“That we should always look on the bright side has gone too far and may be damaging our wellbeing.” This is the opinion expressed by Conor Feehly in “The Happiness Trap” (New Scientist, June 8, 2024).
The problem with repeatedly chanting such mantras as “I am a lovable person” or “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better,” explains Feehly, is that they don’t work. Assertions such as “happiness is a choice” and that “I am in control of my emotions” turn out to be fallacies. “It’s going to be okay” may be false optimism. Devising strategies to avoid negative emotions is what Susan David of the Harvard Medical School calls “the tyranny of positivity”. Psychologists have found that these exercises in self-affirmation are ultimately ineffective primarily because they aren’t believed by those who are reciting them. The long-term effects are really to cause damage because they create a world of illusions, described as “toxic positivism”.
When algae first emerged from the oceans some 480 million years ago to become plants, they had no roots, so they established a symbiotic relationship with fungi, which were essentially nothing but roots. The fungi had the capability of extracting critical moisture and minerals from the ground, while the algae could photosynthesize sugars from sunlight, so the two organisms established a mutually beneficial partnership. This is a subject that has been explored by Dr. Suzanne Simard in her seminal book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Rupert Sheldrake has explored the mysterious world of fungi even further in his remarkable book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds. And George Monbiot has added further dimensions to this fascinating subject in Regenesis, in which he examines the complexity of life systems in soils. Chapter 1, “What Lies Beneath”, is particularly illuminating.
The last page of The Economist magazine traditionally contains an obituary. The June 15, 2024 edition was for William (Bill) Anders, a former Apollo 8 astronaut who died on June 7th, 2024, at age 90 (“Obituary, William Anders”).
On December 21, 1968, Anders, along with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, blasted off from Cape Kennedy in Florida on a reconnaissance trip to the Moon. Their mission was to orbit it several times and take photos of its surface for a future landing site. The chances were one in three that they would not make it back.
Below are seven biological wonders that should help to confirm the sophisticated intelligence of nature. These are merely a sample of what we are discovering about the animals and plants that share this planet with us, a reminder that is particularly appropriate since our behaviour has initiated the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history.
“Why war?” is a question that haunts everyone, including both Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. For Einstein, it was a question that had no rational answer. For Freud, war was an expression of the “death drive” for violence and destruction that was inherent in every human. If Einstein was hoping for optimism, Freud was drawing from his theoretical insights into the human character, a conclusion confirmed by the unequivocal message of history.
