(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, the Rolling Stones’ 1965 megahit, should have more appropriately been titled (I Can’t Keep No) Satisfaction, wrote social scientist and author Arthur C. Brooks in How to Want Less: The secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff, - a recent essay in The Atlantic. Brooks has been in the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School for the past two years, after being president of the American Enterprise Institute from 2009 to 2019.
Satisfaction, he explained, “is the greatest paradox of human life. We crave it, we believe we can get it, we glimpse it and maybe even experience it for a brief moment, and then it vanishes. … In fact, our natural state is dissatisfaction, punctuated by brief moments of satisfaction.”
Our human tendency to pursue satisfaction despite its fleeing nature condemns us to continuously live in a so-called hedonic treadmill. We might not like it, “but Mother Nature thinks it’s pretty great. She likes watching you strive to achieve an elusive goal, because strivers get the goods - even if they don’t enjoy them for long. More mates, better mates, better chances of survival for our children - these ancient mandates are responsible for much of the code that runs incessantly in the deep recesses of our brains.”
In December of 2008, The Economist published a very interesting article, Why we are, as we are, to commemorate the approaching 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species. “For a Darwinian, life is about two things: survival and reproduction,” said the article. “Of the two, the second is the more significant. To put it crudely, the only Darwinian point of survival is reproduction. As a consequence, much of daily existence is about showing off, subtly or starkly, in ways that attract members of the opposite sex and intimidate those of the same sex. … Status and hierarchy matter. And in modern society, status is mediated by money.”
Darwinians used to think that the appeal of money was primarily due to the ability to better provide materially for children. “But the thinking among evolutionary biologists these days is that what is mainly going on is a competition for genes, not goods. High-status individuals are more likely to have genes that promote health and intelligence, and members of the opposite sex have been honed by evolution to respond accordingly. A high-status man will get more opportunities to mate. A high-status woman can be more choosy about whom she mates with.”
Published at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, The Economist article also provided a Darwinian explanation for greed, that is, the seemingly uncontrolled pursuit of wealth, possessions and power beyond the need of the individual. “Status, though, is always relative: it is linked to money because it drives the desire to make more of the stuff in order to outdo the competition. This is the ultimate engine of economic growth. Since status is a moving target, there is no such thing as enough money.”
There’s also no such thing as enduring happiness or satisfaction. “Neurobiological instinct - which we experience as dissatisfaction - is what drives us forward,” said Brooks. This is Mother Nature’s cruel hoax. “Happiness doesn’t help propagate the species, so nature doesn’t select for it.” If satisfaction = getting what you want, then the secret to satisfaction means that you must fight powerful evolutionary forces.
He suggests that we embrace a different formula: satisfaction = what you have ÷ what you want. Instead of attempting to increase the numerator, our haves, - which will never work, - we should focus on decreasing the denominator, our wants. And he offers three suggestions on how to do so based on his own personal philosophy and social sciences research.
Go From Prince to Sage
In July of 2019 at the age of 55, Brooks resigned from his decades-long position as president of the prestigious American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to join the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School. A year later, he published an essay in The Atlantic that explained why he had decided that it was time to transition from Prince to Sage.
Brooks wrote that a few years earlier, shortly after his 51st birthday, he started to take stock of his life. He was on top of the world: he was president of a flourishing Washington think tank, he’d written a few best-selling books, his columns were published in the NY Times, his speeches were well attended. But, he’d started to wonder “Can I really keep this going? I work like a maniac. But even if I stayed at it 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at some point my career would slow and stop. And when it did, what then?”
So Brooks started developing a tangible roadmap to guide the latter stages of his life and career. He resigned his position as president of the AEI in 2019, and joined the Harvard faculty.
“[S]atisfaction lies not in attaining high status and holding on to it for dear life, but in helping other people - including by sharing whatever knowledge and wisdom I’ve acquired. That’s one reason I stepped down from a job in the public eye to concentrate on writing and teaching. If I take another leadership role in my career, my focus will be on what I want to share with others, not what I want to accumulate for myself.”
Make a Reverse Bucket List
“[M]any self-help guides suggest making a bucket list on your birthday, so as to reinforce your worldly aspirations. … I’ve instead begun to compile a reverse bucket list, to make the ideas in this essay workable in my life. Each year on my birthday, I list my wants and attachments. … I try to be completely honest. I don’t list stuff I would actually hate and never choose, like a sailboat or a vacation house. Rather, I go to my weaknesses, most of which - I’m embarrassed to admit - involve the admiration of others for my work.”
“Then I imagine myself in five years. I am happy and at peace, living a life of purpose and meaning. … Inevitably, these sources of happiness are intrinsic - they come from within and revolve around love, relationships, and deep purpose. They have little to do with the admiration of strangers. I contrast them with the things on the first list, which are generally extrinsic. … Most research has shown that intrinsic rewards lead to far more enduring happiness than extrinsic rewards.”
Get Smaller
“Lately, there has been an explosion of books on minimalism, which all recommend downsizing your life to get happier - to chip away the detritus of your life. But it’s not just about having less stuff to weigh you down. We can, in fact, find immense fullness when we pay attention to smaller and smaller things. … Each day, I have an item on my to-do list that involves being truly present for an ordinary occurrence.”
“Each of us can ride the waves of attachments and urges, hoping futilely that someday, somehow, we will get and keep that satisfaction we crave,” wrote Brooks in conclusion. “Or we can take a shot at free will and self-mastery. It’s a lifelong battle against our inner caveman. Often, he wins. But with determination and practice, we can find respite from that chronic dissatisfaction and experience the joy that is true human freedom.”
Wow, Irving, so great to see your picture and read your thinking. I hope you're doing well and I assume you are, given this thoughtful blog post. I'm still at IBM, trying to get the recent US Innovation and Competitiveness Act passed. Best wishes, Taffy
Posted by: Taffy Kingscott | May 31, 2022 at 02:40 PM