The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and @Amazon.com

I haven't been sleeping.

I've been clear in my head or felt like myself, sick, nauseous, sleepy. Everything looks distorted, and everything inside just kind of takes and you can barely find the will to complain.

As always, my goal on the show, The Rational Basis of Happiness, is to help you love your life, to learn what's trapping you, what's keeping you from doing that, and to help you move forward. And with me today to discuss this is Andy Bernstein, who has his PhD in philosophy. He teaches at several universities. Pace was one of them. He's given addresses at Harvard University, Stanford, RPI, and many other schools, and he's the author of many articles, several Cliff Notes, and a novel, The Heart of a Pagan. Today we're talking about freedom, freedom and happiness. How can you make the most of it? And Andy, welcome to the show.

Good to be here, Dr. Kenner.

Wonderful to have you on. I read a book, Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, and what struck me as astounding were some of the things that he said. First, he said that you hear people say that the slaves didn't want to be free, and he said that's absolutely not true, that he has never seen one who did not want to be free or would want to return to slavery after being free. And then he also talked about when the slaves were liberated during the Emancipation Proclamation, that before that time, they were singing songs with a lot of reference to freedom, but they had to camouflage it. The freedom had to be in the next world. So when we hear all of these soul songs and we hear about freedom in the next world, it has no connection with life in this world. Then they said after that, after they got their freedom, they threw off the mask, and they were not afraid anymore. They could say, "No, we really are talking about freedom in this world." And I thought that that was fascinating, that people all over really want to be free.

I think people recognize that the quest for personal happiness intrinsically involves my ability to take action in pursuit of my goals, and if somebody else can physically—has the legal right to put a gun to my head and enslave me or incarcerate me or kill me—in other words, prevent me from going after the things I love, from pursuing my own goals, there's no way that I could be happy. So freedom is recognized, I think, by people, whether they were in slavery or whether living under a dictator or whether they just have oppressive parents. The yearning for freedom is, I think, universal, and it's because people, at some level, even if not consciously, at least subconsciously and emotionally, they recognize it's a necessary condition for the pursuit of personal happiness.

And as you're saying that, I'm thinking, you know, there are so many people in America who have the foundation. They have the freedom. You can choose a college, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps, get a job—even if you're very poor—and make it in America. But so many people end up trapping themselves. They feel depressed, and the depression is, "Well, I can't use my freedom that I have." They don't say it in those words, or they feel anxious because they know there's some action that they need to or should take, and they're not taking it. They're not going after their goals. And one of the things that Booker T. Washington said, and I'll quote him here, he said, "The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them." These are the slaves right after the Emancipation Proclamation. He said, "It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of 10 or 12 into the world to provide for himself in a few hours. The great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education, citizenship." And he goes on, he said, "While rejoicing ceased when people realized that they had to take responsibility for their lives." How would you go about giving some advice to people who are really stuck to help them take that responsibility more joyously?

Hey, I got to interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is. The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it @amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

How would you go about giving some advice to people who are really stuck to help them take that responsibility more joyously?

You know, what struck me when you were talking is that people, I think one of the great tragedies of mankind is that they generally recognize that political freedom is a great value, and they fought for it, and they've died for it, but they haven't, at the same time, recognized the similar need for what we could think of as moral freedom, and that is freedom from the duty-bound ethics. It does me no good to be politically free, and then political freedom means nobody can physically prevent me from going after my goals. But that does me no good if internally I've accepted the claim that I have unchosen obligations to serve my family or society or the church or whatever, because then I'm just enslaved by my own thinking to carrying out the dictates, the orders, the commands, or the wishes of others. And so, in order for me to maximize my political freedom, take advantage of it, I have to be morally free. That is, I have to accept and proclaim my right to my own life, to pursue my own interests, goals, values, and to recognize I'm not a servant of other people. I'm a slave to other people. I'm a free agent. I'm a free man, and I have the right to my own life. That's critically important in order to maximize the value of political freedom. That's what I would stress to people who are struggling, because I suspect they're struggling because, at some internal level, they've accepted the ethics of altruism, the idea that they must serve these other people.

Yeah, tell me about this, because you're using the word moral a lot. And as Booker T. Washington said, you know, they had questions of finding a home, of a living, of rearing their children, of having a career, education. They had to really pull themselves up by the bootstraps. And many of them turned to the churches, you know, for moral guidance because that's where people typically turn. What happens then, Andy?

That is, again, that's part of the tragedy because what religion teaches—and I don't think it makes much difference whether it's Christianity or Judaism or Islam or any of the major religions—what they teach is that God comes first, others come second, so that your life then becomes a life of service, kind of on the Mother Teresa model, where you have to perform obligations, unchosen obligations, or selfless service to God and to others, and your own desires, your own wishes, your own values, your own hopes get submerged in this self-sacrificial approach. Political freedom will do you no good if you have to, if internally, you have accepted the idea that you have to sacrifice for others. It's just a way of turning yourself over into bondage.

Can you give me an alternative morality that will work, that will not be at odds with your own happiness, your own life, and that won't run roughshod over other people?

Yeah, I think it's actually pretty simple. And the idea is that two things: one, I have the moral right to pursue the things that I want, that I'm not a slave to other people, first of all, and then secondly, that the means by which to get those things I want are about my own hard work—not by lying, stealing, cheating, or conniving—but simply by working hard, by using my mind, by getting an education, by putting in the sweat equity, by putting in the honest effort. If I want the A's in class, I study. If I want to rise the ladder in corporate America, I get to work early in the morning, and I put forth my best effort all through the day and stay late at night and do the same.

And you're creating wonderful values there, which are very pro-life in the non-abortion sense, very much for a person's life, and therefore it's very moral because that's the essence of morality. How would you define it? We have 15 seconds. How would you define morality?

Well, I think morality involves acting in accordance with the survival requirements of mankind, which means producing goods and services that life depends on. So it means in your career to be productive.

Thank you so much, Dr. Randy Bernstein, for being with us today. Love to have you back again.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

And please listen to this. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by the Hunters, Kenner and Locke: To create and maintain a positive mood within your romantic partnership, you must take control over your own moods. Since emotions are caused by thoughts, you can help control your moods by focusing on the good parts of your life and the positive aspects of your partner or spouse. How do you do this? Train your mind to focus on genuinely positive daily events. Contrast this with making exhaustive lists of the upsetting things that happen to you each day, as many chronic worriers do. The former mindset will create a positive climate in the relationship, but the latter will not. We don't mean to ignore negatives. On the contrary, take every action possible to resolve problems that undermine your happiness. If your partner avoids you because you're in a bad mood every night after work, think about how you can improve your mood, either alone or together.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.