In April I came across a
New York Times article about an art exhibit by Stefan Sagmeister called The
Happy Show. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/arts/design/stefan-sagmeisters-happy-show-at-institute-of-contemporary-art.html) There are more than 10 books on my shelves on
happiness, and I have often blogged about how much the positive psychology
movement has affected me. (http://kentbottles.blogspot.com/2010/11/gratitude-and-health-happiness-and-well.html)
When I noticed that Sagmeister’s The Happy Show was opening at the
University of Pennsylvania Institute for Contemporary Art, I vowed to go see
it, even though I had never heard of him or his work as a designer. I finally got around to going last
week.
The outing started on a
high note as I easily found a parking place on the street near the museum
located at 36th and Sansom on the Penn campus; it probably helped
that graduation was over, and most of the students have left for summer
vacation. I did note that
something as simple as easy parking could put me in a positive mood. Since I was early and the museum did
not open until 11:00 AM, I took a pleasant walk around the Penn campus and was
most impressed by Alexander Liberman’s massive sculpture Covenant and the red
brick Fisher Fine Arts Library.
Upon entering the museum
at 11:00 AM, I was told by the two security guards that I could not see the
show until I checked in at the front desk. After waiting 15 minutes, a young woman appeared, but she
was “just an intern” and could not check me in. The guards tried to be helpful, but it was frustrating to
just wait for the official person to check me in. When he finally arrived, he was did not apologize and really
only wanted to record my zip code on his computer screen: 19072.
Climbing the stairs to
the second floor gallery, I was not in the best of moods, but the appearance of
giant monkey balloons inscribed with “Everybody always thinks they are right”
immediately took my mind off my delayed entrance. This quotation was the first of many observations evidently
taken from Mr. Sagmeister’s diary, and The Happy Show is organized around
several of these thoughts. (http://brokensidewalk.com/tag/stefan-sagmeister/)
The giant monkey
balloons immediately made me think of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College
graduation speech. (http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words)
The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how
to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have
just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge
percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns
out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict
you graduates will, too.
Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to
be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my
deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most
vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of
natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's
pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into
our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that
you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in
front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR
monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be
communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.
Please don't worry
that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or
all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my
choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural,
hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered
and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can
adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being
"well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.
I wandered around the
landing outside the entrance to the show, and I appreciated the Jonathan Haidt
metaphor of the human brain as a small conscious rider on top of a huge
unconscious elephant. The rider
cannot really force the elephant to do anything, but over time the rider can
train the elephant to be influenced by what the rider wants to accomplish. Mr. Sagmeister wants to see if he can
train his mind in the same way he trained his nonathletic body to finish the
New York marathon, and The Happy Show is documenting this mind training.
Haidt’s metaphor of
rider and elephant comes from his book The Happiness Hypothesis, which I had
read when it first came out in 2006.
Michael Gazzaniga, when he came to Grand Rapids, Michigan to give an
Autumn Health Forum lecture for me, told me to read Haidt who he greatly
admires. Haidt is best known for
his describing work as job or career or calling:
· If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at
the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably
pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does
your work.
·
If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of
advancement, promotion, and prestige.
·
If you see your work as a
calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling you are not doing
it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater
good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems
obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and
you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout,
“Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay,
if you suddenly became very wealthy.
(http://ma.tt/2010/07/job-career-calling/)
Haidt’s 2012 book The
Righteous Mind: Why Good People
Are Divided by Politics and Religion has created a stir by claiming that
conservatives and liberals differ in their support of the five fundamental
moral values: care for others,
fairness and justice, loyalty to your family or nation, respect for tradition
and authority, and purity or sanctity.
According to Haidt liberals put much more emphasis on care for others
and fairness than conservatives who embrace all five moral values.
Two more displays caught
my eye on the landing outside the main entrance to The Happy Show. One described three levels of
happiness. Level One short term
happiness listed the words bliss, ecstasy, orgasm, and joy. Level Two medium term happiness listed
satisfaction and well-being. Level
three long term happiness was described as fulfilling one’s potential and
understanding the reason why you are alive.
On the handrail by the
stairs leading into the entrance of the exhibit, I read that Sanskrit has 16 words
for happiness and that German has none.
Does this mean that the Indians are happier than the Germans or does it
mean that Indians are just better at talking about happiness?
In Part II of this blog
we will enter Stefan Sagmeister’s The Happy Show and see how he trains his mind
to be happy.
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