The Anti-Easterlin Paradox

Just reading 'A Farewell to Alms' by Gregory Clark: in the closing paragraph of his introduction comes this,

'The contented may well have lost out in the Darwinian struggle...' (p16)

This is the main paradox that seems to exist... one that I only hear in Buddhist circles because the vast mass of Western commentators on "life" seem to view struggle and consumption as the key to life.

Richard Easterlin famously published work in 1974 that suggested that there was a plateau beyond which increasing wealth did not correlate with increasing happiness - it even suggested a fall in happiness. This was dubbed the "Easterlin paradox" which reveals the prevailing culture in which he published. What has emerged since is evidence that contentment does increase with increasing wealth: now that to me is the paradox!

Why? because to gain increasing wealth one must work harder, and to utilise increasing wealth one must spend harder (in classical economics tho I've argued recently this is a myth). Either we perform these extra actions randomly or we are being driven to do them - and it is that drive which is the problem. What drives people to work and spend harder? The answer is desire and the cost of not attaining one's desire we know as unhappiness and dissatisfaction. So it is true that we are happier and more satisfied when we get what we want - which is what the data bears out. But, the solution to unhappiness and dissatisfaction is not to work and spend harder: quite the reverse! it is to relax and master those desires. That is true unlimited happiness and not only is this not tested for, I don't even believe that modern analysists are even aware that it exists anymore! for they are too busy themselves furthering their careers in the fields of social research.

A simple example is the mobile phone. We are very satisfied with our new iPhone, or we are very unsatisfied with our last phone. However a hundred years ago before even phones what was there to worry about? We neither wanted or didn't want phones - nothing to excite or dissappoint us. This is phone-happiness: being free from the ups/downs of phones. Now they always argue in Buddhism that one can be free and have phone-happiness while having a phone: but to do this one must "unattach" from phone which means we claim neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction from the phone - and to do that is to undermine the whole import of modern thinking!

Using the self-reference argument (which remains to be proven :-( if wealth makes us happy, then where is the wealth in social-research? or are these researchers unhappy?

p.s. the arguments present recently in this blog for social structure being the primary force in human activity are seem similar to what I find is called the Hedonic Treadmill.

This leaves the paradox however that once one is truely content and happy then ones motivation shifts from limited personal desire to more global compassion. What I do not understand yet however is that biological processes then become purely survival in nature and no longer pleasure: which harks back to the days when reproduction was something done out of duty not out of pleasure. I understand we have a duty to eat, how can there be life without food? but it seems odd in this culture to engage in marriage and childbirth simply for the sake of generating more people.

Can it really be the case that the Human race is destined to solve the question that desire poses and then cease to exist? or remain tethered to the post of desire and driven to greater and greater need and subsequent satisfaction? and also greater and greater suffering in the process?

I really have no idea at present about this!