Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

I was guided at the outset in far-reaching ways by my agent, Linda Lowenthal. And my dear editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, early on found the soul of this book, wouldn’t let me waver, and brought the good in this book to completion.

Duchenne smiles and grateful touches to you all.

BORN TO BE GOOD

 

1Jen Science

 

ANTONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK changed how we look at the natural world. Born in Delft, the Netherlands, in 1632, he came from a family of brewers and basket-makers. Van Leeuwenhoek was peacefully settled into his life as a fabric maker, minor city official, and wine assayer until he started grinding up lenses to build simple microscopes to get a better look at the drapes in his shop. His curiosity led him to place the algae of nearby lakes under his three-to four-inch single-lens microscopes, as well as the cells of fish, his sperm, and the plaque of two old men who had never cleaned their teeth. He was the first to study bacteria, blood cells, and spermatozoa. He opened humanity’s eyes to the microbiological world, changing our understanding of who we are.

This book offers a Darwinian lens onto a new science of positive emotion. We’ll call this new science jen science, in honor of the Confucian concept of jen. Jen is the central idea in the teachings of Confucius, and refers to a complex mixture of kindness, humanity, and respect that transpires between people. Alienated by the violence, the materialism, and the hierarchical religion of his sixth-and fifth-century BC China, Confucius taught a new way of finding the meaningful life through the cultivation of jen. A person of jen, Confucius observes, “wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others.” A person of jen “brings the good things of others to completion and does not bring the bad things of others to completion.” Jen is felt in that deeply satisfying moment when you bring out the goodness in others.

Jen science is based on its own microscopic observations of things not closely examined before. Most centrally, it is founded on the study of emotions such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment, and amusement, emotions that transpire between people, bringing the good in each other to completion. Jen science has examined new human languages under its microscope—movements of muscles in the face that signal devotion, patterns of touch that signal appreciation, playful tones of the voice that transform conflicts. It brings into focus new substances that we are made of, neurotransmitters as well as regions of our nervous system that promote trust, caring, devotion, forgiveness, and play. It reveals a new way of thinking about the evolution of human goodness, which requires revision of longstanding assumptions that we are solely wired to maximize desire, to compete, and to be vigilant to what is bad.

Seeing the world through this Darwinian lens of jen science could very well shift your jen ratio. The jen ratio is a lens onto the balance of good and bad in your life. In the denominator of the jen ratio place recent actions in which someone has brought the bad in others to completion—the aggressive driver who flips you off as he roars past, the disdainful diner in a pricey restaurant who sneers at less well-heeled passersby. Above this, in the numerator of the ratio, tally up the actions that bring the good in others to completion—a kind hand on your back in a crowded subway car, the young child who compliments the elderly woman on her bathing suit as she nervously dips her toe in a swimming pool, the woman who laughs as a stranger accidentally steps on her foot. As the value of your jen ratio rises, so too does the humanity of your world.

Let’s give the jen ratio a little life. An after-school moment at my daughters’ playground yields the following. In the numerator: two boys laugh, giving each other noogies on the head, girls do handstands and cartwheels, giggling at their butt-thumping mistakes, in the soft expanse of a grassy field, kids dog pile on a young boy deliriously clasping the football to his chest. In the denominator: a boy teases a smaller boy about his shoes; two girls whisper about another girl who tries to enter into their game of unicorn. This minute of playground life yields a jen ratio of 3/2, or 1.5. A pretty good scene. In an interminable, eight-minute line to buy stamps I see 24 varieties of exasperation, from sighs to glares to threatening groans, and one guy laughs three times. 3/24 = .125.

One can apply the jen ratio to any realm: our interior life, more satisfying and more trying periods of a marriage, the tenor of a family reunion, the goodwill of a neighborhood, the rhetoric of presidents, the spirit of historical eras. Think of the jen ratio as a lens through which you might take stock of your attempt at living a meaningful life.

THE JEN RATIO AND THE HEALTH OF NATIONS