Stumbling on Happiness

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Daniel Gilbert. Stumbling on Happiness

Copyright

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PART I Prospection

CHAPTER I Journey to Elsewhen

The Joy of Next

The Ape That Looked Forward

Twisting Fate

Prospection and Emotion

Prospection and Control

Onward

PART II Subjectivity

CHAPTER 2 The View from in Here

Dancing About Architecture

Feeling Happy

Feeling Happy Because

Feeling Happy About

New Yeller

Remembering Differences

Perceiving Differences

Happy Talk

Squishing Language

Stretching Experience

Onward

CHAPTER 3 Outside Looking In

Dazed and Confused

Comfortably Numb

Warm the Happyometer

Measuring Right

Measuring Often

Onward

PART III Realism

CHAPTER 4 In the Blind Spot of the Mind’s Eye

Little Big Head

Filling in Memory

Filling in Perception

The Meat Loaf of Oz

Discovering Idealism

Escaping Realism

An Embarrassment of Tomorrows

Onward

CHAPTER 5 The Hound of Silence

The Sailors Not

Absence in the Present

Absence in the Future

On the Event Horizon

Onward

PART IV Presentism

CHAPTER 6 The Future Is Now

More of the Same

Presentism in the Past

Presentism in the Future

Sneak Prefeel

The Power of Prefeeling

The Limits of Prefeeling

Onward

CHAPTER 7 Time Bombs

SpaceThink

Starting Now

Next to Nothing

Comparing with the Past

Comparing with the Possible

Comparing and Presentism

Onward

PART V Rationalization

CHAPTER 8 Paradise Glossed

Stop Annoying People

Disambiguating Objects

Disambiguating Experience

Cooking with Facts

Finding Facts

Challenging Facts

Onward

CHAPTER 9 Immune to Reality

Looking Forward to Looking Backward

Little Triggers

The Intensity Trigger

The Inescapability Trigger

Explaining Away

Onward

PART VI Corrigibility

CHAPTER 10 Once Bitten

The Least Likely of Times

All’s Well

The Way We Weren’t

Onward

CHAPTER 11 Reporting Live from Tomorrow

Super-replicators

The Myth of Fingerprints

Finding the Solution

Rejecting the Solution

Onward

AFTERWORD

NOTES. Foreword

Chapter 1: Journey to Elsewhen

Chapter 2: The View from in Here

Chapter 3: Outside Looking In

Chapter 4: In the Blind Spot of the Mind’s Eye

Chapter 5: The Hound of Silence

Chapter 6: The Future Is Now

Chapter 7: Time Bombs

Chapter 8: Paradise Glossed

Chapter 9: Immune to Reality

Chapter 10: Once Bitten

Chapter 11: Reporting Live from Tomorrow

Afterword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INDEX

About the Author

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

About the Publisher

Отрывок из книги

WHAT WOULD YOU DO right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you’ve been hiding in your sock drawer since the Ford administration? Would you waltz into your boss’s office and present him with a detailed description of his personal defects? Would you drive out to that steakhouse near the new mall and order a T-bone, medium rare, with an extra side of the really bad cholesterol? Hard to say, of course, but of all the things you might do in your final ten minutes, it’s a pretty safe bet that few of them are things you actually did today.

Now, some people will bemoan this fact, wag their fingers in your direction, and tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show that some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice. The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our boss’s witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become. We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirrelling away portions of our paycheques each month so they can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty nappies and mind-numbing repetitions of The Cat in the Hat so that someday they will have fat-cheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become will enjoy the cupcake we are paying for now. In fact, just about any time we want something–a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger–we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, minute, day or decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance.

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Prospection and Control

Prospection can provide pleasure and prevent pain, and this is one of the reasons why our brains stubbornly insist on churning out thoughts of the future. But it is not the most important reason. Americans gladly pay millions–perhaps even billions–of dollars every year to psychics, investment advisors, spiritual leaders, weather forecasters and other assorted hucksters who claim they can predict the future. Those of us who subsidize these fortune-telling industries do not want to know what is likely to happen just for the joy of anticipating it. We want to know what is likely to happen so that we can do something about it. If interest rates are going to skyrocket next month, then we want to shift our money out of bonds right now. If it is going to rain this afternoon, then we want to grab an umbrella this morning. Knowledge is power, and the most important reason why our brains insist on simulating the future even when we’d rather be here now, enjoying a goldfish moment, is that our brains want to control the experiences we are about to have.

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