Positive Psychology
What place is there for happiness as we follow a man of sorrows?
It depends who you ask, of course. One Christian may happily treat Jesus as an add-on lifestyle accessory, to baptise a comfortable life in the lukewarm waters of spiritual wellbeing. Another may argue that faith is not a matter of happiness at all but of self-denial.
Happiness is without doubt subjective, and scientists argue over how much of it depends on our genes. Still, in our pleasure-seeking, Prozac-popping culture, the nature of happiness is being called increasingly into question.
Dr Anthony Seldon, the historian and headmaster of Wellington College, hit the news this week by introducing classes on 'happiness and positive psychology' for his privileged 14-to-16-year-olds.
'The lessons will', he wrote in Wednesday's Independent, 'be highly moral.' They will ask how to set more realistic goals in life, and how to cope when bad things happen.
'The pursuit of true happiness is also a deeply spiritual quest,' he observed. 'The heart of spirituality is about transcendence of one's own self and the forming of deeply loving and compassionate relationships with others.'
The 'positive psychology' driving the lessons was developed by Dr Martin Seligman, who brought the science of happiness into the public eye as president of the American Psychological Association. In fact, according to a companion piece by Deborah Orr in the same newspaper, positive psychology is now Harvard's most popular course.
Seligman argues that we pursue happiness in three basic ways: in the 'Pleasant Life' (going after pleasure, which is unrewarding in the long term), the 'Good Life' (focusing on a commitment to work and family, but constrained by the pressures they involve) and the 'Meaningful Life'.
The last of these concentrates on doing good things selflessly for others. And 'this is the way to true self-fulfilment,' says Seligman.
We've heard it all before, of course, in the Gospels. But do we listen? Happiness is found less in a cheesy smile or even a warm, fuzzy feeling, and more - and more deeply and tangibly - within the tensions of (for example) the Sermon on the Mount.
No friend of the Church, Orr concludes that this is 'where positive psychology starts to look like a movement dedicated to placing the Christian values that have fallen out of Western favour ... into the scientific context that so many of us hardened rationalists crave.'
And that's enough, surely, to make even a man of sorrows smile.
Brian Draper
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