Professor Dawkins and the increase of the sum total of happiness

Poor Professor Dawkins has apparently caused a furore on twitter after tweeting, to a woman who said that she would face a serious ethical dilemma if she found she was pregnant with a baby who had Down's Syndrome, that she should abort it. He seems suprised by this. His apology, as reported by the Guardian, seems to be an apology for causing a riot rather than for what he actually said, claiming that those who objected did so from an emotional point of view, that twitter did not give him enough space to put his whole argument across and that because of this he left himself vulnerable to wilful misinterpretation.

However, the thing that really bugs me about this is that Dawkins claims that his response is totally down to logic. According to the Guardian, he wrote: "If your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down's baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child's own welfare." I take issue with this, and in fact, I am frequently irritated by people who claim that anyone who disagrees with them is arguing emotionally, and that they themselves are basing their argument purely on logic. 

• If your morality is based, as Professor Dawkins' is, on a desire to increase happiness and reduce suffering you should presumably never say anything that might offend anyone because offense generates suffering, even if this is a subjective response. 
• If you believe that this life is all there is, that there is no life after or other than this one, then the abortion of an unborn child would presumably decrease the sum total of happiness, seeing that without life there cannot be happiness.
• If your aim is to increase the sum total of happiness rather than the happiness of the individual, and given the amount of great joy which those families express regarding their children with Down's Syndrome (and indeed their children without Down's) then presumably the termination of a child would not increase happiness and the reduction in suffering (given the absence of the child and the effects on the family) could well outweigh the non-increase in happiness.
• Given that people who are objectively suffering can experience happiness, and that people who are happy can suffer, suffering and happiness are not necessarily opposed and therefore the aims to decrease the former and increase the latter may, in fact, be conflicting.
• By extension of his argument that it is immoral to maintain life where there is suffering, all those who suffer from any illness, or indeed with the potential to suffer from any illness, however short or long term, should be exterminated because their existence may lead to their own suffering or the suffering of others.

Given the logical outcome of his moral framework, perhaps it is time to reconsider the starting point. If the outcome is outrageous and not what he intends at all, perhaps that is because some of his reasoning is based on an emotional understanding of happiness and suffering. 

Going under the knife

Considering (or perhaps because of) the amount of time I have spent working in hospitals I am still rather squeamish when it comes to surgery. I think it's amazing that it's possible to drill a hole in a bone and then tie a tendon or ligament through it or whatever it is they do, replace worn out ear drums using skin from behind the ears, or reconstruct a breast using tissue from another part of the body, but I don't much want to talk about it and I definitely don't want to watch. The idea of having unnecessary surgery is as incomprehensible to me as playing 'chicken' on a busy road, especially when I've trawled through enough medical notes to know that those wielding the knife don't appear to have the fine motor skills required to use a mere pen. Cosmetic surgery I find frankly icky (technical term, as I'm sure you can appreciate), especially the type where they suck fat out of one place in order to put it into another. Consequently I was surprised to read that this is on the increase.

 

This morning I was reflecting on the Holy Father's message for World Communications Day and I was initially surprised at how positively he spoke about social networks. I have read and heard a lot of comments about the evils of facebook, twitter et al which destroy interpersonal relationships, as individuals seek virtual relationships in which they can pretend to be whoever they want to be. However, as usual, Pope Benedict is right: social networks are neutral in themselves, it is how we use them which makes them positive or negative, good or bad. (I know I look like I've gone off topic: bear with me!) Similarly, plastic surgery is not intrinsically bad. There are many good uses to which it can be put, such as reconstruction following accidents or surgery or to correct physical abnormalities which present health risks in themselves. I am glad to see from the BBC report, though, that the number of 'man boob' operations has decreased because people are going to the gym instead. The operation, whilst superficially resolving a problem, does nothing to address the underlying cause, whereas going to the gym requires commitment and taking responsibility for oneself. At root it recognises that our actions have consequences.

 

When I say that there are good uses to which plastic surgery can be put, I don't know that think that all the others are bad. What concerns me is why people feel the need to have surgery to alter their appearance. In the same way that we can create an alter ego online, we can also project a different image by changing our physical appearance. We all constantly use 'masks' to hide our fears and insecurities, to make ourselves more likeable, or employable, or attractive (on whatever level). In other words, we take steps which we think will make us happier. In the drastic case of cosmetic surgery, it would seem that many people think that looking younger, or thinner, or having a certain body shape, will have consequences which in turn will lead to happiness. I question whether this is true. If a life is built on something which isn't real, can it lead to real happiness? And wouldn't our time and efforts be better spent on trying to be more like the One in whose image we are made, rather than attempting to alter our exterior to conform with any other image?

 

Faith, hope and mental illness

This isn't about the news, although today the Mail apparently carries an article on how brisk walking prevents Alzheimer's. This is about me, my brain, and how it doesn't really work properly.

 

I am suffering from a severe episode of a recurrent depressive disorder. This episode has so far lasted around 18 months; it's difficult to pinpoint the start and the harder I look, the more I can see signs earlier than that. I'm a lot better than I was 18 months ago. I can walk, I don't fall over for no reason and most days I can get up and maybe be vageuly productive. Occasionally I can manage to apply the techniques I learned from CBT. But I still suffer from extremely low energy levels, lack of interest in things I enjoy (it's a bad sign if I don't want to read, I used to read in the bathroom, at school under the table, in bed under the covers) and a level of anxiety which makes me worry about answering the phone or even talking to my closest friends and family members. I can only concentrate on one thing, and if someone talks to me while I'm doing it I'll probably shout at them out of sheer panic. I can't remember what I just did, or whether I just did it. I am short tempered and impatient. Worst of all are the times when the "brain rubbish" floats to the surface and I hate myself, think I am worthless and conclude that the world would be a better place without me in it.

 

The first time this happened I was so terrified that I hyperventilated and collapsed. It doesn't happen very often now, or with such intensity, and I have learned how to deal with it. I am no longer ashamed of these thoughts because I know that they are a fruit of my illness and not of my will. I have discovered that the best way to deal with them is to share them, rather than hide them, (although one has to choose carefully who to share them with!). I struggle with my anger and impatience more and it is impossible to tell to what extent they come under lack of personal conversion, and how far they come under depression. I cannot simply fight, fight, fight because there is an element of chemical imbalance involved. I cannot attribute them entirely to my illness because I know that I was impatient before that. Now when I lose my temper, I see it happening and get so frustrated with myself that I am acting like a small child (yes, I am also lacking in humility) that I get even more stressed out and more grumpy, and so it goes on. All this isn't helped by the fact that I often can't sleep and that when I do I have crazy, but strangely real dreams which are hardly restful.

 

I say I am not ashamed, but I rarely tell anyone I have depression. I don't want to have to deal with their judgements. I don't look ill (except for being a little paler than usual on really bad days, and they are the days on which no-one sees me), and even I often have a hard time accepting or recognising that I am (sometimes I feel like it is a daily lesson!), so why would anyone else believe it? At the same time, as a healthcare professional and a Christian, I feel I have a responsibility to help end the silence and stigma which surrounds mental illness. I read this week that GPs are overprescribing anti-depressants. Similar stories about sleeping tablets have been in the news for weeks. And yes, they probably are overprescribed. People have this expectation that life is happily ever after and when something difficult comes up, or they aren't happy because they are looking for happiness in places where it cannot be found they think they have depression (I speak in terms of the illness, rather than  the emotion). They want a tablet to make them feel better and it isn't going to help. It annoys me: it reduces my illness to a lifestyle issue rather than a disease. But it also makes me really sad for them: they are reducing themselves to a merely biological level, they do not know the happiness that comes from loving God and I want them to: I want to tell them all. 

 

Faith in God, Christian life and frequenting the sacraments will not prevent illness of any kind, including depression. Christian life is not some kind of fluffy, light-hearted dream where everything us 'nice' and goes according to plan. It is a joyous battle, which has already been won. It is falling over and getting up again, over and over. It is a relationship with a real person. But happiness is not a feeling. True happiness is the peace which comes from knowing God and fulfilling his plan, being 'right' with Him, if you will. I may rarely feel happy, but I know I am happy and I can say that with all honesty. I may suffer from severe anxiety but I know that, with God, suffering transcends my daily experience of it, and can have meaning and even purpose. I don't just know that intellectually, I experience it regularly. I have hope that my life won't be like this for ever, but that even if it is, that God is with me in this suffering and that with Him, as a wise friend once said, the best is always ahead of us. And I am slowly learning that I can't be in control of everything (and this is a struggle which extends long before and after this particular episode of depression), that I have to allow God take charge in my life because I know and believe that His plan is the best plan. I have long believed that the difference between the saints and the rest of us is that they recognised suffering and mortification as an opportunity to grow in holiness, grow closer to God, at the moment when it was happening and made the most of it whereas the rest of us either miss them completely, don't realise until afterwards, or stay on the level of "poor me". So this is me, half way between a pity party and the foot of the cross, where my Mother stands with and looks upon her Son. That is the only place where any of this makes sense.

Keeping up with life

The Daily Mail (not my favourite source of healthcare/science, or indeed any other kind of news, but anyway) reports a worrying trend in the number of women taking stimulants in order to cope with life.

Aside from the fact that Ritalin and friends are not licensed for the treatment of ADHD in adults (ie their safety and efficacy in this group of patients is not proven) and that buying medicines on the internet is a stupidly dangerous thing to do there are some other concerning aspects.

The women taking these drugs are obviously experiencing extreme pressure to perform and conform, but more seriously still we can see a tendency to measure people by what they do. We are not ourselves, or what we eat, but what we do. This is massive problem because if you cease to "do" then you also cease to "be". In the case of the students using these drugs, their measure of themselves is how well they perform in exams: I am only as good as my exam results. Others struggle with the demands of juggling work and family life, or long hours and pressure to meet targets. But where is the weakness in admitting that something is hard? There is also, as so often with mental health, a reduction of the human person to the merely biological.

According to the article, women aged 25 to 34 are the most stressed demographic group in the country. No surprises there: we are the group who first experienced student loans, SATs at 7, 11 and 14 years, league tables, contraceptives for all, abortion virtually on demand... We have grown up being encouraged to turn down children in favour of career success, with the advice that giving up work for motherhood makes you a failure, that instant gratification is our right and we are also the generation whose parents lapsed in their religious pratices meaning that many of us have never stepped foot inside a church. We started life with the understanding that, as women, we would have to fight tooth and nail to be recognised as good enough and we have arrived at adulthood finding that most of the work has been done.We have moved on from the time where everything was blamed on our parents not giving us enough attention. Now we are our bodies. We have been formed by secularism and individualism and taught that an expensive pair of shoes can solve all our probelms.

We were promised the world, and the world turned out to not be worth the paper it was written on. Only God's promises are worth trusting, and the majority of this group have no idea what they are.

Loneliness is bad for you

Since I started writing this blog, I have been struck by how the Church really is the expert par exellence in humanity. The Church knows that we are made for communion, for relation, and that this is essential for our happiness. Everyone else is only just catching up: the Daily Express reports that there is a link between loneliness and dementia.

I don't agree with their headline, that an active social life is the key, and later in the article they identify that it is feeling alone rather than being or living alone which is the important factor. In university we were taught that "people with fewer social contacts are more likely to commit suicide". That seems to suggest that it is being alone rather than experiencing loneliness which leads to ideation of suicide. But I would imagine that it is experiencing loneliness rather than being alone which contributes to depression. The correlation between depression and suicide is not well defined, but now appears to be less than 10% among all depressed people (although only 2% for the majority of people with depression) compared with 1% in the general population. Given that ideation of suicide is a symptom of depression, as well as the fact that depression interferes with normal rational thought processes, 2% seems fairly low.

There is also a strong link between depression and other illnesses. People with chronic illness are more likely to become depressed, and people with depression are at greater risk from other illnesses. Demonstrating direct causality here is probably nigh on impossible, given the number of interconnected factors involved...diet, medication, employment, relationship... Obviously there is going to be some overlap between being alone and feeling lonely and single households are now the most common type in the UK.

If this is a step up from last week's reduction to the biological it is still a reduction of the human person, only this time to the bio-psychological. Two out of three ain't bad, but there is a hierarchy and the spiritual always gets top billing. The first communion to which we are invited is communion with God. Faith and communion with God can transform and elevate all the other experiences of our lives, even illness and suffering. With God's presence, even loneliness is transformed and dispelled. But people are not going to realise this when five million only have their television for company (especially if they watch Eastenders). It's Advent, God is coming, so go and see one of the five million and tell them about it!

It's not my fault!

I was somewhat bemused to read yesterday morning that there is a gene for binge drinking. Further inspection suggests that this gene predisposes some people to experience a stronger physiological response than others when drinking alcohol.

Personally, I would say that binge drinking has more to do with sin, freedom and the perennial search for happiness than genetics. Obviously binge drinking can't make us happy, any more than sleeping around can (and there does seem to be a strong correlation between the two). But whether they know God or not, everyone has a hunger for him, a longing for the infinite, and without knowledge of God this leads us to look for happiness in many places where it isn't to be found. Furthermore, I would say that not finding this happiness, not being able to satiate this desire we have (because for so many people they haven't chosen to reject God, it's just that faith has never been suggested to them as an option) we end up trying to fill up our lives with <i>anything</i> that might make us feel something, be it sex, drugs or rock n roll. Of course this self-destructive behaviour leads us into a downward spiral of increasing unhappiness: only in God and his loving Plan can we find happiness. He has made us for Himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, to paraphrase St Augustine.

I am not some sort of neo-luddite who wishes to exclude science and technology from every facet of life. If people have genetic tendencies towards certain behaviours or illnesses then of course identifying that and seeking solutions can be a good thing. But the increasing tendency to identify genes is part of both the "loss of the sense of sin" bemoaned by Pope Pius XII (once we blamed "the system", now we blame our genes) and also constant reduction of the human person to the merely biological. Yes, I have a body, but I am not my body. Neither am I my DNA. And while we continue to place all our hopes on genetics we will never find the answer to those situations which many would agree are a problem.