Calculating Happiness

Dear Happiness Hunters:

Rakesh Sarin is UCLA’s Anderson Paine Chair in Management and has created some controversy by claiming that happiness can be described mathematically.

The simple equation: Happiness = Reality – Expectations.

(Part of me delights in the new discipline of behavioral economics, championed by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. My delight arises from an argument I used to have with my high school and undergraduate friend, Charlie Fishkin. He was an economics major, and I was in sociology. He used to claim econ’s superiority to soc because of its reliance on mathematical modeling, thus making it more scientific. I would argue back with an equation of my own: Economics = Social Psychology + Money. Charlie went on to create the Office of Risk Assessment for the Securities and Exchange Commission. I like to think I moved on to work for the department of Soul Assessment, for the Eternal Security Commission. I am confident that Charlie and I are equally happy; but that gets us back to Sarin’s equation.)

There’s an elegance to Sarin’s proposition, one that has stuck in my head for several weeks since I first heard it. The elegance is the way it leads us to focus on the controllable rather than the uncontrollable variable. In unhappiness the human tendency is to focus on reality, the thing we cannot control. It rained so our picnic is ruined; the market plunged so our retirement is delayed. Our first reaction is disappointment, focusing on the uncontrollable variable—the weather or market conditions. Sarin’s equation suggests there is another variable, one which we can control, and that is our expectations.

This formula explains why, a number of years ago, I stopped buying lottery tickets. I wasn’t a regular player, but I confess I could not resist tossing a dollar towards the chance of a nine-figure payout. I found that when I bought my ticket, my mind immediately raced to all the good things I would do when I collected my winnings. There was the homeless shelter, the pay-it-forward café, college education for grandkids and underprivileged children, VOCEL would receive endowment funds, and there was the Jonathan Krogh Chair of Social Justice at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Between the time of my dollar expenditure and the drawing, I found a certain euphoria of anticipation. My happiness equation was balanced in this way: Happiness = Fantasy = Expectation; that was until Reality factored into the equation. Without fail, when the drawing occurred (and no, in case you were wondering, I never won), I found myself unhappy. The deficit between reality and my fanciful expectations was substantial. And although the state of unhappiness only lasted for a moment or two, I found myself feeling not only unhappy but also stupid for having paid $1 for the privilege. I realized there were so many better ways to lose a buck without the consequence of disappointment.

At our son Calvin’s wedding, it rained. A beautiful outdoor ceremony was planned, and the bride Meg, overwhelmed by the emotion of the day, began to cry. Her dad Tom compassionately took her hand and tried to explain how the staff was at that very moment moving the venue into the tent and everything would be okay. With tears in her eyes she told her dad, “But this is not how I pictured it.” He cupped her face in his hands, looked her in the eye and said compassionately, “Then change the picture, baby.” By the conclusion of the evening it was still raining, but no one could deny we were all happy.

Working to find happiness in nothing less than what is, I remain,

With love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

Featured
Giving and Gaining
Giving and Gaining

Dear Spam-Call Warriors:

The phone rings. You don’t recognize the number, but you’re waiting for a call, so you say, “Hello?” There’s a long pause and then that strange boip sound that you know connects you to an AI-controlled recorded voice. Yep, it happened again…Spam Call! Against all reason, you try to interrupt sometimes with insults or questions, but the bot hasn’t been trained in irony, so you get back a very disappointing, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to…” Sometimes you wait and eventually get connected to a live operator. Guess what—even though it’s a living breathing person, they cannot be insulted. There is no expression of annoyance they have not heard before. Of course, they hang up before you can explain your frustration. Their only hope is volume, scooting on past your indignation to the next voice,

No Obligation Subscription - Hoping Inspiration Works
No Obligation Subscription - Hoping Inspiration Works

Dear Subscribers:

Once an organization or association has approved by-laws and built a website, it seems the next project is to create a newsletter or magazine. In addition to collecting dues, the staff, whether volunteer or paid, is tasked with keeping track of the industry’s trends and legislative agendum. Many of these periodicals now exist only online, but who can forget the importance of Potato Chipper Magazine or the National Tire Dealers and Retreaders Association newsletter? (When I was a kid, the latter arrived for my dad at the house each month.)  It matters not your hobby, interest or profession, you can bet there’s a periodical that fits even the narrowest of interest. Some titles explain themselves, like “Private Island Magazine”; others feel a tad more obscure, like “Emu Today and Tomorrow” or “Miniature

If You Don't Feel Full, It's not Righteous
If You Don't Feel Full, It's not Righteous

Dear Hangry Diners: 

Having just stepped away from my morning news feed, I’m inclined to observe that the world is a mess. Of course, 24-hour news cycles and constant doom scrolling would lead even the most stable among us to become unmoored, assuming the great apocalypse is only moments away. But that’s how it works when attention is monetized. The financial incentives are out of whack—the purpose of information is not to keep me informed, but to keep me glued, to awaken in me an insatiable hunger for the next screen. I’m ashamed to admit how well it works, because even as I write this I am tempted to click back on the updates of some story, issue, poll or commentary. It all triggers in me a

Seeking Real Intelligence
Seeking Real Intelligence

Dear Real Intelligence (RI?) Seekers:

Last year my brother Bruce (Prof. Emeritus electrical engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, and Founding Director CMU Africa) was interviewed by CNBC Africa regarding current technological developments on the continent. In the interview, which may be found here, he discussed the importance of context in Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning models. In our conversations, my brother has talked about the vast difference between American and European AI models and African continental models relating to everything from logistics to health care to banking. 

If you were to use models trained with data from legacy countries and inquire as to how developing nations in Africa could improve the delivery of goods and finances, the AI output would most likely commend grand infrastructure projects requiring the construction of massive dams, highway systems and power plants. However, African nations are currently using networks

One Painting is Not an Exhibition
One Painting is Not an Exhibition

Dear Art Dealers, 

From 1870 to 1871, impressionist painter Claude Monet lived in London, where he had arrived from Paris in self-imposed exile to avoid conscription in the Franco-Prussian War. That first exposure to London’s smoggy air inspired the young artist, who was fascinated by what the moisture and pollution did to the refraction of light. After returning to Paris, Monet was determined to revisit London, which he did many times over the subsequent decades.

Among his favorite subjects for painting were the Parliament buildings along the River Thames capturing the various angles of light and fog. Throughout his career, Monet captured those

Don't Try to Be Happy
Don't Try to Be Happy

Dear Happy(?) Campers:

Happiness is a byproduct, not a goal. I heard that quote during a podcast interview last week and it is stuck in my head. 

A little research reveals that Mahatma Gandhi may or may not have said something similar. His abbreviated quote usually reads, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Except that seems to be a memeification (yes, invented word) of a longer, more verifiable Gandhi quote: “Happiness is a direction, not a place. Happiness

Leisure, A Sign of Failure?
Leisure, A Sign of Failure?

Dear Busybodies, 

Labor Day—that last gasp of summer as we slip our summer whites into storage and prepare for the seasonal responsibilities of harvest. A day for workers to set aside the drudgery of Mondays for one fleeting glimpse of how life could always be had we been born into the luxury of the leisure class. Except these days we no longer mark success as freedom from responsibility, but rather prove our worth by a flurry of perpetual busyness.

Imagine Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos lingering over one more game of croquet on the lawn while sipping lemonade. Or Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg touring aimlessly down a coastal highway, windblown with

Wishing It Were True
Wishing It Were True

Dear Seekers:

This past week I attended a required clergy continuing education program hosted by the Presbytery of Chicago. A portion of the day was devoted to helping us understand the importance of monitoring our stress. When we are under pressure, we are more likely to violate the personal boundaries of others; we become less supportive of their needs, and our tolerance for their behavior wears thin. At the same time, the presenters wanted us to appreciate how stress helps us grow, building our resilience, so they offered this illustration...

Biosphere 2 was a research project constructed in the Arizona desert in the late 1980s to determine if it was possible to create a closed ecological system which, in the future, might sustain human life on other planets. It’s a massive domed structure that replicates

The Gospel of Success
The Gospel of Success

Dear Wealthy Investors:

If you’ve missed the fact that I think a “prosperity gospel” is heresy, then we haven’t talked. Religious hucksters have been around since the beginning of time. Even the early church struggled with that brand of phony. 

In Acts 4.32, we’re told how many people sold property to place the money before the Apostles so they could distribute it to any who were in need. In Acts chapter 5, Ananias and his wife Sapphira wanted in on the action. Christians were digging deep to support the work of the early church. So Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property, but they held back

The Pervasive Power of Patrons
The Pervasive Power of Patrons

Dear Political Patrons:

I’m not a Chicago native, but I’ve spent nearly three times as many years as a resident of the Windy City as I had in my hometown of Omaha, and all of that time on the South Side (if one counts Hyde Park as the South Side). When I arrived in Hyde Park, Michael Bilandic was Mayor, and the fact that he was Croatian was of little consequence to my newfound awareness of Chicago politics. The Irish were kings of the South Side ever since Mayor Richard J. Daley’s mother, Lillian, announced that she wanted more for her son than being a policeman. Richard J. didn’t disappoint.

Daley (the elder) had a keen sense of optics, making sure that his base constituencies were well represented when handing out credit and meting out power. His was a carefully crafted machine in which the component parts were not