CHAPTER 29
Peter Stearns
Abstract
This chapter argues that historical analysis can actively contribute to the growing interest in well-being in several specific ways, in addition to the pleasure that many people find in reading or listening to various kinds of historical work. Four connections are emphasized: first, the role of history in providing perspective on some of the key well-being recommendations, by noting earlier approaches to similar qualities—for example, in classical philosophy or Hindu or Buddhist texts; second, awareness of the very real and complex modern history of the idea of happiness itself, and how it has connected to areas like work and family life; third, assessment of recent claims of progress, and how these, and the complexities they involve, affect current well-being and perceptions of well-being; and finally, explicit historical work on a variety of modern trends, in domains like consumerism, or trust, or gratitude, that generate awareness of some of the current problems faced in the well-being movement, particularly in its larger social and cultural context.
Key Words: history, happiness, progress, consumerism, trust, gratitude, loneliness
Exploration of the past, when purposefully directed, improves our grasp on our condition today, whether the focus is on the individual or on the social context more generally. In fact, history offers the most comprehensive opportunity available to evaluate the human experience and determine the trends that are currently shaping our lives. The historical perspective can be focused in several ways directly relevant to human flourishing, as this chapter will suggest. The common link is the opportunity to use selected features of earlier patterns to inform our lives today and contribute to the growing interest in improving well-being.
This approach requires a few preliminaries, before engaging the main tasks of exploring some of the key opportunities.
First, many people already see history as a source of both enlightenment and pleasure. They read biographies, or other accounts of the past, or probe their own family experience to provide better understanding of their own lives (Rosenzweig & Thelen, 1998). Their goals may be improvement of identity: how history helps illustrate the experiences of social groups, ethnicities, or regions; or a delight in exploring some of the achievements of the past that enhance appreciation of the present—the glories of the Renaissance, perhaps, or the successful struggles for fuller recognition of human rights, or the wisdom of the Founding Fathers; or examination of past challenges that were ultimately overcome, that offers some balance to contemporary gloom-and-doom.1 Whatever the particular pleasures, including history as part of the enjoyment of life inspires a host of readers, a wealth of local history societies, and the strong interest of many retiree learning groups in highlighting the history offerings available.2
Second, urging history as a contributor to well-being requires recognition that the most conventional exposure to the study of the past—the school classroom—is not always a pleasant memory, despite the real enthusiasm that good history teachers continue to generate. The history that contributes to human flourishing is not an accumulation of facts to be memorized or an emphasis on the wars, kings, and presidencies that so often hog the textbooks. For some, using the real opportunity to gain new perspectives on the human condition involves giving history—a somewhat different kind of history—a second chance.
And third, focusing history’s contribution to human flourishing will bother some very good historians who shy away from unduly utilitarian uses of their discipline and who, most particularly, are nervous about too much connection with the present. There is, in the tradition of the discipline, an admirable commitment to study the past for the past’s sake, without the potential distortion of application to current issues and concerns. For some, indeed, the distinctiveness of the past may be something of a refuge from the complexities of the present. The kind of history that contributes to human flourishing does not focus solely on the most recent developments, but it does have a somewhat presentist bias. It certainly does not seek to oversimplify the past, though it centers on the most relevant highlights. “Well-being history,” if the term is acceptable, is not the only kind of history that should be pursued, and tensions with purists should be acknowledged. But the benefits of this more selective approach to the past deserve careful consideration as well.
Indeed, for many historians, the opportunity to contribute to the growing interest in human flourishing, as a research area and set of practices, extends the uses of the discipline and takes advantage of the range of topics developed over the past half-century.
This chapter will suggest four overlapping ways to apply historical perspective to contemporary considerations of well-being. The first highlights precedents for concepts of well-being themselves, both to connect to earlier recommendations and to identify and explain innovations. The second centers more specifically on a history of modern ideas of happiness, which also help frame the current discussion but raise some cautionary flags as well. Third—and this category is potentially vast—history can be assessed in terms of actual trajectories of well-being while also addressing nostalgia for qualities that may have been lost over time. And finally, shading off from this massive venture, history can be applied to trends that quite directly affect well-being today, some of them recent but some stretching back at least three centuries. Any one of these categories could support a considerable literature and, in some cases, invite further research as well; but a more summary sketch can lay out the terrain.
Well_Being in the Past
For many historians (particularly those dealing with premodern topics), a prime opportunity to use the past to frame the present targets the exploration of past ideas about well-being. Philosophers, physicians, and theologians have devoted a great deal of thought to the definition of human well-being and to qualities that would promote well-being in individual lives. Greek philosophy might provide a familiar touchstone, but Confucian, Arab, and Indian approaches are also readily available. More generally, the idea of using classical ideas to help assess contemporary values is a familiar one in many educational traditions—assessment of political theory offers a familiar example—and there is good reason to apply the approach to well-being (Pawelski, 2016).
And the results, surely, will be a mixture of confirmation and contrast. Greek or Hindu promptings about moderation and health resonate strongly with well-being staples today. Confucian insistence on the importance of group harmony can be tested against some of the more individualistic emphases in the well-being movement, but there is overlap as well. At the same time, not surprisingly, some contemporary topics reflect issues that were not common before modern times. The need to caution people against undue consumerism, and the realization that well-being is better advanced by interesting experiences than by acquisition of things, may touch base with more traditional concerns about greed, but obviously there are important new ingredients and warnings. The classical sages were not dealing with this aspect of contemporary culture. Other current interests—in curiosity, resilience, or grit—warrant evaluation in terms of older ideas as well (Sheldon & Lucas, 2014; Kashdan & Ciarrochi 2013). It would be revealing, for example, to explore the relationship of a relatively new term—mindfulness—to older ideas.
It might also be enlightening to encourage a more systematic history of the evolution of interest in well-being itself, again at least for purposes of general perspective. While the term human flourishing is quite new, dating back only to the 1960s, well-being has a much more extensive pedigree. Google Ngrams, which trace the relative frequency of word use, show important peaks of interest in well-being in the English language particularly in the eighteenth century, and then a steadier surge from the mid-nineteenth century onward, with the most dramatic increase after 1950 (see Figure 29.1).
Figure 29.1 Frequency of the word “well-being” in English, 1600–2008, Google Ngram Viewer, accessed August 2, 2019.
Google Ngram Viewer is a search application that allows one to measure the frequency of particular terms or words in the Google Books database. While in some ways problematic and obviously not a complete representation, the tool is a helpful way to assess cultural trends and changes.
It seems probable that the first peak followed from Protestant debates about spiritual well-being and the second picked up on the growing Enlightenment interest in the secular human condition. Further exploration might well shed light on overlaps and contrasts with the more recent surge of interest.
And of course it is informative to pick up on the rise of the more recent interest itself. Fortunately, an important recent study offers at least a good start on this, tracing the relationship between psychological interest—first from humanistic psychology in the 1980s and then from the positive psychology movement after 1998—and an older tradition of self-help literature (Horowitz, 2016).3
An initial set of historical perspectives on human flourishing centers on establishing explicit context for the interest in well-being and for the more specific recommendations that flow from contemporary advice. Many key points are supported not just by current research, but by strong valuation in the past, as in the emphasis on moderation or the importance of positive social relationships. Other points reflect some of the differences between contemporary life and its counterpart in the past. Both aspects can be illuminating.
The Rise of Modern Happiness
General context leads to a second, more specific historical venture with important implications for contemporary goals in the history of the idea of happiness itself (and attendant interest in greater cheerfulness).
There is no question that ideas about happiness, and the sheer level of interest in happiness, began to change rapidly in the Western world in the eighteenth century (MacMahon, 2006; Kotchemidova, 2005). Google N-grams clearly show the pattern, as references to happiness peak dramatically in the second half of the century (roughly the same incidence captures a new interest in cheerfulness). A number of cultural historians have noted the contrast between a predominant emphasis on slight melancholy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, appropriate to human sinfulness according to influential versions of Protestantism, and the more unapologetic commitment to goals of happiness after about 1750. Diary writers stopped berating themselves for bursts of humor, as had been common even in the 1730s. And of course the American revolutionaries of 1776 would proudly list the “right” to the pursuit of happiness, translating a major cultural shift into the political arena (Eustace, 2011; Kotchemidova, 2005).
The most important cause of this new interest was unquestionably the philosophy of the Enlightenment and its extensive popularization. Greater optimism, a belief in the validity of progress and satisfaction on this earth, combined with increasing attacks on older, gloomier ideas such as original sin. But changes in living standards, at least for the property-owning classes, might also contribute. Physical comforts improved for many people in the eighteenth century, from better bedding to the availability of umbrellas to protect against rainstorms (though a few British stalwarts objected to the latter as a French import incompatible with sturdy national character). New kinds of consumer goods, most obviously imports such as sugar, coffee, tea, and chocolate, were becoming available. At the same time, one historian has speculated that better dentistry helped reduce the incidence of rotting teeth, making people more willing to expose themselves in smiles (Jones, 2017).
Obviously, cultural change of this magnitude involves all sorts of complications. Cultures outside the West would not participate to the same degree, a differentiation still visible today, as in the greater Japanese hesitation about prioritizing happiness (Katayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000). In the West itself, people in the poorer classes would hardly be able to share in the new expectations, and the aspirations may have applied more to men than to women. Certain religious groups, still attached for example to ideas of original sin and damnation, resisted the tide at least for a time (though mainstream Protestantism largely adjusted) (Greven, 1988). Children, also, were included only a bit later, for it was hard to break through older assumptions about some of the limitations of childhood, including, of course, its association with high rates of mortality. References that linked children and happiness begin to rise only after 1800, and intensified only toward the middle of the century (Stearns, 2011). At the same time, there are some intriguing confirmations of the steady groundswell in expectations: a number of new words—sulky, grumpy, grouch—were introduced into English from the late eighteenth century onward (grouch is the most recent, in 1895) to designate people who were not horrible but who needed to be cited for their failure to live up to desired standards of cheerfulness.
Some differentiations may have reflected comparative distinctions even within Western culture broadly construed, though further comparative analysis would be useful. European visitors to the new United States in the early nineteenth century noted a particularly resolute cheerfulness and a desire to make others laugh, that they found distinctive and, in some cases, decidedly off-putting (Stearns 2020).
But for all the important qualifications, the new belief in happiness was unquestionably launched and, despite some obvious setbacks (the horrors of World War I, for example), it would not only persist but often intensify.
Marriage and family life formed one obvious target. As relationships were increasingly formed through some kind of direct courtship rather than parental arrangement, with love rather than property considerations the prime criterion at least in principle, it was not surprising that the idea of evaluating marriage in terms of happiness gained increasing attention—with a growing literature developing from the late nineteenth century onward (Coontz, 2006). Insistence that children should be happy surged as well, with whole books on the subject by the second quarter of the twentieth century. And a new institution—the birthday party—gained ground from the 1850s onward, primarily as a vehicle for celebrating children’s happiness; and on cue, the song “Happy Birthday” emerged in 1926 to highlight the connection (Baselice, Burrichter, & Stearns, 2019).
Ideas about happiness at work developed more haltingly. The famous middle-class work ethic urged the importance of hard work but was noncommittal on whether it directly fostered happiness or merely provided the means for a happier life off the job. By the twentieth century, however, with the rise of industrial psychology and a growing interest in reducing worker discontent, discussions of creating a happier workplace began to solidify—connecting directly with aspects of the well-being movement today (Rodgers, 1979; Chmiel, 2000). Finally, of course, the rise of new forms of leisure during the same turn-of-the-century decades was presumably based on a belief that sports and entertainments would actively contribute to happier lives. The criterion was increasingly ubiquitous, covering a growing range of human activities, with clearly rising expectations to match.
The persistent and often intensifying interest in individual happiness marked Western cultures off from many other regional value systems. International polls seeking to measure happiness in the early twenty-first century almost invariably rated Western cultures on the high side, compared, for example, to other advanced industrial societies such as Japan or South Korea. A fascinating parental survey in 2018 showed that respondents in India, China, and Mexico rated the achievement or health of their children above happiness, but Western societies uniformly rated happiness well above all other goals—at 86 percent for France and mid-70s percentages for the United States and Canada (Malhotra, 2015).
The deep commitment to happiness had its drawbacks, as historians and others have pointed out (MacMahon, 2006). The emphasis might make sadness more difficult to cope with, at an extreme even equating it with psychological disorder—and this applied to children as well as adults. Expectations might simply rise too high, making the normal bumps of life less acceptable; from the early twentieth century onward, many marriage experts warned about unrealistic emotional goals for marriage that might actually compromise stability (Coontz, 2006). In some cases as well, and perhaps particularly in the United States, happiness goals intertwined strongly with consumerism; not surprisingly, advertisers were eager to persuade potential customers that additional purchases would enrich their lives. The Walt Disney firm, founded in the 1920s, has consistently used happiness as a core slogan, describing some of its theme parks as “the happiest places on earth” and seeking actively to persuade customers that they should be overjoyed simply to be involved. And the excesses of the happiness/consumerist connection are widely noted in the current well-being literature. In sum: the pressure to be happy and seem cheerful could be double-edged, in terms of the implications for human flourishing.
This complex history links directly to the broader interest in well-being, helping to explain, among other things, why proponents are usually eager to distinguish their goals from mere happiness and often concerned about modifying some of the expectations that the happiness culture promotes. Here is a case, clearly, where knowledge of the historical trajectory of a cultural quality contributes directly to personal assessments of life goals and to some of the subtler challenges in the positive psychology initiative itself.
Historical Trends in Well-Being
The well-being movement raises an even broader historical question, related to analyzing the idea of happiness but going beyond its scope: Can we use history to determine whether life satisfactions have been increasing over time and, if so, whether this might nourish the current interest in greater well-being? Recent publications, such as Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now, dear to the hearts of many positive psychologists, raise the challenge clearly (Pinker, 2019).
Arguing that the human condition has been improving is a huge claim, and a few preliminaries are essential. First, the claim was made at one earlier point, in the later nineteenth century, when many historians and publicists pointed to the huge gains in education, living standards, or the abolition of slavery to argue that life was getting better and would continue to do so (Butterfield, 1965; Lamoreaux, Raff, & Temin, 2004). This interpretation, called Whig history, was dashed by events like World War I, and the result has left many observers properly cautious. Few historians, usually interested in more specific topics in any event, are comfortable with big progress claims today—and Pinker’s optimistic assertions have earned a largely critical assessment (Gutting, 2018; Gillespie, 2018; Bakewell, 2018). And ultimately, in all probability, the trends involved are too complex to resolve definitively.
But the issues are worth some discussion, if the goal is the broader interest in history’s relationship to well-being. The argument is admittedly tricky, particularly against the backdrop of scholarly skepticism. Yet, it can be argued that tallying up some of the big pluses and minuses of modern life is actually a good way to translate historical findings into contemporary guidance in ways that relate directly to well-being concerns—without falling into Whiggish oversimplifications.
The big question is how industrial society compares with its previous, agricultural counterpart, and this really is worth thinking about (Stearns, 2017). The question highlights industrialization—now more than two centuries old in some regions—as the most important single historical change in modern times, which despite all the other competing developments is almost certainly true. And it points to the many limitations and drawbacks of agricultural society. (There is an argument that human well-being was in fact at its peak before agriculture, when among other things the species was in greater harmony with the environment; but this interesting claim is a bit remote for our purposes; MacMahon, 2018).
So here is where industrialization brings advances—and continues to do so as agriculture recedes in importance; indeed, many of the global gains have been accelerating as industrialization takes fuller hold, even granting some initial hardships in launching the process of change. The list, and the historical sense involved, should become familiar to anyone interested in the context for contemporary well-being—though some of the historians’ leading caveats should be taken to heart as well.
Incontestably, first in the West and then more globally, human health has improved, stature has increased, later middle age has become less debilitated, life expectancy advances, while rapidly falling birthrates facilitate other positive changes in women’s lives. Perhaps most strikingly, infant mortality drops to such a point that, for the first time in human history, most families do not have to expect the death of one or more offspring as a matter of routine. Education levels advance, literacy and other related gaps between boys and girls decline, children’s work obligations largely drop away. Poverty declines, quite massively. Worldwide, 137,000 people have been emerging from the starkest poverty every day for the last twenty-five years (pre-COVID). Access to electricity advances steadily. And this list of basics can be further expanded (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2017; Pinker, 2019).
Almost certainly, along with these developments, women’s lives have improved in other respects, for example in the steady decline of child marriage. Rates of capital punishment have dropped. Data suggest a decline in violent crimes over time, thanks to better policing and improved impulse control (Pinker, 2012). It is even possible that exposure to some of the less pleasant emotions has been reduced. Most obviously, for growing numbers of people, better sanitary facilities bring a marked decline in the experience of disgust. It is also interesting to speculate about the incidence of grief: lower death rates before old age suggest fewer occasions for grief, though unexpected loss or death may be harder to accept than before (Corbin, 1988). Overall, certainly, in a host of major ways, the human condition has been advancing dramatically, and some of the most important drawbacks of agricultural society—such as the high mortality rates—have been remedied and then some.
And these same points are arguably significantly linked to the interest in human flourishing. They legitimately support a degree of optimism, against the “progressophobe” tendencies of many experts, eager to highlight problems and challenges over human gains. It is not naïve to be somewhat encouraged about the basic state of the contemporary world (again, pre-COVID), or at least key aspects of it, as we consider the context for our own well-being and that of those around us.
But these same facts raise an equally legitimate question, again applying selective recent history to our own context: Why, amid so many signs of greater flourishing, is an active sense of positive satisfaction not more widespread? Several responses deserve consideration, again as part of a historically informed evaluation of the world around us. Four or five factors invite attention.
First, of course, with regard to many recent gains, the cup is only half full: there is still a great deal of poverty and disease in the world, and this should cause distress. We may hope that additional advances will improve the situation, but we have not reached nirvana. Second, there is the embarrassing but vital point that many of the crucial recent gains have been more visible outside the United States and the West than within. We can, if we are benevolent, rejoice that regional economic inequality has been dropping thanks to industrial gains in China, India, etc., but it is not entirely selfish to note that it is hard to find comparable progress back home during the past few decades. (Indeed, on the crucial measure of child and maternal mortality, things have recently been getting worse in the United States.)
Third, there is a really interesting challenge to memory and gratitude. The decline of infant death is a huge improvement in the human condition, but for most people in the West it occurred several generations ago. We have no active memory of the bad old days, and therefore no basis for any particular appreciation. Our focus is more likely to be a worry lest, however rarely, a child might die. The same applies to several other aspects of living standards, where the most crucial breakthroughs occurred a few generations back. A well-being-focused history can address this to an extent, but a gap between past achievement and current priorities will remain.
Fourth, pretty obviously, industrial society has not resolved some other important issues; progress, by any measure, is hardly unalloyed. For example, while some optimists believe that we have figured out how to reduce war, the evidence is at best limited and insecure. Inequality has not been seriously dented, though it is interesting to consider how much this affects well-being once poverty is reduced (Scheidel, 2017).4
And finally, industrial society creates some massive new problems that must feed into any historical assessment of our contemporary context. Environmental deterioration is an inescapable topic here, but many people would add possibly new problems in family life (though historians warn of misleading nostalgia), or the decline of spirituality, or the rise of novel psychological issues associated with modern life. Even the adequacy of sleep seems to be challenged with the advance of industrialization (Hornborg, McNeill, & Martinez Alier, 2007; Pinker, 2019; Reiss, 2017).
What’s suggested, then, is an active historical appreciation of some of the real gains of modern life, which are often obscured both by undue presentism and by historians’ reluctance to venture big-picture evaluations. But this appreciation must be modified by an equally historical assessment of unresolved issues and new challenges. There is, admittedly, a balancing act here, along with a frustrating inability to make sweeping statements about the mix of advances and deteriorations. But the exercise, even if less than conclusive, can help us lift up from the details of the moment to a wider assessment of the framework in which we operate, both the strengths that we can build on and appreciate and the leading targets for redress. The actual trajectory of human happiness (as opposed to the increase in expectations) is too complicated to be captured in a single formula, but there is an active and usable history of many of the ingredients (Coontz, 2006; Laslett, 2004; Matt, 2011).5
Tracing Current Patterns
This leads directly to the final main opportunity in connecting history and human flourishing: the application of historical analysis directly to assess patterns and trajectories for some of the key components of human well-being, both to provide perspective on the issues involved—to encourage further thought—and to help guide our own responses. The agenda here takes advantage of the huge expansion of the range of historical inquiry in recent decades—though additional challenges remain. It emphasizes relatively recent developments, privileging contemporary history, but in some cases—as with the idea of happiness itself—it must extend back in time for at least several centuries.
Any list in this category must be illustrative, not exhaustive, but the opportunities should be clear. Some topics involve direct juxtaposition of current circumstances with counterparts in the relatively recent past. We are all trying to figure out how social media affect well-being—do they, for example, promote destructive levels of envy—and while all sorts of analyses are welcome, the questions are fundamentally historical (Matt, 2019). Well-being experts already grapple with the excesses of consumerism, and here too there is a rich history that will help us understand what modern consumerism is all about and why (and when) it may have gotten out of hand (Cross, 1993, 2000). The quality of modern leisure, juxtaposed against older forms such as the great and now largely lost tradition of popular festivals, is another prime candidate, with particular relevance to relationships between individual and community; here, too, we can trace the emergence of more modern emphases, such as the strong element of spectatorship, and evaluate the process of change (Hecht, 2007; Robert Malcomson, 1973; Marrus, 1974).
There are other, less familiar invitations as well. A strong emphasis in well-being research involves the salutary effects of gratitude. At one level, the findings do not require a history; they speak for themselves. But they gain additional meaning, and invite fuller consideration, when a history is attached. Currently, there are two historical studies of gratitude, both relevant. The first juxtaposes more traditional forms of gratitude, which were used to bind communities together and link people across social hierarchies, and then notes how this kind of extensive and connective gratitude began to decline with greater individualism in a fascinating process of change. The second study, focused on the United States over the past two centuries, highlights the strong emphasis on gratitude that persisted in the nineteenth century but then its later diminution, in part because of the decline of formal manners, in part because of a growing sense of entitlement that reduced the feeling of thankfulness. Both of these assessments of the process of change help us think more clearly about gratitude today, suggesting the need for more effort than some well-being advocates may imagine. And they also highlight some of the newer, more individualistic features of the current gratitude emphasis, itself, as in the (by more traditional standards) odd notion that people might simply record their thanks in “gratitude books” without necessarily reaching out to others (Leithart, 2018; Clay & Stearns, 2020).
The importance of trust offers another connection between well-being efforts and explicit historical perspective. Trust is properly emphasized for its role in positive social relationships. But various forms of trust have clearly been eroding in the United States over the past half-century. Polls show a steady decline of trust in most basic institutions since the 1960s. Though hard to measure, trust in neighbors and fellow citizens has also been shaken. For various reasons—including obvious ones, like the impact of air conditioning and television in reducing activities outside the home—many neighborhood contacts have dwindled. Negative emphases from news media and some politicians played a role as well. New levels of fear, as in the Halloween candy scare of 1979, which encouraged assumptions that someone next door might be trying to poison the kids, had the same effect. As Robert Putnam has shown, American participation in other kinds of associations, like local clubs, has also dropped. None of this detracts from the importance of building trust as part of well-being, but it suggests some troubling trends that must be addressed (Putnam, 2001; Glassner, 2018).
Loneliness is another target for historical perspective. Very recent sources of loneliness are fairly familiar: the expansion of the elderly population and the isolating effects of social media. But there is a strong suggestion that, at least in some Western cultures, a new awareness of loneliness began to develop as early as the late eighteenth century, as the word itself took on its current meaning in terms of absence of contact with others; this type of loneliness, by contrast, was less present previously (Alberti, 2018). Here is a reminder, first, that as with the expectation of happiness, some contemporary issues require historical inquiry beyond the most recent decades. The same finding opens an opportunity to gain a deeper appreciation of what contemporary loneliness is all about.
The basic point is clear. There is a history of a surprising range of human phenomena—some of it already available, some open to further inquiry as connections between historical findings and the interest in human flourishing expand. This newer focus on the human experience does more than offer opportunities to explore the origins of current phenomena; it connects directly to our understanding of the setting in which people operate today. This expanded kind of history tells us where we are coming from, and we must know this as part of knowing where we want to go, as individuals and as a society.
Conclusion
The historical contributions to human flourishing are varied, from perspectives on well-being itself to specific inquiries into key aspects of the current human condition. The contributions suggest a few adjustments in some of the standard kinds of historical inquiry and presentation, but they build on the current strength of the discipline as well. They invite interaction with other kinds of perspectives on well-being and on the formation of positive goals. History does not, in the end, tell us what we should do next, to enhance our potential. But it does describe the context in which decisions are made, and it clearly highlights some of the key issues any decisions will encounter. Historical perspective helps connect individuals with their social environment, a crucial issue in the well-being movement. Historical knowledge is in fact fundamental to human wisdom, and we flourish more abundantly if we seek to be wise.
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1An informal survey of retiree learners who express delight in history emphasized this point strongly: the sense that amid the flood of current problems the chance to look back on even worse dilemmas was encouraging.
2It is also worth remembering the common injunction that failure to learn from history will simply cause mistakes to be repeated. This is an important feature of the role of the discipline in policy, including military strategy; it may be less applicable to the more positive qualities of human flourishing.
3Some readers will find this book somewhat cynical, in pointing to some of the pragmatics in the effort to define a new kind of psychology.
4Looking at the impact of ongoing inequality on well-being is an interesting interdisciplinary challenge, history very much included.
5Historical analysis is also essential in evaluating stubborn nostalgic beliefs, not to debunk but to help clarify this kind of relationship between misleading images of the past and present discontents.