The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [70]
The second approach might be called reflective or meditative. We are swept along today by the pseudo-urgency contrived by PR and advertising. The advertisements scream at us to buy; the presidential press conferences scream at us to invade. The mechanisms are the same: propaganda is deployed to overcome our real interests by appeals to emotion, notably to fear or sensory pleasure. Buddhists have long developed and deployed a special tool for rebalancing needs and daily sensations: meditation. This kind of mind training aims to unplug the mind from the daily sensory overload to regain a balance with longer-term needs. A related step today should be to unplug from the TV, the mobile phone, and the Facebook page. Systematically unplugging to gain quiet time and composure is a necessary step toward breaking free of many of today’s most addictive compulsions.
The third approach is practice. As Aristotle rightly emphasized, we foster virtue by practicing virtue. Virtuous qualities are self-reinforcing, just as are harmful addictions. Acts of compassion awaken our desire to be even more compassionate. The cultivated practice of increased household saving, more leisure time, increased compassionate giving, and other acts of moderation build the courage, stamina, and pleasure of virtuous behavior.
The Importance of Meaningful Work
Nearly every study of happiness underscores the importance of meaningful work to personal well-being. Unemployment is the single largest factor in the public’s unhappiness and political restiveness. Yet America’s work environment has deteriorated notably over the past quarter century. Unemployment is high and stagnant; fear of job security is pervasive; corporate malfeasance is shockingly high; and the mismatch of jobs and skills is becoming a national crisis and scandal. We need a new mindfulness of work to recover our bearings.
There are vast improvements possible in the quality of working life for average workers. American workers have little job security, no guaranteed vacation time, little flexibility regarding working hours, meager union protection, and no representation on the corporate boards regarding compensation, employment, work sharing, training, and other issues. Libertarians claim that any further worker representation in company decision making would destroy U.S. competitiveness. Yet throughout northern Europe, workers participate in corporate deliberations and often decision making, without a loss of productivity and with more creative solutions on job flexibility and vacation time.
Many European governments have also pioneered and demonstrated the efficacy of “active labor market policies,” which use government funding to match workers to jobs and to improve targeted job training for skills that are in demand. The U.S. labor market is increasingly mismatched. High-skilled workers find good jobs, while poorly skilled workers settle for poverty-level pay or fall out of the labor force altogether. The unemployment rate of college graduates is around 4 percent, but for workers with a high school education or less, the rate is three times that.6 Yet the United States is pushing more and more poorly trained young workers into the labor market and doing little to help them stay in school.
Knowledge in an Age of Complexity
Mindfulness of knowledge is an approach to life and science exemplified by the Dalai Lama. He has written and said on numerous occasions that his own belief system, Tibetan Buddhism, must always keep an open door to science and that all Buddhist doctrines are open to revision based on new scientific evidence. He has taken this pledge much further by sponsoring and attending many sessions of Buddhist monks and Western scientists, and these meetings are leading to new insights regarding the interface of neuroscience and human happiness. That kind of openness to science is urgently needed in America today.
Most Americans have little idea about