Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

BORN TO BE GOOD

 

Dacher Keltner

 

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY    New York • London

Copyright © 2009 by Dacher Keltner

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: 978-0-393-07335-5

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

TO THOSE WHO HAVE GIVEN ME SO MUCH JEN:

THE FAMILY WHO RAISED ME—JEANIE KELTNER, MY MOTHER;

RICHARD KELTNER, MY FATHER; AND ROLF KELTNER, MY BROTHER—

AND THE FAMILY WHO SUSTAINS ME—

MOLLIE MCNEIL, MY WIFE; AND NATALIE AND SERAFINA KELTNER-

MCNEIL, MY DAUGHTERS.

Contents

 

Preface

Acknowledgments

1

Jen Science

2

Darwin’s Joys

3

Rational Irrationality

4

Survival of the Kindest

5

Embarrassment

6

Smile

7

Laughter

8

Tease

9

Touch

10

Love

11

Compassion

12

Awe

Notes

Text Acknowledgments

PREFACE

 

SOME SCIENTIFIC INSIGHTS arise in powerful, fleeting experiences—a startling observation, a dream, a gut feeling, a sudden realization. My own thinking about human emotion has taken a longer course, reflecting the intersection of the long arc of life and the scientific data I have gathered.

I have been led to the idea that emotion is the source of the meaningful life. My mother, an English professor and student of Romanticism, and my father, an artist guided by Lao Tzu and Zen, cultivated in me the conviction that our best attempts at the good life are found in bursts of passion captured in plot turns in the prose on a page or oil layered on a canvas. This idea proved to have the deepest scientific promise in the hands of Charles Darwin, who believed that brief emotional expressions offer clues to the deep origins of our design, and Paul Ekman, who figured out how to bring quantifiable order to the thousands of movements of the face.

Born to Be Good is the product of my family and scientific upbringings, and attempts answers to three age-old questions. The first is: How can we be happy? Legions of recent empirical studies on happiness have led to best-selling books. We have learned about the difficulties of knowing what makes us happy (Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness), the importance of optimism (Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness), and that, for most of us, relationships are the surest route to happiness, and seeking happiness through financial gain is an illusion (Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis).

Born to Be Good offers a new answer to the question of how we can be happy. In honor of my mother and father, you might call it the Zen Romanticism thesis. The idea is that we have evolved a set of emotions that enable us to lead the meaningful life, emotions such as gratitude, mirth, awe, and compassion (the Romanticism thesis). The key to happiness is to let these emotions arise, to see them fully in oneself and in others, and to train the eye and mind in that practice (the Zen thesis).

Born to Be Good engages a second old question: What are the deep origins of our capacity for kindness? We are witnessing a renewed debate about our origins. Advances in DNA measurement, in archeology, and in the study of our primate relatives are yielding striking new insights into the history of humanity, where we came from, how we dispersed, how we evolved. Embedded in these discoveries is an answer to the question of where our capacity for goodness comes from. Born to Be Good reveals how survival of the kindest may be just as fitting a description of our origins as survival of the fittest.

Finally, Born to Be Good asks: How can we be good? We are in a period of probing moral reflection. U.S. children rank twentieth of twenty-one industrialized countries in terms of social well-being. The moral stature of the United States has fallen dramatically in the past eight years. Deep concerns about genocide, inequality, and global warming raise doubts about whether a hopeful future for the human race is justified on any grounds. There is a hunger for new views of the nature and practice of human goodness. Just look at the crowds that attend every talk by the Dalai Lama.