreme expression of the disappearance of all will to live and the inability to lead a meaningful life.

4.1 Depression Depression, which was in ancient times called melancholy and attributed to an imbalance in body fluids, was in the Middle Ages and long afterwards considered a form of demon or demon possession. The treatment therefore consisted of bloodletting or exorcism. Yet there are still similar views. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for example, spoke of the ‘big black dog’ (like a kind of devil) which came to visit him, and often the metaphor is used of an ‘enemy’ that one can fight, but that one can never ‘completely conquer’. Psychiatrist Judith Orloff wrote in her book Emotional Freedom that depressiveness is an energy that people can catch from others without realizing, for example in the cinema. Of course, the use of the term ‘energy’ sounds more modern and scientific than ‘evil spirit’, just as ‘neurotransmitters’ sounds more modern and scientific than ‘body fluids’, but the train of thought is essentially just as magical.

In her book ‘The Depression Epidemic’, Dutch psychologist and science philosopher Trudy Dehue shows that the term ‘depression’ has had several meanings throughout history and was embedded in different thinking traditions and paradigms. For example, there has been the psychodynamic model in which depression was seen as the person’s response to certain important events. In the contemporary biological model, depression is presented as the result of an underlying biological disorder, a disease that is separate from the person affected by it who is therefore the ‘victim’ of it.

The difficulty in defining depression is that the only thing that can be determined is a certain behaviour of a certain individual in a certain situation. It has been agreed in the medical world that if that behaviour meets certain criteria (such as those of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - DSM), then that behaviour may be called depression. However, that is no more than a handy name, a label that doctors can use to indicate a certain behavioural pattern, just as

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we may call a certain pattern of movement a tango. However, the fact that a certain behaviour can be called ‘depression’ says nothing about the cause or the dynamics of that behaviour. It is not a question of a behaviour that is caused by a disease called depression, just as the dance movements are not caused by a tango. The behaviour is the depression, just as the movements are the tango. Yet people, including professionals, all too often have the illusion that the names in the DSM point to diseases that are the cause of the phenomena described. The absurdity of this kind of confusion between description and cause becomes clearer if someone says that he is not married because he is celibate or that he has entered a state of celibacy. Clearly, celibacy is not something you can have. It is the behaviour of an individual, who probably has his reasons for it, and not the result of a disease condition. This confusion between a definition or description of phenomena and the explanation of the described phenomena shows the almost hypnotic power of ‘explanatory narratives’ where even professionals often find it difficult to obtain clarity.

Spiritual traditions and mystics like St John of the Cross viewed depression as a dark night for the soul to pass through before seeing light again. Depression is then the absence of the experience of the beautiful and the mysterious and the absence of the experience of being part of a larger and inspiring whole. The person has withdrawn from the web of human interactions and is like a body cell that no longer wants to function in relation to the larger whole, but which also loses its reason for existence and no longer knows what to do. Those cells eventually lead to a process called cancer.

4.1.1 The scientific logic Scientific research appears to have shown that depression has to do with neurons and neurotransmitters in the brain, in particular dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. Hence the idea of the chemical imbalance or ‘the breakthrough substance in the brain’. In advertisements for antidepressants, pharmaceutical companies show impressive graphical representations that zoom in on the brain, neurons and synapses, and on the functioning of neurotransmitters. It is suggested that the disease itself has finally been identified and the remedy is clear. Often a comparison is made with the missing insulin in diabetes. The idea that medicines can intervene in disorders of the mind was a breakthrough. Psychiatric disorders emerged from the sphere of inner conflict through these discoveries and psychoanalysis was immediately seen as out of date. Mental illness became brain disorders and appeared to be treatable. The neurotransmitter theory also suggests that the brains of the persons involved are fundamentally abnormal and that pills will therefore be necessary for life. Man himself, as well as his interaction with the environment, have completely disappeared from the picture in all this. The lived life and the subjective experience have been explained away. The scientific approach essentially means the death of the person as a freethinking and acting being.

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Sometimes it is added that the missing substance in the brain is related to a missing piece of DNA, the so-called ‘serotonin transporter gene’. After a controversial publication in the journal Science in 2003, a review article of further studies six years later disputed the existence of such a gene. An article in the leading Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) came to the conclusion that only certain circumstances make people unhappy. According to the authors, an alleged depression gene ‘neither in itself nor in interaction with stressful events’ plays a role in depression, and added for clarity ‘not among men, not among women, and not among men and women together.’

Is there no room for a genetic influence? We are all born with a genetic inheritance and our genes almost always play a role, but as such cannot be held directly responsible for any particular behaviour. After all, genes are not compulsion. At most they can create a certain predisposition.

Genes can make certain people more sensitive to alcohol, but they cannot make a person drink.

Genes can also be switched on or off by certain environmental factors. For example, genes could also increase the likelihood of depression, but only in specific circumstances. Genetic aspects can contribute to anxiety and depression, but only if there is an additional trigger. People used to speak of an endogenous depression that arises purely by itself; experts including Dr. Johanna Moncrieff and Dr. David Healy, rate this as highly divergent, from non-existent to very rare, of the order of one in a hundred. So it is not a good idea to tell people with depressed behaviour that it is a biological process.

The neurotransmitter theory has also always been inconclusive. After all, the fact that a depressive pattern of behaviour is accompanied by changes in the neurotransmitters and on brain scans does not mean that the condition is also caused by this. It is not difficult to see that any defective neurotransmission or chemical imbalance can be just as much a consequence as a cause of the problem. After all, it is now clear that everything that people do involves changes in the neurons and neurotransmitters. This also applies to tango dancing or falling in love, for example. But that doesn’t mean that those changes are also the cause of tango dancing or of falling in love. The fact that many people behave more courageously and less socially restrained after drinking alcohol does not mean that anxious or timid behaviour is the result of a lack of alcohol. Science has also shown that a smile is only muscle contractions, but that doesn’t mean the cause of that smile is to be found in the muscles. If that were the case, someone who could no longer smile should examine the muscles involved; perhaps, as a treatment, one might even suggest implanting an electrical stimulator to send electrical impulses to the affected muscles so that the person can smile again. Presumably, few people will want to follow this line of thought.

To this day, the neurotransmitter theory on closer examination has never progressed beyond a hypothesis, and the results of research have proved to be unrepeatable. Even the more often advanced argument of a lowered serotonin level in people who throw themselves in front of a train has been refuted by other research. The American psychiatrist Ronald Pies, editor-in-chief of Psychiatric Times, wrote in an editorial in 2011 that the theory of a ‘missing substance in the brain’

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as an explanation for mental problems really annoys him. Critical British psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff describes in her 2007 book ‘Myth of the Chemical Cure’ how the neurotransmitter hypothesis led to serotonin reuptake inhibitors being considered ‘antidepressants’, after which all kinds of grief and hopelessness were considered signs of a disease called ‘depression’.

In addition, the newer agents, the so-called SSRIs, have the drawback that the effect is not immediate, although the neurophysiological reaction does occur immediately. In fact, a recent review of half a century of research stated that dejected and unhappy people actually show an increased serotonin transmission rather than a decreased one. The article from 2015 therefore concludes that the original starting point for the theory of the missing substance cannot possibly be correct. According to the authors, SSRIs do not promote serotonin transmission at all, but they do disturb the energy balance in the nervous system. Thus, antidepressants cause an imbalance instead of correcting it. Rather, the beneficial effect seen in some cases may be due to the endogenous repair mechanisms that attempt to compensate for the damage caused by the medication administered. Because it takes a while for this recovery mechanism to kick in, the effect of antidepressants never occurs immediately, and patients may initially feel even more miserable. If the ‘treatment’ is stopped later, problems may arise again because the nervous system has to turn back the repair mechanism. All of this, of course, sheds a very different light on the many patients who have experienced side effects such as dry mouth, weight gain or drowsiness when taking antidepressants for years. Perhaps the medication is the cause of these problems rather than a solution.

Various studies, including that by Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, have also shown that antidepressants, which act on the neurotransmitters, hardly work better than a placebo. In 1983, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) came to the following conclusion: ‘There is no evidence that there is anything wrong with the serotonin balance of depressed patients.’ In 1996, neuroscientist Steven Hyman, of Harvard University, published the scientific paper ‘Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drugs’. According to Dr. Hyman, after undergoing some compensatory adjustments due to drug use, our brains are going to respond in ways that are ‘both qualitatively and quantitatively different from normal’. So it is important to understand that these drugs are not substances that normalize the brain. They are just abnormalizing substances, and once you understand that, you also understand how they can cause a manic episode, or why they could be associated with sexual dysfunction or, for example, violence and suicide. In 2010, Dr. Jeffrey Dach reported in JAMA that a study of 30-year data showed that SSRIs were in most cases no more effective than a placebo. The internationally respected Dutch physician and neurobiologist Dick Swaab, in his well-known 2010 book ‘We Are Our Brain’ which describes how much we are determined by our brain, writes: ‘Depressed patients treated with placebo had progressed to the same degree after six weeks as patients who had received the real antidepressant. Brain scans showed that there was a major match in the activity changes in brain areas between the group that received a placebo and the group that received the real antidepressant’.

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Ivan Illich in 1976 wrote his ‘Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health’, an argument that was perceived by many at the time as an indictment of the misery caused by doctors. The opening sentence said: ‘The medical establishment has become a major threat to our health’. David Healy, professor of psychiatry at Bangor University in Wales, wrote in Medscape Medical News on April 27, 2015 that the idea that depression is due to decreased serotonin levels in the brain and that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are an effective treatment is a myth. According to Dr. Healy, SSRIs were ‘a treatment in search of an illness’ and clever marketing tempted doctors and patients while pushing better treatments aside. Dr. Healy said ‘This raises the question of the weight that doctors and others attach to biological and epidemiological plausibility. How is it that a plausible (but mythical) biology and treatment story is pushing aside all the clinical data?’ Healy argues that the idea that serotonin levels were lowered in individuals with depression was rejected in the 1960s and that SSRIs were shown to be less effective than (the older) tricyclic antidepressants. Attempts were then made to market the SSRIs as tranquilizers, but they failed.

They only found a place on the market when it was suggested that depression was the ‘deeper disease’ behind anxiety. This was based on the idea that there was a ‘chemical imbalance’ in serotonin concentrations in the brain that needed to be normalized. Dr. Healy says that this idea caught the public’s attention and was initially picked up by the alternative health market and later by psychologists. The myth was taken up by doctors and patients. It was a useful story for doctors in communicating with patients. For patients, the idea of correcting an anomaly was an attractive story with great moral strength, especially among individuals who were reluctant to take tranquilizers, and because of the liberating message that their problem was not due to moral weakness’. ‘In the 1990s, no one knew whether SSRIs lowered or increased serotonin levels and that is still the case,’ said Dr. Healy. ‘There is no evidence that anything was corrected during the treatment.’ Medical doctor and philosopher Bert Keyzer compares medicine to the Vatican: ‘Any idea what explosives you could put under it so that it explodes? After all, medicine is something like that?’

In addition to the serious implications of the useless prescription of medication, the chemical imbalance theory is also harmful because it undermines patients’ agency. If you think that the cause of your depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, you may also think that medication is the only option for getting better. According to Todd Kashdan, a professor of psychology at George Mason University in Virginia, belief in a biomedical explanation of depression leads to: ‘patients becoming pessimistic about a potentially beneficial changes; they are less confident in their ability to deal with gloomy moods (which are inevitable). They also no longer believe that psychotherapy can be a credible or useful strategy for treating their depression. In essence, they become less flexible in their options for depression and have less confidence that they can get better again. Indeed, a 2014 study confirmed that attributing depressive symptoms to a chemical imbalance makes people more pessimistic about their prognosis and leads them to believe that medication would be more effective than psychotherapy. Attributing the cause to a chemical imbalance may actually make the final outcome worse instead of better. Indeed, research shows

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that people treated with medication showed a less favourable long-term result than people who did not.

Attempts to view and treat depression as a disease according to the medical model, i.e. by identifying a ‘cause’ and removing it, have so far largely failed. One can relieve the symptoms somewhat, but it does not make people cheerful or happy. Depression is simply not a disease that can just be contracted or that one can just ‘catch’ or ‘fall into’. So there is no question of ‘cure’ or ‘relapse’. All these terms fail to understand or explain existential reality. Depression also has nothing to do with too much sensitivity or too much empathy or with a strong or weak personality, and even less with a lack of willpower. People with depressed behaviour usually don’t understand what’s going on and suffer from their inability to change their condition. That suffering is always real.

It is therefore advisable for scientific practitioners and care providers to remain very modest. We know enough to know how little we know. In other areas, for example, it has hitherto not been possible for all the force of scientific thought to predict or prevent economic behaviour and economic depressions. The human brain is even more complex and it is completely impossible to make predictions in the area of human behaviour. One can statistically demonstrate the influence of many ‘factors’, but one cannot predict what effect they will have on a particular individual or who will or will not become depressed. We also don’t know what ‘factors’ such as wounds, scars, vulnerability, resilience, or self-confidence actually mean. In the wake of the ‘scientifically substantiated’ treatments, people are also constantly bombarded with all kinds of alternative treatments, therapies, diets, cleansing or other treatments, pop psychological self-help programmes and various do-it-yourself (pseudo)spiritual escape routes in the global meaninggiving market. What is less clear here is that all these approaches implicitly reinforce the belief that there is something wrong that urgently needs to be repaired or ‘healed’.

So the sobering news is that antidepressants don’t work better than a placebo. The interesting news, however, is that placebos (usually) work just as well as antidepressants: Mom’s kiss on the sore knee. A doctor who treats a patient actually always does two things. He gives a medicine, which usually has a certain chemical effect in the body. That is the scientific dimension. But as a doctor he also carries a certain, almost priestly, authority, performs a certain medical ritual and tells a story about what the treatment will do. That is the symbolic, ritual, existential dimension, about which more later (see: ‘The existential logic’). As amazing as it may seem, the story told is often as important as the medicine. It is known that telling a story in combination with a completely ineffective treatment often works. This means that the brain works incredibly well and does everything it can to promote our well-being, just as our digestive system does everything to get the most useful elements out of what we put in our mouth. In his book, Dick Swaab writes with disarming honesty: ‘The placebo effect is the unconscious self-healing ability of the brain.’

The unsurpassed Voltaire (1694-1778) said, ‘Medicine is about amusing the patient while nature heals disease.’

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Physicians and patients have been systematically misinformed about depression. This has led many people to be much more familiar with the medical terms and beliefs than with the true, existential nature of the problem. Belief in the idea of disease has led people to behave like patients who need expert treatment. This leads to a negative self-image and an attitude of powerlessness, unresponsiveness and disempowerment, which in turn contribute to the depressed mood. Those involved behave as helpless victims who are indignant and aggrieved if a language is used that aims to make people take responsibility. They dismiss this as ‘theory’ and as a ‘lack of empathy’ or even as ‘victim blaming’, while insight and accountability offer the only possible way out.

4.1.2 An evolutionary pattern When millions of people suffer from the same problem, it is hard to believe that they are all individual problems. Evolutionary biologists assume that recurring patterns of behaviour such as depression, which are so frequent and appear to occur in all ages and cultures, must have an evolutionary purpose, just as fear, anger, or infatuation do. An animal in its natural habitat will rarely become depressed, but baboons with the lowest social status do show a submission response. In order not to get any more stick from the others, they must constantly make submission gestures to indicate that they have already been defeated and are no longer a threat.

A baboon who behaves this way because he is at the bottom of the ranking resembles a depressed person in many ways. He keeps his head bent and his body low. He barely moves, loses his appetite for eating and mating, is drained of energy, and is startled when someone approaches him. The latest study by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett found that societies with more equality function better than unequal ones in all aspects.

Human evolution started on the African savannah where people lived together in small tribes of hunter-gathering horses of no more than a few hundred people. In pre-agrarian societies, people could only survive in a group. They were hardly ever alone. Their survival was due to the close-knit social network and their great mutual involvement. They discovered how they could work together to kill large animals, share food and get recognition. In those circumstances, if you became separated from the group and remained alone for a long time, for example because you were lost or expelled from the group, you were in serious danger. You symbolically fell out of the nest, you were prey for predators and if you got sick, there was no one to take care of you. You would rightly feel anxious and that would be an urgent signal to return to the group. Just as hunger is a signal to start looking for food, loneliness is a condition that motivates us to look for connectedness. If that doesn’t work, we may experience some sort of existential panic. Our evolution has left us feeling good and safe only when we are connected.

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Because of natural selection, man is equipped with an efficient motivation system for things that are scarce, but not for things that are abundant. For example, people may crave fatty and sweet food, which used to be rare delicacies, while they do not crave vegetables, for example, of which there were always enough. Those who do not eat enough vegetables do not suddenly become fatally ill, but slowly weaken. The same could apply to social contact. There is a rather vague void, but no acute suffering and no real craving, because man has developed in an environment where people have always been surrounded by people. Being alone was exceptional. Because people do not automatically crave social connection, it is not immediately clear that they feel unhappy and empty due to a lack of social contacts.

Loneliness is one of the major problems of contemporary society. Neuroscientist John Cacioppo discovered that loneliness is one of the important factors in the development of both anxiety and depression or addiction. Brain scans have shown that lonely people constantly search their environment for imminent danger because they unconsciously realize that there is no one to help them if something happens to them. Just as bees get confused when they lose their hive, people get confused when they lose their connection to the group. They sleep less deeply and their sleep shows more micro-awakenings: extremely brief moments when people come out of sleep for a while. John Cacioppo became one of the pioneers of what came to be known as ‘social neuroscience’. This is also the case with other social animals. Researcher Martha McClintock worked with laboratory rats, some kept in cages and others in groups. She found that, in isolation, the rats developed breast cancer eighty-four times more often than the rats living in a community.

Robert Putnam, a professor at Harvard University, researched one of the most important trends of our time, that people do fewer and fewer things together. We do fewer things together than the people who lived before us, who were hardly ever alone. We have left our tribes and have come to live alone. We have come to believe that doing things alone is the natural state of man and that we can only help ourselves. That is a denial of human nature. Our brain is not an island.

The fundamental question: ‘What is loneliness?’ is not easy to answer. Feeling lonely is different from being alone. Being alone is certainly not necessarily negative. It can be very productive and one can be alone without being lonely. Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) said: ‘The strings of a lute are on their own, though the same music vibrates through them’, ‘The pillars of the temple stand on their own’ and ‘The oak and the cypress do not grow in each others’ shade.’ However, loneliness is a different experience. Wayne Dyer (1940-2015) said, ‘Loneliness is a window on which you painted a wall.’ The experience of loneliness has nothing to do with the number of people we meet in a day. In a big city or on a large square full of people you can feel lonely. Loneliness is not the physical absence of other people as such, but the sensation of not sharing anything important with others. Even when surrounded by people, even in a family or with a life partner, one can be lonely.

People can also isolate themselves and condemn themselves to loneliness, for example because they fear being vulnerable because they ‘think they are different from the others’, or because they carry a memory about which they are ashamed and dare not speak. Loneliness is an ‘I’ story. It is the reverse of connection and community feeling. In a demonstration with five hundred others

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one can feel connected, while in a shopping street one can feel lonely with five hundred others. In order not to feel lonely it is necessary to experience connection, that is the idea (and therefore the feeling) that one shares something valuable with others or with a group, that one is ‘vibrated by the same music’. This can be a shared vision of life, a joint project or a common future. Connection is the idea (and therefore the feeling) that we mean something to others who in turn mean something to us. The other is like a mirror, a context in which one can mutually experience existence and become a better version of oneself. Connection is a ‘we’ story about mutual recognition and appreciation. It is to experience what Aristotle called ‘one soul in two bodies.’ To end loneliness requires the perception of ‘mutual involvement, help and protection’ with at least one person.

Loneliness explains the increasing number of addictions to gaming or social media like Facebook.

This involves creating an alternative reality with a ‘We’ story, a kind of tribal culture in which one can acquire a certain status. It is a way to escape the fear of loneliness. After all, in the West, happiness is considered an individual task and responsibility. Research shows that in more collectivistic cultures, such as the Amish in the United States, where happiness is experienced much more collectively, there is considerably less mental unwellness. The search for quick, individual solutions proves to be a pitfall. It is precisely this individualistic attitude that is partly the reason for the problems. Instead of doing something for ourselves, we would be better doing something for others. That is good for well-being, just as moving is good for the body, even if we don’t feel like it.

Another insight comes from research by scientists at the University of Essex in Great Britain who spent three years mapping the mental health of more than 5,000 families. They found that anxiety, stress, and depression decreased significantly in people moving from the city to a green area and significantly increased in people moving from a green area to the city. Almost everyone feels better in nature, while the less affluent neighbourhoods in cities look a lot like a prison. The biologist E. O. Wilson argues that humans have an innate preference for the type of landscapes in which humans have lived for most of their evolution. Almost all animals become upset when taken from their habitats.

Depression is like a fever: it is clear that something is going on, but it is not clear exactly what; it is very non-specific. Depression obliges us to stop and take a closer look at the condition. Indeed, in the case of major life events that could bring about a significant life change, such as those related to work, status, health, material resources, social relationships or partner, it may be important to take sufficient time to consider the situation and not to draw hasty conclusions. Just as fever or physical pain is a sign of action to be taken, sadness, grief and depression may be an invitation to stop what we were doing to find out if that might not have been the cause of the problems. After all, too much optimism and enthusiasm could be detrimental. We need to take our rose-tinted glasses off and soberly review our goals and strategies to minimize further damage. The Dalai

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Lama said, ‘Pain is a speech your body makes on a topic that is of vital importance to you, in a way that best catches your attention.’

Pain is a speech that your body makes on a topic that is of vital importance to you, in a way that best attracts your attention.

DALAI LAMA

4.1.3 Newer perspectives In the past thirty years, scientific attempts have been made to find biomarkers based on blood tests, MRI scans or genetic research. This has yielded little, because conditions such as depression cannot be linked to a gene or to a brain area. Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Prof. Dr. Thomas Insel (b. 1951) was director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland for thirteen years. He has written a number of books on neurobiology and obsessive-compulsive disorders, but has particularly focused on his research on oxytocin, the so-called ‘cuddle hormone’ that plays an important role in the formation of human relationships and mutual attraction.

Thomas Insel is the founder of Mindstrong, a company with which he wants to develop an app that can help people with mental illness by warning them early. To this end, the app must detect certain changes. In an interview, Thomas Insel stated: ‘What I find fascinating and ironic is that for many years we have spent a lot of money on all kinds of techniques to find objective criteria for mental illness and that we now arrive at a device that everyone already has in their pocket.’ He is of course talking about the smartphone. Mindstrong’s goal is to detect biomarkers, not by placing the patient in an MRI scanner or drawing blood, but by analysing his behaviour. After all, there are simply no objective diagnostic criteria for psychosis, depression or anxiety. However, they are reflected in certain patterns of behaviour and that produces biomarkers of a completely different kind: digital biomarkers. The smartphone is a useful instrument for analysing the behaviour of individuals. This makes it possible to measure the reaction times of people via the strokes on their keyboard: ‘Everything that people do on their phone, scrolling, clicking, deleting, can be registered. People spend a lot of time on their phones and that permanent registration results in thousands of different ‘digital biomarkers’. The smallest deviations can be registered. All that data is collected daily and then analysed with artificial intelligence to filter out the relevant signals.’ ‘It used to be said that the only objective biomarker for bipolar disorder is someone’s bank statements. That’s not a bad idea: if a new manic episode is announced, the patient suddenly starts to spend a lot of money. We need that kind of information about behaviour in the real world.’

So it is no longer about finding underlying causal factors, but about behavioural parameters. This is in line with clinical practice and should ultimately lead to what Insel calls a ‘digital smoke

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detector’: an app that warns the patient or the care provider that something is wrong, based on differences in reaction times and scrolling behaviour. That, for example, a depression is developing without the patient realizing it. Or vice versa: that it is going in the right direction without the patient noticing it. In the first case, the patient can take measures, in the second, the report can mean a boost.

Demy Borsboom (b. 1973), professor at the University of Amsterdam, came up with the idea that it is better to give up causal thinking completely. He notes that psychology has indeed blindly adopted the philosophy of medicine. In that way, depression is said to be the underlying disease that causes symptoms such as worry, sleep problems, anhedonia and demotivation. But, says Borsboom, what if that underlying cause simply does not exist? What if it is simply a network of symptoms that cause and perpetuate each other and are thus the problem itself? For example, it could lead to sleep deprivation, which in turn leads to more brooding, more sleep deprivation, dejection, listlessness, malfunctioning at work, feelings of guilt and worrying again and so on.

Borsboom: ‘That’s how you end up in the well-known swamp of symptoms that we call depression. A swamp that it is then very difficult to get out of’.

4.1.4 The existential logic

The people who couldn’t hear the music thought the dancers were crazy.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I said above that two stories can always be told about humans: an objective and a subjective story, a scientific and an existential story. Insofar as man belongs to the material world, he is subject to physical laws such as gravity. Insofar as he is a biological being, the laws of biology apply, such as evolution and genetics.

The scientific story is about objective concepts that, however, have almost no meaning for the human experience. The scientific view necessarily shows us an orderly, lawful and predictable world. In the scientific narrative, problematic behaviour is regarded as a disorder of the brain and the brain is studied in isolation without connection to the environment. It is all about neurophysiology or neurotransmitters. The scientific narrative says: we are our brain.

The existential narrative reverses that logic: our brain is formed by our behaviour and a human being, that is, a consciously acting being, can only be understood by means of an existential story.

After all, the essence of man is not his material or biological existence, but his existential dimension, his biography. Rather, an existential approach is required, an answer to important life

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questions. The existential view ‘reads’ the world as a poem, as a painting, as a symphony, with a meaning determined by experience. This, of course, belongs more to the sphere of philosophical reflection and of wisdom than to that of science. A reading that sees one’s own life, society and life in general as meaningless and pointless is at the heart of joyless existence and of the existential problem called depression.

An existential story is not about life, but about my life, not about objective facts, but about subjective opinions, not about neurophysiology or neurotransmitters, but about meanings and values (often preceded by the words ‘for me...’ ). It deals with issues such as desires and values, which as such are completely outside scientific reality, but which are extremely important for experience and for the quality of life. In the scientific story the sum of one and one is always two, the earth rotates every 24 hours on its own axis and orbits the sun every year at a speed of 108,000 kilometres per hour. In the existential story, the sum of one and one can equal zero or three, the sun rises and sets and the seasons follow each other. In an existential story (‘for me ...’), people, bodies, objects, actions, places and times are not only what they objectively, scientifically are, but have a subjective, social, existential meaning. The experience of fresh water in a splashing mountain river is different from the knowledge that it concerns H20. A birthday is a special day, even though it is objectively the same as every other day. The home is a special place and one’s own children are very special children, even if they are no different from other children. Meanings are expressed in a corresponding, more or less ritual, behaviour, that can only be understood from that meaning. The death of an ‘own’ child is accompanied by grief and mourning, while the death of other children may leave one relatively unaffected. This special meaning has been compared to the special meaning of a poem that appeals to us and ‘touches’ us. The meaning rises, as it were, from the words and cannot be reduced to them. This is characteristic of the world of life, the world that is not orderly, lawful and predictable, the world of private subjective meanings, the world of the symbolic order, the world that really matters to man and in which, according to Blaise Pascal (1623- 1662): ‘Le coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connaît point.’

A first objection is that the symbolic order is nevertheless not a purely private affair, just as language is not a private affair but public property. People learn to speak, think, experience and live in a culturally and historically determined social field of meanings and stories, which apply their gravity to the individual meanings and the individual symbolic order. Each individual thinking takes place in the context of a public thinking. Words and events have a generally accepted meaning, though variations are possible. Events in particular can be experienced surprisingly differently by different individuals and at different times. As I said above, the death of one or more children was part of the normal pattern of life barely a few centuries ago, but in today’s society is considered a tragedy, which some believe is impossible to ‘overcome’. Stories and meanings are always created in a social context and in a collectively supported way of life. This also makes it unbelievable that so many people with problems are classed under just one medical denominator, for which there is but one solution and where there is always a disrupted and subsequently restored balance in a neurotransmitter system.

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A second concern is that the modern world has become a kind of upside-down world in this respect, where an existential story is only considered ‘real’ and credible if it is ‘scientifically proven’. In this way, the world of experience, which is the most ‘real’ for concrete people, is subordinated to the scientific world of biology and neurology, even if it now calls itself psychoneuro-endocrino-immunology. If science cannot find anything, then the verdict is that there is nothing ‘real’ and that everything was only ‘imagination’.

It has also been suggested that considering depression as a disease is misleading because the term ‘disease’ suggests (has the meaning) that it is a condition that an individual may ‘contract’ unwillingly or ‘catch’ unexpectedly but which is known by science and can be treated. However, depression is no more a disease than love. Both depression and infatuation are existential states, ways of being, meaningful patterns of behaviour such as dancing or mourning. They are states with a symbolic content, an existential logic that can only be understood subjectively.

So why do people so stubbornly stick to a story about brains or genes? This too can only be understood in an existential story. The first reason is that the belief in a scientifically explainable cause of depression, the belief that it is all biological, is existentially satisfying, because then one does not need to think further about one’s own life and the real reasons why one does what one does. No one wants to hear that they have spent most of their life looking for explanations in the wrong place. A second reason is that the label ‘disease’ in our (reverse) society is a kind of identification, a proof of ‘authenticity’. We don’t tell someone with cancer that he should not behave like that. An additional reason is that it is much more difficult in society to say that so many people feel unhappy because of the way society functions. In our neoliberal capitalist society, there are powerful players who have an interest in continuing to view depression as a chemical problem requiring chemical treatment.

Nietzsche says that people who dance can be called crazy by people who cannot hear the music.

Indeed: for those who do not hear the music, the dancers’ movements seem silly, absurd and without any sense or logic. One can examine their muscles, their brains, their neurotransmitters or their genes, but their behaviour will remain incomprehensible. Only when you hear the music, does it become clear that the dancers are trying to express something with their movements. That is the key, the code through which the seemingly random movements suddenly form a legible, meaningful pattern. The dance is not the result of ‘causes’ or ‘factors’, but is the expression of an intention, a desire. More generally, it can be said that human behaviour cannot be understood if one does not hear the existential music. Likewise, depressive behaviour can only be understood if one gives up the scientific pretension and the search for ‘causes’ and instead hears the ‘existential music’, i.e. what the person concerned imagines, what he believes and wants to express about himself, about others and about life. A person cannot be scientifically understood in terms of external factors, he can only be understood existentially, from the inside, as one ‘understands’ a text, a poem or a painting.

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Existentially, depression can be thought of as a certain relationship with life, just as love is a certain relationship with a partner, that is, a way of relating to the reality of the partner or of life.

Infatuation or enthusiasm is a relationship in which attractive and exciting possibilities are projected into the future: ‘there is music in it’. As long as there’s enthusiasm about anything, there’s no depression. Depression is exactly the opposite and can be understood as a relationship that has been extinguished, that people have tired of, that they no longer feel like, that they no longer see a future in, where ‘no music is left’. All enthusiasm is gone. They have symbolically fallen out of the nest. Unfortunately, in this case it is a question of the relationship with the only real partner, the only partner that one can never exchange for another, namely life itself.

When an important thing or person disappears from life through the ending or slow extinction of a relationship, or through death, a pattern of behaviour called grief arises. People grieve because something or someone was important and meaningful and because they had expectations.

Mourning means learning to accept and inhabit the world as it is and will be from now on.

Everyone takes the time he needs for this. People often think or are told that they suffer from depression when their grief lasts longer than a certain period of time and that they have to take medicines to repair the wrong chemistry in their brains. That is, of course, nonsense. Yet there is a striking similarity between the patterns of behaviour (the so-called ‘symptoms’) in grief and depression. Depression can indeed be considered a form of grief. The terminated relationship in

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this case is the relationship with the existential partner: the relationship with others, with nature, with meaningful values, with purpose, with freedom and with a future. Because many people do not have a clear picture of this relationship, they often do not understand the nature of their grief, depression or emptiness and can start to believe that it is a disease. Once it is understood that it is not so much a disease of the person involved, but the consequence of a broken relationship with life and with society, it becomes clear that the ultimate solution must be sought in the restoration of this relationship.

A depressed attitude and depressed behaviour are often wrongly considered to be the result of depression. In reality, it is the belief in meaninglessness and in the absence of a future that is the thing itself, the heart, the engine of the depressive pattern of behaviour. Someone who is tired of a relationship is not someone who suddenly has a mysterious illness called ‘depression’. They have not suddenly begun to suffer from a ‘missing substance in the brain’. They have simply come to believe, for any number of reasons, that there is no future and that this cannot be ‘cured’ with a pill. A depressed person feels trapped in a reality in which he sees no further possibilities.

Depression is the absence of inspiring ideas about future possibilities and illustrates that people are determined much more by ideas about the future than by events or ‘factors’ in the past.

Depression is like a bad, empty dream about the future.

Man is much more defined by ideas about the future than by events in the past.

Martin Seligman’s research has shown that depression has more to do with a scheme (a pattern, a process) than with a theme (the alleged cause). The pattern includes the irrational steps of a negative judgment and an idea of worthlessness, helplessness (nothing and no one can help me), which is also seen as permanent (it will always be like this) and pervasive (it will be like this everywhere). That is a kind of cognitive fixation, a narrowing of consciousness, a tunnel vision that is characteristic of all forms of suffering and that closes the mind to other possibilities of life and in particular for the future. That is the pattern, the cognitive style of the depressed mindset. People with a depressed pattern are trapped in a bubble, in a cave of Plato in which the present seems meaningless and the future seems empty. If one believes that, then one also ‘feels’ it, and that feeling in turn strengthens the belief. It’s easy to get lost in stories. As in Plato’s story, people who dare to question the projected ‘reality’ in the cave are met with disbelief and rejection. After all, the depressed mood makes rational thinking more difficult, which creates a depressive spiral of automatic negative thoughts and expectations. It is as if one makes an advance payment on possible future unwellness, as if one goes into the bank to pay interest on a possible future loan.

People with a depressed pattern of behaviour are therefore similar and make similar statements, which amount to negative expectations and a belief in powerlessness and hopelessness.

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The depressive dance is a gloomy, lonely dance because life, the only inevitable partner, is rejected as unsatisfying.

4.1.5 The depressive logic The prosperity paradox I mentioned above becomes less incomprehensible if one understands man as a complex being with different existential dimensions. Thus, a simple distinction can be made between a biological, an affective, an intellectual, a social and a spiritual dimension. A similar pattern or scheme applies to each of these dimensions: a deficiency leads to an unpleasant sensation, a hunger, while the fulfilment of a deficiency is experienced as a pleasant sensation. For those who are hungry, a meal is a pleasant experience, but those who are not hungry will get little pleasure from eating a meal. For those who are full, the idea of eating can even be disgusting. This means that a meal is not pleasant or unpleasant in itself, but is experienced as pleasant by those who are hungry and as unpleasant by those who are not hungry. The experience is not so much determined by the factuality of the meal as such, but by the degree to which it responds to a need.

The example of hunger is a good model for other levels. Those who have an affective hunger, are hungry for affection, acceptance, recognition. Those who have an intellectual hunger are hungry for an understanding of the world in which they live.

The existential logic of depressive behaviour includes one or more of the following elements or ingredients:

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Depression = disenchantment x disempowerment x meaninglessness or in other words, depression is where disempowerment, disenchantment and lack of purpose overlap.

4.1.6 Meaninglessness Those who suffer from a spiritual hunger, a hunger of the soul, go through a kind of eclipse of meaning and hunger for meaning and purpose. However, with the scientific revolution and the disappearance of the great meaningful stories (including religion), the meaningful long-term perspective has largely been replaced by an enjoyable short-term perspective. Religious dogma has been replaced by the market dogma of growth and return on investment. In our Western, postmodern and individualistic view of life, happiness often seems to be defined as taking as many city trips as possible and posting the most liked photo on Instagram. Pleasure is indeed as addictive as sugar. It maintains the craving without ever giving real meaning and satisfaction.

Where difficulties and obstacles in life were once seen as unavoidable and necessary learning moments on the way to a future fulfilment of life, life difficulties and life questions are increasingly seen as unwanted disturbances of a pleasant life. The elimination of such disturbances has become the primary objective of the individual and of the social order. After all, people declare

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that they are entitled to an undisturbed and pleasant life and increasingly turn for assistance, in particular to the government and its institutions, in order to remove anything that can hinder a pleasant life.

This explains why so many who seem to have everything needed for happiness still declare that they are unhappy and experience ‘a void’. They wonder whether ‘this is all there is’. That’s another way of saying they feel an unsatisfied hunger. Often these people cannot even identify the hunger they experience. They only feel emptiness and are often ashamed of their unhappiness because, in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of others, they ‘have every reason to be happy.’

On closer inspection, these people only have ‘everything’ at certain levels: the levels of material needs, affective needs, social needs, even intellectual needs. There is one more level that often remains undernourished: the level of meaning. A life filled with pleasures, from restaurant visits and city trips to luxury holidays, is like a meal of only chocolates and pralines. It cannot satisfy the spiritual hunger and will eventually become boring for an adult. Especially people in our wealthy societies who have a lot of time and money and can buy every possible pleasure are ultimately bored by this. They have everything to live with, but nothing to live for. They realize that there must be ‘something more’, but they don’t find what that is. They experience life as empty, a coincidence without a reason for existence, without necessity and without a future. That is the ontological fear, the disgust that Sartre calls ‘la nauseé’, the vertigo of freedom, of contingency.

Anyone who eventually turns to modern-day care provision with this hunger, emptiness and absence of well-being, will soon be diagnosed with ‘depression’, resulting in often endless drug treatment and hospital admissions. It is a tragedy that such thoughts, which used to be attributed to retirement, the ‘empty nest’ or the ‘midlife crisis’, are reported by increasingly younger people.

As already mentioned, the human brain, especially the primitive brain, is not selected to deal with abundance and comfort, but to survive in scarcity and solve problems. In those circumstances, more is always better. The brain cannot cope with an abundance of time, resources or care, it gets bored and goes crazy, resulting in rampant overconsumption and diseases of civilization such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes. This also leads to increasing social inequality and exhaustion of the planet. Often fear also arises because the brain thinks that there must be a mistake and that it must have overlooked some problem. It will look for and will find problems. It is as if consciousness, relieved of all its burdens, becomes a burden to itself. After all, the brain has not learned to limit itself. However, money, resources, time, care, comfort, and luxury lead to corruption, deception, greed, power, narcissism, selfishness, and other childish ‘borderline’ behaviours as well as more serious problem behaviours such as depression, addiction, and ultimately suicide.

Consciousness, relieved of all its burdens, becomes a burden to itself.

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People will often endeavour to satisfy unsatisfied hunger with the wrong food. They can try to satisfy a hunger on one dimension with food from another dimension. Everyone knows ‘affective eaters’, people who try to satisfy their affective hunger with food for the body. After all, a ‘void’ can easily be interpreted as a need for food. Food for the body is obvious, it is abundant and readily available. Obviously, this only leads to overfeeding of the body while in no way satisfying the affective or spiritual hunger. There are also people who try to satisfy their spiritual hunger, their hunger for the soul, their hunger for meaning with food from another dimension. They eat more, pursue affective or sexual adventures, shop compulsively, travel, play sports or collect art, and attempt to ‘express’ themselves in various ways in an attempt to satisfy internal hunger.

Obviously, this cannot work sustainably. They enjoy themselves and have fun, but they are not happy.

4.1.6.1

Disenchantment

The experience of disenchantment is close to that of meaninglessness. Those who experience life as meaningless will not be able to see much beauty or splendour in it. In the modern world, the experience of enchantment is therefore often virtually absent. One of the insights from the practice of mindfulness (see below) is that adults hardly ever ‘really’ look at the things they allegedly ‘already know’. People also say that they ‘already know’ or ‘have already done’ cities or countries, so it is no longer worth their while going there. This leads to increasing boredom, disappointment and disillusion, and at an increasingly younger age. This is disenchantment.

Depression is a state in which people are trapped in their own story, their own ego, their own bubble, their own cave, where hardly any air and light can enter from the outside. Researchers have determined that a stay in nature is the exact opposite of this sensation and generally generates a sense of awe and enchantment. Most people are therefore temporarily lifted from their bubble and feel better.

One can think of a relationship again. At first one is in love, enthusiastic, enchanted. As time passes one gradually becomes less enchanted. Then there are two possibilities: one finds a new enthusiasm – re-enchantement - or one slips towards disenchantment. That usually means the end of the relationship. The same happens in the course of an individual life: a child is naturally delighted and enchanted by everything it discovers. As it gets older and has seen and knows more, it becomes less and less enchanted. Then it can go in one of two directions: one finds a new enthusiasm - a re-enchantment - or one gets completely disillusioned and disenchanted. This leads to disinterest, indifference, cynicism, or a diagnosis of depression.

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Historically, a similar pattern has also occurred in society. The first human was as enchanted as a child by the wonderful world into which he had entered and in which he saw all kinds of gods and magical and mythical figures and powers at work. That was the world of animism and pantheism, in which people looked at things and the world with reverence and awe. That would gradually change later under the influence of the scientification of the world view. German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) spoke of the ‘Entzauberung’, the ‘disenchantment’, the disillusionment of the world as a result of the scientific view. The historian E. J. Dijksterhuis (1892-1965) spoke of the ‘mechanization of the world view’. The scientific view indeed reduces everything to a known and cognitively understandable causal system. We no longer pray for rain. This has, of course, brought us countless useful insights and innumerable benefits, but at the same time it has also removed enchantment, wonder and awe. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) wrote in ‘Psychology of Science’: ‘Non-scientists, poets, believers, artists and ordinary people in general may be somewhat right in their fear and even hatred of what they see as science. They often feel that science is a threat to everything they deem wonderful and sacred, to everything that is beautiful, sublime, precious and awe-inspiring.’ The French historian and philosopher Marcel Gauchet (b. 1946) described in his book ‘Le désenchantement du monde’ the history of five thousand years of disenchantment as a result of the increasing desacralization and obsession with the knowledge of positive science.…

Marianne Williamson (b. 1952) wrote: ‘Our environmental crisis has arisen with the transition from a sacred to a profaned universe. By embracing the mechanized worldview, we have been left without a sense of reverence or awe of the mysteries of nature, and from there it was only a small step towards crimes against nature.’ The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor (b. 1931) also paid much attention to this aspect of the modern world.

Man has increasingly assumed the distant, scientific view and has gradually rejected the existential, poetic view as unscientific. However, this also makes everything dull and boring. It is as if we were to analyse a film image by image or a piece of music note by note. That is not wrong in itself, it can even provide interesting information, but it does deprive us of the perception of the meaning of the film or of the music. Man no longer looks as a poet or as a lover, but more and more as a scientific researcher or as a doctor. He has traded the soul for neurology and the balm for the soul for a brain scan. Science sees H20 but sees no mighty ocean, no splashing stream, no refreshing spring. The scientific view sees paint on canvas, but does not understand the beauty of a painting. Neurology finds brains, but no mind and no soul. Science sees dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, but doesn’t understand the experience of love. That explains why people now have extensive knowledge, but little or no wonder and, above all, few experiences of happiness.

Every time I think about how much I have been given, many things that I have taken for granted turn into a source of happiness.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

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4.1.6.2

Disempowerment

In countries where elephants are trained to do heavy work, a very easy and effective method is used to ensure that they do not run away. The young animals are tied to a tree with a rope around the leg. They try to escape a number of times, but soon learn that they cannot get away. As the elephants grow, they become very strong and can pull whole trees out of the ground and haul tree trunks. However, they are now so used to the rope around their foot that they have long since stopped trying to escape. They could very easily pull the rope out, but they don’t because they believe they can’t.

Something similar happens in humans. As a child we learned to deal with reality in a certain way.

We have drawn some conclusions about ourselves and the world. We have come to believe certain things and we no longer doubt them. These assumptions are anchored in the words, metaphors and images we use. Our thinking, feeling and acting is based on these assumptions, although as adults now, like the adult elephants, we have many more options than when we were children and we can now make our own choices. But we often do not, because we do not believe that it is possible. We don’t really realize yet that Santa doesn’t exist. It is as if we are still walking around with an umbrella to protect ourselves from the rain, although it has long since stopped raining. As the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy, ‘You always could, you just had to discover it for yourself.’

In his famous research, Martin Seligman (b. 1 942), the father of positive psychology, has shown the link between powerlessness and depressive behaviour in animals. I referred earlier to submission behaviour in baboons at the bottom of the social ladder. The importance of these insights is that it has been clearly demonstrated that normal, healthy animals, in conditions of captivity or hopeless, unfavourable conditions, can also start to exhibit a depressive pattern of behaviour. This makes it clear that what is called ‘depression’ is not a disease (the animals in question have not suddenly become ill), but rather the activation of an already present, innate but dormant pattern of behaviour, just like laughing, crying, mourning or falling in love. Indeed, these behaviours do not need to be learned, but are activated in certain circumstances or contexts, just as people will laugh in some contexts and cry in others. In some circumstances, the love pattern is activated, in others the depressive pattern.

Circumstances or contexts in which this depressive pattern is activated, in both animals and humans, are contexts in which an individual is convinced, ‘arrives at the conclusion’, that nothing is possible or makes sense any more, because he believes he is imprisoned in a hopeless situation.

A prison is the usual social method of punishing someone by depriving him of the freedom of further choice. This is clear when it comes to a physical prison, where the circumstances of the remaining ‘life’ are often also inhumane. But just as people can make themselves anxious with

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frightening imaginings, so too can people imagine being imprisoned and consequently feel imprisoned, even if they are not. As I stated above, man lives more with his imagination and his representations of reality than with reality itself. Byron Katie says, ‘The world is my perception of it. I only perceive through the filter of my story’. It is not the real circumstances that ‘make someone depressed,’ but the story, the conclusion they reach about those circumstances. The circumstances are therefore not the cause, but only the context, the trigger.

The world is my perception of it.

I only perceive through the filter of my story.

BYRON KATIE

The experience of feeling imprisoned can occur in very different circumstances: Materially: people can feel trapped in poverty or in an insurmountable mountain of debt that seems hopeless; Affectively: people can feel trapped in an oppressive family structure, in emotional blackmail, in a suffocating relationship without breathing space, in emotional poverty, in loneliness; Professionally: people can feel trapped in countless rules that prescribe what is allowed and what is not allowed, where the only concern is ‘playing by the rules’, in a strict hierarchical structure, in an inhuman morality of performance or winning, in a one-dimensional meritocracy of winners and losers where numbers and performance are the only form of identity and where work is only a ‘job’ and no longer an opportunity for self-realization; Socially: people can feel trapped in patronizing social structures or roles, in forms of exploitation or exclusion; Mentally: people may feel trapped in certain religious, scientific or philosophical beliefs (e.g. the idea of being abnormal or suffering from an incurable disease), in habits, norms, beliefs, a bilious vision of life; Existentially: people can feel trapped in the endless dullness of comfort and in the dictatorship of security and normality (too much reality and too few possibilities), in a narrow self-image, in oppressive ideas about the past (the ‘weight’, the ‘burden’) or about the future, about illness, about addictions (‘I will never get out of this again’), about aging (the inevitable ‘deterioration’), about death; Spiritually: people may feel trapped in meaninglessness, in the absence of a meaning-giving framework, of any transcendence from everyday reality.

In all these circumstances, people may have the idea (often referred to as ‘a feeling’) that they are caught in a reality where there are no possibilities and no choices. People with such a vision of life will therefore develop a depressive pattern of behaviour. That is the experience of ‘falling’ into depression. This ontological depression ultimately boils down to existential death. In the words of A.N. Whitehead, it can an existential death be described as ‘the possible belief in the impossibility

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of further possibilities.’ It is an existential suffocation resulting from the failure of a breathable life between opportunities and realities. Just as insulin was the key hormone that made the many symptoms of diabetes suddenly understandable, the idea of ’being trapped’ seems to be a key concept for understanding depression.

In his book ‘The Lost Connections’, journalist Johann Hari describes the striking parallels between the hopelessness, powerlessness, despair and uncertainty of the native inhabitants of America who were expelled, murdered and imprisoned in reservations without any prospects for the future, and the living conditions of many contemporary workers who through the neoliberal system have ended up in a kind of capitalist reservation for the precariat. In both cases, this is accompanied by high rates of depression, addiction and suicide.

Disempowerment is a passive mindset characterized by the absence of awareness of freedom and choice, for example because people are believed to be victims of a disease. This leads to self-pity, sadness, helplessness and victim behaviour. Curiously enough, this mindset is largely due to the development of science, especially medical science, which names almost every difficulty in life as a disease, a disorder or a condition. As a result, the individual becomes increasingly dependent on diagnoses and treatments and believes that he is powerless. The experience of being in prison in a hopeless situation is, as stated above, the existential dance of depression.

Jonathan Haidt (b. 1963), a moral psychologist and professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University, writes in his recent book that today young people are presented with three major errors: (1) You are vulnerable and need protection, (2) Feelings are a reliable guide in life, and (3) the world is a battleground between good and bad people. At first sight, these rational and humane ideas are a real cause not only of much fear and conflict, but also of disempowerment and disenchantment. This is especially true for the belief in vulnerability. People think that ideas and statements can be ‘hurtful’ and traumatizing and cause permanent ‘damage’ while the opposite is true: challenges make one stronger and contradictions sharpen the mind. But according to Haidt, overprotective parents raise young people in a logic of pampering. As a result, young people start to believe they have the right to a problem-free and conflict-free life. They rely on adult support to avoid any kind of discomfort.

This anxious and pessimistic lifestyle is the main risk factor, the main so-called ‘vulnerability factor’, which can cause people to react to difficult conditions with a pattern of depression, i.e. the choice to give up. Just as smoking predicts lung cancer, pessimism predicts depression. Negative, pessimistic thoughts and stories lead to pessimistic moods and emotions and endless worrying, frustration, self-harassment and stress. They are also the cause of poor sleep quality and lead to increasing stress and physical fatigue with eventual signs of exhaustion or burnout. All this contributes to the downward spiral of depression. For the pessimist who is on the way to a depressed attitude to life and who is therefore existentially almost already dead, the physical farewell to life is only one step further and can even be seen as liberating.

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A pessimistic lifestyle also has the advantage of being an easy and safe place. Depressed people do not take any risks because ‘it will not work anyway.’ Moreover, pessimism has a special status.

After all, an intellectual should be ‘critical’, he should accuse ‘painful realities’ and ‘hold up a mirror to others’. Because someone who feels impending doom must see things very sharply.

Every pessimist therefore calls himself a realist. After all, those who wear pessimistic glasses only see things that confirm their idea. Just as Multatuli’s Miss Laps didn’t know she was a mammal, some people don’t realize they have a pessimistic lifestyle. After all, pessimists are rarely disappointed because they had always predicted the unfortunate outcome. Optimists risk disappointment or risk being tricked. But with whom would you rather share life: with someone who is constantly preparing for the worst, or with someone who expects the best?

An optimistic lifestyle requires a more nuanced, concrete and specific thinking and perception, making it clear that nothing is ever completely negative, that nothing is always and everywhere true and that there are always meaningful choices and possibilities. Confucius said that nothing that happens to us is bad if we learn the lessons and reap the benefits of it. That is an empowering, creative lifestyle. So depression can mean the beginning of the end, but also the end of the beginning, the end of some illusions and the way to a more conscious life.

Nothing that happens to us is bad if we learn the lessons and reap the benefits from it.

CONFUCIUS

In social terms, the enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution were mainly translated in modern neoliberal society into organized, bureaucratic rights and duties, with the meaning and contribution of individual existence to society becoming almost invisible. People no longer know what their efforts and commitment are for and no-one thanks them for it. They pay taxes to an anonymous bureaucratic fiscal system and in return are entitled to all kinds of benefits and allowances from an anonymous bureaucratic social security. Human interaction is increasingly administrative and less and less affective. People hardly feel personal involvement, compassion or love. They no longer feel connected to society. This also is a source of disempowerment and disenchantment.

Although democracy held the promise of a life determined and directed by the individual, people seem increasingly to live by rules and circumstances over which they have no choice. Democracy, hijacked by an opaque, globalized economic oligarchy, has become a dictatorship of the majority, of normality and of mediocrity, a social game staged in the same commercial and competitive fashion as song festivals, beauty pageants or other forms of commercial mass entertainment.

More and more reference is made to shadowy, magical ‘powers’ such as free competition, competitiveness, the financial markets or the stock market. In the metaphysics of the market, the

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citizen becomes a consumer. But when the market becomes the law, inequality becomes the rule.

On the other hand, people seem to have become almost blind to the real choices in their own world of consciousness. They have not yet met the Wizard of Oz.

When the market becomes the law, inequality becomes the rule.

4.2 Addictive behaviour Addiction is also a behaviour that seems incomprehensible as long as we don’t hear its existential logic, its existential music, which is often one of clinging to one specific substance or activity in order to escape psychological suffering or an unbearable reality. Addiction is often the last stage before a real depression, which is giving up all will to live. Some people even state that what they affectionately call ‘their cigarette’ is the last pleasure in their lives.

Obviously, for addiction too, extensive efforts were made by the scientific world to find a biological base that would allow for a rational treatment, as if the brain were an isolated island.

These attempts have remained but wishes for the time being. In many cases, repeated courses of treatment, even with lengthy admissions to expensive drug rehabilitation clinics, appear to be virtually ineffective. On the other hand, it is known that women who become pregnant can quit smoking or drinking almost immediately, without much effort, without years of ‘fighting’ and ‘struggling’ and slog. Has something that was so difficult suddenly become easy? Of course not! It has always been easy. All it took was motivation, a good reason. It is also noteworthy that people in a rehabilitation centre can relatively easily stay ‘clean’, but ‘relapse’ as soon as they return to their familiar social environment.

According to the traditional, conventional view, addiction is a result of the chemical properties of certain substances. This view is based on a simple and apparently convincing experiment with rats in a cage who have the choice between pure water or water with heroin or cocaine. The observation is that nine out of ten rats drug themselves to death and the conclusion is that addiction is a chemical process.

In the 1970s, however, a new insight emerged through the research of Bruce Alexander (b. 1946), professor of psychology in Vancouver. Alexander noted that the above experiments were always performed with rats placed only in a bare cage. He therefore repeated the test but put the rats together in a ‘rat park’, with a lot of social contact and interesting and stimulating toys. The surprising result was that far fewer rats chose the drug and none of the animals died. The

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conclusion was therefore: lonely and unhappy animals indeed prefer drugs, but ‘happy’ animals don’t! So it was not a chemical problem but an existential problem.

Obviously, such experiments cannot be conducted with human subjects, but a natural human experiment occurred following the Vietnam War. According to the Archives of General Psychology, 20% of the soldiers in Vietnam were addicted. So people feared the worst when they came back from war. However, this turned out not to be a problem because 95% of them just quit on their own! The analogy was clear: these soldiers returned from a terrible cage to a pleasant park. This, of course, contradicts the concept of addiction as the user’s moral weakness, but also the concept of addiction as a result of a chemical process in the brain. Bruce Alexander therefore states: addiction is not a chemical process but an attempt to survive in a miserable cage. A similar finding can be made in homeless people living in poverty, on the street, as isolated rats in a bare cage, with cigarettes and drink or other drugs as the sole ‘comfort.’ In some cases, these people surprisingly manage to ‘solve’ their problem. The explanation is usually that they have received an unexpected opportunity: a partner, a job, a home and a ‘normal’ life.

Another natural experiment is that patients with severe bone fractures after an accident are often administered morphine (medical heroin), which is more powerful and purer than street heroin.

According to the conventional theory, many people should therefore leave hospital ‘addicted’.

However, this does not happen, even after months of ‘use’. After the hospital, these people return without any difficulty to their normal activities and their social environment.

In the fascinating 2006 book ‘The Cult of Pharmacology’, science author Richard DeGrandpre (b.

1964) describes our irrational relationship with drugs and the mythical power we attribute to it.

For example, he notes that only about 20% of smokers quit their habit with the help of patches or other nicotine replacement products. That means that 80% of smoking behaviour is not attributable to nicotine! Again, there is no substance addiction, but an addiction to a reward. In the case of smoking, the reward is, on the one hand, the elimination of the unpleasant state of loss created by the nicotine, and on the other hand, the social reward of ‘belonging’. Indeed, there are two main reward systems: the dopamine reward system, which responds to substances and the oxytocin reward system, which is more responsive to social reward.

The reward is the escape from a negatively experienced environment or the elimination of a negatively experienced condition (loss) that had been created by the use of the drug. So the reward is a negative pleasure, which is the return to a normal state, similar to the redeeming relief of kicking off shoes that hurt. But for those who aren’t wearing tight shoes, kicking those shoes off is no fun. In other words, there is no positive pleasure, no additional happiness. This also makes it clear that it is not the substances (drugs) as such that are the main problem, but the liberation from an (un) social environment experienced as negative. One is not addicted to a substance or an activity, but to the reward of escaping from a certain unpleasant reality.

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Dutch ‘drug professor’ Peter Cohen says people have a deep need to connect with other people. If there is insufficient connection with others, people will ‘connect’ to anything (drugs, porn, gambling, gaming, sports...). People with sufficient connection to other people do not need such surrogate solutions. French psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik points out that in our society there is a lot of solidarity, but it is becoming more administrative (an impersonal thing about rights and duties) and less affectionate (you don’t know who helped you and nobody comes to thank you for your contribution to his or her maternity leave or unemployment benefit). Although we are helped by many people, we can be lonely because we don’t feel that we are important to others. Bruce Alexander says: ‘We live in a society where many people live alone and in isolation.’ As in the work of Michel Houellebecq, we have become elementary particles. There is no ‘we’ feeling. The answer to addiction is therefore not withdrawal or ‘cure’, but more affective connection. That is the existential logic.

British writer and environmentalist George Monbiot (b.1963) has written an interesting opinion piece entitled ‘The Age of Loneliness is Killing Us’. In his book ‘Out of the Wreckage’ he wrote: ‘we need connection just as we need food and shelter.’... Take, for example, the Japanese concept of Shinrin yoku or forest baths aimed to restore our connection to nature. Perhaps filling the void and giving the impression of belonging is also an explanation for the apparent need for the ubiquitous, noisy and mind-numbing youth music.

In the case of work-, relationship-, sports-, porn-, sex-, gambling-, game- or Facebook- addiction, there is of course no chemical substance at all, but only the expectation of a reward. The unpredictability, the so-called intermittent reinforcement, remarkably prevents the stimulus from being extinguished and thus increases the addictive effect. With every bet, with every lottery ticket, with every swipe across the screen, there is an expectation of a possible reward. The reward is the release from the negative state of dullness, loneliness, withdrawal symptoms or craving. We have already mentioned the increasing number of addictions to the internet and gaming. In gaming or social media, an alternative reality is created with a team, a tribal culture in which one can acquire a certain status. It is a way to escape loneliness, but the result is, unfortunately, often even more loneliness.

When asked if there are any lasting changes in the brain, Bruce Alexander replies by observing that rats who were ‘addicted’ in a cage alone for 57 days and then put back with the others showed signs of withdrawal but quickly regained normal behaviour. In ‘The Biology of Desire, Why Addiction is not a Disease’ (2015), psychologist and professor Marc Lewis (b. 1951) writes: ‘The disease model does not take into account the neuroplasticity of the brain. All significant and repeated experiences lead to changes in the brain, but these changes are not permanent’. The brain is constantly changing, and the physiology of the brain is always parallel to psychic reality. A brain scan is a snapshot of a changing process, like a snapshot of a dancing couple. The human brain has been selected by evolution to quickly respond to, and adapt to, signals from the outside world, as well as to quickly form habits and automatisms. It mainly responds to immediate

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circumstances (an attacking mammoth) and much less or not at all to longer term conditions (cancer is like a possible mammoth within twenty years). So it is not about ‘healing’ or ‘recovery’, but about a learning process.

Addiction is therefore a symptom of the deeper existential problem that society pays more attention to consumption, property, status and power than to people. But the human brain seeks ‘connection’ with other people or, if necessary, with substances. Addiction is therefore not a ‘disease’ of the individual but is a problem of society, which for many has become a miserable cage, even though it is often gilded. So we need a social recovery instead of an individual ‘cure’.

People seek in drugs whatever they don’t find in life. There is no causal logic, but a logic of lost intentions: meaning, hope, expectations, ideals, dreams, future. The disease model leads to powerlessness and dependence on a ‘treatment’ by ‘experts’ which benefit only the pharmaceutical industry and drug rehabilitation centres.

All this, of course, sheds a completely different light on the ‘war on drugs’. After all, that logic makes people even more isolated by criminalizing them and locking them up, and it also keeps a huge illegal trade alive. Here too, punishing undesirable behaviour is not a learning experience or motivation for desired behaviour. Again, blowing smoke away without putting out the fire that causes the smoke does not lead to a sustainable solution. The alternative would be a logic of ‘connection.’ In Portugal, for example, in 2000, under the leadership of President Jorge Sampaio and Dr. João Goulão, a radical step was taken towards decriminalization (not legalization). The money from the ‘war on drugs’ was spent on projects aimed at connection, reintegration, housing and employment, in other words: a goal to live for rather than punishment. The result was a drastic reduction in the drug problem.

So it involves not a disease logic but an existential logic. With any ‘problem behaviour’, we must first listen carefully to find whether that ‘problem’ happened to be the ‘solution’ for another problem. The smoke is not the problem, but the fire that causes the smoke. Addiction is a way, a lifestyle to ‘solve’ an emotional problem. It is an artificial paradise, a beautiful dream as a solution to a bad dream about reality. Unfortunately, the ‘solution’ becomes a habit that causes problems.

The behaviour becomes obsessive, a reflex, an almost irresistible automatism. It is essentially a utopian expectation. But what has been learned can be changed. The remedy is not a punishment but a learning process of the brain, creating less destructive habits through an existential approach.

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Addiction is not the same as occasional recreational use or experimentation by young people. An addiction process starts as an attempt to escape from a certain unwellness, from a cognitive dissonance. This could be an acute event (a ‘difficult moment’, the ‘loss’ of a partner, work or a house) or a chronic state of feeling bad, of dissatisfaction, of being trapped in a hopelessly boring and empty life. A major event (accident, assault, attack, abuse) can also be a reason. The use of the ‘drug’ (stimulants, alcohol, drugs, food, not-eating, sex, relationships, therapy, buying, gambling, traveling, snacking...) Leads to an intoxication, a temporary, artificial dissolution of the cognitive dissonance, a ‘feeling less bad’, which is attributed to the drug as to an experience machine.

The problem is that due to habituation, the drug has to be used more and more and more often, so that the attempt to escape from the feelings of discomfort actually reinforces it. After all, no one derives self-respect or self-esteem from addictive behaviour. Every addict feels ‘stupid’, weak and worthless. The use of the ‘drug’ makes people feel even worse and even more worthless. The addiction makes an additional dent in our self-image. As a result, cognitive dissonance increases and the drug or activity thus creates its own needs. After all, the intoxication of the addictive substance or activity is followed by physical and / or psychological unwellness. This brings the person back into a ‘miserable cage’ so that they have to use it again to escape that misery.

Addiction is therefore the result of the counterproductive effect of a good intention because the ‘agent’ actually promotes and maintains dependence. The sum of two problems is not a solution.

An addiction is like an air raid shelter that one ‘needs’ to protect against an imaginary danger.

Virtually any normal behaviour (eating, drinking, sex) can thus enter a vicious circle and become problematic. A drowning person sees a life raft in every piece of driftwood.

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Nowhere is addictive behaviour so painful and accompanied by as much suffering as in the field of relationships. What people call ‘love’ is often an addiction. This often becomes, as with any addiction, only clear at the end, when one tries to ‘kick the habit.’ Then it turns out to be almost impossible and the blame falls on the partner who wants to end the relationship. What is called ‘heartbreak’ is actually withdrawal symptoms that indicate addiction. If there was no addiction, the relationship could end in a mature, reasonable and civilized manner. If there really was love, one would wish the partner all the best with his decision and one would not get blamed.

Buddhism speaks of attachment and sees ‘need’ and ‘clinging’ as a major cause of suffering.

‘Needing’ and ‘not being able to do without’ are indeed not expressions of love but of addiction.

The difference between love and addiction is that love wants the other person’s happiness while addiction wants the other person to make us happy. It’s like the difference between picking a flower and watering that flower. A child needs secure attachment, but an adult needs to detach in order to connect. Love is not about ‘give and take’. A good relationship is only possible between two people who do not ‘need’ anything but who want to share their well-being. Nothing is ‘given’ or ‘taken’. Love is about being, about being loving.

What is called ‘heartbreak’ is actually withdrawal symptoms.

In the same way, parents can be addicted to their children, therapists to their patients, patients to their victim identities. All these cases involve ‘needing’ something to feel good. ‘need’ is the key concept. All these people have a gaping hole in their self-awareness. This is the existential music that makes the behaviour understandable. Unfortunately, the addiction often only becomes clear when an attempt is made to stop and it is established that this does not work.

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Attempts are often made to avoid responsibility for addictive behaviour by treating it as the symptom of a disease that results from ‘vulnerability,’ ‘(over) sensitivity,’ or a multitude of ‘factors.’ After all, if it is a disease, the responsibility lies with others, with experts, practitioners and caregivers. It is not uncommon for addicts to take a challenging and sometimes provocative attitude towards the ‘rescuers’ who try to help them: ‘I am curious to see if you will be able to help me.’ In the end, they always get the same result: no one can ‘help’ them (see also my discussion of victim behaviour and the drama triangle).

It is also often said ‘I can’t stop using it because I’m addicted.’ This is like saying, ‘I’m overweight because I’m obese.’ Or ‘I’m not married because I’m a celibate.’ In other words, a certain behaviour is ‘explained’ by an abstract property, which in turn is defined by that particular behaviour. This, of course, is a circular argument that can only be broken by the insight that once a person becomes aware of a behaviour, he is also capable of not doing it either. One can always not do what one can do. Only a completely unconscious behaviour, for example unthinking thoughtless grinding of the teeth or automatically lighting a cigarette, cannot be stopped. But as soon as one becomes aware of, for example, self-devaluing behaviour, one can also stop putting oneself down. After all, not doing something is always easier than doing something. It is simply

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enough not to do anything. How does one stop dancing? stop playing tennis? stop playing the violin? If addiction is an absence of freedom, then the remedy is the acquisition of freedom, that is, of consciousness. It is not a fight against alcohol or any other drug; that comes down to a negative addiction: something one should definitely not do; in which case that substance still determines one’s life. As long as one thinks that one has to fight, one will lose. It is all about making the positive choice for the alternative: a valuable life. Once that choice has been made, there is nothing to ‘lose’ any more. Those who are motivated will always find a way. To resist the lure of the siren song, Odysseus put wax in the ears of his crew and tied himself to the mast of his ship. But those who are not motivated will always find an excuse (See later: ‘Motivation: wanting what you want’). One has no power over the thoughts, emotions or desires that ‘arise’, but one does have power over the answer one gives and over one’s behaviour.

The most effective and practical motivation is not so much the fear of unwanted consequences, as the longing for the adult moral pleasure of living as a free and mature person and not as a slave to a will that one perceives as foreign to oneself. Addiction is not a question of a weak will, but rather a strong will, which, however, is experienced not as one’s own will but as a foreign will, as if one were not the source of it oneself. So there is a need to reclaim thinking, desires and will and to reconcile them with ones own values. To this end, it is not so much necessary to understand the genesis or the causal embeddedness in the internal dynamics, but to ‘understand’ the will, as one ‘understands’ a text, a poem or a painting, not ‘scientifically’ but in an existential way. After all, every action follows from a will, and if one takes responsibility for one’s own will, it is no longer necessary to seek excuses. A free will is a will that one stands behind, with which one identifies (see also Jean-Paul Sartre and Peter Bieri on freedom).

Not doing something is always easier than doing something.

As soon as one becomes aware of a particular behaviour, one can decide not to do it.

In addition, in cases of addiction, there is often co-dependency. This may be the case with a partner who, of course with the best of intentions, disapproves of the addiction behaviour, but still maintains it unintentionally. There is co-dependency in someone who needs to put the other person’s feelings and needs ahead of their own. John Bradshaw (1933-2016), author of numerous well-known self-help books, defines co-dependency as ‘a loss of identity’ that is, a lack of attention to one’s own feelings, values, and desires. Often these are people for whom certain basic needs were not met as a child, so that they have not had the opportunity to build up an awareness of their own internal values. They derive their sense of value from others. Such patterns can remain in the psychological ‘ground’ for a long time, like archaeological fossils or mummies. Expressions of child-like patterns that still exist are ‘feeling rejected’, ‘feeling disrespected’ or ‘feeling unappreciated’.

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To avoid these painful patterns, people develop all sorts of strategies, such as ‘always being nice’, putting yourself out for others’, ‘always letting others get their way, to the detriment of themselves’, ‘keeping silent when one should actually speak’, ‘seeking attention’ , ‘playing Rescuer’, ‘wanting to take care of everyone’, ‘suppressing emotions’, ‘signing oneself away’ or ‘sacrificing’ for the other person. The real reason, of course, is that they need and seek the acceptance of the other. People who suffer from co-dependent behaviour often do not know what they want, cannot say good no, have difficulty making choices, remain ‘stuck’ in unhealthy relationships for too long and feel responsible for the feelings of others. These childlike patterns often take over the wheel of life. All of this is very human, but not very useful in adult, personal or professional relationships. However, it is often said that they ‘just wanted to help’ or ‘wanted to save’ the relationship. In reality, one is acting from a deep need of one’s own, and makes oneself, consciously or not, depend on the behaviour or reaction of the other or of the relationship. This does not help the other person or the relationship (see the discussion of the drama triangle).

4.3 Self-chosen life termination What I have said about depression and addiction applies, mutatis mutandis, to self-chosen termination of life: it is not through scientific research but only by listening to the ‘existential music’ that we can gain some insight. In this case too, the ‘existential music’ is much more determined by the skill of the player than by the quality of the instrument.

In an average year, more than 1,000 inhabitants in Flanders opt for suicide, about 1.5 times more than the average in surrounding countries. RIZIV figures show that in 2017 no less than 352 million doses of antidepressants were sold in Belgium. A minister stated that suicide was mainly due to the economic crisis. A well-known psychiatrist stated that ‘according to scientific research’ the crisis and uncertainty are indeed stressors that are partly responsible for the number of suicides.

The ‘remedies’ immediately proposed by the government: more psychiatrists and psychotherapists, more care and support, as well as a further lowering of the threshold to the care services, are not very inspiring and amount to mopping up with the tap still running.

It is often argued that a certain behaviour is the result of external circumstances, ‘sensitivities’, ‘vulnerabilities’ and all kinds of factors. The problem with this kind of ‘scientifically substantiated’ causal ‘explanations’ is that it reduces the person to a victim, a will-less product of external circumstances and various scientific-sounding ‘factors’. According to science, man is apparently determined by ‘factors’ and mapping these ‘factors’ has taken the place of, and even seems more important than, teaching and promoting an ethics and an art of living, thereby placing responsibility outside of the individual, because whoever is thinking about stepping out of life must be suffering from a serious psychiatric disorder. Such an ‘explanation’ naturally fits in with the prevailing discourse of vulnerability and the current rhetoric of victimhood, but ignores a

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person’s intentionality and freedom of choice to deal with these circumstances and ‘factors’ in an individual, personal way. Such ‘psychologizing’ statements unfortunately cause the true ‘psyche’ of the person to be ‘psychologized away’.

Science has a causal logic that is very useful for explaining disease states but is insufficient to understand human behaviour. After all, man is not a robot with unchanging reactions to circumstances or causal ‘factors’. Objects respond according to fixed causal laws and do not have their own intentions or desires. Human beings, on the other hand, have a will and show their individuality in the unique response they give to every circumstance. Human beings are much more determined by intentions, desires, fears and dreams, as well as, last but not least, by a will to live. A depressed pattern of behaviour or a suicide decision is therefore never a predictable consequence of certain circumstances but is always a personal response to those particular circumstances. However, internal processes and cognitive content are not readily accessible, even to the person concerned, so the behaviour can be easily attributed to external factors. This is an example of an attribution error.

The difficulty here is also that in most cases human behaviour cannot be understood through causal logic but only through existential intentional logic. Causal factors could include medical conditions, medicines, sleep deprivation, alcohol or drugs. After all, they have a more or less predictable effect on people. Existential, intentional factors, on the other hand, are the reasons, motivations, or excuses that a person can invoke to justify a particular choice or pattern of behaviour. As mentioned above, depression is a pattern of behaviour that can start as soon as a person believes she is a helpless prisoner in a hopeless situation, in a reality without possibilities. If one can no longer with enthusiasm imagine oneself in the future, then the desire, the meaning and the intention to live on, disappear. This is the existential logic. If the only meaning in life is fleeting pleasures and enjoyment, any disturbance of that enjoyment quickly leads to the ‘conclusion’ that life no longer makes sense. It is like saying that a holiday no longer makes sense because a traffic jam has occurred. If life makes no sense, it can also be destroyed, both one’s own life and the lives of others.

Many young people apparently have no desire for the life offered to them by society, in which they do not seem to find inspiring models for developing a meaningful identity of their own. They feel trapped in a ‘society’ of individualism and indifference, of all-encompassing marketing and a relentless rat race, in addition to the many lingering senseless conflicts and the screaming inequality between rich and poor, both at home and around the world. If so many young people eventually commit suicide, it is the result of their reaching a ‘conclusion’ about the futility of life in a society of beauty pageants, pop festivals, idol worship, sports hysteria, fashion madness, holiday hypes and city trips, but also of arrogance and rudeness instead of discussion, impulsivity instead of reflection and superficial frivolity instead of depth. A society where democracy and solidarity are preached, but where everyone else tries to grab as much as possible for himself and contribute as little as possible, naturally leads to a total lack of social involvement and enthusiasm.

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The only heroes are on the football field or on a stage with thumping sounds to proclaim their uninformed ‘messages’. The futility of all this can be measured by the answer to the question: ‘Who will really benefit from this?’ or ‘What does this actually contribute to society?’

We have entered a world of idols who have taken the place of ideals. However, the status of idol is reserved for few. Everyone else can only be admirers or followers who will sooner or later be frustrated. An ideal, on the other hand, is an idea, a narrative about future possibilities, that is inspiring and creates enthusiasm for everyone, and in which everyone can feel involved and addressed. It is the engine of every major social change. An ideal arouses desire and makes you want to live. Who wants to live can cope with any difficulty. For those who don’t feel like living, every difficulty seems insurmountable. Why should we expect more wisdom and meaning from young people than from ourselves?

In our society, people expect the good life to come naturally to them (after all, it is a ‘right’). This is often disappointing. If life does not go in the desired direction by itself, it is said that life is not possible and that the world is a mess. It is the world about which the French philosopher Michel Foucault said: ‘In our society, there is hardly anything left of the idea that you, your own life, your own existence is the most important work of art to focus on.’

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Suicide, like the use of drugs, is not the result of circumstances or factors but of the expectation that in death or in the use of drugs one will find what one does not find in life: an end to the pressure, the stress, the pain, the oppression, the unrest, the discontent. The solution is therefore not so much to change the circumstances, as to change the response to them. Peace and wellbeing can only be found in oneself, not in conditions and circumstances. True joie de vivre can only arise from the consciousness of doing good, not from the (material) manifestations of appreciation or recognition by others. The hunger of the soul cannot be satisfied with food for the body.

No matter how difficult life can be, there can never be sufficient reason to end life ahead of time.

Otherwise, we would have to accept that everyone would commit suicide in a similar set of circumstances. We can have compassion for individuals who commit acts of desperation, but we can never say they did it for ‘understandable reasons’ or that they had no other choice. Life does not belong to us. It’s been given to us. Our so-called ‘own’ life does not belong to us either; it is an invitation, a gift. We can cherish it, we can use it and we can pass it on. That is our gift to life. But no one can claim to have so much wisdom and stand in such a sublime position that he can judge and decide that life is meaningless. The person who finds no meaning in life does not talk about life at all, but only about their own inability to find a meaning in life, just as the person who does not find beauty in the music of Bach or Mozart does not say anything about Bach or Mozart, only about himself.

A wise person understands that the meaning of life cannot depend on fortuitous individual life experiences. A wise person understands that destroying life goes against the order of life. This also applies to destroying one’s own life. If a person does not have the right to destroy another person’s life because it does not belong to him, for the same reason he does not have the right to destroy his own life. Every person should be convinced that he has a unique place, just as every boulder in a river has a unique place and every cell in the body has a unique place. Every person must be convinced that he is creating a work of art that would remain unfinished without him.

Every person should be convinced that without his contribution, the universe would be a little less good.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), a genius inventor, architect and thinker, often compared to Leonardo da Vinci, one evening at the age of 32 on the shores of Lake Michigan was toying with the thought of ending his life. After a series of business failures and the death of his little daughter, he believed he had made such a mess of his life that he would be best off the scene.

Everything he had tried or undertaken had apparently come to naught, despite his incredible creativity and imagination.

But Buckminster Fuller never ended his life. Instead, perhaps because of his deep confidence in the fundamental unity and order of the universe, of which he felt an inalienable part, he decided to live from that moment on as if he had died that evening.

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If he was dead, he no longer had to worry about what was to become of him. He would be free to devote himself to a life as a representative of the universe. The rest of his life would be a gift.

Rather than just living for himself, he would dedicate himself to the question, ‘Do I know of anything on this planet (which he called Spaceship Earth) that needs to be done and that probably won’t get done if I don’t take responsibility for it?’ He decided to do nothing other than to constantly ask himself that question and do what occurred to him.

If you have to sweep the street to make a living, you must do it as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed and as Shakespeare wrote.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

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PART 3 - The art of living - the worthwhile life

‘To you, Adam, we have not given a particular place of residence, not a face of your own, or a particular gift.

The intention is that you will obtain and possess the whereabouts, the face and the gifts you choose according to your own wishes and insight.

The nature of others is fixed and is restrained by laws prescribed by us.

You will determine your nature for yourself according to your own free will with which I have entrusted you.

I have placed you in the middle of the world so that you can view everything around you more easily from there.

I have not made you heavenly and not earthly, not mortal and not immortal.

As a free and sovereign artist, you must, as it were, be your own sculptor and sculpt yourself in the shape you choose.

You can degenerate into the lower, animal, forms, but you can also be reborn by your own will into the higher forms, which are divine.’

PICO DE LA MIRANDOLA (1463-1494)

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Scientists or ‘experts’ cannot explain why people have a depressive behaviour, become addicted or want to end their lives. Nor can they explain how people can create works of art such as the Mona Lisa or the St Matthew Passion. Fortunately, artists have not waited for a scientific explanation and we can simply observe that man is capable of creating works of art. In the famous text above, Pico de Ia Mirandola (1463-1494) has the Creator describe human freedom. Man is made aware of his abilities and responsibilities with regard to his life. The most important artwork that man has to create is his own life. Science cannot provide a recipe for making a work of art.

Therefore the art of living is not science but art!

Nor can science and the ‘experts’ ‘explain’ how Edmund Hilary was able to climb Mount Everest in 1953 or how Nelson Mandela survived 27 years in captivity without being broken or depressed.

For a long time it was thought that this was impossible, but we can only conclude that man is clearly capable of it and that consequently each of us must have something of that possibility within us, not as a property or ‘strength’ but as a possibility, just like playing violin is possible for those who want to focus on it. This is also the lesson of Christ, of the Buddha and of other great thinkers: it is not what they did concretely can help or liberate us, but the lesson they gave us about what is humanly possible. We can no longer think that it is impossible because they have shown us that it is possible.

This awareness or liberation is often called ‘self-confidence’ or ‘resilience’ in today’s language. It is ultimately the power of faith in an empowering idea (that the gods, or science, religion, time, meditation, the others, yourself will help you ...) even if that belief seems reasonably absurd.

Christ constantly said, ‘Your faith has saved you.’ This section discusses the necessary ingredients for a value-oriented life and an attitude of resilience and confidence.

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5. Peace as a starting point Forgive yourself for not being at peace.

The moment you completely accept your non-peace, it is transmuted into peace.

Anything you accept fully, will get you there, will take you into peace.

This is the miracle of surrender.

ECKHART TOLLE

5.1 The need for peace Animals have survived many millions of years by using violence as the best solution to the survival equation we discussed above. However, due to its astounding evolutionary success, the human species has grown tremendously, reaching the limits of available resources, posing an increasing threat of conflict and violence. Moreover, because of his great intellectual capacity, man has created an enormous capacity for destruction. In animals, violence is limited to local conflicts with limited consequences. Chickens peck each other and pigs bite each other’s tails. In his natural state, a man with a club or a spear can only kill a limited number of opponents. With modern weapons however, he can wipe out thousands of people in one fell swoop, and wreak devastating destruction, with unprecedented consequences for humanity. Thus, man has become the tragic being who can wipe himself out. His success has become a threat to his own survival. Although nobody really wants that, it could just happen. The tragic thing is that no one wants evil and yet suffering can arise. After all, the increasing stress caused by the growing population and relatively scarce resources means that the critical possibilities of the new brain can be suppressed, as a result of which the balance in the brain can shift to more primitive, hard wired routines.

Violence is therefore no longer a reasonable option for humans. Humankind urgently needs more reasonableness and order, not only for individual well-being but also for social well-being. Just as the individual person needs reasonableness to lead a value-oriented life instead of an emotionally driven life, so society also needs reasonableness to regulate primary urges. It is no longer acceptable to automatically label other individuals or countries as enemies. War is essentially an outdated means, a behaviour from a previous evolutionary period. The immense resources and gigantic amounts of energy and raw materials that are still spent on war and armaments, as well as the gigantic global production and trade in arms, are barbaric and utterly unworthy of a civilization that calls itself human. The reasonableness of a society is embodied in the constitution, the institutions, politics, legislation, the judiciary and national and international treaties. Many problems could be solved almost immediately if these resources were devoted to peaceful coexistence. Peaceful coexistence is an absolute necessity for man if he is not to endanger his

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survival and his well-being. Moreover, people are already living as if they have more than one planet available and experts are warning, in vain for now, of the threat of violence due to the scarcity of essential resources, such as water.

For humans, the survival equation given above must therefore be adjusted:

Evolutionary success = survival x procreation x living together where the product equals zero if one of the factors is zero.

Living peacefully and sustainably has become urgent and essential for human survival and wellbeing as a species, but is far from self-evident. Man has not been prepared by evolution for it. So he will have to learn it if he does not want to perish. He will have to learn to cultivate a culture of imperturbable nonviolence and peace. A big company cannot progress if the employees continue to waste their time in a game of ‘win and lose’ or ‘us against them’. The human species will only survive if people pursue common values. Peace is one of the most important forward-looking projects. Living in plurality with others is, as Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) put it, ‘a basic condition of becoming human.’

‘No tree has branches that are so foolish as to fight among themselves.’

Old Indian saying.

5.2 The source of peace Unlike violence, peace does not arise by itself. The source of violence is nestled deep in our old brain, just as in the brains of all animals, even those with tiny brains. Violence is nature that speaks. Peace requires culture. The source of peace is also in ourselves, but in the thick bark, the cortex, which surrounds our old brain and contains the proverbial ‘thin layer of civilization’. This source, therefore, is also always present as a possibility, and, in order to discover it, it is sufficient to re-examine the circumstance, the context, in the present or in the past, in which this possibility has already spontaneously manifested itself. After all, we can always get to know our patterns, sources and possibilities by observing our behaviour in contexts in which they are addressed and challenged. Then we can observe how the emotions and experiences concerned arise. Moreover, if we have understood that these experiences are not caused by that particular context, but that they only awaken a pattern in us, we can let go of the context and learn to address that source in other contexts as well. We no longer have to wait for the right context to feel that way again. We can practice ourselves in peaceful, connecting stories rather than in the polarizing rhetoric of fighting and struggle.

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Do you see beauty in nature? Then you have found beauty in yourself!

Do you find peace in nature? Then you have found peace in yourself.

Do you find God in nature? Then you have found yourself!

In many cases, the family or immediate environment will be an obvious context to look at. After all, in that context we automatically assume a certain attitude, a state of mind, a mindset that is automatically benevolent and peaceful. We are benevolent to our loved ones and family members and naturally do the right thing. We don’t have to make any special effort to do that. Augustine (AD 354-430) said, ‘Practice love and then do what you want.’ Those who are loving want to do good for the beloved. But if we can feel peaceful and benevolent with our loved ones, we can learn to do it in other places as well. We can also learn to see others as our next of kin, as brothers. Martin Luther King (1929-1968) said, ‘We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish like fools.’

Now that we have learned to fly in the air like birds and to dive into the water like fish, we need only learn to live on the earth like humans.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Conversely, if one becomes bitter or angry in certain circumstances or contexts, it only means that our internal source of anger has been contacted.

I noted above that anger always arises from two conflicting ideas: on the one hand a descriptive thought related to a reality and on the other a normative thought related to the same reality: ‘I think my partner no longer loves me (thought 1) and I don’t like it (thought 2).’ This is a cognitive dissonance that can lead to dissatisfaction and conflict.

Peace, on the other hand, arises from two mutually reinforcing ideas: a descriptive thought related to a reality and a normative thought of acceptance, consent or approval: ‘I think my partner loves me (thought 1) and I like that very much (thought 2). This leads to a pleasant harmony, a cognitive consonance.

Peace requires emotional maturity and independence and is not apathy or insensitivity at all. To be able to sail in a storm is not a sign of insensitivity to the wind or the waves, but a sign of skill in steering that requires special attention to the wind and the waves. In the same way, staying in peace and saying yes to everything that can happen in life is not a sign of insensitivity or indifference, it is an expression of the art of living and of respect for life. It is the attitude of an

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anthropologist or a therapist who shows respect and genuine interest in the other, without, however, letting his own well-being depend on the other and without being upset when the other says or does something that does not please him. In other words, an anthropologist or therapist practices the art of distant involvement, sensitivity without vulnerability. Real sensitivity is paying attention to the other person’s feelings without letting one’s own feelings get carried away; that would be not sensitivity but sentimentalism, often referred to as ‘vulnerability’. Being overrun by emotions is not morally wrong, but is completely different from paying attention to the other.

Only when one is serene and at peace can one really pay attention to the other. That’s quite difficult in a culture of victim rhetoric and fear of being ‘hurt’ or ‘lost.’

Being able to sail in a storm is not a sign of insensitivity.

An adult is at peace. He is ready to receive life as it presents itself and is not afraid of being ‘hurt’ for the simple reason that he understands that there is nothing that could be hurt. Man has no particular core or substance that could get ‘hurt’ or ‘damaged.’ These are metaphors that have unfortunately become social clichés and confused with reality. What is called ‘vulnerability’ is only a self-doubt, a rather vague fear of the unknown, of unforeseen difficult events. Consciousness cannot be hurt because it is only a space in which thoughts, beliefs, memories and emotions arise like clouds that float across the blue sky. Space, the blue sky itself, cannot be hurt.

There is therefore a need for a culture in which more evolved behaviour, more mature behaviour, more new brain behaviour, more human values (for example freedom, equality, fraternity) are taught, encouraged, rewarded and thus reinforced during education. Two dimensions are always important in education. The maternal dimension consists of learning to feel good and safe in the world. The paternal dimension consists of teaching values as a compass by which to navigate reality. These are dimensions or functions that can be exercised by both the mother and the father.

There are three ways of learning: the first, by reflection, is the noblest; the second, by imitation, is the easiest; the third, by experience, is the hardest.

CONFUCIUS

5.3 Peace as a therapeutic principle

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It will have become clear by now that any form of therapy, in spite of any more or less magical acts, practices or exercises, is essentially always aimed at replacing a story of discontent and suffering with a story of peace and well-being. Peace is therefore also an extremely useful and fruitful concept as a therapeutic principle. To this end, it should first be understood that psychological suffering is always suffering in the psyche, in the imaginary space of the mind. Only what is in the spirit can cause suffering. So that suffering must also be solved in the mind.

Suffering can only be solved by resolving the conflict, the cognitive dissonance between a descriptive thought related to reality in the present, past or future, on the one hand, and a normative thought of unacceptability, impossibility or unbearability on the other. A special form of cognitive dissonance and thus of stress and unwellness is reflected in the idea of ’improving oneself’ or ‘working on oneself.’ After all, this indicates dissatisfaction with the idea of what one is now. In the pursuit of an ideal or the desire to improve oneself, there is always a ‘good I’ that a ‘less good I’ wants to correct or improve.

To resolve a dissonance in music, at least one of the dissonant notes must be replaced with another. To resolve a cognitive dissonance, at least one of the two dissonant thoughts must be replaced. Reality itself cannot, of course, be changed, but thoughts about reality can be changed.

On the one hand, a thought about reality, about the I, the present, the past or the future, can be an incorrect or emotionally overstated judgment that can be replaced by a more reasonable, descriptive perception or a more reasonable, descriptive thought. For example, an ‘insult’ is more reasonably and emotionally neutrally described as ‘a statement by someone who needed to express a certain opinion in a certain way.’ Ultimately, a statement mainly says something about the speaker. The ‘wrong done to me’ can be seen as the behaviour of an unhappy person. A partner’s ‘betrayal’ can be seen as his or her need and freedom to make another choice. The ‘loss’ of or ‘needing to give up’ a loved one can be seen as letting go of the illusion that people are property and should not die, and can be replaced by gratitude for knowing that person. A disease is not an enemy that must be ‘fought’ but can be seen as a biological process that has settled in the body without being asked. People may also be in conflict with their bodies or with certain emotions or thoughts that they are trying to ‘chase away’ or ‘fight’.

On the other hand, the thoughts of ‘unacceptability’, ‘intolerability’ or ‘being hurt’ can also be critically examined and possibly replaced by more realistic thoughts. This comes down to replacing a thought such as ‘No, this cannot and should not happen and is unacceptable!’ by the thought ‘yes, this can happen and I can accept it!’ Reality, other people, the past, the future cannot in most cases be changed. One can learn to live in peace with them, even if things do not happen according to our wishes. Not only can this be done in one’s own mind, but others can also be guided to let this process happen in their minds. In many cases, this will require prudence and therapeutic skill because people are convinced that their suffering was caused by external reality and they are more or less stubbornly opposed to the idea that they have something to do with it themselves. Often, they will mistakenly think their suffering is ‘their own fault’. This is also a dissonant thought that needs attention. If you catch a flu, you are not ‘to blame’ for it, but you are

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responsible for taking care of it. Therefore, the therapy will often have to be administered in homeopathic doses.

Eastern thinking has developed a greater tolerance for cognitive dissonance. For example, Lao-Tze says in the Tao Te Ching ‘The Tao does nothing, yet nothing remains undone.’ That is the famous wu-wei or doing nothing that is actively practiced in meditation. This can be compared to martial arts such as judo and aikido where doing nothing means waiting quietly and unbalancing the opponent with his own strength. Research psychologist Nick Hobson of the University of Toronto recently proposed wu-wei as an antidote to the increasing problems of anxiety and depression.

Hobson points to our tendency to over-analyse any situation. We critically examine each tree instead of looking at the forest as a whole. We examine every millimetre of a painting instead of looking at the painting as a whole. Our Western causal way of thinking leads us to believe that there is a solution for every problem. If a certain story remains unsolved, our brain will invent one.

An interesting approach is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), developed by Dr. Marsha Linehan.

The method assumes that two states can be mutually opposite without causing a conflict. One can be in a state of fear and yet control ones circumstances and life. This way of thinking allows a person to deal with contradictions and inevitable uncertainties.

If there is peace in your mind you will find peace with everybody.

If your mind is agitated you will find agitation everywhere.

So first find peace within and you will see this inner peace reflected everywhere else.

You are this peace.

H.W.L. POONJA (PAPAJI) Peace never fails. We fail in peace.

Compassion never fails. We fail in compassion.

Love never fails. We fail in love.

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6. Peace and the logic of well-being Any change in behaviour, whether to quit smoking or to learn to address the source of peace in ourselves, always requires three ingredients: 1. Insights, competences or skills 2. Strategy 3. Motivation

6.1 Insights and skills The emotional independence or emotional autonomy described above provides the background for three main skills and competences: attention or mindfulness, compassion, and nonviolent or connecting communication.

Let’s listen to the following story about the Buddha: The Buddha was teaching under a tree when someone approached him and spat at him. The Buddha wiped his face, finished, remained impassive and asked, ‘What else do you want to say?’

Ananda, his best student, said, ‘This is going too far! We cannot allow this! If we don’t punish this man, soon everyone will do this!’

The Buddha said, ‘Be quiet! This man did not offend me, but you offend me! This man doesn’t know me but must have heard about me. He does not spit on me, but on his idea about me. If you think more deeply, he’s spitting on his own mind. I’m not part of that. But I can see that this man wants to say something but does not have enough language. That’s why I ask: What else do you want to say?’

And to his disciples, the Buddha said: ‘I am more offended by you because you live with me and you know me!’

The man went home, completely confused and shaken, but unable to sleep all night.

The next morning, he returned to the Buddha and fell at his feet.

The Buddha said again, ‘What do you want to say? This is also one way to say something for which there are no words!’

The man said, ‘Forgive me, my lord!’

The Buddha said, ‘Forgive? The man you spat on yesterday is no longer here; so what can be forgiven?

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And you too are no longer the man who spat yesterday. That man was angry while this man asks for forgiveness. How can that be the same man?

So, come closer and let’s talk about something else!’

The Buddha was teaching peacefully, but the man disturbed that peace with his arrogant and aggressive behaviour. The Buddha did not fall into the trap of answering aggression with aggression. He showed that the other had no power over his emotional space. Nor did he seek to correct the other or punish him for his behaviour. He kept his dignity and restored peace with his wisdom. He illustrates the essential skills to achieve lasting peace: Mindfulness: attention and presence here and now, remaining undisturbed with oneself and with one’s own values. The other does not determine who you are.

Compassion: an attitude of attention and benevolence towards the other. The other is not a ‘monster’ and it is precisely whoever ‘deserves’ our love the least that needs it.

Forgiveness: the other or the past has no power over one’s own life.

Self-respect: an important insight is that the Buddha, through his dignified behaviour, teaches others without being pedantic. After all, how one treats oneself is a model of how one wants to be approached and treated. Respect cannot be demanded, it must be earned.

Nonviolent Communication: the language of peace, the practice of mindfulness and compassion in communication. The Buddha does not retreat to being hurt or insulted, he does not complain about ‘disrespect’ and does not seek to punish or get satisfaction, but he pays attention to the needs of the other.

Moreover, the Buddha shows insight into the cognitive nature of emotions and of suffering. He understands that the other person’s anger cannot have been caused by himself but must be the result of something the other must have heard about him. Emotions are not caused by persons or events, but by representations of those persons or events. What is not in the inner world cannot cause emotion and cannot cause suffering. By leaving the other’s opinion with the other, there is no cognitive dissonance in himself and no suffering.

We can recall this story about the Buddha as a source of inspiration to think about how we can deal with certain concrete situations ourselves. The Buddha also said, ‘If someone wants to give you a gift, and you don’t accept it, where is the gift? With the giver! If someone wants to give you his anger and you don’t accept them, where is the anger? With the giver!’‘ The liberating lesson is that you can do that too!

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If someone wants to give you a gift, and you don’t accept it, where is the gift?

With the giver!

If someone wants to give you his anger, and you don’t accept it, where is the anger?

With the giver!

THE BUDDHA

6.1.1 Mindfulness Mindfulness is an ancient Eastern practice that has been stripped of all sorts of religious and mystic frills by the American molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn (b. 1944) and has thus found its way into the West. It has similarities with other practices such as prayer, contemplation or hypnosis. Mindfulness is purely attentive. It is learning to be merely present and perceive without judgment, like a child. Everything is new for a child. In the Zen tradition they say: ‘A zen mind is a beginner’s mind.’ It is like looking as if you don’t know anything, like a child. If one looks, for example, at a tree in this way, one experiences only one great and beautiful, mysterious and majestic being: something that one does not know. The same can be done with people and things.

It is important to say or think as little as possible about the experience and not to name it, because as soon as one thinks or speaks about an experience, one is not in the experience. I said before that this shifts the balance in the brain from the experiencing system 1 to the narrative system 2.

Krishnamurti (1895-1986) said: ‘If you teach a child the name of a bird, it will never look at that bird again.’ Indeed: we don’t really look any more because we know the name of everything and so don’t bother to look. As a result, we only see a concept, a name, and not reality itself. Just as we no longer really listen to people we know (too) well. For example, if you think you’ve seen a tree, try drawing it. Then you realise that you have not seen that tree at all. You quickly looked and recognised something similar to the ‘tree’ concept and you said you saw a tree. In reality, you didn’t see that tree. You saw a tree, a concept, but not this tree. We are ‘quick and dirty’ thinkers: fast but sloppy thinkers. We only really look when we see something we have never seen before, something that is new. Then we watch with full attention. That is mindfulness. An adult person can acquire the ability to actively focus attention and awareness. The art of living is exactly the art of directing attention in the desired direction. The trick is to learn to use the possibilities of the brain instead of being used by the accidental patterns in the brain. The art of living makes one a driver instead of a passenger, an owner instead of a tenant.

Real attention has sometimes been described as the attitude of a child walking around the room with an overflowing plate of hot soup: very carefully and attentively, one foot at a time. We can focus that kind of attention not only on the outside world, but also on the inner world. Not to discover who we really are, as is sometimes said, but to discover who we are not. Who we are is

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impossible to grasp, but can be approached much more conveniently in a negative way, namely by identifying who we are not. Who or what we are is what remains if we think away everything we are not: our past, our activities, our possessions, our status, our body, our feelings, our name, our thoughts, our language, our skills, our achievements, our habits. After all, we can perceive all these things in our consciousness, and what we can observe, we cannot possibly be. What is left then?

The observer itself, the awareness, the aware being. Eckhart Tolle (b. 1948) says: ‘You are the space in which thoughts and feelings can arise.’ One can experience this somewhat if one replaces the statement ‘I think’ with ‘I think in me’ or if one replaces the statement ‘I am angry (or fearful)’ by ‘there is anger (or fear) in me’. This form of mental gymnastics and self-observation creates a mental distance, a mental space of freedom and serenity. Awareness of thinking and feeling is a cognitive function of the new brain, which reduces the function of the old brain, which contributes to peace and serenity. The consciousness itself, the ultimate observer, is impossible to observe otherwise there would be yet another observer. In Buddhism it is said, ‘An eye cannot see itself.’ It is clear that this contributes to the emotional autonomy described above.

If I let go of what I am, I can become what I could be.

LAO-TZE

Mindfulness is not about stopping thinking, it is about stopping knowing in order to learn to look again with an unbiased and uninhibited attention. It is like learning to look at the glasses of knowledge and to take them off instead of looking at the world through them. It is a pure, original experience that can arise if everything that is context and decor is thought away, forgotten.

Mindfulness brings peace to the body and opens the mind to new possibilities. It is experiencing the fullness of every moment. As we often no longer really look at things, we also do not really experience this moment now. Our attention is constantly being hijacked by thoughts and judgments about the present, the past or the future, and the present moment passes without us really being present. We are held hostage by anger or sadness about the past or fear, hopes or desires for the future. In all these cases, we are doing an injustice to the now, as if it were not good enough. Mindfulness is not about trying to feel good. The aim of mindfulness is not a warm and cuddly feeling. And that’s a good thing, because feelings are fleeting and transient. They are temporary. There are no feelings that can be felt permanently. Always trying to feel good and positive does not lead to anything because feelings simply cannot be tamed. So-called negative feelings are like negative people: the main problem is that we are so negative about them.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, is being completely present and completely relaxed in the moment now, no matter how one feels, because this moment is unique and enough as it is. Every moment is good enough. It is not perfect, but it is as perfect as it can be now. It is not more perfect because it cannot be more perfect now. If we cannot appreciate the moment of now, we

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will miss out on all of life because life consists only of moments of now. If we cannot be happy now, we will not be able to be happy tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next year or some other place. Happiness is not a destination in the future, it is an attitude of being absorbed in the now, just as we can only enjoy food if we are aware of the food that is there now and we can only enjoy music when we surrender to the music that is there now.

The aim of mindfulness is not a ‘self’. Mindfulness is like a mother lovingly looking at her child.

Mindfulness is an objectless love, without motivation and without a final destination. Mindfulness is independent of any positive or negative assessments or judgments about personal life or about life in general. Mindfulness is simply the peaceful relaxation and tranquillity in one’s own existence, the deep awareness of ‘being there’. The source of mindfulness is the realization, ‘I am.’

Not: ‘I am okay, nice, or worth it’, but simply, ‘I am.’ This is just as possible for someone who has (apparently) screwed up his life as for someone whose life is (apparently) a great success. Even with thoughts and feelings of worthlessness, of failure, of being ugly, of not mattering at all, of being a complete loser, mindfulness is readily accessible regardless of any stories of failure or success. That whole polarity just falls away. Mindfulness is a well-being, a love without opposite.

A Zen monk is chased by a tiger. Desperately, he jumps into a ravine where the tiger cannot follow him and where he can just about hold on to a protruding root. But when he looks down, he sees a tiger standing there licking its lips, and to make matters worse, he notices that a few mice are gnawing away at ‘his’ root. Fortunately, he looks aside and sees a strawberry plant next to him. He picks a strawberry and puts it in his mouth. How delicious it tastes!

Mindfulness, as a form of meditation, has grown into a practice that has been extensively researched by many leading researchers. It has also been shown that people who meditate regularly change the structure and functioning of the brain after a few weeks, as is the case with people who learn to play a musical instrument or learn a new language. For example, neurological research by Olga Klimecki shows that after just a week of compassion training, there is a noticeable effect on the orbitofrontal cortex and the striatum. Meditation appears to promote social behaviour, well-being, concentration, resistance to stress, resilience and compassion, and appears to reduce insomnia, anxiety, worry and depression. A recent overview of the results of this study was provided by Matthieu Ricard, and Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, among others. There are now also countless meditation apps in circulation, of which Headspace, for example, is one of the best known.

6.1.2 Compassion

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The starting point for an attitude of compassion towards life is the view that there are no good or bad people, no healthy and bad apples, no angels and no monsters. There are only people with wishes, and everyone essentially wants the same thing, which is happiness. That is, of course, a postulate, a choice, rather than an empirical fact. Regardless of whether this is actually the case, it is an attitude that one can consciously learn to adopt in order to achieve more acceptance, humanity, tolerance and peace. It is to accept the other person with his peculiarities and idiosyncrasies (so-called ‘mistakes and flaws’). It is saying yes to the other.

Everyone strives for happiness. The only difference is the way in which people pursue happiness.

Some do so with more maturity, elegance and wisdom than others. Some have been fortunate enough to have a careful upbringing, to have studied, to have read mind-broadening books and had interesting conversations. Not everyone has been so lucky, and many adults behave like frustrated children. They try to get what they think they need and try to remove from their lives what they see as the cause of their frustration. Only the way they do it can be different.

Compassion is the choice and the art of seeing the human in every human being. It is choosing to see every person as we ourselves are. Every person is imperfect and at the same time as perfect as he can be right now. He is no better because he cannot be better at this time. He behaves in response to the considerations and reasons of the moment, which may be incomprehensible or even unimaginable to us. However, it is not necessary to analyse or psychiatrise the other person with all kinds of labels or pathological diagnoses (the other person is not a ‘monster’ or a ‘pathologically narcissistic polymorphic perverted psychopath’!).

Compassion should not be confused with empathy. Empathy is a feeling that is easily evoked by things that are close to us or that are similar to us (small, sweet, weak, innocent, little Aylan on the beach), but which also disappears quickly: out of sight, out of mind. That is moral sentimentality. It is an ‘I’ story, as all emotions are ‘I’ stories. Moral sentimentality leads to charity or philanthropy, but not justice. Empathy is a good starting point, but it should not be limited to our immediate field of vision. It should be extended on reasonable grounds to a broader ‘we’ story. Canadian psychologist Paul Bloom (b. 1963) therefore prefers to speak of rational compassion rather than empathy. Rational compassion is not an emotion but it is a value, something that is reasonable, important and valuable, such as honesty or justice. Values apply to everyone, not just people in our immediate environment by whom we are ‘touched.’

As I mentioned earlier, both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are always present in every human being. Every person does the best he can at that moment. There are no good or bad intentions: what is good for the spider is evil for the fly. Every person acts at every moment according to their degree of insight and awareness of that moment. The best and the worst are patterns that are potentially present in every human being because they once made evolutionary sense.

Compassion for the other and compassion for oneself (self-compassion) go hand in hand. after all, you did as well as you could in the past. Why didn’t you do better? Because you couldn’t do better

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at the time. As one learns to accept one’s own imperfection, one also learns to accept the imperfection of others and vice versa. As one moves away from accusing others, one can also move away from accusing oneself. Accepting is not the same as approving or justifying. It is hard on sin but soft on the sinner. Socrates (469-399 BC) said, ‘Nobody gets up in the morning and thinks ‘Today I’m going to do evil’.

Treat good people well.

Treat not-good people well also.

This is how good is created.

LAO-TZE

6.1.3 Forgiveness An attitude of compassion is a prerequisite for forgiveness. Forgiveness is not forgetting the past or pretending that the past was not so bad. Forgetting is impossible, and justifying what was not right is not desirable. Forgiveness is not approving or justifying the past, but it is learning to accept without resistance that the past was what it was. It is giving up the resistance (the ‘fighting’) against the past. It is stopping hoping for a different past. It is saying yes to the past as it was. This applies not only to others, but also to one’s own past and one’s own feelings of guilt. We were not a bad person either, we did what we did because we couldn’t do any better at the time.

Forgiveness is freeing oneself from the grip of the past. It is no longer giving the perpetrator or the circumstances power over the emotional space. It is more important to the present than the past and to allow itself a future again. It is treating oneself better than the past did. We cannot change the past, but we can refuse to be changed even further by the past.

Many people insist that they ‘cannot accept’ certain events. That is, of course, a curious and even absurd attitude, because what happened has de facto been accepted. Not accepting what happened is simply not an option. It is a good way to maintain internal struggles, dissatisfaction and unwellness. It is a form of cognitive dissonance. We simply do not have a choice of accepting or not accepting the things of life. We only have the choice between accepting things like a stamping and screaming child or like a wise and serene adult.

Acceptance is easier for people with a religious frame of mind. After all, things that happen always make sense, because ‘they are an expression of’ God’s will’. Believers also recognise and accept that God’s ways are inscrutable. At the death of a child they accept that ‘the Lord has called it back to Himself.’ In other words, they can accept without understanding, because there is a God who understands everything and thereby gives everything a meaning.

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However, modern people want to understand everything themselves and declare ‘they cannot accept what they cannot understand’. This is the source of much misery and much suffering. Yet even without a religious framework or belief in a supernatural supreme being, an attitude of acceptance without understanding is possible. It is enough to understand that man cannot ‘understand’ everything. Things simply happen when the conditions under which they arise are met, and sometimes a person was simply in a certain place at a certain time.

Resentment, unpardoned, keeps us trapped in the past. People do not want the other person to get away with their deeds unpunished. Our suffering is a demand for revenge and emotional satisfaction. The perpetrator must suffer. People want the perpetrator to be punished and to repent. We want to ‘pay him back in the same coin’. That is the existential meaning. But by doing this, one’s own life is held hostage by the past and by the perpetrator. That defines and darkens life as even the smallest coin can obscure the sun if you keep it close enough to the eye. After all, what one actually does is to perpetuate negativity in one’s own consciousness, in one’s own emotional space. It is hoped that one’s own suffering will cause the other to suffer as well. One does not want to stop suffering because that would be like letting the other person get away with impunity. In reality, however, one mainly suffers oneself. The Buddha said, ‘resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other will die’. Christ also said on the cross: ‘Forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’. That is the redemptive lesson for each of us. Christ showed that although they could hurt his body, they had no power over his spirit. In his mind he remained a free man who chose love. The lesson is that this possibility is also present in each of us.

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) stated when he left prison after 27 years, ‘As I walked through the gates of the prison, I knew that if I did not forgive, I would still be the prisoner of the past.’ He was not a bitter or depressed man. He did not call himself a ‘victim’ and did not say that others should repent and be punished before they could begin his trial process. Plato said that you can never make an unfree person from a free person, not even by putting him in prison. 71-year-old Richard Phillips, who spent 45 years in prison as a result of a judicial error for a murder he had not committed, declared that he was not leaving the prison bitterly. He said, ‘You can only be bitter when there was already bitterness there. When you squeeze a lemon, you get lemon juice, but that lemon juice was there before you squeezed the lemon.’

In their behaviour, others show who they are and what their values are. In our response to that behaviour, we demonstrate who we are and what our values are. We can treat others according to their values or we can treat them according to our values. We can behave as they have behaved, or we can behave as we want to behave. One should not forgive because the other person deserves it, but because one deserves it oneself. Forgiveness is becoming aware of this pattern and deciding to consider one’s own well-being and values more important than punishing the other person.

‘Kill him.’ Said the brother. His face was set in stone. ‘Kill him!’ Cried the mother through her tears. ‘Kill him!’ Said the sister’s trembling voice.

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At the campfire where the meeting took place, each family member was given the opportunity to speak out. Judgment had to be made about the life of a young man outside, handcuffed and with anxious eyes, waiting for the outcome. Murder is a terrible act. The murder of a friend is an even more terrible act. He sat there, with his friend’s blood still on his hands, awaiting his fate.

‘Let’s think this through,’ the grandfather said softly. The tragedy his family was immersed in deepened the wrinkles on his already furrowed face. He spoke with the voice of many generations.

‘Will our young one come back if we kill this man?’ ‘No, no, no.’ This word moved slowly around the circle of pain. Sometimes it was whispered, sometimes murmured, sometimes uttered with rancour.

‘If we kill this man, will there be more food for our community?’ Asked the old man, staring straight ahead. Again they said, ‘No, no, no.’

‘My brother speaks true words,’ said the great-uncle. Everyone turned to him. A tear trickled down his cheek. ‘Let’s look at this matter very carefully.’

And they did. They argued all night and then brought the man to the campfire to pronounce judgment.

‘See that tepee?’ They asked, pointing to the tent of the man he had killed. The killer nodded. ‘It’s yours now.’

‘And do you see those horses?’ They pointed to the animals that had belonged to the murdered man.

The perpetrator nodded again.

‘They are also yours now. You’re a kinsman from now on, you’re our son. You will take the place of the one you killed. ‘ The man was on his knees and looked up at the faces of those present. His new life had begun. And the tribe had also started a new episode.

Brown Bear sat across the table from me. ‘This happened at the end of the eighteenth century,’ he said.

‘They could have killed him. The tribal law gave them that opportunity.’ The story deeply impressed me. I love the words of Brown Bear working on me. A murderer who is taken in by the victim’s family; was such a thing possible? ‘This young man became a very devoted son,’ continued Brown Bear. ‘When he died, he was a textbook example of a loving, devoted son to all tribes in North America.’

From Gary Zukov, ‘Stories of the Soul’.

6.1.4 Nonviolent communication Nonviolent communication is the language of peace. It was put on the map as a method by Marshall Rosenberg (1934 - 2015), who was inspired by the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers and the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, among others. His approach is based on a picture of the person and on some simple principles that are easy to understand but often go against the desires and patterns of the old brain. In short: man is a being who tells stories (narratives) and makes

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choices based on needs, values and emotions. It is important to take responsibility for one’s own stories, needs and emotions, and also to pay attention to the stories, needs and emotions of others.

Nonviolent communication is therefore not about the utopia of a conflictless society, but about the mature, dignified, mindful and compassionate approach to the inevitable diversity, plurality and conflicts of interest. The story of the ‘insult’ to the Buddha shows the pacifying, peace-making effect of nonviolent communication. Nonviolent communication is also not a method to always get one’s way, not even to always reach a consensus, but to achieve a commonality that transcends the we-side opposition. So it is pre-eminently a necessary quality in a society that wants to be democratic. After all, important choices are often irrational and therefore objectively undecidable. If choices were rational, the decision would be easy. Nonviolent communication is about living with conflicts of interest, without making the other a bad person or an enemy to destroy. Nonviolent communication is therefore about accepting and respecting the subjectivity of the other. No one is right or wrong.

The well-known Prisoners’ Dilemma makes it clear that communication in a long-term conflict of interest always leads to more favourable results than non-communication. Everyone wins. In an atmosphere of non-communication and distrust, as is the case with animals, conflict and violence are the only ways to find a solution, but everyone pays a high price. Competitive companies and organizations often pay a high price for the lack of communication. This became clear, among other things, in the situation during the Cold War and the arms race that became unaffordable for everyone. It was only through communication and consultation that more reasonable solutions were reached.

An extensive literature is now available on non-violent communication. Various organizations also offer certified and non-certified education and training. Sufficient attention is not always paid to the importance of the underlying narrative (see the discussion of the model of the Needs, Narratives and Networks) and often too much emphasis is placed on the more popular needs and feelings, the so-called ‘listening to oneself’.

6.1.4.1

Language and stories

Communication is based on language. Language does not change reality, but it does change the perception of reality. Shakespeare has Juliet say, ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. However, Marcus Aurelius said, ‘Drop the judgment “I am offended” and the insult is gone’. Charlemagne is said to have said:’ Speaking a second language is like having a second soul.’ People who speak different languages will turn their attention to different things, remember things differently and think differently. One can label something as a failure or as a surprise. Homophilia can be seen as a biological variation, a deviation, a disease, a crime or a

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moral problem. We do not live the actual reality, we always process the facts into a picture, a story. Wayne Dyer said, ‘When we look at things differently, the things we look at change.’

Military rhetoric and metaphors such as ‘combat’ and ‘fighting’ lead to different emotions than terms such as ‘striving for’ or ‘committing oneself to’. Calling something a wound or an injury that needs to be healed and can leave scars creates a different experience than calling it a special memory. Calling a behaviour an addiction creates a different expectation than calling it a thoughtless habit. A victim is different from a person involved, an affected person, an injured person or a dupe. Something that collapses has a different affective value than something that decreases in value. Calling a past ‘heavy’ sounds different from calling it a learning opportunity.

Calling something ‘difficult’ has a different effect than calling it interesting or special. The wellknown relationship therapist Esther Perel writes that adultery is often not the result of being tired of one’s partner but of being tired of oneself. People don’t so much look for another partner as look for another self. People want to be with someone else in order to be someone else, to discover a different story about themselves.

Words, stories and metaphors direct our gaze. They create a mindset. Once something is given a certain name, it begins to exist that way. Words direct thinking in a positive or negative sense, thereby awakening a positive or negative experience, which in turn determines the physical experience. Poets use metaphors for their aesthetic value, but most users of metaphors don’t want to create beautiful images; they read the world in a certain way and consciously or unconsciously try to direct the reading (perception) of others and influence it in a specific way.

This happens both in individual conversations and in social life.

Man is therefore a being of stories, of narratives. People make a story, a mental order with which they can live. Our so-called description of the world, of events, of society and of ourselves, is a story, a mental construction. Man has an almost unlimited ability to make up such stories. The mental tools with which the facts are usually subconsciously and unthinkingly processed and arranged into a story are provided by one’s upbringing. For example, in some families people constantly count their blessings, in others suspicion and pessimism reign, and good experiences barely penetrate to consciousness.

We don’t see the interlocutor, we see our story about the interlocutor. What we hear from a partner in conversation is what remains after the communication has passed through our filter of interpretations and stories. A real problem in conflicts is that the communication of the other person is often seen as an insult, threat or attack. After all, the old brain is always focused on survival and is biased and primed by evolution to respond immediately to situations that are seen as unwanted, threatening or dangerous, while favourable situations are seen as less important and self-evident. Buddhist-inspired psychologist Rick Hanson says the brain is like Velcro for negative information and Teflon for positive information.

The following story illustrates this:

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A traveller walked from a village in the mountains to a village in the valley. On the way he saw a farmer working the land. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ asked the traveller.

‘Yes indeed,’ said the farmer.

‘I’m traveling from the village in the mountains to the village in the valley and I wonder if you could tell me what the people are like down there?’

The farmer thought for a moment and asked, ‘Tell me, how did you like the people up there?’

‘Terrible,’ said the traveller; ‘I’m glad I could leave. The people were not hospitable at all. When I arrived I was greeted coldly. I never felt that I belonged in that village, no matter how hard I tried. The villagers remained aloof and kept themselves to themselves; they are not friendly to strangers. Tell me, what could I expect in the village in the valley?’

‘I’m afraid I have to tell you that your experience down there will be about the same,’ said the farmer.

The traveller thanked the farmer, sighed and continued on his way.

A few months later, another traveller came along the road from the same village in the mountains to the village in the valley. He also stopped at the farm.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ Asked the traveller.

‘Certainly,’ said the farmer.

‘I’m traveling from the village in the mountains to the village in the valley and I wonder if you could tell me what the people are like down there?’

‘Tell me,’ said the farmer. ‘How were the people up there?’

‘Great,’ said the traveller; ‘I would have stayed longer if I could, but I had to travel further. The people were so hospitable. When I arrived I was kindly received. I felt like a member of the village family. The villagers were kind and generous, and the children played with me. It is a pity that I had to leave, but I will always remember it with pleasure. But tell me, what can I expect in the village in the valley?’

‘I think you will see that the people there are just as friendly,’ said the farmer.

The traveller thanked the farmer; smiled and continued on his way. (Buddhist story).

6.1.4.2

Needs and values

The basis of nonviolent communication is the choice not to perceive what the other says or does as an attack on personal wellbeing, but to assume that the other person is communicating something about his desires and needs. That is a starting point, not an empirical fact. Only those who are emotionally at peace, and therefore do not feel ‘personally attacked’, can pay sufficient attention to the other person and his needs. Even if the other person did intend to insult or hurt, it just means that he thinks he will feel better that way because of a certain need.

Marshall Rosenberg, the spiritual father of nonviolent communication, said, ‘When I use nonviolent communication, I never hear an opinion about myself. The truth is, when someone tells you what’s wrong with you, that person really has an unmet need. Listen to the need, not the opinion.’ Nonviolent communication is not about objective equality or inequality, but about

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subjective desires, needs and emotions. When people say something to or about you, they always say it based on a specific need. Listen to the need. Everything is either an expression of love or a call for love. Listen to the call for love.

Nonviolent communication is about emotions and needs. As stated above, emotions are expressions of desires and needs. The basic need of every living being is, of course, its survival.

This also applies to humans. Survival also means living well, living happily. Socrates said that everything that man does can ultimately be reduced to the desire and expectation to make him feel better. Every need is at the service of an underlying, deeper need. Only being happy is an end point. There is no longer an underlying need. A happy person wants nothing further. People want to be happy in order to be happy.

Two other needs immediately follow from this general need: the need to take in certain things from the outside world (food, shelter, partners) and the need to keep other things at a distance (enemies, disaster). This results in other needs, desires, wishes, values and intentions. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) neatly presented human needs in his well-known hierarchy of needs. At the bottom are the basic needs, followed by the social needs and ultimately the need for selfrealization. A child needs food, warmth and affection. An adult has a greater need for wisdom, freedom, meaning, dignity, serenity and opportunity for self-development.

The general idea is that if a need is not met, an unpleasant (negative) sensation or emotion arises, like a hunger. Hunger is a powerful incentive to act and do what is necessary to make the unpleasant sensation disappear. What applies to food, also applies to other requirements. For example, there may be an emotional hunger, a hunger for affection, for acceptance, or for recognition. Once a need is met, the needs next in line come into view. A hungry person only thinks of one thing, but as soon as he has eaten, the desire for safety, social contact, recognition and acceptance arises.

Self-realization is seen as the highest desire and is often associated with goals and values.

Objectives are concrete projects to be realized. Achieving a certain turnover, building a house, traveling the world: these are goals. They are dreams with a deadline. The problem is that once an objective has been achieved, one no longer has a dream. Values, on the other hand, are abstract concepts that indicate directions in life without an end goal. Values can be pursued without ever reaching them. They are like a compass. A child acts on the basis of impulses and emotions. An adult acts on the basis of values. Examples are justice or compassion. In any life situation one may ask oneself what choice one can make to move toward justice or compassion, but one can never say that one has definitively reached justice or compassion.

6.1.4.3

Emotions

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People have emotions because they have needs and desires. Emotions are not irrational but refer to needs and desires. Man experiences hunger because he needs food. He experiences loneliness because he longs for social contact. Emotions set us in motion to take action. They are our engine.

Intuitively, emotions seem to give us information about the outside world, but in reality they always point to ourselves and our needs. As stated above, most emotions are not triggered by the external context but by the internal context, i.e. by the cognitions, stories and narratives that are told in us or that we tell ourselves. Most emotions are therefore so-called cognitive emotions and are an I-story. Feeling and thinking are often confused. For example, people say, ‘I feel inferior.’

However, that is a cognitive emotion in response to the thought, ‘I think I am inferior.’ People call it ‘feeling’ because this thought is accompanied by an unpleasant feeling. This includes thoughts like: ‘I feel powerless, guilty, disappointed, hurt, ashamed, indignant, furious, jealous, ignored, or rejected.’ All of these are cognitive feelings, that is, reactions to thoughts. Spinoza says, ‘Emotions are false judgments.’

A man is driving the car in the evening and suddenly gets a flat tyre. When he takes his spare wheel out of the boot, he finds that he has no jack. It is a secluded road and he is near desperation when he sees a house in the distance with light still shining from the windows. He sets off hopefully to ask if he can borrow a jack. But along the way, he starts to doubt: ‘Imagine that the people there don’t want to give their jack to a stranger!’ He already feels the indignation and anger rising. But then he thinks: ‘But no, of course they will lend their jack to help someone in need!’ And in good spirits he carries on. A little further on he is again overcome by black thoughts: ‘What should I do if they don’t want to lend their jack?’ Again a feeling of powerlessness and injustice overtakes him. ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he? So why wouldn’t they help him? Oh no, of course they will want to help him.’ ... But then… But no ...’

Finally he arrives at the house and rings the bell. When the occupants open the door, he snaps at them: ‘You can keep your blooming jack; I don’t even need it anymore.’

During his walk, this man experienced a whole series of emotions without anything in the outside world having changed. Where do those emotions come from? Obviously, they are his own reactions to his own ideas and thoughts, his own narrative about reality. Learning to take responsibility for one’s own emotions instead of blaming others or circumstances leads to emotional independence. In this way one is no longer like an emotional puppet whose strings everyone can pull, but one becomes the director of one’s own emotional space instead of letting it be determined by circumstances or by the behaviour of others. That is emotional maturity.

Epictetus (A.D. 50-138) said, ‘If anyone wanted to use your body without your permission, you would refuse it out of hand. But if you simply leave the power of your emotions to others and to circumstances, you will find that to be normal and even a sign of special sensitivity.’ Aristotle (384322 BC) said, ‘Getting angry is easy. Anyone can do it. A child can do it. But knowing whom you should be angry with, in what way and for how long, is not so easy.’ That is emotional intelligence avant la lettre.

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Getting angry is easy. Anyone can do it.

But knowing whom to be angry with, in what way and for how long, is much less easy.

ARISTOTLE

It is often said that one should ‘listen’ to the body or the heart, which usually refers to the emotions. We must indeed pay attention to our emotions because they are signposts to our needs and desires. But instead of making others or circumstances responsible for this, we need to examine and question our own needs. After all, if we didn’t have needs, we wouldn’t have emotions. But moreover we have to realise that our emotions (the ‘body’) always listen to us and to the words and stories that we tell or that appear in our consciousness out of habit. We can learn to steer our emotions in a more desirable direction by telling ourselves different stories. As I explained above, it is also clear that the contents of consciousness (images, stories, thoughts, cognitions) are the most powerful ways of influencing the neurophysiology of the brain. This explains the success of ‘positive thinking’ on mental and physical well-being. Just as every brick is important for a house, every thought is important for emotional and psychic existence. Emotional intelligence, letting go or distancing starts with thinking about emotions. After all, any kind of thinking stimulates the activity of the higher brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, and reduces the activity of the emotional brain. For example, there is the very simple traffic light method, which consists of imagining a traffic light that can be green, orange or red (on red you stop, on orange you hesitate and on green you can continue) the aim being that you don’t make important decisions unless the light is green.

Emotions can also get into a hopeless spiral. People can also have emotions about their emotions, just as they can have judgments about their judgments. They may feel bad about feeling good (self-rejection, guilt) or they may feel good about feeling bad (indignation, victim identity, moral superiority). These emotions are the result of their judgments and stories about their emotions that they may or may not judge to be justified and correct. They can also tell how they should have felt. Such emotional states can go on indefinitely and are often labelled as ‘thinking too much’. In reality, it’s not about thinking too much, but about not thinking well enough. Emotions are simply unreliable as a compass for action. Only acting on the basis of values, thinking about what is right and fair, can lead to a life of satisfaction and happiness in the long term.

6.2 Strategy

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Knowing what to do is important, of course, but knowing when to do it and under what circumstances is equally important. This can be called strategy: weighing up and assessing the right time to switch off the autopilot and deploy the right know-how. The brain can be compared to a forest and habits are like familiar paths in the forest. Once you discover a new path in the forest that you want to use from now on, it is not necessary or even impossible first to clean up or eliminate the old familiar path. A path that is no longer used will automatically become overgrown, without further intervention. Likewise, it is not possible to ‘unlearn’ or ‘combat’ a habit. One can only decide to stop using that habit, that particular path in the brain, after which it will disappear by itself. Whoever wants to learn a new language should not first ‘unlearn’, ‘combat’ or ‘suppress’ the old language, but should ignore (inhibit) the automatically emerging words of the old language and consciously learn to use the words of the new language instead. It is therefore often necessary to interrupt the old pattern (a so-called pattern interrupt) and to practice the new pattern. Everyone knows that learning a new skill (playing the violin, learning a new language, learning to play tennis...) is not possible without regular practice and repetition.

The repetition gradually creates a reliable new pattern. Socrates said, ‘The secret to change is not to fight the old but to focus all energy on the new.’

For example, people who want to quit smoking do not need any special knowledge or skills, but they do need a kind of strategy, an approach to deliberately make the automatic pattern (hand in pocket, cigarette in mouth, looking for a lighter, ...) more difficult. and interrupt (for example, no cigarettes in the pocket ... eek!) to wake up and remember their intention not to smoke any more.

Then a new pattern can be practiced deliberately, for example a relaxed smile at the old brain doing its best to get its familiar candy, remembering why they wanted to quit smoking, congratulating themselves for sticking to the decision made and not being taken back, being proud of the fact that they no longer display that crazy addictive behaviour, that they are happy with the new quality of life and with the newly acquired maturity, dignity and freedom. . .

Peace and nonviolent communication are about interrupting the automatic pattern of discussing, arguing, trying to be in the right, getting aroused, getting angry ... to evoke a pattern of serenity instead. This means that people will use other words and metaphors to others and (especially) to themselves instead of the worn social clichés and the sometimes ridiculous military rhetoric (combat, fighting, winning, losing, collapsing, black hole, wounds, injuries, being ‘vulnerable’, victim, slap in the face, dagger in the back...). Think of the Buddha’s attitude in the story above about the man who spat in his face. The Buddha was not offended or hurt, but listened. He remained connected and focused on the other person’s emotions and needs. Whoever thinks that is an inspiring story can decide to do it that way from now on. This may be a bit awkward at first, but for every learning process: ‘You fake it until you make it’. Whoever wants to learn tango dancing looks for a tango master and imitates his steps, clumsily at first, but later on getting better, until he gradually gets good at it and eventually becomes a master himself. This ‘pretending’ approach was also recommended by the American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910).

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You fake it until you make it.

The importance of words, whether spoken out loud or in our thoughts, cannot be overstated, because these words actually create a reality. That is the performative power of words, described earlier. If one simply says, slowly and attentively, in a meditation, the words ‘I am at peace’ instead of the usual, automatically emerging and threadbare social clichés and military rhetoric, then one can make peace simply arise and become a reality. That is the creative power of words.

People do not understand how this is possible, but they also do not understand how it is possible that their legs make the right movements when walking or how their words come out of their mouth in the correct order when they speak. It is a simple yet surprising and far-reaching conclusion: the body listens to our intentions and simply carries them out. It is sufficient to say, or even think, the words ‘I am at peace,’ as a fact, and to establish that ‘the body’ relaxes and comes to peace almost immediately. It is not about convincing oneself to believe or not believe, it is about creating an internal reality, about training the mind. One cannot do what one cannot imagine. But if one can imagine that it is possible, then one can also do it. Just as athletes can mentally train their physical performance through visualisation, other behaviours can also be mentally trained. One can imagine various situations and imagine that in all those situations one remains at peace. Meditation and hypnosis are also based on this principle. Each time this pattern is repeated, a firmer network forms in the brain. Not only muscles but also neuronal networks become stronger with use. Ultimately, the new pattern will become as automatic as the old one.

The idea of ’trying’ is a particular pitfall. After all, ‘trying’ is not ‘doing’. When you instruct yourself to ‘try,’ you are actually instructing yourself not to ‘do.’ ‘Try’ to walk up a flight of stairs! Someone who wants to do something is not going to ‘try’ but to get started. People don’t ‘try’ to go on vacation, they just do it. Those who want to learn to play the piano will not say after a few attempts that ‘it doesn’t work’. It is a learning process and one takes the time one needs. Those who are motivated always find a way and enjoy learning and making progress. Those who are not motivated will always find an excuse.

6.3 Motivation: wanting what you want By far the most important factor, however, is motivation. Motivation is the driving force, the emotional motor of every desire and every action. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) wrote: ‘Every human activity is driven by a desire. Some serious moralists propose the utterly false theory that it would be possible to resist desires in favour of duty and moral principles. I say this is wrong, not because no one would ever act out of a sense of duty, but because duty is powerless unless the

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person concerned desires to be dutiful. If you want to know what people will do, you need to know not only or not mainly their material circumstances, but their entire system of desires and their relative importance.’

Human behaviour cannot be understood from past causes or factors, but from reasons, intentions, desires; in other words from projections into the future, from motivation. Behaviour always arises from motivation. So you always do what you want, even when you say you did something you didn’t want to do. The latter statement also creates an unpleasant cognitive dissonance, which in itself can lead to even more undesirable behaviour. The problem is therefore not at the level of the will, but at the level of motivation. Willpower is only the power of motivation as in the example later on of people leaving on vacation. What you do is always the result of motivation.

The problem is that people are free to do what they want, but not free to simply want what they want. One cannot simply choose or conjure up motivation, one has to create it, bring it about.

That requires awareness and reasonableness.

One can do what one wants but one cannot want what one wants.

So if you want to change a behaviour, you first have to examine your motivation. That also means taking responsibility for the existing behaviour, rather than attributing it to vague factors like ‘my addiction,’ ‘my depression,’ ‘my lack of confidence,’ or the like. Man is not a puppet and his behaviour is not controlled remotely. Man is always responsible for his own behaviour, even if it happened without thinking and there is no guilt. Whoever causes a traffic accident is always liable, even if there is no real fault, for example because of a mechanical problem.

There are two kinds of motivation: the motivation not to do something or to move away from something, and the motivation to do something or to move towards something. The first kind is called negative motivation, the second positive motivation. Both can lead to change. Change can arise when the discomfort of continuing to do what one has always done or staying where one is is greater than the fear of change. Anais Nin (1903-1977) said, ‘There came a time in life when the pain of being locked in a bud was greater than the fear of becoming a flower.’ That is negative motivation, the motivation of people who stop smoking after a heart attack. Change also occurs when the expected pleasure of doing something else or going somewhere else is greater than the pleasure of staying where one is or doing what one has always done. That is the positive motivation of women who quit smoking when they become pregnant, of people who leave on vacation or of people who learn to play the violin.

We can think of examples from everyday life. Do you know anyone who set off in their car for the South of France, but who halfway there turned around discouraged and returned home,

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explaining: ‘I didn’t succeed. I tried but it was too difficult. I gave up because there were too many traffic jams and detours and I lacked discipline and confidence. I have too negative a self-image’.

Of course not! People say: ‘It was pretty difficult, but we wanted to reach our destination at any cost’. It is simply impossible to stop them! People who are motivated never lack willpower, discipline, self-confidence or other modern concepts and excuses from popular psychological jargon.

Motivation is determined by representations or stories. Facts, logic or numbers are boring and almost powerless compared to an exciting and sexy story. If the intended change is seen as a pleasure or as an added value, the motivation will follow. But if the change is seen as a loss or as an obligation that is presented as difficult and troublesome, if every day is seen as a ‘struggle’, it is not even worth starting because that ‘battle’ will be lost. And even if you don’t lose it, it is not a life of quality. That is not motivation, that is ‘must-ivation’ or ‘musto-philia’. Motivation is about pleasure, must-ivation is about obligation and leads to fatigue and ultimately burnout. No one is willing to give up a pleasure in exchange for a difficult and boring life of prohibitions, struggles and hardship. Nobody wants to be obliged. ‘Must’ doesn’t motivate. The child in us tries to get out of it and usually succeeds. On the other hand, it is easy to give up a pleasure if one has the prospect of an added value, a greater pleasure, a pleasure of a higher order. The surplus value, the existential gain can be of a material, affective, intellectual, moral or spiritual nature. For an adult this could be, for example, the pleasure of being a dignified, elegant and free person, of doing good and of taking charge of one’s own life.

The motivation to do something is proportional to the confidence in the feasibility and the expected subjective added value. This means that the motivation (the ‘will’) increases as these factors become more important. Both confidence in the feasibility and the expected subjective added value of a certain behaviour are determined more by stories in society, in the media and on websites than by objective data. You can see for yourself that both factors are usually greater for the behaviour ‘going on vacation’ than for example the behaviour ‘quit smoking’ or ‘improve inhumane living conditions elsewhere in the world’.

Motivation, on the other hand, is inversely proportional to the tendency to look for and find distractions and excuses and to the time needed to achieve the goal or reward. This means that motivation increases as these factors become less important. Both factors are usually low for ‘going on vacation’ behaviour but may be high for ‘quitting smoking’ behaviour. The importance of the time factor is clear: when a mammoth charges towards us, we are immediately motivated to respond, but the idea of a mammoth that may charge towards us in twenty years is much less motivating. This applies, for example, to the idea of cancer in smoking, although everyone knows that smoking is predictive of cancer.

Motivation also determines the available energy, according to the well-known formula:

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E = mc² Where E stands for energy, emotion or drive, M for motivation and c² for the product of competence and compliments. The available energy is directly proportional to the motivation, the competence (doing something that one can do well is pleasant) and the associated compliments (reward, pleasure, recognition, appreciation ...) that one gets or that one gives oneself. But if even one of those factors is zero, the available energy will also be zero!

Motivation is an burning desire. Motivation is a dream that creates will. It is more than a mere wish, which is playing with a thought. Various wishes may be present at any given time. One can wish to smoke and at the same time wish to be healthy and live a long life. One can wish to become an engineer and at the same time wish to become a musician. One can wish to have children and at the same time wish to lead an independent and adventurous life. One will therefore have to investigate those wishes and let one wish take precedence by identifying with it and thinking about how it can be realised. In this way the wish becomes a will, a motivation.

People who are motivated have enormous ‘willpower’ and can make impressive efforts. Ballet dancers make tremendous efforts and endure significant pains to make their dream come true.

People passionately engaged in certain scientific, artistic or sporting activities accept unbelievable difficulties without complaint. They even enjoy it.

When you are inspired by some great purpose , some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds.

Your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world.

PATANJALI

How does one motivate oneself ? Not by committing to oneself, but by imagining the fun that can be expected. The pleasure always has something to do with a pleasant alternation between familiarity and curiosity, between recognition and surprise, between dullness and excitement and between safety and risk. What is too familiar and familiar quickly leads to boredom and grind.

What is too unknown and new leads to unrest and even fear. That explains the pleasure of tourist, culinary or artistic experiences. Too simple a journey, meal or music will get boring. There must be enough novelty and complexity to allow for discovery and excitement, but not so much that people experience the event as chaotic and feel overwhelmed by it. That is what one is looking for

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in a holiday, a concert, a film or a novel. It also explains the addictive effect of competitions, games of chance and gaming, for example.

If you want to build a ship, don’t look for people to lug wood or draw plans.

Do not give them tasks and assignments.

But teach them to long for the endless sea.

Then they will build the ship on their own.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Everyone knows people who say: ‘I would like to quit smoking, but I can’t.’ The expression ‘I would like ...’ indicates a wish, but it is not yet a will. It is playing with the thought. The vast majority of women who become pregnant appear to be able to quit smoking or drinking suddenly without any problem, even though they had ‘tried’ fruitlessly before. Does that mean that quitting was difficult, but has suddenly become easier? Of course not! It was always easy. All it took was a good reason, a motivation. This is not: ‘I would like to...’ But: ‘I want and I will do it right now!’ For women who become pregnant, there is suddenly a new value in their lives, so that quitting is no longer ‘difficult’. ‘I want to!’ Is like a magical power.

Incidentally, ‘difficult’ or ‘easy’ are very relative terms. Nothing in itself is difficult or easy.

However, thinking or uttering these words inevitably creates the corresponding experience. It is enough to think or say the word ‘difficult’ to evoke the ‘experience’ of heaviness and effort. Only what you don’t know (yet) seems (too) difficult. What one knows always seems easy. Playing the piano is easy for those who can play the piano. It seems difficult for those who can’t. In the marshmallow test mentioned earlier, children from the age of four appear to be able to give up immediate pleasure for greater pleasure in the longer term. Apparently it is still ‘too difficult’ for others.

The pleasure, the existential profit, can indeed be immediate, or on longer term. An emotionally driven life, doing what feels good, nice and tasty (eating, drinking, smoking, watching TV, consuming, lazing around, having sex with that attractive colleague...) gives immediate satisfaction, but the effect is usually not long lasting. After all, the good is often not what immediately feels good. A value-driven life, doing what is valuable, good and right (studying, responsible and healthy living ...) often gives less immediate pleasure, but leads to more sustainable happiness in the longer term. Raising children is not always a pleasure, but it gives people long-term satisfaction. It is a happiness, a moral pleasure. People are often satisfied and proud of the good decisions they made, even years later. Doing what is valuable, right and good increases self-confidence and gives meaning to life.

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Values are like the DNA of an adult life. But living according to a value-driven compass is often unclear. It takes thought and often leads to emotional confusion and cognitive dissonance between what we ‘know’ would be good and something else that is apparently wanted in us. You know you shouldn’t smoke or drink, but there is a desire to do it anyway. The brain does not like cognitive dissonance and tries to convince us that what feels good is also good. And often that suggestion is happily accepted. We believe that what feels good is also good. And often we only find out much later that this has got us into trouble (obesity, diabetes, myocardial infarction, a lung tumour, a failed marriage...) After all, feelings only say something about ourselves. They say what is ‘good’ for ourselves, but not what is good for others, for society or for the planet. They also only say what is good now, not next week or in ten or twenty years.

The starting point is to be conscious of being a grown up and free person. People are free to do what they want, but they are not free from the consequences of what they do. It is not about struggling or fighting, but about the choice between two forms of pleasure: the pleasure of the child in us (the old brain, ‘the body’) who wants to get his way, or the pleasure of the mind, the moral pleasure of behaving like a dignified and mature person and doing the right thing. A child is motivated by physical tendencies and desires, an adult is motivated by values and intentions. A child finds pleasure in getting, an adult finds pleasure in giving.

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7. Happiness, Utopias and Happiness Machines In this chapter I discuss some remarkable and inspiring philosophical models of the art of living.

My selection is of course arbitrary and strongly coloured by my personal taste and preference. The discussion is also very personal and far from comprehensive. My aim is not at all to give an academic exposition, but to provide concrete inspiration.

We can complain that roses have thorns, or rejoice that thorns have roses.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

7.1 Socrates’ utopia In Plato’s ‘Republic’, Socrates (469-399 BC) describes a society in which people settle for the satisfaction of their basic needs. They have no scarcity, but no luxury, and therefore have no reason to produce more than is necessary. They are satisfied with simple things. In such a (utopian) society there are also no wars and no injustice. However, as luxury goods become available, other needs arise and society must be organized very differently to meet the needs of such goods. To meet the growing drive to consume, there is a need for well-trained craftsmen, more and better food and a police force to maintain order and to protect and defend assets and property from the greed of others. In Socrates’ view, such a consumer society is not a healthy but a sick society. When people are no longer content with the satisfaction of the basic necessities of life, problems, scarcity and war arise, and society eventually falls prey to unrestrained desires and greed. The problems of excessive greed are the result of the boundless desire for unnecessary luxury. This desire disrupts a healthy society in which people are satisfied with simple things.

Socrates proposes a solution to these problems: people must relearn to distinguish between natural and unnatural desires. The people best able to make this distinction are, in the eyes of Socrates, philosophers, who can see the universal ideals of the good, the true and the beautiful and can therefore distinguish exalted human happiness from the happiness of disaffected people who cannot restrain their desires.

In the Socratic Utopia, the unbridled urges of the ‘democratic beast’ are curbed by philosophers who have the wisdom to know what is good for people, just as parents know what is good for their children. Philosophical wisdom can only be achieved through long training that leads to the right understanding. Only a small elite have the intellectual abilities and the necessary motivation to

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follow such training and discover true happiness. The others will have to follow the philosophers, who must protect society against exploitation by a dictator and against people’s own unrestrained urges that would be free in a democracy. After all, in a democracy in which everyone is entitled to vote, base happiness weighs as much as the higher kind of happiness of a philosopher. In a democracy, ignorance has as much decision-making power as wisdom. Churchill called democracy ‘the worst of all possible forms of government, apart from all the others.’

In ‘The Republic’, Socrates also tells the remarkable story of people who have been chained in a cave all their lives so that they can only see the back wall. Behind them is a fire. Between the fire and the inhabitants of the cave are people who carry all kinds of objects with them. On the back wall of the cave, the chained people only see the shadows of the people and the objects that are in front of the fire. They mistake these shadows for real people, whom in reality they cannot see.

Now suppose, says Socrates, that one of the chained people is liberated, so that he can suddenly see the fire, the people and the things behind him. This man would initially be subject to great confusion. He would not believe that what he sees is merely the shadows on the wall that he has so long held for reality. If this man finally understood the true state of things and went back into the cave, he would not only have to get used to the darkness in the cave again, but would also want to explain to his former fellow sufferers that they are only seeing the shadows of people and are seeing things that are not even illuminated by the real sun but by an artificial fire. However, the prisoners in the cave will think that the man has gone completely mad and will eventually want to lock him up and even kill him if he continues to insist on their mistake and their ignorance.

According to Plato, a philosopher should not be guided by observable reality but focus on the real world of abstract ideas. After all, according to Plato, the changeable world of observable things is only a fake world of shadows from which the real philosopher tries to escape. Only the world of unchanging ideas can be real. Since this world can only be understood by reason, that is by spirit, it must itself be spiritual in nature. The people in the cave are pitiable for their ignorance about the real world. Some may think they are living happily, but the philosopher who has been freed from his chains knows better. However, the philosopher with true insight is not happy either, for he is surrounded by people who do not understand him and who consider him a fool.

The allegory of the cave is a story to illustrate the superiority of philosophical utopia. It is also a tragic story that resembles the life and death of Socrates himself. Socrates tried to convince people that their existence was based on misunderstandings. This eventually led to his conviction and death. Socrates resolutely rejected the possibility of saving his life by giving up his critical attitude because a life whose value is not critically examined would for him not be worth living and would be worse than suicide. Socrates wanted to debate with others to understand what a valuable life is. However, he failed to convince people and his good intentions of making people happier by ridding them of their ignorance were turned against him. Although he claimed to know nothing, in fact his fellow men found him intolerable because of his cleverness.

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Socrates, like Christ or the Buddha, left no scriptures himself. He comes to us in the dialogues of his student Plato and there are many unanswered questions about the historical figure. Like Christ, he came to an end violently: in 399 B.C. he was sentenced to drink the cup of poison. Like Christ, he refused to flee or give up his ideas, but chose to die in dignity. Messengers with unpleasant messages rarely make themselves loved. Their ethical values threaten the bystander’s ego.

The allegory of the cave remains an extremely inspiring story that is useful in a very concrete way.

I said earlier that all suffering is a kind of narrowing of consciousness, a tunnel vision. People with depressed behaviours, addictive behaviours, or suicidal thoughts are obsessed with ideas and thoughts they hold to be reality. They are in a kind of cave, a bubble, a virtual reality of projections, desires, fears, (pseudo-) scientific concepts and social clichés. The Buddha said that all suffering is a result of ignorance. Those who point this out are often not only misunderstood, but often accused of incomprehension and lack of empathy and threatened to be rejected and exiled, or, like Socrates, condemned to drink the cup of poison.

Humans constantly create new bubbles. After all, the entire culture is a kind of Plato’s cave, where man is constantly surrounded by cultural artifacts. This has been accelerated by the advent of digitization and the internet, so that people are increasingly surrounded by screens. Through our use of the services of digital platforms such as Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple, more and more information about our preferences is collected and used to determine the content of what is displayed on our screens via algorithms and artificial intelligence. Ultimately, the algorithms know you better than you know yourself and it is not inconceivable that in the near future one will be able to read electronic books that are produced the moment they are read, according to the preferences of the individual reader. This creates a very new Plato’s cave.

7.2 Aristotle and middle way excellence Aristotle (384-322 BC) did not believe in abstract ideas as separate from observable reality. One cannot fathom reality by turning away from it and seeing abstract ideas, as Plato believed.

According to Aristotle, one can only get to know reality by looking closely at it and looking for the essential things in the many manifestations of matter.

Thus man is the only being who walks upright. Therefore, his head is close to the highest part of the universe, where the gods are located, and with his reason he participates in divine reason. So walking upright is not an accidental attribute but the expression of his divine intelligence. It is the result of the divine element in man, namely his theoretical mind and insight.

Aristotle makes a connection between reason and happiness. Unlike many other ancient philosophers who had a somewhat negative view of man and human existence and for whom happiness is possible only by controlling those negative elements, Aristotle was an optimist who

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formulated a philosophy of self-development: people can become happy by fully developing their human capabilities, talents and abilities. This leads to what Aristotle called eudaimonia, the happiness of a flourished, blossoming life. For Aristotle, happiness is the result of a virtuous and sensible life. For Aristotle, virtue means something like excellence or uniqueness, in accordance with the views of reason. It is not a form of ‘spontaneous living’ in accordance with feelings and desires, but reasonable actions in which the mind is in charge of desires and emotions, without suppressing or banning them. Rather it is about the ‘middle way’ between extreme expressions of emotions or desires, a kind of ‘excellent mediocrity’ or ‘mediocre excellence’, the middle way between asceticism and indulgence, between insensitivity and hypersensitivity. For Aristotle, a happy life is a life in which man can realize his powers without going to extremes. Every life, as a worker, philosopher or lawyer, can become a happy life if one can develop one’s abilities.

It also follows from Aristotle’s line of thought that the more abilities and talents a living being has, the more difficult it is for that being to become happy and the greater the chance of frustration if it fails.

If someone sweeps the street to make a living, he must sweep as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed, as Shakespeare wrote.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

7.3 Epicurus’ art of living Epicurus (341-270 BC) is the founder of Epicureanism, the school that is considered one of the four major directions in the philosophy of late antiquity, alongside the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle and the Stoa. He founded a community, the Garden, where he lived a secluded life with friends and students.

Philosophy is about personal happiness, which, according to Epicurus, is the highest good in human life. According to Epicurus, life is about happiness that can be achieved by avoiding as much fear and pain as possible and pursuing pleasure. This is often misunderstood as a down-toearth hedonism, but for Epicurus pleasure is above all peace of mind and imperturbability (ataraxia). Essential for this is the avoidance of fear, sadness and pain. If philosophy could not free us from our fears, especially from our fear of the gods and of death, there would be no reason to take it seriously. This means that Epicurus’ philosophy is at the service of this ethic. He did not develop a logic or political philosophy.

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Physical pleasure is worth pursuing, however it should be noted that Epicurus clearly had the long term in mind. For example, it is unwise to eat a lot, which provides immediate pleasure, but can cause stomach pain. So enjoy, but in moderation. It is known that Epicurus himself was satisfied with bread and water and led an extremely austere life. According to Epicurus, it is a natural fact that both animals and humans strive to avoid pain and seek pleasure. However, in this case, the enjoyment of pleasure can only consist of meeting ‘natural’ needs. Epicurus distinguishes three types of needs: the natural and necessary needs (for example eating, drinking, sleeping), the natural but not necessary needs (for example sex or good food), and the non-natural and unnecessary desires (for example, striving for fame or wealth). The ‘pleasure’ that Epicurus refers to is satisfaction of the natural needs. Once satisfied, there is no reason to pursue further pleasure. It is certainly not meant to cultivate new desires, and then try to fulfil them, because that only creates mental unrest.

Spiritual pleasure (ataraxia or imperturbability) is not as such a primary goal, but it is worth pursuing. If there is physical pain, it cannot be denied, but we can counteract it by thinking of pleasant things we have experienced. So spiritual pleasure is a counterpart to physical discomfort.

Ataraxia is a state of peace of mind, a lasting feeling of well-being, a spiritual ‘pleasure’. But ataraxia is a result, a condition, whereas physical pleasure has to do with the satisfaction of need.

A major source of concern is the idea that the gods will punish us if we live wrongly. But, according to Epicurus, that fear is unfounded, for the gods lead a carefree life and are perfectly happy so that they have no wish or need to meddle with people. It is also nonsensical to fear death because: ‘as long as we are there, death is not there, and when death has come, we are no longer there.’ Absence of fear of death or of the gods is one of the ‘ingredients’ that contribute to ataraxia. ‘Death does not concern us’ is a statement by Epicurus to indicate that life is more important.

When I am dead, the elements of which I am composed will still be part of the universe and will be as useful in the great fabric as they were when they were part of this individual creature.

DAVID HUME

The best life, according to Epicurus, is a withdrawn life among friends. Friendship plays a major role: every person who joined Epicureanism could count on the support and the confidence of the other Epicureans. Epicurus’ motto ‘Live in secret’ indicates that he does not recommend taking up public functions or otherwise taking the spotlight.

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Epicurus’ philosophy is still valuable today. Epicurus asked what stands in the way of us leading a relaxed life. This question, which he asked around 300 BC, is very topical. After all, people today are remarkably stressed or dissatisfied with their lives, even if they have a healthy family, a good job and a nice house. According to Epicurus you can solve this by taking away suffering as much as possible. He sees our desires as the main causes of much suffering. People often focus on so-called empty desires such as expensive items, luxurious food and a lot of sex. The problem with these desires is that we do not really need the things we desire, but still want more of them. In this way one constantly breeds new desires, which one then tries to fulfil. The result is mental turmoil.

‘Wealth that knows no boundaries is great poverty,’ Epicurus wrote. It is good to keep this in mind to avoid having short moments of pleasure that are not worth anything in the long run.

Compared to previous centuries, people in our western society have a lot of time and money. We are therefore in a position of luxury. Ironically, the problems start there too. Because whoever has a lot of free time also wants to do something with that time. But what? If you don’t know, free time leads to stress and dissatisfaction. People then look for a purpose in their life, something to spend their money and time on. For example, there is the obsession with extremely healthy food.

It is important that people take good care of themselves, but this seems to be a new religion in which one must beware of ‘sin’. This becomes a problem when people set the body as their life goal and are constantly working on it. It is not strange that someone wants to optimize themselves, but instead of the body, one could also choose to focus attention on the mind, as was so important in ancient times. Then virtues such as kindness and generosity come into the picture again and attention is focused on the environment and the role people play in it. Morally, that seems a lot healthier.

7.4 The stoic art of living Say to yourself at the break of dawn: today I will meet all kinds of people: a busybody, a thankless one, a boundless one, an impostor, an envious one, an egoist.

They became so because they cannot distinguish good from evil.

But I have understood the nature of good and evil and have seen that one is full of beauty and the other repulsive.

I cannot be hurt by any of them, because what is ugly does not bind me.

I cannot get angry with or hate my neighbour, because we came into existence to work together, like the feet, the hands, the eyelids and the teeth.

That is why it may be contrary to nature to oppose one another, and we do this by being annoyed and disgusted.

MARCUS AURELIUS, Reflections, chap. ll

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The Stoics were originally philosophers who met in the Stoa (portico) in Athens. The founder, Zeno, lived in the fourth century BC. Epictetus (55-135) and Marcus Aurelius (121-180) are representatives of the later Roman (neo) Stoicism in which, partly under the influence of Christianity, nature or the cosmos is the carrier of a divine reason or Logos. According to the Stoics, wisdom is living in accordance with nature, that is, with reason. That leads to happiness or inner peace (apatheia).

The Stoics understood that much suffering is caused by the way in which man views and judges things. Man has the opportunity to investigate this through reason. Death, exile, frustration, sickness, old age, etc. are things over which man has no control, but he can cultivate virtue, happiness, equanimity, serenity, acceptance and wisdom.

The above quote is an example of praemeditatio malorum, referred to by some as Stoic Pessimism, which urges man to be aware of potentially unpleasant realities. This is not childish fear or oppressive negativity, but mature realism, reasonableness and prudence. Not fear of, but thinking about, possible disaster. This is comparable to the pre-trust in Buddhism, the awareness of the temporality and impermanence of things. The realization that everything there is could also not be there and the realization that nothing is a right and therefore there can be no ‘loss’. People have no power over external events, but do have power over internal states, emotions and qualities. The purpose of philosophy is to use reason in dealing with passions, worries, fears, desires and aversions. The more a person practices this, the happier, freer and more noble they become.

So, contrary to popular belief, Stoicism is not about denying or suppressing emotions. The Stoics, on the contrary, paid a lot of attention to them and wanted to recognize and investigate them to find out what caused them and then to steer them towards more well-being. According to the Stoics, emotions are judgments about what is good or bad. However, judgments are within the power of the human mind and can therefore be corrected. Whoever is angry or sad is mistaken, but whoever sees his mistake is freed from his anger or sorrow and achieves peace of mind. That is the characteristic of a wise person. Seneca writes in his book ‘Anger’ that there is no point in answering anger with anger. Whoever gets angry behaves like an ignorant person. It is pointless to kick back at a donkey or bite a dog back.

Epictetus said that we must understand what is and what is not in our power so that we can focus our efforts on the former and not waste effort on the latter. We cannot change things outside of us, but we can change our opinions and judgments about those things. That is where our freedom lies. A master can be a slave to his emotions and a slave can be spiritually independent.

When it rains I am happy, because even if I’m not happy, it still rains.

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Although Stoicism is above all practical in nature, it is about practicing virtues such as courage, moderation, justice and wisdom, and about developing oneself. It is about making full use of our own abilities and keeping an eye on the moral aspect of our actions. It is a question of mindfulness and spiritual exercises, but also social commitment and love for all humanity and for nature.

Stoicism is therefore quite demanding as it states that the only thing that really matters for a good life is the practice of a life of high moral standards and peace of mind, and that all kinds of satisfaction and material prosperity can be regarded as, at most, ‘insignificant things that are preferable’. When a person has peace of mind, no further calamity can befall him, no matter how disastrous the circumstances in which he finds himself. Man comes to no harm as long as he controls his own mind and manages to maintain his peace of mind. Stoicism therefore has connections with a number of major ethical traditions and religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism and Christianity.

Stoicism has a metaphysics with a spiritual dimension. It accepts the principle of universal causality that says everything has a cause and everything in the cosmos proceeds according to natural processes. Transcendence is not really part of it, although Stoics believe that the universe is ordered by what they call the Logos. This is ultimately the belief that nature can be understood through reason, unlike the Epicureans, who believed in chaos in nature, and unlike the cynics, who believed that humans cannot discover the true nature of nature.

Stoicism does not fantasize about immortality, but it does not avoid the fact of death. Regardless of how we try to make sense of our lives, our job is to prepare ourselves and those we love to make sure that our lives are finite and that our presence in the world will disappear forever. We must learn to die with dignity so that those who survive us can be comforted by it. Socrates was the great example in this. ‘We die every day,’ Seneca wrote in his letter to Gaius Lucilius. ‘Whoever doesn’t know how to die well doesn’t live well.’

Stoicism inspired a number of important therapeutic approaches, including Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy (see below), Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and Albert Ellis’s Rational-Emotional Therapy (RET). The latter had a huge impact on modern psychotherapy. His approach consists of cheerfully examining and challenging the thoughts that are the source of unwanted emotions. According to Ellis, these always belong to the category of normative, dogmatic thoughts, to ‘the tyranny of must’ that he calls ‘musturbation’ (mustophilia) : ‘I must score well; others must treat me fairly; the world must give me what I need; if these things don’t happen (which will of course often be the case), they lead to catastrophizing (‘terrible’, ‘horrible’, ‘unbearable’)’.

Yet Stoicism as such is a philosophical system, that is, a general frame of reference, a vision of life, and not a therapy intended as a short-term intervention for solving specific psychological problems faced by individual travellers on the journey of life.

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The early Christians were still heavily influenced by the Stoics. In the Middle Ages, however, the Church as a powerful institution in the Western world overshadowed not only the authentic Christian thinking of the gospel but also the great classical Greek and Roman philosophers. Man again turned to God through the Church, and philosophy took on the role of the servant of religion. It was not until the Renaissance that interest in classical humanism again emerged, with figures such as Pico de la Mirandola and Spinoza.

7.5 The Buddhist art of living If someone sprinkles a handful of salt in a cup of water, the water becomes so salty that no one can drink it.

But if someone sprinkles a handful of salt in the sea, it will not affect the taste of the water.

So make sure your mind is as big as the sea!

THE BUDDHA

Buddhism is not a religion in the sense of a belief in a supernatural reality. The BudIBdha (450-370 BC), who is ‘the awakened one’ was not a god but an ordinary mortal. Therefore, there are no gods or saints to worship or serve. There are only wise men. There are also no dogmas or commandments, no sacred scriptures, no rituals, no priests, and no pope. There are no official positions and there is no membership. There is no need to pray or beg for forgiveness, grace or redemption, and there is no prospect of happiness in the afterlife. It is about understanding suffering and realizing happiness here and now. In contrast to a religion that promises salvation in the hereafter, Buddhism is a wisdom, an art of living, a practical philosophy, a humanism and even an existentialism. Direct personal experience and transformation based on awareness (‘waking up’) are essential.

The Buddha, like Socrates or Christ, left no scriptures, and there are many questions about historical reality. He comes to us from the writings of his followers. He taught mainly on the basis of concrete parables and examples. Earlier I told the story told of the man who spat into the face of the Buddha and how the Buddha reacted to it. The Buddha also told the story of a man injured by a poisonous arrow. A doctor was called in, but the man refused to be cared for until he had received satisfactory answers to his questions: ‘Who is the man who injured me, where did he come from, what were his motives, how did he manufacture the arrow’, etc. Obviously the man would have died long before all these questions were answered. Likewise, according to the Buddha, your peace of mind and your spiritual life should not depend on whether the universe is eternal or not and whether there is an afterlife or not. Rather, focus on life.

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The approach to Buddhism, like that of Stoicism, is not based on the pursuit of fulfilment by worldly goods or activities, but on abandoning the pursuit of such entanglement. Buddhism is essentially an extremely practical philosophy of life. Socrates said that an unexamined life was not worth living. The Buddha said something similar, ‘Don’t believe what I’m telling you just because I said it. Research it for yourself. If you come to the conclusion that something is valuable, put it into practice’. The Buddha is often referred to as ‘the great physician’. Indeed, his primary concern was to understand suffering. The essence is the insight that suffering and discontent are not the result of circumstances, but arise from the way people respond to those circumstances. More specifically, it is about our attachments and resistance to change. The most important values or virtues in Buddhism are therefore acceptance, peace, compassion and kindness.

In the early years, the Buddha taught the whole of these insights and especially the well-known four noble truths about suffering, the origin of suffering, the end of suffering and the way out of suffering. The most important lesson is that suffering is always a result of ignorance, that is, a lack of a clear view of man and life. A wise person does not suffer. Eckhart Tolle says: ‘You have to understand that suffering is not necessary.’ That is the radical core of the hinayana, the ‘small vehicle’ to liberation, in which thoughts and emotions are investigated and the patterns emerge that frustrate and can cause suffering. The Buddha speaks in essence of what is now called cognitive dissonance, without of course using that concept. The path to liberation from suffering is aimed at learning to relax the contraction of the mind. The hinayana is very concrete and practical in this. The four noble truths are almost like a medical model: there is illness, we can understand this illness, we can treat it.

However, the later-developed mahayana or ‘great vehicle’ considers hinayana to be too limited because it focuses on personal liberation only, while the mahayana aims to liberate all living entities. Thus, the figure of the bodhisattva arises as a guide that assists others in their path to enlightenment. At the same time, emphasis is placed on egolessness and on the broader aspect of emptiness, i.e. the absence of solid essences. Everything is ultimately intangible and changeable.

Even matter is largely empty and consists of molecules, atoms and elementary particles that are constantly changing and intangible.

A third current is the vajrayana or ‘diamond vehicle’. This is the most esoteric form of Buddhism and makes much use of yoga and meditation exercises. It assumes that both previous paths have been followed and focuses entirely on the personal, individual realization of liberation. It has mainly been preserved in Tibet.

Finally there is the navayana or ‘new vehicle’, modern Buddhism. After all, Buddhism is extremely open and flexible. It has adapted and cross-fertilized with Taoism and Confucianism in China, as well as Shinto in collaboration with Samurai culture in Japan. In this way it has also adapted to Western culture, in particular the American one, more specifically in the Californian context where a flourishing Buddhist tradition has emerged.

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Buddhism likens people to waves on an ocean. The waves think they are unique and special, but in reality they are interconnected and all consist of ocean water from which they originated and into which they will disappear again. When a wave disappears, it simply returns the energy it received at its origin to the ocean. The same idea was also expressed by David Hume in the quotation earlier. Schopenhauer would later adopt this idea.

Like most Eastern philosophies, Buddhism attaches less importance to logical arguments and rational understanding that are so important in the West. On the other hand, it attaches more importance to the immediate insight that can arise from stories or experiences. This is not the Western understanding of feeling; it is rather a form of awakening, a sudden understanding, a transformation, a sudden wordless revelation, just as a child suddenly ‘understands’ that Santa Claus does not exist or just as people can suddenly ‘understand’ that they are connected to everything. Words or arguments fall short. The Tao says ‘Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak do not know.’

Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Zen teacher, says: ‘Meditation is not an escape. It is the serene encounter with reality’. What is reality? It is what will survive if you think away everything you believe in, if you let all ideas disappear. According to Buddhism, real freedom therefore does not consist of freeing the ‘I’, but of liberating oneself from it. This idea was also adopted later by Schopenhauer.

The most important lesson of the Buddha is: there is also a Buddha in you!

A Zen master sees a student immersed in meditation.

He asks him about the purpose of his meditation exercises.

The student replies, ‘I want to become a Buddha.’

The master says nothing but takes a roof tile and starts scraping it against a rock.

After some time, the student can no longer curb his curiosity and asks his master, ‘Why are you scraping that roof tile against a rock?’

The master replies, ‘I’m grinding it into a mirror.’

The student asks, ‘But how can you make a mirror by scraping a roof tile against a rock?’

To which the master replies: ‘How can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?’

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) is sometimes considered the first European Buddhist. He also declared, like the first noble truth, that life is suffering. However, unlike the Buddha, whose statue he had on his desk, he was extremely pessimistic about the relief of suffering. He thought it was preferable not to live. He suggested, following Kant, that life is largely an idea and that one cannot know reality ‘in itself’. Among the ideas, according to Schopenhauer, is the will to live, which, as in the second noble truth, is the cause of all suffering. After all, the will to live leads to the struggle for existence. Although Schopenhauer is usually regarded as a primal pessimist, he is nevertheless

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the author of ‘The Art of Happiness’. After all, his pessimism was a method, comparable to the methodical doubt of Descartes. Schopenhauer’s intention was to achieve lasting happiness: not the happiness of a satisfied pig, but an adult happiness, in the footsteps of the Buddha, whom he had discovered as one of the first philosophers. His method was an attitude of mistrust, of not believing in ideas, not even of the major world traditions that proclaim a ‘sense’ and a ‘truth.’

After all, there is always a deeper idea behind every performance. There is always a cave inside the cave. Only in the experience and contemplation (mindfulness!) of beauty can we be released for a moment from the will and from suffering. Only in death can this become a permanent condition, according to Schopenhauer.

7.6 Spinoza’s art of living Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677), the author of the monumental and labyrinthine Ethics, is a particularly remarkable and exemplary philosopher, not only because of his philosophical work but also because of his personal life story. He was called the philosophers’ philosopher by Hegel (17701831), and Nietzsche (1844-1900) saw in him a pastor. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) said, ‘Every philosopher has two philosophies: his own and Spinoza’s.’ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) called him ‘The noblest and loveliest of the great philosophers.’ Well-known psychiatrist and author Irving Yalom and neurologist Antonio Damasio devoted an important book to Spinoza, and Freud was sometimes accused of using Spinoza’s insights without honouring him. No one can ignore Spinoza.

His philosophy can have radical and far-reaching consequences for everyday life. I necessarily limit myself to a brief presentation of some elements of this intriguing philosophy insofar as they are useful in the context of a practical art of living.

Every philosopher has two philosophies: his own and Spinoza’s HENRI BERGSON

Spinoza saw it as his mission to fully implement the Copernican revolution, including with regard to thinking about God and man. God and nature were the same for Spinoza: ‘Deus sive natura’.

According to Spinoza, there can be no supernatural God. That was an absolutely logical conclusion: if God is infinite and perfect, then there cannot be a place where he is not because then he would not be perfect. The ultimate goal of scientific study was therefore spiritual: ‘The greater our knowledge of natural phenomena, the greater our knowledge of the essence of God,’ he wrote.

Knowing and loving God, says Spinoza, does not require performing rituals, belief in supernatural dogmas, or accepting alleged historical narratives in the Bible. It only requires ‘practicing justice and love for others.’ When asked if he believed in God, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) stated that he

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believed in ‘the God of Spinoza who reveals himself in the harmony of all that is, not a God who deals with fate and actions of the people’. Entirely in the spirit of Spinoza, Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) would say much later that anyone who knew the universal theory of everything also knew the spirit of God. Science can indeed be seen as the book of nature, as the Bible or the Quran is the book of God: an imperfect man-made text, which could never comprehend the insusceptibility and infinity of nature or God, respectively, as no image can do justice to the glory of God. The God of Spinoza is also the power, the energy that is in everything and that makes there be in everything a will to be and a will to live. Seeing that divine perfection fills us with joy or bliss.

According to Spinoza, body and mind are one and the same substance, which we can know and experience in two ways: as body and as mind. According to Spinoza, this substance can be called both nature and God. So Spinoza is a radical monist, unlike Descartes, who was a dualist. There is therefore no question of the influence or interaction of the mind on the body or vice versa, because these are still dualistic thoughts. The mind and body are two aspects of one and the same.

According to Spinoza, man is a being who wants to live, a being of desire. Desire is not just a characteristic of man, it is his being. Man is longing and only longing. Without desire there is no life because life is desiring to live, wanting to know, striving for fulfilment, for perfection. Spinoza calls this desire the conatus. Man thinks that desire is the result of a shortage or a loss, but in reality he longs for fulfilment. Desire is therefore not a lack for Spinoza, but a strength.

According to Spinoza, man is part of overall nature and therefore subject to the laws of nature. As a result, he is also subject to various external events and encounters that cause sensory impressions. Impressions that increase our capacity to act and our power of existence fill us with joy. Impressions that diminish our capacity to act fill us with sadness. We experience joy when our life force, our vital energy, increases. We experience sadness when it subsides. Happiness is the experience of getting bigger. Unhappiness is the experience of getting smaller. Therefore, if man is to have a lasting joy, he must not focus on transient and changeable things, but must choose things that can give lasting fulfilment.

Certain passions cannot be avoided, according to Spinoza. But also these disorders or ‘affects’, i.e. the human feelings or emotions, can be understood if one knows the laws to which they are subject. The two basic, primary disorders are the result of the increase or decrease of livelihood and are active disorders or joy, and passive disorders or sadness, respectively. All other conditions can be traced back to these two. The difference in perception is a result of the different perception of the cause. For example, if someone thinks her joy is caused by the presence of a certain person, she will call it love. If someone feels sadness and thinks a certain person is the cause, he will hate that person.

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The ideas underlying those emotions can be adequate or inadequate. Conditions we experience as a result of misrepresentations or memories can therefore be avoided. Unwanted or passive emotions stand in the way of understanding and the right knowledge of reality. They mean suffering. Negative feelings such as sadness, fear, hatred, regret, resentment, indignation, despair, or shame are always undesirable because they obscure our view of reality and conflict with our real interests. Desired or active emotions, on the other hand, contribute to real insight and lead to reasonable and meaningful action.

Because the desire to live is present in everything, frictions and conflicts constantly arise. After all, people can do things that can be unwanted and even harmful to other people. This is the origin of so-called negative emotions (anger, rage), which Spinoza calls ‘passions’. So it is not what the other person did but one’s own normative judgment that causes the discomfort and the dissatisfaction. If someone does not show up for an appointment, the normative thought will automatically arise: ‘This is not possible! At least he could have called me!’ and anger arises. But when he gets a message later that the person in question has had a serious accident and is in hospital, the anger disappears by itself because one understands the cause.

Understanding the cause of an emotion is an easy way to get rid of that emotion. The real art of living, however, is not to get angry, even if you don’t know the cause. Spinoza comes to our aid with the insight that everything always has a cause, even if it is unknown. There is always a reason why someone does or says something in those particular circumstances and not something else.

Even if a person has certain intentions, those intentions are also determined by something that preceded them. This is not an empirical fact such as learning that someone has had an accident, but a philosophical insight, a general knowing. So someone who really realizes this will never get angry again and has complete peace of mind.

Events take place according to natural laws without purpose. Phenomena we call natural disasters are explainable by the laws of nature. They arise when the necessary conditions under which they arise occur. It just couldn’t be any other way. This can be a comforting thought. The tricky question of why God ‘allows’ suffering does not arise because things happen because there was simply no other way. Man does not escape the laws of nature either, but people have no insight into the complex convergence of circumstances, influences and interactions, and they therefore assume that they themselves are the cause of their will and action. Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1777) said that if a compass had awareness it would believe it was pointing to the north of its own free will. So we must consider human action as we consider natural phenomena.

This applies to anger as well as to a storm or a solar eclipse. So for Spinoza there can be no absolute freedom, no absolute self-determination, since everything is determined by previous causes. We are not the unmoved mover of our inner cosmos. There is freedom of action in the sense that we can do what we want without hindrance, but there is no free will in the sense that we cannot want what we want. A stone in free fall does not fall free. We can eat what we want, but we cannot want what we want. We can marry whom we want, but we cannot fall in love with

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whom we want. To know what we want, or rather what is wanted in us, we can only pause and wait for that choice to become clear. Spinoza defines freedom of action as the ability to act according to the current, individual nature and necessities. After all, free will without prior causes would be mere arbitrariness. Man gains freedom to the extent that he acts according to reason and is not a slave to it passions or external causes. Those who act under the influence of fear or anger are less free than those who act according to reason.

The question of freedom or lack of freedom is separate from any measures we can take to protect ourselves. For example, we take measures to protect ourselves against bacteria and viruses, against wild animals and against thunder. We take measures to protect ourselves against flooding, without questioning whether water has free will. Likewise, we can take measures to protect ourselves against certain human behaviours of people, regardless of whether we believe these people have free will or not.

According to Spinoza, love is therefore not a commandment or an assignment, but: ‘joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause’. The bottom line in this description is that love in its most essential form is a joy at the thought of the existence of something or someone who is considered the source and object of it. That is also the joy when you see the beauty of, for example, a rose. There is nothing greedy about this form of love: a rose does nothing, asks for nothing, gives nothing. And yet the person who beholds it is filled with happiness, the happiness of being near such a perfect thing. This is so, even when it comes to a tragic beauty, which at first glance can only provoke resistance. Man can learn to look in such a way that he can perceive divine order and perfection. Then the whole cosmos resonates in his inner cosmos. After all, in the light of eternity, everything is always perfect and that insight leads to peace of mind, joy and love to all that is. That is the experience of beauty, that is, of happiness. Spinoza adds at the end of his Ethics that this is as difficult as it is rare.

The vision of Spinoza is in some ways close to that of Francis of Assisi (ca 1182-1226). Where Spinoza says that everything is determined by natural laws, Francis states that everything is given to us by God. In Spinoza’s view this is the same thing, because for Spinoza nature is the same as God. Francis also wrote a hymn to nature in his Sun Song.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) expresses much the same in the following poem: When spring comes, and when I’m already dead, the flowers will bloom in the same way and the trees will be no less green than last spring.

Reality doesn’t need me. I feel tremendous joy at the thought that my death is utterly insignificant.

If I knew I would die tomorrow and it was spring the day after tomorrow, I would die happy because it was spring the day after tomorrow.

If that is her time, when should she come unless at her time?

I like that everything is real and everything is as it should be; I like that, because it would be like that even if I didn’t love it.

Therefore if I die now I die satisfied, because everything is real and everything is as it should be.

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You can pray in Latin over my chest if you like. If you want, you can dance and sing all around.

I have no preference about when I can no longer have a preference.

What will be, when it will be, will be what it is.

FERNANDO PESSOA (1888-1935)

And this, less melancholy, is from Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931): Beauty is not a need, but an ecstasy.

It is not a thirsty mouth or an outstretched hand.

Rather, it is a flaming heart and an enchanted soul.

KAHLIL GIBRAN (1883-1931)

Spinoza’s philosophical approach allows for a form of philosophical therapy similar to Buddhism and Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotional Therapy. With Spinoza too, ideas, that is thinking, also play a decisive role in the emergence of emotions and experiences. This is why thinking, that is philosophizing, can also lead to emotional change.

For example, when we are offended by someone, we should see his behaviour as part of the natural order.

We then know that our fellow man is not free in his behaviour and we will therefore hate him less.

If we know that a certain event is inevitable, we will rebel less against it.

SPINOZA, Ethics, Part V, Note to Proposition X.

Spinoza’s thinking has fascinated and inspired many. One of these was none other than Albert Einstein. Einstein says that attention to mystery is the most beautiful experience and the cradle of real art and science. The everyday complacency can be broken by wonder at things, at the mystery of reality. That is a cosmic-religious feeling. Also for Einstein, God coincides with the non-personal intelligence or rationality in things. But this God is only there for those who, like Einstein himself, stand back a bit from concrete scientific work and focus on the awe-inspiring reality itself and on the rationality that shows itself in it: ‘A sublime and wonderful order reveals itself both in the world of nature as in the world of thought’. This is accompanied by joy and delight. Other scientists, including Richard Feynman (1918-1988), one of the greatest physicists, also had an eye for the mystery of things made visible by science.

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7.7 The utopia of John Stuart Mill Anyone who thinks about happiness in society cannot ignore John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and the utilitarianists. Utilitarianists defend the view that everyone has the mission to strive for as much happiness as possible for as many people as possible. Critics of utilitarianism call this a philosophy for pigs, a porcratic happiness, a criticism that was already addressed to Epicurus and his supporters.

However, according to John Stuart Mill, a learned philosopher was much happier than a pig lying lazily in the mud. He thought it was better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig. After all, people also have intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual pleasures. Mill starts from the idea of a competent assessor: someone who can compare the different forms of happiness. Therefore, a competent assessor should not only know what it is like to experience the porcological happiness of a lazy pig, but should also have a taste for philosophy and art. For example, he should know the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and the string quartets of Beethoven. After all, people have higher potentials and can only be happy if they can also develop them. They therefore do not want to lower themselves to animal forms of happiness but long for freedom and dignity. People who have learned to taste and appreciate good wine, or who have learned to appreciate Bach and Mozart, will no longer settle for cheap wine from the supermarket or ordinary commercial music.

Only people who have not learned to appreciate higher forms of happiness, due to inadequate upbringing or unfavourable social conditions, can indulge in outlandish animal forms of pleasure.

Mill also believed that individual freedom is a necessary condition for happiness. After all, people cannot be forced to appreciate beautiful music or delicious wine. In his book ‘On Liberty’, Mill argued that people want to be able to discover and compare what is valuable to them and to experiment with ways to become happy.

But Mill also made the particularly unpleasant observation that a critical analysis of happiness experiences actually makes these experiences disappear. ‘Ask yourself if you are happy, and happiness disappears,’ Mill wrote in his autobiography. It brought him to the brink of depression.

As a result, he realized that happiness can only be a by-product of activities that are performed without the conscious goal of becoming happy. That is a paradoxical and rather tragic observation: man strives for happiness while precisely that striving makes happiness impossible! Therefore, a philosopher who always asks critical questions is never satisfied. A critical person leads a tragic existence because he can do no other than ask questions and therefore cannot just be happy like a satisfied pig wallowing in the mud.

7.8 Friedrich Nietzsche’s art of living

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The concept of the art of living is inextricably linked to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900). Nietzsche initially studied theology but lost his faith and switched to philology. There he studied the art and culture of the ancient Greeks. When he later became acquainted with Schopenhauer’s work, he became a great admirer of it and his interest shifted to philosophy. In 1869, at the age of 25, he became a professor at the University of Basel. Later his admiration for Schopenhauer cooled and he distanced himself from his views. His unstable state of health, with violent migraine attacks, made it gradually impossible for him to carry out his tasks and in 1879 he was forced to resign as a professor. From that time on, he lived as a free philosopher and travelled extensively, looking for an environment that would benefit his health. In 1889, he had a breakdown and spent the rest of his life in mental confusion.

According to Nietzsche, there is no definite objective truth. The world is always known from a certain perspective that is inevitably temporary and changeable. Still, knowledge of the world is vital for humans. Man therefore tries to capture the ever-changing world in fixed terms and concepts, including the term ‘I’. Terms and concepts are indispensable for survival but create a world of illusion because they are metaphorical. Metaphors are therefore of fundamental importance to Nietzsche for knowing the world. According to Nietzsche, man constructs his subjective reality on the basis of words and concepts. Any image of reality is narrowed down, made concrete and realized in a certain language. Language reduces reality to known or defined terms. The complexity and the infinite variety of reality become conceivable, negotiable and manageable by conceiving it as a construction of nameable concepts. Our concepts create stability in the changing world, a stability that it does not have of its own accord. Our concepts are like mummies, they are static reductions of reality, which divide reality into boxes and order them neatly. There are only stories and stories about stories. Philosophy thus becomes an art form and not absolute knowledge. Here it is no longer reason that is at work, but imagination. Our concepts are not mirrors of reality, but, in Nietzsche’s words, ‘manifestations of our will to power.’ Reason looks on, smiling. The problem is that we often confuse the artwork with reality. After all, there is no escaping language and the imaginary order. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) would later say, ‘Il n’y a pas de hors texte.’ That comes close to the Buddhist view.

In Greek tragedy Nietzsche saw two tendencies or life forces at work: the Apollonian, which strives for order, beauty and regularity, and the Dionysian, which tries to destroy all order and regularity in favour of intoxication and the original chaos. The Greek tragedy was an expression of the unreasonably and violently flowing life and the realization that reason will never be able to fully understand it. After all, there is always a different idea after each performance, and another cave behind each cave. Art should precisely depict this play of opposing forces in reality. According to Nietzsche, the Apollonian and the Dionysian merged in tragedy. The Dionysian gave tragedy its strength, but the Apollonian made it possible as an art form. According to Nietzsche, beauty is therefore not the most important thing in art. Beauty belongs to the Apollonian, the highest form of appearance. However, the artist needs the Apollonian to shape his Dionysian inspiration.

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Nietzsche therefore overturns Plato’s vision of appearances and reality: our daily reality is a shadow of the primary reality, which however is not a set of static ideas, but an endlessly moving play of forces. The primary reality is chaos, while the world we perceive is a solid, false reality. In Nietzsche, the Apollonian is appearance and the Dionysian is reality. Later the Apollonian would predominate in Greek art, especially thanks to Euripides and Socrates. Nietzsche reproaches Plato, Socrates and their followers for denying the desire for strength and power that is present in every human being and turning it into the desire for an afterlife or a belief in a sublime morality; thus, according to Nietzsche, humanity changes from strong individuals to a flock of sheep.

Like Spinoza, Nietzsche did not believe in a God outside of man and nature. He adopted the metaphysics of the will from Schopenhauer, but he held a Dionysian confirmation of that will. This was his concept of the ‘Übermensch’, the ultimate life artist who lives life ‘with great class’. With the Übermensch Nietzsche propagates a whole-hearted acceptance of life and suffering as it is, without resignation. Resignation was the solution of Schopenhauer and of Buddhism, which Nietzsche came to reject after his initial admiration. Like Spinoza, Nietzsche argues that what increases our vital force also makes us happy, while what weakens us makes us unhappy.

Nietzsche wants to put human consciousness back into nature in which the spirit serves to live life.

Man has knowledge to give him something to hold on to and reason to influence reality. Nietzsche invites us to love life passionately. The affirmation of life is unconditional for Nietzsche. The ultimate test for the will to live is the question whether people, with all their suffering and sorrows, might want to repeat their life endlessly, again and again, never better or worse than it is now. That is the famous ‘eternal recurrence.’ Nietzsche describes the eternal return of life as a hypothesis; in ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ he treats it as a fixed fact, a dogma. Nietzsche believed that embracing difficulties is essential to a fulfilled life and considered the journey of selfdiscovery to be one of the greatest and most fruitful existential challenges.

But the path to finding oneself, waking up from anaesthesia, from the world of traditional moral, metaphysical and religious scenes in which we usually find ourselves like a dense cloud, is often more like a stroll in the park. One can, Nietzsche writes, look over one’s life and ask the question: ‘What have I really loved so far? What lifted my soul? Line up the answers for you, and perhaps a pattern will become clear by their nature and order. See how they form a ladder along which you can ascend to yourself, for your true self is not hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above what you usually limit yourself to. True culture does not give us artificial limbs, waxed noses or bespectacled eyes, but frees us from all unnecessary ballast and side effects.’

According to Nietzsche, man has no choice but to affirm the world as it is, including all suffering and sorrow. Supernatural worlds are designed to make suffering and human uneasiness bearable.

But Nietzsche also criticizes the utilitarian morals of English philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who argue on the premise that judging an act as good or bad belongs to those who are the object of that act. That leads to morality of the weak, when initially it was the strong person who determined what was good. Nietzsche refers to the old chivalric morality that

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had great importance and selflessness. Nietzsche therefore distinguishes between an aristocratic and a popular or slavish morality. The people rebelled against the aristocrat through a subtle transformation of morality and moral terminology. They began to call an attitude of resignation and submission good while what was opposed, aristocratic morality, was called bad. That is what Nietzsche calls the reversal of morality.

Nietzsche did not write virtue ethics like Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas. Yet in his oeuvre he discusses many virtues such as generosity, compassion and diligence. Characteristic of Nietzsche’s view of morality, however, is his aversion to negative morality, a morality that prescribes what not to do. Nietzsche, on the other hand, promotes positive morality that prescribes doing good.

Because of the focus on the good, Nietzsche says, everything that does not belong to life automatically falls from man. The truly aristocratic man has respect for himself and for the strength within himself that manifests itself in his urges and needs and in the truths he projects on the world. Nietzsche sees violence as a virtue because struggle is an intrinsic part of nature.

Violence with an open mind, however, is above the underhand violence that, according to Nietzsche, enslaves and bridles man under the guise of compassion.

In his essay ‘Schopenhauer as an educator’ the third of his Untimely meditations, Nietzsche wrote: ‘No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is a path in the world that no one other than you can take. Where is it going? Don’t ask, walk it!’ Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) would later say, ‘To know what you are going to draw, you have to start drawing!’ That is the true art of living according to Nietzsche: living without security, without a safety net, but with greatness!

Nietzsche is probably the most misunderstood philosopher. After his death, his work and reputation fell into the hands of his racist and Nazi-minded sister Elizabeth, who used her brother’s work to proclaim her own ideas. Thus, Nietzsche, who hated German nationalism and had an aversion to anti-Semitism, was presented as a hero of National Socialism. A sad fate for the man who wrote: ‘Distrust persons with a strong penchant for punishment! In their face one sees the executioner and the bloodhound.’

Nietzsche still speaks in a way that many philosophers do not. This is partly because he is not a philosopher in the ordinary sense at all. He did not write coherent work and did not develop a system. He produced brilliant, surprising, but also disturbing concerns and observations. He also regularly revised his views so that his work is not free of contradiction. Like Spinoza, Nietzsche has also been a lasting source of inspiration for later philosophers, including Freud and the philosophers of existentialism.

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7.9 Existentialist art of living Existentialism was an influential philosophical movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the main representatives of which were Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986). Existentialism was a form of practical philosophy and an art of living, especially because of its chosen themes such as freedom, choice and responsibility. Sartre was one of the last philosophers in the humanist tradition.

One of the traditional themes in philosophy is the question of the essence of things and of man. In the tradition of Plato and of the Judeo-Christian thinkers, man was created by a maker who envisioned a model, a concept. After all, to make something you have to have a concept in mind.

Conversely, only things made by a maker can have an ‘essence’, namely the concept that the maker envisioned. The essence of man was his divine calling. According to Sartre, this essence simply does not exist. This follows from a simple logical reasoning. After all, it has been clear since Darwin (1859) that man was not ‘made’ by a maker, but originated from a blind evolutionary process. This process does not have a fixed concept or goal, but has the sole function of maintaining itself. Even survival and reproduction is not a goal but a logic. That is the ‘essence’ of every biological life. Animals have natural instincts that function as a kind of built-in essence, which have been selected by evolution and which determine their existence. Animals therefore always behave in the same way. But man has consciousness with which he transcends biological determination. Since human consciousness is not ‘made,’ there can be no such ‘essence.’ As a result, man has a great freedom, but also a crushing responsibility to shape his life. The famous saying is ‘existence precedes essence’. The essence of life is existence itself. There is no other essence to be ‘developed’ or ‘unfolded.’ Life is a project created by living it. Man comes unfinished and has to invent himself and decide according to which values he wants to live. He is responsible for the final result. He cannot fall back on his nature, nor on his ancestry. After all, he can distance himself from his upbringing and his past which he can criticize and leave behind. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) said: ‘I am not what happened to me, I am what I want to become.’

Existence precedes essence

Existentialist feminism, as described by de Beauvoir in ‘Le deuxième sexe’ (1949), is also an emancipation with regard to unnatural determinisms in a humanistic, egalitarian and universalistic perspective of human friendliness. Women are by nature physically destined to have children, and that certainly has physiological and psychological consequences, but that does not mean that they are ‘made’ to have children. Their situation is not a determination. They can transcend their situation of being a woman. Women can make a different choice.

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Just as existentialism turns against sexism, for the same reasons it also turns against any form of racism. After all, racism is based on the idea that people are carriers of the characteristics of a species, which therefore form a kind of ‘essence’. Racists assume that Jewish, African or Arabic people are only representatives of a group and have a common essence, as described by the French-Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961). But man has no essence and no race.

This existentialist anti-racism had a great influence in the second half of the twentieth century.

For similar reasons, Sartre also criticized psychoanalysis, stating that there is no essence of obsessional neuroses, melancholy, hysteria or psychoses. There are no basic psychic structures that determine people’s behaviour. As a result, he had a great influence on the anti-psychiatric movement in the 1960s.

In his main work ‘L’être et le néant’, (1943), Sartre developed an existentialist metaphysics. He distinguishes two ways of being: the mere being of things, being-in-itself (être en soi), and the special being of man, being-for-himself (être pour soi). Things are always what they are, they always coincide with themselves. However, man is never quite equal to himself. He is a project and always stands, as it were, next to himself. He can perceive himself and what can be perceived cannot be. Consciousness is the space between the ‘être en soi’ and the ‘être pour soi’. As stated above, consciousness, the ‘I’, is what remains when everything that is not ‘I’ is thought away.

When man becomes aware that every identity is an illusion, only the nothing remains. The search for ‘authenticity’ and for who one really is, can therefore be discontinued. This nothing, this indeterminacy is precisely humankind’s freedom, but also a person’s responsibility for the person they are. The fact that Jean Valjean was able to shake off his ‘identity’ as a criminal in ‘Les Misérables’ gave him the freedom to shape his life in a different way.

What can be perceived, one cannot be.

If there is no human nature, no essence of man, nor of woman, of Jew, of Arab or of psychiatric patient, if man is a priori determined by nothing and no identity, man is in fact ‘nothing’. As soon as one tries to define oneself one reduces oneself to a thing with fixed properties. That is what Sartre calls ‘la mauvaise foi’: ‘bad faith’, because man is not a thing. Yet people often rely on all kinds of determining ‘factors’ of a historical, familial, social or genetic nature to claim that they had no choice. They point to anything but their own responsibility. Bad faith is invoking a readymade determinism, an essence that would limit one’s own freedom. It is claimed that one has been caught in a deterministic essence or ‘identity.’ That makes man a machine, a thing. That is Reification, ‘chosification’. People (like the famous waiter in a cafe described by Sartre) can pretend to coincide completely with a certain social role, as an imagined essence. People can

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pretend they have no freedom. People can try to coincide their existence with an essence and ‘just be themselves’. After all, there is always the fear of freedom, responsibility, nothingness (le néant), or even disgust (la nausée). Society therefore offers numerous essences and tailor-made scripts. In addition to the racist and sexist essences already mentioned, science also mainly provides medical science - and the ‘experts’ from the world of care - in many essences, identities and diagnoses such as vulnerability, high sensitivity, depression, burn-out, borderline or bipolarity, as scores available to be performed, but also as many forms of improper existence. A good actor can play all roles and play them with dedication, but not identify with Othello or Macbeth.

Rousseau was already wondering how to grow older without identifying with a social role and thus falling into the trap of reduction and ‘mauvaise foi’. Must a person become ‘someone’ and does that mean becoming a manager, director, minister, engineer, lawyer, artist or writer?

Sartre therefore has no general view of man. According to Sartre, there is no such thing as ‘the’ meaning of life. After all, there is nothing where that meaning could come from. Every person has to give his or her concrete life a meaning. This places Sartre in the line of, for example, Pico de la Mirandola and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Existentialism is based on a self-design of existence. Who you are is not determined at birth. You make yourself who you are by the choices you make. So one can never say who or what one is, because the moment one says that, one is already someone else, namely one who believes that he is this or that. All that one can say about oneself is certainly not true, because all that one can say about oneself is a thought, and a person is not a thought.

Sartre also has a cognitive view of emotions. Emotions are the result of one’s own thinking, of one’s own assessment, appreciation or normative view of reality as desired or undesirable. The actual reality is what it is. It is not beautiful or ugly, not nice or boring, not good or evil. When man considers his subjective assessment of objective reality, he also feels an emotion. So man is also responsible for his emotional life. Your own thinking may be unconscious, but it is possible to become aware of it. Desirable or undesirable are not properties of reality but of the observer. The belief that emotions are caused by others or by circumstances is, according to Sartre, a form of magical thinking, which he later referred to as ‘bad faith.’

Existentialism is a liberating philosophy because it emphasizes freedom, unmasking the power of norms and obligations as excuses. But it is also a constraining philosophy because everyone is always responsible for their own choices and their consequences. There is no escaping it. After all, not even choosing is a choice. According to Sartre, man is therefore condemned to freedom.

Denying that freedom of choice is what Sartre calls ‘bad faith’ because it is precisely through this denial proves that people are aware of their choice. Only someone who is free can say that he is not free. Only someone who is aware of a choice can choose to say that he has no choice.

Someone who really doesn’t have a choice wouldn’t be able to deny it. Awareness of being always presupposes awareness of the possibility of ‘not-being.’ Sartre gives the example of someone who is absorbed in reading a book and is unaware of himself. But the moment he becomes aware that he is reading a book, he can also stop reading. He cannot say, ‘Sorry, I can’t do any shopping right

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now because I’m reading.’ He could say, ‘Sorry, I can’t do any shopping right now because I want to read further.’ Then he makes a choice. A person who becomes aware that he is smoking can also stop smoking. A person who becomes aware of his negative self-image can also stop putting himself down. One can also not do whatever one can do. It is possible to act in a kind of automatic, unconscious state, but in that state one cannot think of any excuses because to think of excuses consciousness is needed. Freedom is grounded in self-awareness. ‘Freedom,’ says Sartre, ‘is what we do with what is done to us.’

Whatever one can do, one can also not do.

Although existentialism is a philosophy of radical freedom, freedom is not absolute for Sartre either. After all, man always lives in a concrete situation about which he has no choice. One does not have the choice to be male or female, to have other parents or to be born in a different time.

Epictetus spoke of things that are in our power and things that are not in our power. What is in our power Sartre calls freedom, what is not in our power is the situation. Sartre therefore speaks of freedom in a situation. But being in a concrete situation is not the same as being determined. It is in the nature of big fishes to eat little fishes. Fish have no choice. They are determined. People can naturally have a similar tendency, but people can also behave differently. They are not determined. This is unprecedented in nature. As a result, human beings can also create a truly human world, with a legal order and a culture. A situation can therefore never be used as an excuse for a certain behaviour or attitude. Man is sentenced to choice. Even if we do what others expect of us, we do so by choice. Even those who ‘sacrifice’ or ‘self-efface’ do so freely. We also have a choice before a red traffic light! Even in prison there is still a choice! Even before a firing squad there is still a choice!

Existentialism originated in the smoky cafes and jazz cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Paris ‘rive gauche’. It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that the image of the life of existentialism resembles more a creative jam session than a strict and historically correct performance of the score of a classical work. There is no score for man, he has to create and improvise his (existential) music in every moment.

Obviously, the idea of freedom gives a pleasant feeling, did Spinoza not tell us that man is not free? On closer inspection, there are two different concepts: man does have a free choice, but that is not the same as a ‘free will’. As stated above, man is free to do what he wants, but he is not free to want what he wants, just as he is not free to have the thoughts or memories he wants. These are determined by the many previous choices that have made him who he is now. The unfairness lies in the fact that the choice made is determined by countless previous choices. But that, according to Spinoza, is precisely true freedom, because that choice does not arise from arbitrariness, but is necessary on the basis of the nature of who one is now. This is also true with

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our experience: we experience our freedom if we can do what we want at the moment, without anything or anyone being able to prevent it. We feel free if we can follow the course of study that we want and choose the partner we want. But that choice itself, being attracted by that study or by that partner, is not arbitrary but is determined by countless choices made previously. It is impossible to be aware of all the choices, experiences and influences that play a role in this. We cannot decide for ourselves what comes up, we can only wait and determine what comes to the surface.

Like Voltaire, Sartre was a ‘total intellectual’, the quintessentially French combination of philosopher, writer, playwright, journalist and social activist. He often intervened in public debate and, like many other intellectuals, regularly made unfortunate mistakes by joining politically with totally indefensible totalitarian movements, parties and regimes. Indeed, like many intellectuals in the twentieth century, he lived with an ethics of belief, which means that ethical principles are always more important than reality, rather than an ethics of responsibility, which takes into account both ethical principles and reality. Yet he remains one of the most emblematic French philosophers of the twentieth century.

We are not the product of events, we are the product of our choices and our response to events.

Existentialist thinking about freedom and responsibility was further taken up by contemporary philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt, Charles Taylor and Peter Bieri. The latter became known as the author of the bestseller ‘Night train to Lisbon’, which he wrote under the pseudonym Pascal Mercier. This philosophical novel illustrates the philosophical ideas about freedom that he discusses at length in his main work ‘Handwork of Freedom’. The subtitle of this work, ‘About the discovery of one’s own will’, clearly indicates what it is about. Freedom is not self-evident, but must be acquired by man through self-development and the extension of the inner space and scope. This requires continuous self-evaluation based on insight into the own emotional and behavioural patterns that were formed in the various existential contexts and situations of the past. It also requires a focus on the future based on values such as a moral compass. This requires a certain distance and investigation of the inner architecture of beliefs, wishes and desires. This is not an explanation based on scientific insights, but an understanding as one understands a poem or a symphony: by being receptive. It is not about science but about a hermeneutics of the self.

Language plays a major role in this because people cannot understand themselves other than by expressing themselves in a story in the most personal language possible. The ubiquitous media jargon is extremely damaging to one’s own personality and leads to a kitschy life. The research must be followed by a process of ordering, identifying and appropriating certain of those wishes.

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One makes the choice to respond to certain wishes and to reject others. In this way one becomes the actor of one’s own life. ‘Night train to Lisbon’ is about the possibility of making life your own.

Not knowing what one wants, being driven by the accidental internal patterns of prejudices, wishes and desires without insight, is a lack of freedom that can be the cause of an existential crisis. In the form of historical or contemporary public figures, novels or films, society offers countless references to models and examples of life, like the menu in a restaurant. But the menu is not a dish. Wishes are like playing with certain choices (‘I would like ...’) but are not yet a will. A will is a wish that leads to action. It is important to make an informed choice and to make it one’s own it. Peter Bieri points to the importance of the imagination as an essential element in moving from a wish to a will. To this end one has to imagine as concretely as possible what kind of life will result from a certain choice. Moreover, one has to imagine the concrete steps and also anticipate how one will deal with the options that have not been chosen. After all, one can always regret a choice one has made because one can easily imagine that another choice would have been better.

In this way one comes to a decision, which is the formation of a will based on consideration.

Freedom lies precisely in the fact that one could have decided something else.

Man can attain freedom by appropriating his will. If the will were a completely arbitrary phenomenon, man would not be free. The experience of freedom is precisely the experience of a will that is not attributed to oneself, but which appears to be foreign. One is free when one is enslaved by uncontrollable tendencies and impulses. In those cases, however, it is not the will that is weak, but the thinking and judging. The will itself is particularly strong and even dominant.

People can make great efforts to get what they want. Only in the way described above can one appropriate the thought and thereby also the will again. Will is free if it is controlled by one’s own thinking. Freedom is knowing why you do the things you do. However, that remains an ideal and a challenge.

After all, freedom is far from easy to bear. The story of the great inquisitor in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), which Freud called one of the greatest texts in world literature, is set in the time of the Inquisition. Christ has returned but is soon arrested and thrown into prison by the Inquisition. The Grand Inquisitor reproaches Christ for interfering with the work that the Church does in his name because he wants to give people a freedom that they do not want and cannot handle. ‘The first thing they do if you give them a little bit of freedom is to throw this freedom at our feet and ask us to take it over because they are afraid of it. [...] People want to be led like sheep. [. ..] Tomorrow I will have you burned at the stake and you will see that I only have to snap my fingers and the believers, who surrounded and worshiped you today, will drag the branches of bushes and light the fire under your feet.’ At the end of the speech, Christ rises and kisses the grand inquisitor without saying a word. The grand inquisitor opens the door of the prison and says in a trembling voice, ‘Go and never come back, never again!’ And Christ disappears into the night. The story is intriguing, fascinating and confusing. According to several authors, including the Norwegian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the original,

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liberating evangelical message of Christ has indeed been swept away in favour of the power of the institution under the influence of the institutionalized Church. According to Marcel Gauchet (b.

1946), Christianity is historically the religion of the end of religion. Frédéric Lenoir wrote: ‘The great turning point came when Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire.

From being persecuted because of their faith, they quickly became persecutors in the name of their faith. [. . .] While the institution of the Church nailed to the cross the teaching of Christ on human dignity and freedom of conscience through its inquisitorial practice, it returned through humanism. […] In other words, what I call the ‘philosophy of Christ’, the most basic ethical views, no longer bring people through the door of the church ... but through the window of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment! ... The message of Christ’s freedom was rejected by the Church, in the name of human weakness, for the purpose of establishing its power. [. . .] The Inquisition is the incredible perversion, in radical contradiction to the Gospel message and even utterly unimaginable in the heroic times of the Primitive Church, namely torturing and killing people for their own salvation, in the name of Christian charity. [. . .] The specific perversion of the Inquisition was torturing the body for the sake of the mind.’

7.10 The art of living of ‘the little prince’ It would be unforgivable to pass up on the beautiful and timeless novella Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) from 1943, in which, in a tale apparently intended for children, much wisdom about life is explained in a simple but penetrating way. Le Petit Prince has therefore been presented alternately as a story for children, a fantasy or a philosophical story. At least for Martin Heidegger it is one of the greatest works of literature of the twentieth century. It shows that the art of living is not a difficult or unattainable art.

The story is about a pilot who ends up in the desert because of engine trouble when he meets the Little Prince. In reality, it is about going back to childhood to discover that which is essential, which is invisible to the eyes and which can only be seen with the heart, that is, with intelligence illuminated by love. The Little Prince has travelled around six planets. Reminiscent of the six days of creation, the planetary Odyssey shows the Little Prince discovering what prevents people from being together and giving meaning to life. The inhabitants of the six planets are trapped in a Plato’s cave. People each live on their own planet, separated from others by sterile, rational, utilitarian ideas, beliefs and certainties. To be credible, one must adhere to the standards (the Turkish astronomer). Grown-ups love abstractions, numbers, concepts (science), substitutes that deny the richness of living reality. They do not know the essential realities. One must step outside oneself and one’s self-centeredness, leave one’s own planet to discover what can fulfil and give meaning to life. The seventh day is the day of arrival on earth.

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The pilot describes his life: ‘This is how I lived alone, without anyone to ‘really’ talk to, until my plane broke down in the desert six years ago’ ... and the meeting with the Little Prince. The breakdown is the event that shakes him awake from his habits. Adults are lonely. They don’t have anyone to ‘really’ talk to. They forget reality through their rational and self-centred ideas, which cause disasters! By drawing a sheep, the pilot and the Little Prince can ‘really’ start talking.

The desert is a symbol of loneliness, meditation, meeting oneself and one’s own child before it was formatted as an adult. The journey is the discovery of the absurd world of adults: abstractions, speed, alienation, power, bureaucracy, technology, machines. Like Descartes, one has to set everything back up and start again. Relieved of the knowledge and ideas of the adult, of rationality without love, things can be seen again.

The problem is the failure of communication, the problem of language: the incomprehension between the adult and the child, between the world of poetry, beauty, wonder, enchantment and the world of criticism, failures, compromises, mediocrity; the world of logic, the intelligence without love, illusions, ideas (knowledge, power, possession) instead of ‘authenticity’, explanations (science, logic) instead of understanding (essential truths, myths). The Little Prince says, ‘Grown-ups never understand anything,’ they see a hat instead of an elephant in a boa constrictor, they see matter and not spirit.

The pilot says, ‘It took me a long time to understand where he came from’. Because the Little Prince often doesn’t answer. The transition from the adult rational logic to the logic of the child can only take place by asking the right questions and discovering the state of ‘innocence’ in order to understand ‘real’ again. Enlightened by his dialogue with the child, the pilot can finally give meaning to his life again.

Only love provides a window for understanding others. Creating ties gives meaning to existence.

There are many reasons for love’s failure. Love is not about needs, but about the desire to discover connection. In Chapter 21, the Little Prince learns what it means to create connection.

And then the fox appeared.

‘Good morning,’ said the fox.

‘Good morning,’ said the Little Prince politely, turning around but seeing nothing.

‘Here I am, under the apple tree,’ said the voice.

‘Who are you?’ Asked the prince. ‘You are beautiful.’

‘I am a fox,’ said the fox.

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‘Come play with me,’ suggested the prince; ‘I’m so sad’.

‘I can’t play with you,’ said the fox. ‘I’m not tame.’

‘Oh, pardon,’ said the Little Prince. But on reflection he asked. ‘What is this tame’?

‘You’re not from this neighbourhood’ said the fox. What are you looking for here?’

‘I’m looking for people,’ said the prince. ‘What does ‘tame’ mean?

‘The people,’ said the fox, ‘have guns and they hunt. It is very disturbing! They also keep chickens. That is their only use. Looking for chickens?’

‘No,’ said the prince. ‘I’m looking for friends. What does ‘tame’ mean?

‘That’s all too often a forgotten word,’ said the fox. ‘It means’ connected’ ‘Connected?...’

‘Yes,’ said the fox. ‘You are only a little boy to me like all other little boys. And I don’t need you. I am a fox to you like all other foxes. But if you make me tame, we’ll need each other. Then you are the only one in the world for me and I am the only one in the world for you ...’

‘I’m starting to understand,’ said the Little Prince. ‘There is a flower. . . which I believe has made me tame.’

‘That is quite possible,’ said the fox. ‘You can see all sorts on earth.

‘Oh, but this is not on Earth.’

The fox looked very curious: ‘On another planet?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Are there hunters on that planet too?’

‘No.’ ‘That is amazing! And chickens?

‘No’.

‘Nothing is perfect’, sighed the fox.

But the fox continued to explain: ‘My life is very monotonous,’ the fox said. ‘I hunt chickens; men hunt

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me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored.

But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .

The fox became still and looked at the prince for a long time: ‘Please. . . do you want to tame me? ‘said he.

‘Yes, I want to,’ replied the Little Prince, ‘but I don’t have much time. I have to discover friends and get to know all kinds of things.’

‘You only get to know the things you tame,’ said the fox. ‘People no longer have time to get to know anything. They buy things ready in stores. But because there are no shops that sell friends, people no longer have friends. If you want a friend, make me tame!’

‘What do I have to do?’ asked the prince.

‘You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me -like that in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .’

The next day the prince came back. ‘You should have come at the same time,’ said the fox. ‘For example, if you come at four in the afternoon, I will start to be happy at three. The later it gets, the happier I feel.

And at four o’clock I will already be jumping about; this is how I will get to know the value of happiness!

But if you come at any time, I’ll never know how to prepare my heart ... There must be rites.’

‘What is a rite? said the Little Prince.

‘That’s also a forgotten concept,’ said the fox. ‘A rite makes one day different from every other day, one hour from every other hour. For example, my hunters have a rite. On Thursday they dance with the girls from the village. Thursday is a wonderful day! Then I can go to the vineyards. If the hunters danced on random days, all days would be equal and I would never have time off.’

So the Little Prince made the fox tame and the hour of departure came near.

‘Ah,’ said the fox ... ‘I’ll cry.’

‘It is your own fault, ‘said the Little Prince,’ I wished you no ill but you wanted me to tame you’ ‘True said the fox.

‘And now you have to cry,’ said the Little Prince.

‘True,’ said the fox.

‘So you won’t gain anything by it’ ‘I do gain something,’ said the fox, ‘because of the colour of the cornfield.’ And he continued, ‘Go to the roses again. Then you will understand that your rose is unique in the world. Then come and say goodbye to me, and I’ll tell you a secret.’

The Little Prince went back to looking at the roses: ‘You don’t look like my rose at all, you are nothing yet,’ he said. ‘Nobody has made him tame and you have not tamed anyone. You are just like my fox was.

He was just a fox like any other. But I made him a friend and now he is the only one in the world.’

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And the rose became very shy.

‘You are beautiful, but you are empty,’ he said. ‘No one can die for you. Of course, a random passer-by wouldn’t see a difference between my own rose and you. Yet she, alone, is far more important than all of you, because I have given her water, and put it under a bell jar; because I sheltered her with a folding screen and killed the caterpillars for her (except a few here and there, for the butterflies); because I hear complaints and hear sniffing and even heard her silence; because she’s my rose.’

And he went back to the fox: ‘Goodbye,’ he said...

‘Goodbye,’ said the fox. ‘This is my secret, it is very simple: only with the heart can one see well. The essential is invisible to the eyes.’

‘The essential is invisible to the eyes,’ repeated the Little Prince, to remember it well.

‘All the time you’ve spent on your rose makes your rose so important.’

‘The time I spent on my rose ...’ said the Little Prince, to remember it well.

‘That’s a truth people have forgotten,’ said the fox. ‘But don’t forget it. You always remain responsible for what you made tame. You are responsible for your rose. . .’

‘I am responsible for my rose,’ said the Little Prince, to remember it well.

7.11 Robert Nozick and the experience machine In his book ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’, the American philosopher Robert Nozick (1938-2002) describes the thought experiment of an experience machine capable of generating all the pleasurable experiences ever discovered. The machine can be set up in such a way that the user can experience any desired pleasure experience. In addition, he can get out of the machine at any time and change the programming: ‘Suppose there was a machine that gave you every experience you could wish for. Super neuropsychologists might stimulate your brain to think and feel that you are writing a superior novel, or getting to know an incredibly interesting person, finding the boyfriend or girlfriend of your life, or reading a fascinating book. But in fact you would be floating in a tank all the time with electrodes

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attached to your brain. Well, what do you think: would you like to be put in this machine, spend your life in it, with the ability to program all your desires and their satisfaction? Remember that while you stay in the tank, you don’t know you’re in it, but you will believe that what you are experiencing is real. It will be as if everything is really happening. Would you like that? What could be holding us back, what could matter other than the way it feels from the inside, this life of ours?’

Indeed: doesn’t everyone wants to feel good? We want to have fun, seek enjoyment and pleasant experiences and try to avoid painful experiences. When we define the purpose of our life as the attainment of happiness, we define that happiness spontaneously in terms of subjective sensations and experiences. It is not about objective elements, not even about power or money.

These are things that only have value insofar as they have subjective value to us.

The experience machine can create any desired culinary, physical, emotional, erotic, artistic, religious or spiritual experience. It can provide the user with all the experiences that people have ever had or even imagined. It can even generate experiences that no one has yet been able to have and that we could never have invented ourselves. The experience machine is a completely man-made world that is fully equipped to generate pleasure and enjoyment. The machine might make you feel that you are experiencing real feelings, such as intense joy or infatuation, but in reality that feeling would be caused by the machine’s electrical stimuli to the human brain that is inside it. Every ‘natural’ feeling is missing in this world.

The experience machine is a thought experiment intended to undermine an idea of happiness presented by philosophers such as Epicurus and John Stuart Mill. These thinkers assumed that happiness consists only of pleasant experiences (pleasure, enjoyment) and the absence of unpleasant experiences (sadness, pain). Those who believe this will immediately opt for a life in the experience machine. After all, if the experience machine brings you into a continuous state of well-being, there is nothing more to be desired. Moreover, you do not even have to be in it permanently, you can choose to stay there only for a few hours.

Nozick, however, gives a number of reasons why people would not want to be in the machine.

First, people want to achieve real goals and real results. Not only do we want to feel really good, we want to feel good about something real. The mere pleasant feeling is not enough for that.

After all, that feeling would disappear as soon as it was discovered that the feeling was only generated by a machine and not by actual results. This is also the problem with the use of various stimulants and fun activities (see ‘Addiction behaviour’). People really want to mean something and are happy for the right reasons. They don’t want to be an ‘indeterminate blob’ as Nozick writes. Getting into the machine is almost a form of existential suicide. People really want to have contact with reality.

According to Nozick, a philosophy that equates happiness with pleasure is untenable. Happiness cannot be programmed and we cannot consciously strive for it. Happiness is a by-product, a side effect of our activities and our goals. People want to experiment with life, gain new experiences and develop their potential, even with all the associated frustrations. The experience machine

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resembles Plato’s cave. In the machine people experience the illusion of happiness but not the experience of real happiness. According to Plato, a person can only become happy when he manages to free himself from the false shadows in the cave and sees the universal forms of truth, justice and beauty. You cannot do that in the experience machine, even if you program them in such a way that you experience the experiences of someone who sees Plato’s universal ideas.

Therefore, a person in the machine experiences a form of illusion. Nobody wants to fool themselves like that.

But maybe we should think again. After all, spending a few hours in the machine would be more like a visit to the cinema or an evening of watching television. If we didn’t want to be in the machine, why would we want to watch movies or read books where, ultimately, we allow ourselves to live out the experiences and fantasies of others? In addition, the machine may be as addictive as cocaine or heroin. It may well be that everyday (real) experiences lose their meaning due to what can be experienced in the machine. Perhaps one realizes that in real life one is an ‘indeterminate blob’ that experiences nothing worthwhile at all. Indeed, many human activities seem to be an attempt to create an experience machine, i.e. an environment in which people feel ‘happy’ through artificially generated feelings: reading poetry, listening to music, watching works of art or movies, watching television or visiting amusement parks, saunas or wellness institutions.

By and large we transform our lives and our society into an experience machine that generates as many happiness experiences as possible. We pay a lot of money for holidays in countries whose residents are blind to the sights, as we ourselves do not see the sights in our own country.

Chinese poet and philosopher Zhuang Zhou (369-286 BC) once dreamed that he was a butterfly that fluttered blissfully and did not know he was Zhou. When he woke up, he didn’t know if it was Zhou who dreamed he was a butterfly or if the butterfly dreamed he was Zhou.

7.12 The neoliberal happiness machine Neo-liberal society is a form of the (sick) consumer society described above by Socrates, in which everyone tries to acquire for himself as much as possible. The basis of such a society is the stateguaranteed right to property. The philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) devoted remarkable pages to this in his book ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ (1884). Property law was a principle in agricultural communities that allowed the transfer of property, herds and equipment to their own offspring. In order to ensure that it was really their own children, methods were devised in various cultures to force women to chastity. Consequently, for Engels, patriarchy is linked to the development of the property system and ultimately of the capitalist economy. The state increasingly became the guardian of this capitalist paradigm, with the family as the cornerstone. This is how the typical double male morality arose, where it was not tolerated for a woman to have relationships with other men, while the man did not have to take this too

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seriously. Incidentally, the acquisition of wealth is also a way for men to increase their prestige with females: the more possessions, cows and pigs, the more status and the more partners.

In his book ‘Borderline Times’, Belgian psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter describes the metaphor of society as a happiness machine in the form of a fast and luxurious cruise ship, a speedboat. The lucky and elect in society travel in the speedboat, while the less fortunate fall out and have to be taken in by psychiatrists and therapists who struggle with all their might in lifeboats around the world to pick up the shipwrecked people of civilization and to keep up with the luxury ship.

Late industrial society is indeed characterized by, on the one hand, a (western) commercial entertainment culture aimed at excessive consumption, luxury and quick satisfaction, and on the other hand a large part of the world with extreme poverty, violence, terror, economic slavery and inhuman living conditions. Both in the rich countries themselves and on a global scale, the world seems to be mentally still in the feudal period before the French Revolution, with a small upper class with numerous legally protected privileges on the one hand, and a broad underclass in pitiful poverty on the other hand. Although the rhetoric of getting rich by ‘hard work’ is often used, this idea is simply misleading and unfair. After all, if wealth were the result of ‘hard work’, it would mean that poverty would result from a lack of ‘hard work’. That is without a doubt an insult to the many who also ‘work hard’ (or would like to if they had the opportunity), but who have not been given the opportunity to ‘earn’ so much money due to birth and social circumstances. There is no way in which certain ‘wages’, bonuses and fortunes could be ‘fairly earned’ in a society where so many others are left to live in miserable conditions. Those who really want to get rich would do well to be born in the right place or possibly choose a partner from the right family. The Ancien Regime from before the French Revolution is not yet gone. . .

In late modern times, many people have lost their belief both in a saving religion and in a liberating science and many are looking elsewhere for existential fulfilment and meaning of life.

The absence of a meaningful vision of life leads to an existential and spiritual emptiness and hunger. With that nihilistic and often cynical mindset, the experience of happiness is simply impossible. Many people feel that they are missing something, that they are ‘lost’ and don’t even know what it could be. They think (or are told from a medical perspective) that they suffer from depression or a burnout that requires ‘treatment’. Incidentally, the ‘treatments’ proposed, usually pharmacological, may influence the feeling or behaviour, but do not result in more wisdom or fulfilment. They therefore do not lead to a noticeable increase in the art of living or happiness, so ‘relapse’ is almost inevitable.

Not being able to recognize and interpret this emptiness and this hunger often leads to a strategy of the kick, i.e. an individualistic culture of pleasure, a search for pleasure instead of happiness.

This is reflected in the pursuit of more and more exciting and strong personal sensations and emotions under the motto of ‘self-care’, ‘self-development’, ‘self-expression’ or ‘working on yourself’, and to the imitation of, and addiction to, the mundane leisure time, superficial pleasures and banal (physical or emotional) frivolities as a substitute for deeper happiness that are

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advertised in glossy lifestyle magazines. We have become addicted to luxury and comfort. We have become consumption and entertainment junkies. We have lost our free spirit and control over ourselves. The consumer society gobbles everyone up. We try to be ourselves by resembling others as best we can. Where people used to hide in the herd, the herd now hides in ourselves.

We try to live our own lives by imitating others. Time and time again, the illusion is created that we are only one purchase away from the life we really want. We believe in the next purchase as we believe in the next Prime Minister, the next relationship or the next ‘last’ cigarette. Ernest Hemingway called this hedonistic trap of luxury, fashion and frivolity the ‘festival theory of life’, a superficial and meaningless feel-good and fast-happiness culture as the psychic equivalent of western fast food culture. Such a futile life cannot provide an experience of fulfilment and happiness. After all, nothing is as boring and mind-numbing as long-term fulfilment of all wishes and whims. That can only lead to a life full of disappointments. This should not come as a surprise, of course, in a society where youth and brashness are encouraged to be ‘spontaneous’ and are more highly regarded than adulthood and wisdom, where young people at eighteen are entitled to vote and the elderly hardly count. The purpose of life is to grow up and later even to grow old. A seed is intended to become a tree and bear fruit, never the other way around. Gérard Bodifée wrote that for people whose ideal is to be young, the ideal lies in the past.

In the past people hid in the herd, now the herd hides in ourselves.

Few people will want to lie passively in a happiness machine. Our brain seems to be designed to come up with answers to survival problems and seems to find it difficult to cope with in a state of continuous satisfaction. Facing too few problems and challenges leads to a state of bore-out and to the unpleasantness, disinterest, capriciousness and obstinacy of spoiled children with too many choices and too little sense of direction. If there are no problems, the brain seems to feel uncomfortable and apparently thinks a problem has been overlooked. It therefore looks for possible ‘problems’. They can always be found. To ‘feel alive’, young people in particular often resort to increasingly extreme forms of ‘entertainment’, which often lead to misconduct and even delinquency.

Society’s message about how to live a happy life almost never turns out to be true. Our schools and universities have become diploma factories, offering the prospect of a job where one can earn money to consume, but where one does not learn to become a worthy, fulfilled, and happy person. All too often, belief is attached to the myth that those who have ‘made it’ in society and can ride the speedboat are also happy and whoever falls out of the boat is unhappy and needs help. That may be incorrect. After all, being happy is not the same thing as getting lucky. Just as junk food looks like real food, but it doesn’t give us what we really need, namely nutritional value,

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so property and success look like real food for the soul, but they don’t give us what we need: a satisfying life. Unfortunately, a vision of life that makes it possible to choose happiness even if life does not smile on one and one is not so lucky, is too seldom taught systematically in today’s society. It is not enough thought of, thought about and or thought through.

Children and young people, of course with the best of intentions, are still trained and conditioned in a culture of the gift, a logic of rewards that suggests that happiness must come from the outside and, conversely, that accidents are due to the outside world. So they learn to look outside and learn almost nothing about the internal logic, the architecture and the dynamics of happiness and misfortune. Immediate pleasure does not usually lead to long-term happiness. Long-term happiness will often require short-term difficulties to be taken for granted. Most of us must therefore gather together the necessary wisdom of life through pain and shame. As mentioned above, culture is a cumulative process of building on the achievements of previous generations, but in terms of the art of living and happiness, it is as if each of us has to reinvent the wheel for ourselves, simply because we have not been told that it has already been invented.

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8. Nourishment for the soul Nor should one try to heal the eyes without the head or the head without the body, nor should one try to heal the body without the soul.

SOCRATES The beauty of things lives in the soul of those who behold them.

DAVID HUME Nowhere can a man withdraw more quietly and without disturbance than in his own soul.

MARCUS AURELIUS

Spirituality is the investigation and experience of the life of the mind. Man is free to eat whatever he wants, but he is not free from the effects of what he eats on his body. This also applies to the nourishment of the spirit: man is free to think and believe what he wants, but he is not free from the consequences for his spiritual life. What one puts in one’s mouth becomes one’s future body.

What one puts in the mind becomes one’s future soul.

8.1 Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the other The Lithuanian-French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), who survived the Nazi camps, has been called the philosopher of compassion. He asked himself how it is possible that in the place where Bach, Nietzsche, Goethe, Schiller, Liszt and others lived and worked, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and later also Jews were arrested. What can we do about this Western totalitarian thinking, where apparently there is only room for the self? How can one culture allocate so little space to another? Man naturally strives for self-preservation and selfrealization, but according to Levinas it is the vocation of man to go against his nature and in the first place to be addressed by the other. The other man shows himself pre-eminently in and through his face.

In his main work ‘emerald ocean 19032021-’, Levinas states that accommodating the other is essential to the self. The investigation of that process has not yet been completed in the West. The impasse of the West is that it gives no place to the other and yet pretends to be able to grasp ‘the

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whole’. That is the basis of the violence of colonization, of war and of Stalinism. It is the western desire for a totalitarian system based on the belief in a certain kind of autonomy, freedom and malleability and the rejection of the alterity, the ‘other’. Man has to survive in the chaotic reality that threatens to devour him and he is engaged in a struggle for life against others. That is the first identity, the first subject. The autonomous self affirms itself to the others. It appropriates everything (mine, mine ...). It tries, through knowledge and skills, to transform and instrumentalize the other in order to survive and make life habitable. To this end, I try to define the other, to reduce him to his characteristics, because of our totalitarian idea that we can totally know the other. This is totalitarian, reducing man to an understandable and manageable system. This is deadly for the other who is always unknowable in his otherness, in his alterity. This is the ‘infinite’ of the other. This is exactly why Sartre says, ‘L’enfer, c’est les autres’. The others who with their gaze and their judgment reduce and petrify me to a fixed identity (Jew, Arab, narcissist, manipulator, psychopath...).

A person’s autonomy, however, is invaded unsolicited by the other, especially by the face of the other. According to Levinas, man indeed has a fundamental sensitivity to the other. His self turns out to be frail and is powerless as he is questioned by the other, even if the other did not want to.

Man is asked a question, making him responsible, and he has to give an answer. This causes a crisis in his existence. Levinas essentially has a religious attitude: the other who is calling me is God who is calling me. Not the God of Jacob and Abraham but the God of Spinoza. Many people experience their faith as a personal relationship with God to whom they can turn to meet their needs and transcend their shortcomings. Levinas has a radically different image of God. According to him, a direct relationship with God is not possible, God can only be reached through fellow men. What we do for the sick, the poor, the ragged, we do for God. There is no world outside of this world.

Transcendence is right in front of me!

But also Levinas cannot ignore the fact that man is violent by nature, or rather that violence is part of his nature. Hobbes’s vision was: man is a wolf towards the other. For Hobbes, the state or the law must curb and channel violence. For Levinas, this is one’s own responsibility. Yet this remains a fairly pessimistic view of man.

In his second main work, ‘Autrement qu’être’, Levinas states that the ‘infini’ is already present in us. We also never coincide with our characteristics (our appearance, our language, our beliefs ...).

We also don’t know ourselves, we are the ‘infinite’ ourselves. The human being is more than an urge to survive. Man does not choose himself. He discovers himself in his ability to be touched by the other. There is, according to Levinas, ‘a goodness that precedes every choice.’ A human is more than a fighter. Man is, so to speak, pregnant with the other. This is the feminine in man, in contrast to the virile quality of self-affirmation. The ability to be touched is not a personal choice, it exists before the self. The opportunity for response, for responsibility is already present. There is a natural goodness, but it is not a necessity. We were created as each other’s guardian, but that is not what we do automatically. We can also be a wolf.

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Despite the violence that Levinas knew in his life, he never developed a philosophy of hatred. He opposes any form of revenge but is in favour of justice. He remains in a logic, an eschatology, of peace. He retains his dignity as a human being and can even show compassion for the executioner.

He states that person is responsible for taking responsibility for the other. After all, if one says nothing, nothing will change. I can only do what I am capable of now and what I am invited to do.

Rwanda, Congo, Auschwitz, Iraq, Syria… are our business. Everyone has their role to play, wherever they are.

Levinas based his philosophy on a human experience: being affected, being touched by another person. According to Levinas, the other disturbs us in our complacency. A child who comes into the world (unconsciously) assumes that the whole world is there exclusively for him or her. It is only when the child encounters the absence or refusal of the other that it gradually begins to understand that other people are not always there to serve it. The other disturbs our complacency through his presence.

To be disturbed by the presence of the other is the origin of Levinas’ philosophical reflection and, by extension, of science. Heidegger had already argued that philosophy, the search for truth, does not start with wonder at the world, as Aristotle had thought. Humans are initially agentic beings who only start thinking when they are disturbed. The wonder comes when we are disturbed in our dealings with the world because something does not meet our wishes and therefore creates a problem. Man (Dasein) is in the world and is not opposed to it as a spectator separated from it.

The contemplative attitude only arises when things no longer work by themselves. To quote Heidegger’s own example: normally you use a hammer to punch a nail into the wall. Only when the hammer breaks do you really start looking at it. The hammer is normally ready-to-hand, only when something goes wrong does it become present-at-hand and changes from a utensil to an object of interest. The relationship of knowledge is therefore not that which humans naturally assume.

Levinas stated that it is mainly the other who disturbs us. The other disturbs us by appealing to our humanity and our help. But by doing this he forces us to think, to wake up, and makes us into a conscious person. Rather, this awakening, which in Christian mythology was seen as the eviction from paradise, amounts to an ascension from the unconscious state of the animal to the conscious state of man. Man is not expelled from the paradisiacal existence by God, but by fellow man. But that makes him a conscious person.

The existence and the questioning of the other happen to us and even ambush us. Levinas argues that the other, through his mere existence, calls us to contribute to his life and thus to his happiness. We experience this as a compelling call that we cannot deny or evade. An adult cannot remain indifferent or be completely happy when he knows that the other is suffering, just as we cannot pass a beggar completely without a care. The other touches us and it is often to our dismay that we wish the other had not disturbed us by his presence. This is aptly described in Albert Camus‘ novel ‘la Chute’, in which the main character, Jean Baptist, tells how the fact that years

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ago he did not help a young woman who jumped from a bridge in the Seine has haunted him all his life and has put a damper on his life.

But if it is true that being disturbed by the other makes us more human, then the reverse can also be said: that removing any disturbance makes it more difficult for us to become human. This may explain why the current culture of indulgence, with the cultivation of victim thinking and the ongoing demand for care and support, is the cause of the immaturity, the so-called ‘vulnerability’ and the low frustration threshold that is noted by many sociologists and therapists. One does not become a great sailor in calm waters, and the current consumption happiness is extremely fragile and vulnerable. In the speedboat society, people must constantly regain their balance and the slightest misstep can be fatal.

8.2 Viktor Frankl and resilience Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), who, like his contemporary Emmanuel Levinas, survived the concentration camps, based his whole philosophical and therapeutic approach, logotherapy, on the insight that people can handle almost anything as long as they see a sense in life, as long as their soul, their highest dimension, is nourished. A meaning provides resilience and mobilizes energy.

Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy is based on the principle that there is always a perspective, a way of looking, which makes the concrete situation a meaningful experience. Everyone lives in a world in which countless incidents and events occur. Those are the things that happen to us, that we suffer because we simply have not chosen them. This applies to many circumstances: the parents we were born to, the upbringing we received, the people we meet, and countless other circumstances. Everyday events occur that we have not chosen: people can be unkind or even spiteful, we can lose property, we can be fired, relationships can end, we can get sick, people can die, and we can end up in circumstances we absolutely did not want. The question always arises: ‘Why did this have to happen to me?’ For Viktor Frankl, on the other hand, these are ‘the questions that life asks us.’

After all, people not only undergoe, they also undertake. People are not stones that float through the universe and undergo purely passive forces, nor are they animals that merely ‘react’ to the environment. They are entrepreneurs. They have an awareness that allow them to make choices that lead to action. They act. Instead of asking the question, ‘Why should that happen to me?’

They can ask the question, ‘What is life teaching me here?’ This does not require any special strength, but it does require a special wisdom and attitude.

This is why resilience is essentially an attitude of learning and, even more so, an art of learning: the art of learning something in any circumstance and thus becoming a bigger person. This art is

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based on an attitude, a conviction, a belief in life. Nietzsche said, ‘Whoever knows what he lives for, can live with anything.’ Thus was Nelson Mandela able to accept and survive his unenviable situation. In this way does a person become a centre of personal freedom from which action proceeds. A person does not ‘react’ but ‘responds’ to the questions that life poses, based on beliefs and the values she wants to realize in life. These are the things that happen, thanks to us.

Sartre said, ‘Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.’ This experience of freedom and empowerment and the awareness of realizing important and meaningful values nourish the soul.

Man always has the choice to do the right thing. At any time, even in difficult circumstances, there is something of value that can and should be done. This statement by Viktor Frankl is a starting point for ethics and moral education. It forms the basis for adult happiness and also includes a moral mission with a social interest because the prevention of problem behaviours such as depression, burnout, suicide, drug use and other addictions, self-mutilation, etc. can only consist of creating a happier society. The answer to the question: ‘Why do people do this?’ becomes clear when the question is formulated in reverse: ‘Would happy people do this?’

A religious belief has traditionally been an important framework for meaning and a model of resilience. Christ was the ultimate example of resilience with the resurrection, and religious martyrs accepted their fate. Religion gave a view of reality that made it possible to accept it because everything had a meaning. Religion is a form of spirituality that tells us that everything has a meaning and that what we do always makes sense because there is a god who makes it meaningful. This makes it possible to accept difficult and incomprehensible circumstances.

Whoever believes in a god says humbly and confidently, ‘I don’t understand, but God’s ways are inscrutable and my God is infinitely good.’ When a child dies, they say, ‘God called the child to him.’ This makes the grief tolerable. As depression is the absence of meaning, so it is clear that a truly spiritual or religious person cannot be depressed.

Modern man, who no longer believes in a religious narrative, has also lost that comforting and meaningful framework. Life seems to have become meaningless and for those who cannot see any meaning, depression threatens. Viktor Frankl’s approach is aimed at developing a meaningful attitude in life without appealing to a transcendent God; in God’s place, he puts concrete life in all its forms, both the life of the individual and the greater life of which we are all part. So this is not the god of Abraham and Jacob, but the god of Spinoza and Einstein. After all, Spinoza (see above) also has faith, but faith in the reasonableness of the universe in which what has to happen happens because the necessary conditions under which it happens are met.

For those who believe in an idea of God, doing good means contributing to the work of God, to the order that has its origin in God. For those who don’t believe in a god, it doesn’t have to be fundamentally different. After all, doing good can then mean contributing to the order of life as a cosmic process. According to Viktor Frankl, we make a meaningful contribution to life if what happens thanks to us is greater and better than what happened to us. Then we have added something good to life, to the world and to the big picture. Then we leave the world a little better

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than we found it: in Eastern thinking we have then produced good karma. Lao-Tze said, ‘Treat good people well. Treat not-good people well also. That is how the good comes about.’ In Christian thinking we have then put our talents to good use. Buddha and Christ are basically saying the same thing: it is not enough to hide the talents one has been given to keep them safe, we have to use and grow them.

You are doing the right thing because that is what you want to do, not for someone in particular or because this or that person has ‘earned’ it or not, but because that is who you want to be. Just as the sun ‘gives’ its warmth, because that is the expression of what it is. Like a flower ‘gives’ its beauty, without wondering whether this passer-by deserves it. Just as the Mona Lisa ‘gives’ herself to every passer-by.

What we achieve is less important than who we have become by tackling the obstacles to achieving that goal.

8.3 The good as an art of living This leads to a special life ethic. After all, in everything we intend to do, we can ask ourselves: ‘Will I add something good to the big picture by doing this? Will I contribute to the great scheme of life?

Will anyone get better because of what I will do? Will anyone become a better or a bigger person as a result? Will I become a better person myself so that I can contribute more to others? Will I increase my understanding of the world? Will I contribute to the organization of society? Will I

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lead other people to live a more meaningful life? Will I help create a better future? Will I create enthusiasm and love around me? Do I understand that optimism is a moral task? One could think about judge number eight in Twelve Angry Men, who goes against the eleven others, or about the minority of participants in the famous Milgram experiments, who refused to give the subjects a dangerous shock despite pressure from the researcher. An adult life with adult happiness is an ethical life.

Treat good people well.

Treat bad people well too.

That is how the good comes about.

LAO-TZE

Optimism, enthusiasm and love are not the result of a good life. On the contrary, life becomes good if these values are taken as the starting point, despite what others or life do to us. What we do is important. We should always be as good as we can, because we never know who is looking at us and what conclusions that person will draw. This is especially true for young people who always look to their parents. Do I feed their thinking with inspiring images for the future and do I contribute to reducing depression and suicide? Do I realize that the future is always listening in?

What you are is a gift from life.

What you do with what you are is your gift to life.

Conversely, we must also ask ourselves what the possible damage is of what we make happen.

Does my behaviour destroy life? Do I cause harm to others through my behaviour? To myself? To the earth? To the big picture? There is of course nothing wrong with fun and entertainment of itself. But it takes on a bitter aftertaste when we know that others are suffering all the while.

Would we be able to be carefree and have fun if one of our parents, one of our children or a brother or sister was suffering, even if they lived in a distant country? If hedonism and ‘enjoyment’ mean that we have cheap consumption and entertainment available at the expense of others, possibly in other countries of the world, or at the expense of depleting the irreplaceable natural resources of the earth, then is what we make happen better than what happens to us? for in this case we create negative karma.

One of the important forms of ethical conduct is to forgive. In what other people do to us, they show us who they are. In our response to what others do to us, we show who we are. By forgiving we show our emotional and intellectual maturity and independence. Regardless of what others have done to us, we can perform an act of freedom by refusing to live in dependence on them.

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Forgiveness is showing both the other and oneself that one has become a bigger person. It is an ultimate expression of freedom by refusing to lower oneself to anger or aggression. Nonforgiveness shows that one is ultimately no higher than the other. If one needs the other to suffer (to be punished) in order to live on, then one is no bigger than the other. Then one also gives power to the other and loses twice: first by the event itself and a second time by the hatred and negativity that persists in one’s own consciousness. As long as one does not forgive, one relinquishes control over one’s own life and remains hostage to the other and to the event.

Forgiveness is refusing to give even more power to the other person or the past. It is refusing to be a victim any longer. To forgive is to get on with life and to give oneself a present and a future of quality.

Forgiveness is freeing the prisoner in your heart and then discovering that you yourself were the real prisoner.

TOPE POPOOLA

If we repay the evil and suffering inflicted on us with anger and with equal suffering (the ‘deserved’ punishment), then no good will come about. Gandhi said, ‘If we repay an eye with an eye, in the end everyone will be blind.’

But if we respond to the suffering inflicted on us with dignity and compassion, what happens through us is better and greater than what has happened to us. Then we are greater than what has been done to us and we have used our human ability to add something good to life. Then we transcend the fear of being ‘hurt’ and suffering, and we can live in peace with ourselves. Then we ourselves have grown, regardless of what others do or think. In the spirit of Spinoza we can say: then our life force has increased. That is nourishment for the soul by realizing the possibility of doing good. Therefore, forgiveness is not only morally good, but is also healing for one’s own suffering and thus for the suffering of people around us.

When we hate someone, we hate something in our image of them that lies within ourselves.

What is not in ourselves cannot disturb us.

HERMAN HESSE

Happiness is the experience of the good that comes from us, as opposed to a pleasant experience that comes from outside. A happiness that is given to us, that is made or programmed for us, is not a happiness, it is a pleasure, a filling instead of a fulfilment, an (albeit pleasant) filled emptiness. This is the problem with the various forms of experience machines. The void that

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sooner or later becomes clear is the cause of a deeply felt state of unfulfilledness and unhappiness. The medical world has commonly referred to such a condition as ‘depression’ and antidepressants are often prescribed, often resulting in addiction to antidepressants, which is not essentially different from addiction to other substances. Of course, antidepressants (or other drugs) cannot remove the void.

8.4 A society without a human face In contemporary society, less and less appeal is made to personal thinking, in particular to ethical reflection and to sense of responsibility. After all, thinking is hardly necessary any more: you only have to act ‘by the book’ and follow the protocols, procedures or ‘guidelines’ to be untouchable and ‘safe’. This becomes particularly clear and visible on public roads with the countless lines and markings indicating where you can and cannot be, while an abundance of road signs make clear what you should and should not do. But this trend is also becoming increasingly apparent in the working environment, in the judicial world and even in the medical world and in welfare. The absence of ‘regulation’ is labelled as a ‘legal vacuum’ and an ‘unbearable uncertainty’, for which a ‘solution’ must be found as soon as possible. In this way, people are increasingly being reduced to mindless robots, who, moreover, as if in a modern panoptic, are constantly being watched and spied upon by mechanical robots that immediately automatically register every infringement and ‘punish’ it appropriately.

As a result, our society has increasingly become a set of impersonal and anonymous rights and obligations. A society under the dictatorship of the self-evident and ‘normal’, a society without a human face and without the experience of connectedness. People often feel indignant about, but not responsible for, social phenomena such as violence in all its forms, from inappropriate youthful behaviour to unacceptable grabbing behaviour by leaders and governments. But indignation that does not lead to action leads to souring. Instead of ethical reflection, thoughtless adherence to rules, procedures and protocols. Instead of people, norms, rules and procedures are taken as the absolute starting point. But when rules become absolute, man becomes relative. The result is a loss of humanity, which is ultimately a breeding ground for all kinds of violence.

According to Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) it is precisely thoughtlessness that is the source of evil.

Anyone who, like Eichmann at the time, thoughtlessly follows the law and cannot break the rules, will end up breaking people.

When rules become absolute, man becomes relative.

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In health care, especially in the medical world and in mental health care, people are increasingly being reduced to a diagnostic label. On the one hand, problems that are essentially of a social, philosophical or existential nature are increasingly problematized, medicalized, DSM-ised, pathologized, psychiatrised and therapised. As a result, the free, autonomous mind and the power of man over himself is exchanged for the abdication of responsibility, dependence and a rhetoric of victimhood. After all, we cannot help having a ‘disease’ or a ‘disorder’. On the other hand, practitioners and caregivers have to follow increasingly narrow, standardized, ‘scientifically proven’ guidelines and procedures, on pain of a loss of recognition or of costs not being reimbursed or of facing a complaints procedure. Standardization and normalization seem to be more important than specifics and individuality, and the person who gets standardized treatment is getting what he is ‘entitled to’. The individual, living, suffering person himself often disappears behind a blind spot, a smoke screen of rigid, lifeless, mummified psychiatric labels, ‘evidencebased’ box-thinking and acronyms that refer to ‘disorders’ and ‘conditions’ and create the illusion that these are the ‘real’ problems. Here, too, we overlook the fact that diagnostic tools should be at the service of man and not vice versa, and here too it inevitably results in a loss of humanity.

We therefore need less diagnosis- and a disorder-oriented and a more people-oriented approach to suffering people. We need fewer pills and more wisdom, less Prozac and more Plato. We need care tailored to the patient and not tailored to some classification system. After all, no classification system is able to grasp the existential reality of man. Anyone who blindly follows diagnostic categories and cannot ignore guidelines will ultimately ignore people themselves.

Increasingly, the cause (the ‘blame’) of unwellness is sought in the outside world and there is less and less call on one’s own capacities. The government, the welfare state, is therefore inundated with questions from citizens who have been wronged, ‘punished’ and feel their rights have been affected if their standard of living does not meet expectations. Belgian psychiatrist Damiaan Denys, professor of psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam, also regrets that psychiatry is overloaded while in only in a fraction of cases is there a real disorder. This is increasingly creating a culture and a rhetoric of vulnerability, victimization and helplessness. ‘Vulnerability’, ‘loss’ and ‘victim’ are among the most frequently heard words in current social discourse and it is often said that life no longer makes sense because an unexpected and unwelcome event has occurred.

It is therefore hardly surprising that many people have the philosophy of a drowning man, and that the figures for life fatigue, despair, borderline disorders, depression, burnout, self-chosen termination of life, self-mutilation, anorexia, substance abuse and substance addiction seem to increase alarmingly even to epidemic proportions. These numbers only reflect the visible peak of the proverbial iceberg that is shaped by the many lives spent in an ocean of boredom, dullness, joylessness and silent despair, with the occasional island of pleasure or a luxury cruise. Young people who have to grow up with such life models in a monotonous, complacent and dull youth culture of gadgets, pop stars and sports idols, get a very distorted picture of reality and increasingly show a lack of motivation for anything that does not involve immediate enjoyment or

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pleasure. As a result, they are often labelled by parents and teachers as ‘tired of school,’ ‘uninterested,’ ‘lazy,’ or ‘difficult.’

Such a drowning-man philosophy is as easy as it is banal. It requires little awareness, insight or creativity and is the easiest way to appear intelligent and ‘critical’ and to gain immediate acclaim.

Although it is difficult for many with such an immature frame of mind to continue to believe in the meaningfulness of existence, this does not lead to a sufficient reduction in the desire for material and social comfort and to a sufficient sense of urgency to start to bring about serious social changes. It may lead to survival, but it does not feed the mind with positive energy and does not lead to a quality life with wisdom, fulfilment, well-being, love and happiness.

8.5 Is society to blame for everything?

The anonymity of modern society makes the good almost invisible. As a result, an important source of well-being and happiness has disappeared from consciousness. After all, as I said earlier, our society has increasingly become a set of impersonal and anonymous rights and obligations, a society under the dictatorship of the self-evident and the normal, a society without a human face and without experience of connectedness, an increasingly administrative and less affective society.

Progressive thinkers and authors often point to the role of society and of ‘the system’ as the cause of many contemporary problems. The individual is seen as a victim without a will, as a pawn on the chessboard of manipulating individuals and devious systems that make the individual a willless consumer. Society is seen as forcing us to do certain things, imposing certain patterns on us.

In reality, however, society imposes relatively little. In most cases it is individuals themselves who want to participate in society and prosperity at all costs and who want to be part of it. They want to have what others have and to be ‘like the others’. That is a strong drive. People don’t want to be inferior and don’t want to be left behind. Society, the herd, is therefore within the individual. In the past the individual hid in the herd, now the herd hides in the individual himself. This too is an evolutionary pattern at the service of survival. After all, if one does not know what to do, it is in many cases easy and certainly not unwise to do like the others who seem to know what to do.

That is usually unconscious and ‘normal’.

But just as man has managed to free himself from a biological niche and survive anywhere, so too can he free himself mentally from society. There is no obligation to live like the others live. A conscious individual can make use of the possibilities of society without being defined by it.

However, this requires awareness, and awareness is often used sparingly.

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8.6 Towards a society with a human face In fact, the often invoked individualism in society is rather a form of immaturity. A childish individualism sees only self-interest just as a child only sees its own toys and its own pleasure and certainly does not want to give up or share anything with others. Even adults often see their fellow humans as ‘strangers’ and as a thief who comes to take their ‘hard-earned money’; so in the event of a death, fortune and possessions therefore mainly remain ‘in the family’ and it is felt that strangers should certainly not ‘walk away with it.’

In reality, we have not yet come to a true, mature form of individualism, that is to say, the understanding that what we think and do, including our consumption, buying, eating and traveling behaviour, has consequences for everything and everyone, not just now. but also for future generations and that caring for others, for nature and for the planet, is an essential part of our own happiness. Mature individualism understands that self-interest is best served by promoting the common good and, conversely, caring for oneself is an important contribution to the common good. Only a person who is the best version of himself can also offer the best to others. A happy person is a blessing to his environment and, conversely, caring for the environment for an adult is a source of happiness. An adult life therefore seems to be a dance between the polarities of the self interests and the common interests.

Still, self-interest is inextricably linked to public interest. It is only our short-sightedness that hinders this understanding. Our brains are selected for life in caves and in tribal contexts and find it difficult to think on a larger scale. We need a model on a small scale, just as we can only imagine the world by drawing it into a comprehensible map. Now, could we imagine living in a family and being cheerful happily while other family members, our brothers and sisters, were living in hardship and unhappiness? This is impossible for an adult. In a family there is a normal ‘sense’ of the common good. Everyone has an interest in the others doing well. In a family where one child had everything, while the others lived in poverty, life would be full of stress and conflict. We would consider it a dysfunctional and unworthy family. If we cannot be happy while others are unhappy, then the happiness of others is important for our own happiness. It’s that simple: the happiness of other people is also in our interest and it is important for all of us that other people be happy. It can therefore be said at the level of society that happiness is of general interest.

Everyone’s happiness is the real common good.

Happiness is therefore not only individually desirable, but is also socially important. After all, it’s only people who are unhappy and are suffering who cause suffering to others. Only an angry and frustrated child kicks the ‘bad table’ or the ‘bad mummy’. Happy people don’t expect others to make them happy and are not angry if they don’t. Happy people spread happiness around them.

They want to share their happiness with others so that a positive dynamic is created. A happy person is a gift to the rest of humanity.

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Due to the increasing opportunities for communication, the modern world is increasingly becoming a global network of interconnected individuals and societies, a kind of organism with countless cells, tissues and organs, a kind of worldwide family. Therefore, one cannot remain ignorant of suffering elsewhere the world and it is not possible to be carefree and ‘happy’ and to believe that one leads an ethically responsible life. After all, each of us consciously or unconsciously influences the people around us. Those who live and consume in the decadence of the rich Western societies are inevitably co-responsible for the gross and harrowing injustice in the world. However, each of us can also make a positive contribution and take on social responsibility by feeding the global brain with mind-expanding thoughts and inspiring ideas, with ideals rather than idols. This requires not only analytical, critical, diagnostic thinking, but also a synthetic, visionary, utopian thinking, a pedagogy in terms of possibilities rather than limitations. Ultimately, it will take courage to come up with a new model of civilization, as happened (in part) with the French Revolution. The abolition of slavery in 1863 was also ultimately the result of a change in consciousness.

Liberal capitalism is intuitively attractive. It arises naturally and feels ‘normal’ in an economy and a logic of scarcity. After all, it is in line with natural individualism, self-interest, the deep thirst for territory, property and power and the desire for more and more. In that logic, it is ‘normal’ for citizens to try to get as much as possible from, and contribute as little as possible to, society in the form of taxes, just as it is logical for companies to try to grow and make a profit by using public infrastructure without also contributing to the construction or maintenance of that infrastructure.

Everyone at every level is grabbing. The invoice is passed on to the environment and to future generations.

Capitalist ideology is a trap into which virtually everyone falls. Capitalist logic consists of trying to get as much as possible at the lowest possible price. Both companies and governments and citizens try to do this, each in their own way and on their own scale. Capitalism is ruthless and gobbles up everything and everyone. Nobody escapes it. It sets people, groups, societies and generations against each other and leads to inequality and violence. That is basically the logic of the cancer cell, yet we are told that buying the right things and doing the right things will make us happier. As a result, we restlessly run further and further after happiness. British environmentalist George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian: ‘At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy.

You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth’. And further, ‘So what should take its place? It seems to me that the founding principle of any just system is that those who are not yet alive will, when they are born, have the same rights as those who are alive today. At first sight, this doesn’t seem to change anything: the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. But this statement is

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almost meaningless, because there is nothing in the declaration insisting that one generation cannot steal from the next. The missing article might look like this: “Every generation shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.”

We should not only get rid of fossil fuels, but especially of fossil-thinking. Self-interest is nature that speaks. But self-interest destroys the connection with others and leads to loneliness. Each his own property, his own luxury and his own loneliness. The liberal system not only places humanity, but also its egoism, on the throne. Humankind has not fallen from the nest, it has turned its back on the nest of community. The result is the aforementioned symptoms of depression, addiction and suicide. Civilization is in the public interest and is much less self-evident, just as democracy is much less self-evident than an authoritarian system. It takes more awareness, control and selfdetermination. It is a question of ethics, culture and civilization.

Let’s dream of utopia for a moment: what would the world look like if people in the rich western countries for every Euro they spend on non-essential services and products (city trips, commercial sports events, pop festivals, holidays, fashion ...) gave a similar amount to the poorest part of the world? And if they did this for as long as millions of people still live in outright inhumane conditions and children die of hunger, in other words, until poverty was declared illegal (as slavery was declared illegal in 1863)? At the moment, we are not even meeting the agreed norm of 0.7% for development cooperation and as we see how difficult things are in our own country about money going from one community to another, we are still far away from this utopia.

There is more than enough food, wealth and energy in society, but it is concentrated in a minority of the population. There is no problem of shortage, there is a problem of (re)distribution. Even a ‘socially corrected capitalism’ or ‘human-centred capitalism’ is still essentially a capitalism that leads to increasing inequality due to the concentration of wealth. It is enough to look around us in rich residential areas or the marinas of the big cities. A visit to car shows, yacht shows, holiday shows, interior decoration shows, leisure fairs, construction fairs, antique fairs or international art auctions can also bring us refreshing insights. There, people are not concerned with improving society, but with figuring out how best to rename taxes and get away with ‘their’ money. The scenes in the city ghettos or on the borders of Europe are in stark contrast. On January 11, 2019, a notable opinion piece by Italian writer and philosopher Alessandro Baricco appeared in the progressive Italian newspaper la Repubblica, stating: ‘An amazing moral blindness prevents the elite from seeing the injustices and violence that the system they believe in maintains. So they sleep peacefully, often helped by sleeping pills or other tranquilizers.’ A society that allows this condition to exist cannot be considered moral or even dignified. Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed.’

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There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed.

MAHATMA GANDHI

After all, we no longer live in a logic of scarcity, but in the new fact of a logic of abundance. In such a logic, more is not always better, as our primitive emotional brain tells us, but compassion, reasonableness and restraint are more important virtues. However, this logic requires nothing less than a fundamentally new model of society with a larger and more mature consciousness based on the prefrontal brain. That would be a step towards a higher civilization project that could put an end to the excesses of what the philosopher Étienne Vermeersch (1934-2019), following the philosopher and theologian Max Wildiers (1904-1996), called the STC complex; the scientifictechnological-capitalist system. Many authors therefore propose new economic models that take more care of the planet and its inhabitants. Instead of a liberal capitalism based on self-interest with social correction, there is a need for a social system based on the general interest with a correction for self-interest.

A notable proposal in this direction is the model based on a universal basic income, which amounts to a radical reform of the current social security system that is miserly, stigmatizing and administratively expensive. Instead of a universal safety which catches people (provided that they meet strict conditions and humiliating controls), there would be a universal platform on which they can stand and which could become their springboard. It is an income that is enough for survival, but not for a life of luxury, and it is automatically granted, without any formality or conditions, to all inhabitants of a society. Those who want to live more expansively can supplement this income at will with income from their work. It would mean the end of much uncertainty and stress, of the proletariat and the precariat. It would mean dignity and civilization, and it would be a response to rising unemployment due to increasing automation.

The idea of a basic income was already proposed by Thomas More (1478-1535) in his ‘Utopia’ as early as the sixteenth century and has since reappeared sporadically. In the last century in Canada, in the town of Dauphin, the so-called Mincome project was set up by the then progressive government. Unfortunately, three years later, another conservative government took the helm and the experiment stopped. The results were stored unprocessed in the archives. Many decades later, these archives were recovered and processed by Evelyn Forget of the University of Manitoba. In 2011, Dr. Forget wrote an article about this research: ‘The Town with no Poverty’.

The conclusions were clear: people were much less often ‘trapped’ in jobs they didn’t want, but were looking for ways to do meaningful work. After all, people want to lead a meaningful life.

Employers often had to pay employees more to get certain tasks done, so a new balance in society emerged.

One of the important findings was that the number of people with anxiety and depression had decreased significantly. Not only did the number of admissions to hospital decrease, which

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significantly reduced health costs, but so did the number of stays in prison. It made the bureaucratic system considerably simpler and cheaper.

An additional idea would be to drastically reduce or even abolish the system of inheritance. In a scarcity model, legacies intuitively feel right. They meet the evolutionary need to mainly care for one’s own offspring. That made sense in a hostile environment where survival was the main problem. Inheritances, however, create inequality based on birth and maintenance, thus increasing social tensions. In a civilized constitutional state, it is certainly a reasonable and logical idea to allow some or all of the wealth that people have acquired in - and thanks to - a particular society to flow back to that society after their death, so that everyone will inherit and benefit from it.

Well-known European advocates of the idea of a universal basic income are the Belgian economist, philosopher and professor Philip Van Parijs (b. l951), who is recognized as an authority worldwide, and the Dutch historian and publicist Rutger Bregman (b. 1988), a specialist in economic history and author of the book ‘Free money for everyone’. The idea of a universal basic income is often dismissed as utopian, impossible or unaffordable. This was once also the case for the abolition of slavery, as well as for the idea of equal rights for women, universal suffrage or paid holidays. But research shows the opposite. The main effect, according to Rutger Bregman, is that for the first time, people are given the opportunity to walk away from jobs that are inhumane, demeaning or degrading. They can instead start projects to add something of value to society.

After all, people like to contribute to a meaningful future. Bregman says: ‘When I ask people “What would you do with a basic income?” almost 99.9 percent replied, “I have dreams, I have ambitions, I would do something useful!” But when asked what they think others should do, they say, “Oh, they’re going to be couch-potatoes all day watching Netflix!”

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9. The art of living, in three relationships and three words The Harvard Study of Adult Development was a special research project lasting 75 years. From 1939 to 2014, Harvard Medical School researchers tracked the physical and emotional wellbeing of 724 individuals. The group included 456 less fortunate individuals who grew up in Boston and 268 Harvard students. They were evaluated on a number of criteria: quality of life, social activities and working atmosphere. The subjects were surveyed every two years and their health status was evaluated every five years. Due to the duration of the study, several generations of researchers were required to conduct it. Robert Waldinger, director of the study, said, ‘Over the course of these 75 years, our study found that the individuals with the best results were those with warm relationships with family, friends, and the community.’ In other words, good relationships with family, friends and the community keep us happier and healthier. Johann Hari comes to very similar conclusions in his book ‘The Lost Connections’.

In light of these results, it seems useful and enlightening to describe life in terms of three important relationships or conversations:   

the relationship with the self, the relationship with a partner, and the relationship with life.

The relationship with the self has been discussed in detail in this book. The relationship with life encompasses one’s whole life, including work. These three relationships are always present at the same time, although the proportion and relative importance of each may differ greatly according to the individual. Each of these relationships or conversations is a possible source of well-being or unwellness. However, a relationship requires active participation and contribution and cannot flourish if one only waits to see what one will get. Loneliness can be understood as the absence of one or more of these meaningful relationships. There is also a conversation between these three relationships rather than a balance.

The relationship with a partner is the easiest to imagine for most people and is a model for the other relationships. A relationship usually begins with an initial crush, enthusiasm or enchantment as a result of the presentation of an extremely attractive future in which there seem to be almost endless possibilities. This period is in most cases experienced as extremely pleasant. In the next stage, however, the overstretched expectations gradually give way to a more realistic view. One understands that not everything one imagines will be possible, but one still retains an attractive reading of reality and is motivated to continue. Only when one can no longer imagine an attractive future, when one ‘sees nothing in it’, does the motivation, the will to further participate in a

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relationship in which one can ‘feel trapped’, disappear. Then the depressive pattern described earlier arises. Humans are usually determined more by their idea of the future than by their idea of past events.

So in the end life is always an inevitable partner. Whoever fails to build a happy relationship with this partner in all its concrete manifestations will simply see life pass by. It is not about finding the right circumstances or surrounding yourself with the right people, nor achieving the right goals that make you happy, but living from an internal space of freedom, serenity and commitment whereby one can experience a state of natural happiness in all circumstances. If your current operating system, your current modus operandi, does not lead to the desired results, perhaps the philosophy - the mental map with which you live – is in need of an overhaul!

Happy people create happiness in their own life and in that of others instead of trying to get happiness from others and from life.

Happiness is not a continuous flow of sensual pleasures, ego-strokes or satisfaction. A dependence on assets, activities or external events inevitably leads to an impoverished and tragic existence.

Happiness is more than the absence of misfortune, just as health is more than the absence of disease and peace is more than the absence of war. Happiness is a way of being, an existential dance, a life with a personal, existential and spiritual vision for creating unconditional happiness in all circumstances, happiness from within, happiness without external reason, beyond hope and fear, instead of waiting for a happiness which one can only hope will one day come from the outside. That is Aristotle’s eudaimonia, the blossoming, flourishing life.

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What are the social, psychological, or essential ingredients that can help a relationship to blossom? The following three closely related virtues, values or qualities seem to indicate important directions:   

enchantment, meaning and empowerment.

The art of living can be practiced by paying attention every day to increasing one or more of these ingredients in one or more of the important relationships in life.

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For those who like the clear but abstract logic of formulas, one could say:

Happiness = enchantment x empowerment x meaningfulness

9.1 Enchantment and re-enchantment When are people happy? We learn from spiritual and mystical authors that just the sight of beauty, of mystery or of the divine can make you deeply happy. This is the experience of supreme delight, of utter exaltation, of being speechless. One is, as it were, lifted out of oneself and ‘transported’ to another dimension, which is often described as higher or deeper. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) said: ‘Someone who remains able to see beauty never grows old.’ In the French language there is the beautiful word émerveillement, the beholding of la merveille, the sublime, wonder. The English language has marvel and delight in addition to enchantment, the ‘spell’ cast by beauty. There is also the English word awe, ‘to look in awe.’ The opposite is the disenchantment discussed above, disillusionment.

Three kinds of enchantment can be distinguished.

The first is delight in discovering the wonder of the world. A child looks at a rainbow with his mouth open. An adult discovers the unlikely order and complexity of nature. However, the miracle

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is ‘solved’ by science giving a reasonable explanation whereby there is no longer a miracle but a riddle solved. A rainbow is only the result of the diffraction of light into water droplets.

The second kind is the cognitive amazement at the unlikely order based on a limited number of principles.

The third kind is on a higher level, namely the philosophical wonder that there is what there is, the ultimate mystery of existence. This is aesthetic, poetic or religious wonder, a kind of second naiveté that amounts to breaking through the obvious; it is not of the order of information, but of that of contemplation and ‘being spoken to’. Even if we know everything about a rainbow or a rose, the ultimate mystery remains, the unique revelation of the infinite and the perfect, at least if we are ‘open’ to it. Even if we know all the words of a poem or all the notes of a symphony, the poem or symphony retain a meaning that continues to ‘touch’ us and can never be fully ‘captured’. It is not about esoteric knowledge that would be inaccessible to science, but about ‘being spoken to’ and ‘being affected’ as described by, for example, Albert Einstein. This is also what happens when falling in love, being fascinated by an activity or the enthusiasm for certain values.

I said earlier that most people feel better in nature. They experience an awe and connection with the big picture. In a natural landscape or when looking at the starry sky, people also get the feeling that their worries are very small and the world is very big. As a result, they briefly escape the oppressive prison of being individualistic dealing with the problems of your own ‘I’, ‘being yourself’, making yourself better through courses or self-help books as if you were taking a pill. By connecting with something bigger, the ego regains manageable proportions. One does not need anything else for a moment and one does not want to be anywhere else for a moment; this can be considered the definition of happiness. This condition, which is related to what is often referred to as ‘flow,’ can arise only in an experience one engages in for the experience itself, not in order to achieve anything with it. The piano is played for the piano playing itself. Music is listened to for the music itself. It’s not about achieving anything. On the contrary, if one wonders if one is the best piano player in the country, if people will come to the concert, if they will make money and how much, the experience of enchantment will disappear; because then one is constantly judging and cannot be absorbed in the experience of the moment itself.

By connecting with something bigger, the ego regains manageable proportions.

Every experience of beauty is a moment of happiness. The ultimate happiness can only be the experience of beholding the ultimate beauty. Plato had already indicated this when he stated that real happiness is the contemplation of the eternal ideas of goodness, truth and beauty, which he

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says is only reserved for philosophers. Although everyone can experience this occasionally, only philosophers learn to steer their experience consciously. After all, philosophers focus on spiritual values rather than satisfying consumption needs. They accept a long period of study, discipline and freedom, in order to achieve a higher form of freedom. The unique, imaginary human ‘organ’ with which we can behold the mystery and which makes happiness possible is exactly what we might call the soul. The hunger of the soul cannot be satisfied with food for the body or with junk food.

Consciousness itself is also a miracle and is part of the mystery of life. The remarkable thing is that consciousness cannot understand itself. Buddhism says: an eye cannot see itself. So we can understand that we cannot understand consciousness. When one tries to understand consciousness through consciousness, one gets hopelessly stuck. Every new insight leads to a change in consciousness, so that one no longer knows where one is. So in the end one will never be able to know it completely. Einstein already understood that if our brain were so simple that we could understand it, then it would be too simple to be able to understand the brain.

But seeing a tree or a rose can be a happy experience, without that tree or rose doing anything for us or giving us anything. It is not about possession or ‘give and take’, but about the experience of mystery, of reverence, of being in love and enchanted. In essence, any experience of beauty can be such an experience. After all, ‘beauty’ is just another word for the ‘mystery’, the ineffable, that which remains when everything that can be said has been said. This is also the experience of falling in love. Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), the legendary American researcher of myths and religions, wrote, ‘I think what we really lack is not science, but poetry, which reveals what the heart wants to know.’ The Persian poet Rumi said that falling in love is ‘seeing God in the other.’

After all, ‘God’ is just another word for the mystery, the unknowable, the ineffable. The experience of the mystery is the goal of every meditation and every mystical experience. Being happy is the happiness of being there and realizing that you are part of a mystery.

Being happy is the happiness of being there and realizing that you are part of a mystery.

As soon as we experience this happiness, the desire naturally arises to share it with others. But so long as one is in the experience, there are no words, and as soon as there are words, one is no longer in the experience, but is thinking or speaking about the experience. The fact that it is an experience that is essentially ineffable and unspeakable, for which ‘there are no words’, often leads to artistic expressions such as poetry or music. All great art tries to capture something of the mystery of life and bring something of perfection into our imperfect existence. That explains the mysterious beauty and strange attraction of, for example, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

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Being happy is being aware of happiness and witnessing the mystery. Human happiness is the happiness of being human. It is leaving the cave and waking up from the endless game of pleasant or unpleasant shadows and dreams. This is what Buddhism calls enlightenment and what Plato called the beholding of eternal ideas.

Although this ‘aristocratic’ happiness cannot, of course, be scientifically founded, it is an undeniable human experience, comparable to the experience of falling in love or being enthusiastic. In order to achieve greater happiness, it is therefore necessary to develop, in addition to our prosaic, scientific view, a poetic, existential view in order to revisit the experience of wonder and enchantment. The two modes of being, the scientific and the existential, can coexist and be activated independently of one another. We can look at the world as a scientist or as a poet, just as a doctor can look at a another person as a doctor or as a lover.

In the depths of winter, I found, in myself, an invincible summer.

This makes me happy.

Because it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, in me there is something stronger, something better that pushes back.

ALBERT CAMUS

The following two excerpts from ‘The Art of Loving’ by Frank Andrews are examples of creating the wonder of enchantment.

I’m sitting in the living room reading when Karen, who is fourteen, comes in. She sits down for a few minutes while I read on. I look up and want as hard as I can to love her, appreciate her spirit, her warmth, beauty and vibrancy. I surrender to her. She doesn’t seem to notice me, puts her pen down; and leaves the room. But as she approaches the stairway, she suddenly says, ‘Oh, I feel so great!’ She puts her arms in the air and whirls through the dining room, then dances into the kitchen, gracefully and happily. I continue reading with a warm feeling. Somehow I have just taken part in a miracle.

I enter the living room to play the piano for dinner and see Elizabeth sleeping on the sofa. I grab a version of Brahms’ lullaby that I particularly love. While I’m at the piano, I say to myself, ‘I love you Elizabeth,’ and I put as much feeling into those words as I can. When I lift my hands above the keys, I gently repeat ‘I love you Elizabeth.’ When I start playing, I start stroking her hair with my hands on the piano, with the sound of the music and with my inner voice. In each of them, hands, sound and voice, I let as much tenderness and love flow as I can, and each one evokes more tenderness and love in the other. Although she did not wake up for a moment throughout the whole piece, I have now loved Elizabeth so deeply that my life and relationship with her have changed forever.

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Beauty is not a need, but an ecstasy.

It is not a thirsty mouth or an outstretched hand.

Rather, it is a flaming heart and an enchanted soul.

KAHIL GIBRAN

Certain extreme forms of enchantment, including certain religious or mystical experiences, deep meditation, near-death experiences, profound events or experiences with mind-expanding drugs, may, according to some authors, be accompanied by such intense experiences of love, meaningfulness and connection with people and with the greater whole that they can break open the characteristic narrowing of consciousness and the tunnel vision of depression or addictions.

Many people with depression or an addiction are stuck and see only their sorrow, their pain, their resentment or their failures. Their consciousness is like a bubble, a cave of suffering. The sudden opening of consciousness through such experiences can suddenly bring light into the cave, which can also clear the depressive pattern. Such experiences break through the ‘addiction to ourselves’ and the protective patterns (‘walls’) that were formed in the past. People suddenly realize that much of what they cared about on a daily basis - their ego, their sense of importance in the world really doesn’t matter. They understand that they are not a slave to their thoughts or feelings and that is usually a joyful experience. The memory of that experience can become a new guide to life.

The old patterns have not disappeared as a result, but are seen in a different perspective. It is a question of experiencing the possibility of connection for a short time. It is the discovery of an opportunity, a resource that, once tapped, must be maintained to avoid being snowed under by the daily messages of today’s world. This can be done, for example, with regular meditation or other exercises that aim at connection.

9.2 Meaning or the experience of purpose Meaning or the experience of purpose is pre-eminently a need of the adult human being, and without the moral compass of a sense of purpose it is almost impossible for an adult human being to achieve a happy and satisfying existence. As Seneca (4-65 AD) noted, ‘There is no good wind for a ship that does not know where it is going.’ If at the highest level of life you have no idea what you are doing it all for, it is difficult to make choices at the lower, practical levels. This immediately explains the high incidence of anxiety, addictions, fatigue, depression, self-chosen termination of life and other forms of absence of the will to live, for which the classic ‘scientific’ disease model and the classic ‘evidence-based’ treatment methods evidently do not provide an adequate answer.

The question of the meaning of life or ‘life purpose’ was hardly ever asked a few decades ago because life was largely pre-programmed and mainly related to survival and livelihood. In a sense, seeking and finding a life purpose is a luxury, which can become problematic due to the great

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freedom that the modern world has brought us. The question is therefore also posed at an increasingly younger age. After all, our upbringing and our diploma factories prepare young people for a place in the labour and consumer markets, but usually do not prepare them, or not enough, for a meaningful, valuable existence.

Meaning is about the answer to the question: Why do I live? What is the purpose of my life?’ Once these questions have come up, and sooner or later they inevitably will, they will not let go of us, or rather, our brain will not let go of them. But as soon as one asks about the meaning of something, one already glimpses doubt and the experience of emptiness and meaninglessness. All too often this will only be in old age or on the occasion of a change in life-pattern, for example at retirement or when the children leave home and the traditional parenting roles end. However, changes can also occur more or less undesirably, for example due to a dismissal, divorce or death. When the obvious givers of meaning ‘fall away’, people often ‘fall’ into a void that only makes clear that it was not a sustainable meaning, but an illusion of meaning.

The experience of meaning, on the other hand, is not an answer to a question, but an experience that is closely related to enchantment. Someone who experiences enchantment will automatically experience meaningfulness. A Zen saying says: ‘In Zen, one does not find answers, one loses the questions.’ The sense of purpose leads to motivation, which in turn leads to resilience. The sense of purpose is healing in the sense that it closes the void, the gaping hole in our consciousness.

In Zen one does not find answers, one loses the questions.

The Stoics, Spinoza and Nietzsche all realized that man cannot know the meaning of life as a whole, because one would have to be able to take a position outside of life, which of course is not possible. The interesting question is therefore not the question of the meaning of, but the question of the meaning in life, the sense of purpose. For the Stoics as well as Spinoza and Nietzsche, that was the passionate acceptance of life, the contemplation of endless reason and beauty. Bertrand Russell (1877-1970) wrote that he learned the real recipe for staying young from the example of a grandmother who became so absorbed in her life that she had no time to notice that she was getting old. Happiness is not the result of a ‘successful life’, on the contrary: a ‘successful life’ is the result of a happy relationship with life, a relationship of passion and fascination, a relationship of ‘being in love’ and ‘being happy’. Anyone who is absorbed in a dance feels like dancing. The purpose of dance is dancing itself. Anyone who does not feel like dancing will not make sense of it through a philosophical explanation. Those who are happy experience the meaning of life. Those who are unhappy or depressed can lose themselves endlessly in the search for the meaning of life. The meaning of life cannot possibly be determined either by science or by

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philosophy. Declaring that there is no point in life is like taking a cup of water from the ocean and saying that ‘scientifically’ it has been shown that there are no whales in the ocean.

It is remarkable that the sense of purpose almost always appears to occur in the context of a relationship, of connection: connection with others, with society, with nature, with art, with science, with a social purpose, with ‘the higher’ . There is therefore a clear link between enchantment and meaning in the sense that anyone who experiences enchantment or enthusiasm also experiences meaningfulness. Enthusiasm carries meaningfulness, as it were. The question about meaning simply does not arise. Those who are in love experience the reality of love and do not need any ‘evidence’ or an endless digression about the existence and meaning of love. People with children or with a passion experience connection and meaningfulness. They experience the meaning of their existence. After all, children are easy and straightforward givers. They constantly remind adults of the reason for their existence.

So to be enthusiastic and experience the meaning of life, it is not necessary to first have answered every philosophical question about the meaning of life. Enthusiasm, like love, is an attractive dream about exciting future possibilities. It is a fulfilling relationship with life, which is a result of wonder, delight at the beauty, the astonishingness and the mysteriousness of life, and of being a part of consciousness. It is the experience of participating in life as in a cosmic dance with almost endless possibilities. Enthusiasm encourages participation in the bigger picture, just as the more than one hundred thousand billion cells in our body participate in the organism that we are.

Meaning therefore only becomes a problem in the absence of this experience. People who do not follow an ‘obvious’ life path and do not experience an obvious connection, often experience no meaning and can ‘search’ for it endlessly. When life appears boring and tedious, the question arises. Anyone who experiences life as meaningless cannot make sense of it. For example, people without children often find it difficult to answer the question of what the meaning of their life is.

Lonely or depressed people also often think that they ‘have to find a meaning again’ to be able to participate in life again. In reality, the reverse is true: by participating in life and connecting with people or activities, the experience of meaning and the desire to continue to participate in life arise. Can it be that simple? Yes, it can be that simple!

Whoever has a zest for life experiences the meaning of life.

An adult wants his life to have a ‘meaning’ and to serve a purpose. He does not want to live a futile life. He wants to mean something. He wants to leave something behind and he wants to look back on his life with satisfaction and pride. The body lives on what it gets, the soul lives on what it gives.

Without a meaning and a purpose in life, life seems empty and dead. That is existential death.

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Man then lives like a robot, guided only by rules and obligations. He does what he does because he has to, without further possibilities. He often lives life as a punishment. He feels trapped and powerless in a meaningless existence.

The body lives on what it gets, the soul lives on what it gives.

In the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’, Albert Camus stated that the universe and life are absurd: man seeks meaning, but the universe remains silent. There is no answer to his question about the meaning of life. Sisyphus was sentenced to laboriously push a large boulder up the mountain for eternity. But as soon as he reached the top, the boulder rolled back down and the work had to start again. Life is just as meaningless in itself: one is born to eventually die, so what would you live for? Therefore, Camus called suicide the only important issue in philosophy. He said: ‘Given that absurdity, that mortality, the certainty that everything will pass and disappear again, the meaning of life is that you still relate to the fact that you live, that you are faithful to your existence on earth, put up with the fact that it is unclear, endure that its lack of security and deal with its senselessness.’ Camus also wants people to live intensely and passionately. For him, existential surrender is the only possible response to the philosophical stalemate of the absurd. He writes that if Sisyphus realizes the futility of his task, he is free to enter a state of acceptance and surrender. And he decides that we should imagine Sisyphus as a happy person.

The meaning of life cannot be given or determined by man, nor can it be dependent on concrete events in an individual life. Either life has a meaning, and then it always has it, or life makes no sense and it never does. However, the question of meaning is often asked as a result of the question ‘Why did this have to happen? Why did that have to happen to me?’ There are no answers to these questions because events simply happen when the necessary conditions under which they arise are fulfilled. Why does the sun shine? Why is it raining? Because the necessary conditions are fulfilled! Why is there an earthquake? Why does a tree fall on my child? Why did that accident happen to me? Because the necessary conditions are fulfilled! In many cases, one is not a victim of evil forces or evil people, but is simply in a certain place at a certain time. But the lack of answers to those questions can lead to the ‘conclusion’ that everything is meaningless. If people start asking another question, ‘What can I learn from this?’, life changes. Instead of the question about the meaning of life, the question can also be asked: ‘What makes me want to live?’

That is the meaning in life instead of the meaning of life.

A walker passes a construction site where a cathedral is under construction. He sees a man cutting stones and asks, ‘What are you doing there?’

The man answers gruffly, ‘As every moron could see, I am cutting stones.’ This man is angry because he has to do the same thing every day. He get up and chops stones. He leads a meaningless life.

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The walker walks on and sees a second stone carver. He asks, ‘What are you doing there?’

The man replies, ‘I cut stones so that I can support my family and afford a nice home.’

This man will die as a prosperous but unhappy, selfish man in a beautiful house. His life makes no sense other than making money for himself and his family.

The walker asks a third stonemason, ‘And what are you doing there?’

This man replies: ‘I cut stones to help build a great cathedral where thousands of people will be able to live out their spirituality.’

This man, who does the same as the two others, is a happy man because his life makes sense. He serves a higher purpose that transcends him.

A somewhat related concept is the Japanese Ikigai, which resembles what one would usually describe as ‘meaning of life’ or ‘life purpose’, namely something that makes sense of life, something that makes life worth living. Anyone who is enthusiastic about anything is certainly not depressed. Ikigai is a concept in which different existential dimensions or values come together, which one can discover and investigate again and again using the following four questions: What am I good at? What do I enjoy doing? What does the world need? How can I make a living? Ikigai is located in the centre, in the zone where the different dimensions overlap.

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9.3 Empowerment, trust, resilience There is a clear link between meaning and empowerment. It is often thought that something can ‘give’ us strength or energy. In reality, it is always our own strength or energy that is mobilized when one is motivated, enthusiastic or in love. Enthusiasm will also wake up the power or energy to act. The reverse is disempowerment: that which reduces our strength.

Empowerment is taking responsibility for one’s own life instead of holding others, circumstances or society responsible. It is being aware that one is not an object or thing that involuntarily undergoes the influence and gravity of the environment, even though that is what many believe. It is becoming the owner of one’s life instead of the tenant. It is realising that people always do what they want. Empowerment is based on self-awareness that is the basis of what is called selfconfidence. How do you climb stairs? You know it must have something to do with muscles and nerves, but how do you know which muscles to use and how? If you think for a moment, you will understand that you do not know and even cannot know. So what do you do? You just mentally walk up the stairs and then you trust that your body, your legs, your muscles will do the necessary.

This is trust, not because you understand, but despite the fact that you don’t understand. How do you manage to get the words out of your mouth in a sentence in the correct order? You just start speaking and trust it to happen. That is trust.

Trust is the awareness of possibilities, of inner autonomy and of freedom. It does not mean believing one can handle everything or having the perfect solution for everything. It does mean being aware that whatever happens, one will always be able to respond in a mature, serene and dignified manner. This is the awareness of emotional intelligence and of resilience. I said earlier that resilience ultimately boils down to the power of learning or, better still, to the art of learning: the art of learning and becoming wiser in any circumstance. It is this art that enables posttraumatic growth rather than post-traumatic stress. After all, many people with problems are not ‘mentally ill’, but have faced unexpected, unwanted, difficult or drastic life circumstances. The initial response is often a cognitive dissonance. The term ‘cure’ is therefore not adequate in most cases. The term ‘recovery’ is hardly better because it suggests that something is broken and needs to be repaired. Nothing has to be restored, because there is nothing to restore except cognitive harmony. This is only possible by accepting life experiences and integrating them into one’s life story. This is who one is now, and one will never go back to the old way. There is simply no turning back. With each experience one goes further in life and creates a new ‘mode of existence’. There is also nothing ‘lost’ that needs to be found. All one can lose are illusions. For the same reason, ‘vulnerability’ is not a the right concept: there is nothing that can be hurt. Perhaps the most recommendable is the attitude of openness and receptivity, of wisdom and serenity, as described by the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi (1207 -1273) in his famous poem ‘The inn’. After all, without resistance there is no suffering.

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This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honourably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

JALAL AD-DIN RUMI Translated by Coleman Barks

Post-traumatic stress rightly receives a lot of attention from psychologists and care providers, while unjustly little attention is paid to post-traumatic growth. The latter has been examined in particular by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun of the University of North Carolina. The term describes the surprisingly favourable developments that often occur in the process of dealing with a major event. After investigating, among others, parents of deceased children, people with a deceased loved one, people with serious wounds after accidents, survivors of cancer, survivors of sexual assault, war veterans and prisoners, the researchers found a remarkable growth in personal strength, deeper relationships with others, new perspectives on life and spirituality. On a grinding wheel sandstone will be pulverized, but a diamond will shine; the irritating grain of sand in an oyster can eventually become a pearl. However, the current trauma model has a negative impact because many people assume after a major event that they will be permanently damaged. In reality, although the memory will remain indelible, people can overcome a traumatic experience and eventually even live a normal and happy life again. This is a message of confidence in one’s own capabilities and in the future. Someone who has experienced a traffic accident can remain ‘traumatized’ and remain phobic, refuse to drive, or he can decide to get back on the road, but he will remain ‘sensitized’ (not ‘scarred’ or ‘vulnerable’) true to the realities of the dangers of traffic and behave with appropriate caution. The facts are over, the story remains.

The Polish psychologist and psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902-1980) formulated a theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD). It is a humanistic theory of personality, as is the more familiar hierarchy of needs of Dabrowski’s friend Abraham Maslow. The theory describes how individuals

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can develop into a personality in five levels. Central to this is that feelings of ‘being different’ or even existential fears or depression can actually stimulate an increasing ability to define oneself and behave accordingly. This makes individuals more autonomous and better able to create a personality. The theory of positive disintegration has received particular attention in the context of education and giftedness, but it is also gaining increasing interest in the context of personal development.

When Philippe Croizon (b. 1968) in 1994, in his hometown of Saint-Rémy-sur-Creuse in France, stood on a metal ladder to work on his television antenna, he came into contact with a highvoltage cable and received 20,000 volts through his body. His four limbs were severely damaged and had to be amputated. During his rehabilitation, he saw a programme about a female swimmer who swam the Channel. This inspired him so much that he decided to do the same. He experimented with different prostheses and trained 35 hours a week for two years. On September 18, 2010, at the age of 42, he swam across the Channel from Folkestone in England to Cap Griz Nez in France in less than fourteen hours. He never lost the confidence that he would succeed.

One of the most powerful ways to boost trust and resilience is to keep a gratitude journal that records at least three reasons for being thankful each day. According to studies at the University of California, the individuals involved reported not only better mood, more energy, more satisfaction, more optimism, and more altruism, but also less stress, fewer medical problems, and better sleep.

Mindfulness is also a practice with proven effects on the brain and on anxiety, stress and depression. The Shamatha Project is the largest and most ambitious longitudinal study of the influence of meditation on mental and physical well-being ever established. On the occasion of the International Forum on Buddhism and Medicine, Dr. Clifford Saron, head of the team of researchers participating in the project, presented some results. According to him, ‘activities like meditation, which result in a significant positive psychological change, also appear to have a positive influence on the cellular aging processes.’ In particular, an effect was identified at the ends of the chromosomes, the so-called telomeres.

People are much more determined by ideas about the future than by events in the past.

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By way of an epilogue The meaning of life is the desire to live and the desire to live is the desire to live happily. Man is driven by an insatiable desire, a hunger of the soul, which cannot be appeased from the outside, not by possessions or by status, not by a partner, not by the state. Despite all the ‘happiness studies’, it appears that it is impossible to ‘make’ people happy. Anyone who has ever tried to ‘make’ an unhappy person happy will have discovered this.

The art of living is the art of dancing with life. But no one can dance before they can walk and no one can walk before they can crawl. The strategy of looking for a ‘kick’ and a quick buzz, the strategy of the neoliberal happiness machine, cannot lead to lasting happiness. An ‘aristocratic’ art of living has to do with a mature, free and independent mind. Such a spirit leads to an ethics and a kind of art of living and happiness that is possible for everyone. This is a mature, aristocratic happiness, not a petty-bourgeois happiness based on the attainment of goals, possessions or social status. Each of us can choose to become a hub like this that emanates positive, constructive influences that will inevitably resonate with society.

A happy life can only be an ethical life, a careful and attentive life based on values. This may look like a lack of freedom, but it is the kind of unfreedom that leads to greater freedom, just as the mastery of a musical instrument as a result of lengthy study, or the careful performance of a score as a result of sustained discipline leads to greater freedom of interpretation, revealing the wonder, mystery and beauty of the music.

Man lives in a subjective, symbolically ordered habitat. His behaviour is guided by meanings and stories, which can never be rationally, objectively, scientifically understood. Man is not a scientific object and life is not a scientific project. So don’t let your only life be hijacked by all kinds of disorders, whether scientifically validated or not or by well-meaning caregivers. No doctor or therapist can give a meaning to life. No pill or remedy can bring real joy or happiness. Turning to the medical world with life problems is like turning to a garage to learn to drive a car or to a neurosurgeon to learn to dance. After all, in most cases it is not a question of healing a condition or a disease but of acquiring wisdom and life skills. So it’s time to wake up. Time to understand that ‘problems’ are only opportunities for learning and that ‘failures’ are much more interesting than ‘successes’ or ‘goals achieved.’ There is nothing to lose except illusions, and the loss of an illusion can transform us more than achieving a goal. Once you have left your cave and have seen through the illusion of the many experience machines, you cannot possibly be helped back into the illusion with a pill.

All realities start with a dream, and utopias can become reality. We can arouse the best in others by speaking to that best. Just as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin contributed to the awareness

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that eventually led to the abolition of slavery, so can each of us contribute to raising awareness and happiness in the world.

All experiences are valuable because it is always possible to choose a perspective on reality that enriches rather than impoverishes and that leads to self-esteem and the fulfilment of life.

Problems are messages from life. They are the voice of reality that shakes us awake from our comfortable mythical sleep. They offer us the opportunity to grow. Problems wake us up to our true calling as an ethically thinking, responsible and creative person. They nourish our minds and keep them critical and sharp. So it’s time to nourish our personal strength again with the realization that there is always a choice and that we can always choose to live from our highest values. We don’t need anything special to be able do this. Everything we need is already there, we need only learn to use it to create happiness instead of suffering.

But any change of course or change of behaviour requires a change of consciousness, an update of the mental map. Man is free to eat whatever he wants, but he is not free from the effects of what he eats on his body. The same goes for spiritual food: man is free to think and believe what he wants, but he is not free from the consequences for his spiritual map and for his existence.

Zen Master Hakuin was seen by those around him as someone who lived a pure and flawless life. He had a great reputation and many people came to ask him for advice.

A pretty girl, daughter of the grocer, lived on the same street. At one point, the girl turned out to be pregnant. The parents were terribly upset about this and wanted to know who the father was. But the girl wouldn’t say. However, the parents pressed her, and eventually she gave in and named Master Hakuin as the father, although he had absolutely nothing to do with her condition.

The girl’s parents angrily appeared before the master. ‘It is a disgrace that so flawless a man as you has turned out to be the father of our daughter’s child!’

‘Is that so?’ Was all the Zen master replied.

The Zen master had lost his good reputation with everyone, but he was not in the least concerned about it. News of the scandal spread outside the city and no one came to ask him for advice. The master remained unmoved.

When the child was born, the parents brought it to Hakuin: ‘You are the father, so you have to take care of it.’ The master took care of the child. Hakuin bought milk and everything the baby needed from his neighbour, the grocer.

After a year, however, the young mother felt remorse of conscience. She told her parents what really happened and pointed out her child’s real father. The girl’s parents were again deeply distraught and went to see master Hakuin. Most humbly they asked for forgiveness and apologized. ‘You are a very holy man who, despite your innocence, cared for our daughter’s child like that,’ they said. They also asked him to return the child so they could take care of it further.

All the Zen master said was, ‘Is that so?’ And he just returned the child he had lovingly cared for all along.

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Nonviolent, peaceful communication is one of the most important skills in the pursuit of wellbeing. It is the practice of mindfulness, compassion and forgiveness, not on the meditation cushion, but in daily interaction and in relationships with others. To this end, there is a need for an inspiring narrative about other people. They are not our enemies, they are our brothers and our collaborators in inhabiting the planet wisely.

We all come out of Africa. We are made from the same star dust. We will live and die on the same planet. We live thanks to the same earth and the same rain. We are connected in a common project. We have not just been tossed into this world, we are of this world. Just as an apple tree produces apples, so the universe produces people. Alan Watts (1915-1973) says, ‘Just as an apple tree ‘apples’, so the universe ‘peoples’.’ We are in the same boat. To move forward, rowing with each other is more useful than rowing against each other. Other people are not the challenge, our relationship with life is the challenge. You may be able to move forward faster on your own, but you can move forward further together.

We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish like fools.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

Insight must lead to change. It’s time to wake up. It is time for a change. Time to nourish the awareness of young people and of society with inspiring, meaningful, enthusiastic ideas and projects for a society and a civilization of the future. Time to take Karl Popper’s call to heart: ‘Optimism is a moral duty’. This is the best (if not the only) way to prevent depression, addiction and suicide.

As long as we live, we write to the book of our life.

When our lives are over, the book is closed, but not destroyed.

Others, our children and grandchildren, people from near or far, who are looking for inspiration and art of living, can still read the book.

It will contribute to the nourishment of the collective brain.

It is therefore our moral duty to ensure it that the book is worth reading.

After all, the future always listens: not only our personal future, but also the future of others and of society.

A.N. WHITEHEAD

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Index

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