The Eric Metaxas Show - What is Happiness? I Arthur Brooks

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

  Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas sits down with Dr. Arthur Brooks to tackle one of life’s most enduring questions: What is happiness? Drawing from his latest book, The Happiness Files, as well as decades of scholarship and teaching, Dr. Brooks offers profound insights into not only the nature of happiness itself, but also the deeper dimensions of love, loss, and meaning. Together, they examine the science behind happiness, the obstacles modern society places in its path, and the practical wisdom Dr. Brooks shares with his students—most memorably through his signature exercise, “What is my idol?”  

Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of The Blob. Well, way back when, Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because The Blob was supposed to eat him. But he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest.

Eric the Texas! Hey folks, today we are going to be playing a conversation I had last week with Arthur Brooks. He's kind of a big deal, as you'll see. This was a Socrates in the studio conversation with Arthur Brooks. In the last part of Hour 2 today, we're going to play an Ask Metaxus that I did recently. but here is my conversation with Arthur Brooks. Welcome to Socrates in the studio, which falls under the rubric and perhaps also the egos of Socrates in the city. We are in the city of New York City, and I am today going to be speaking with Arthur C. Brooks,

not to be confused with the other Arthur Brooks's. He has a book out now, another book called The Happiness Files, insights on work and life. Arthur Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School. He's also a columnist at the Atlantic where he writes the weekly How to Build a Life column.

He's the number one New York Times bestselling author of 14 books, including Build the Life You Want, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. Not making that up. And here he is, Arthur Brooks. Arthur, welcome. Great to see you. You too. So normally I would make that up.

That would be my kind of a joke, co-offered with Oprah Winfrey, and it would get a big laugh. Yeah. In fact, that's true. That turns out to be true. Yes, indeed. I don't know a lot of people who've co-authored books with Oprah Winfrey. That's extraordinary. I have to ask you, before we get into the brand new book.

Right. How did that come about? It was her idea, actually. So it turns out that during the coronavirus, epidemic when everybody was, well, in most places around the United States, we're all deeply locked down. Yeah. She was at her place in California, and she was reading my column every week.

You know, she walks around her place, and she would read my column every Thursday morning the Atlantic, kind of a light. And she really liked it. And when a book came out during that period called From Strength to Strength, Finding Happiness, purpose in the Second Half of Life, she read it on the first day and called and asked me to be on her podcast. She has a podcast. She's a voracious reader, and she's a very discerning reader, too. And she had me on to talk about my book from Strength to Strength, and we kind of hit it off. She's a very interesting person. She's very smart. She's very erudite person. And we were, you know,

getting along like a house on fire. And what do you know, not a few weeks later, she called my cell phone and said, you know, I've been thinking about it. If I still had my show, I'd have you on 30 times. I said, huh, that would have been great. And she said, but I don't have a show. So, How about if I host you in a book? I said, what do you mean? And the result was that book, or she's kind of the host of the book. I'm the guest. I'm the guy talking about all material inside the book, and it was a great experience.

I mean, the idea of somebody of that stature saying, I would like to write a book with you is wonderful. It's extraordinary. Of course, it speaks well of you, Arthur. But, I mean, listen, even if I didn't know that you had covered, written a book with Oprah Winfrey, I just have to look at the back of this book. And this is other stuff. It sounds like Eric's making it up. There's a blurb here from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and a blurb from George Stephanopoulos. I know George has read and admired one of my books about Dietrich Bonhofer,

but I don't know. Everybody loves that book. You think? I don't know. I love that book. That's a great book. I think it's overrated. Do you really? No. Really, have you announced it? Yes, I've renounced. It's like Tolstoy, renounced all of his works of fiction at the end of his life. He's like, I wouldn't get back to royalties. You'll know what's that.

Yeah, yeah, I didn't, yeah. But he probably gave the royalties to the peasants. Or one of his 13 children. We've just, we've stumbled far away from the fact that you have a new book out called The Happiness Files. Now, this is, in fact, a collection of, some of the best columns that you've published in the Atlantic on how to build a life column. So we have to start with, I have to start with, you know, Socrates in the city is about asking the big questions.

So it's not just sort of like, you know, great tips on how to have a better life, but to actually ask what would that mean or what is that? So let me start with the question. And what, I mean, you are genuinely an expert on the subject of happiness. So what is happiness or what does it mean to you when somebody says, you know, happiness? I mean, happiness is a big, is a word that can mean sort of everything and nothing. And it gets people's attention. But as a behavioral scientist, that's how I'll answer the question. And, you know, I could address it more philosophically or as a Christian.

But as a behavioral scientist, the thing to understand about happiness to begin, with is it's not a feeling. It's not an emotion. And that's really important. Actually, what's important is that you just said, what I neglected to say, you're a behavioral scientist. So you're not just somebody who's thought about this. You've studied it and you come at it from that perspective. I suffered through a PhD. You suffered through a PhD. Yeah, exactly. So say more about that. Happiness, because there are, I think it's a legitimate question that, you know, most people would have, they're given a moment to say, well, what is happiness? Yeah, and, you know, I usually compare it to, for example,

something that you and I have talked about a lot in our various walks of life, which is love. And, you know, most people think that love is a feeling. And this is one of the reasons that marriages don't tend to last because you pursue a feeling. Well, that's an exercise and futility. To love is to will go to the other, according to St. Thomas Aquinas. That's a really more distinction. Yeah, what does he know? But, you know, in all seriousness, what he was never married.

To even go, I mean, to ask the question, what is happiness, that's important. Then to ask what is love. Yeah. Because you've just said it. And of course, Aquinas was of course correct. Yeah. But say that again, because this is, I guess for me, part of the reason I do Socrates in the city is because we have a lot of bad ideas.

Right. We walk around with bad ideas. Right. And those bad ideas hurt us. They hurt us. And other people. For sure. And so to talk up, to think of love as a feat.

feeling, is there a more, I mean, I almost can't think of a more pernicious idea. Oh, it's the worst. And, you know, I've been married almost 34 years. If love were a feeling, I wouldn't have been married 34 minutes because I married a Spaniard, and they're very quarrelsome people. And so the truth is that my love for my wife, my love for God, my love for my friends, my love for my country, these are all different kinds of love, but what do they have in common? They're an act of commitment of will. Aquinas, who was channeling Aristotle and everything he wrote in the Summa Theologia, I mean, that's where modern audiences at the time became acquainted with Aristotle, the greatest student of Plato. They were all Platonist before that, of course, and the student of Socrates. And Aristotle

talked about love as this act of commitment notwithstanding your feelings, which led Thomas Aquinas to define love as to will the good of the other. And then theologians later put a little tag on the end as other. To will the good of the other as other. Now why did who put the tag on the end? Well that was actually Michael Novak of all people. Michael Novak.

Who was a to mystic scholar. To will the good of the other as other. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Your wife loves you as you, not as an appendage of her. Right. And in so doing, she truly wants your good, which is heavenly love. Right. That's what it really means. That is to be if God is love, that's what it means for us to love. And that's an act and a commitment because

it goes against our feelings a lot of the time. And that is the moral imperative. That's what sets us apart. That's the divinity in mankind is to defy your animal instincts and to love somebody despite actually how you feel in a particular moment. And that's the essence of being fully alive. Well, you know, speaking as Christians, it's the same thing. When somebody says, actually, this is funny. I wasn't going to bring this up. But I find this hilarious and delightful When you, one thing that we have in common, we have a few things in common, but one thing that we have in common is both of us. A nice head of hair.

This is a horse hair wig. I'm very open about that. So where do you get your horse hair wigs? It's, you know, as a kid, my father took me to a ranch, and it was a real bonding thing. I picked out the horse. A major retail chain just canceled a massive order, leaving My Pillar with an overstock of the classic My Pills. And this is your game, because for a limited time, my pillows are. offering their entire classic collection at true wholesale prices.

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Socrates in the city. One of the things we have in common is that both of us, about a decade apart, were invited to be the main speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast. And when you spoke, I spoke when Obama was president, you spoke during Trump's first term. But when you spoke, you talked about, because we're talking about it right now, the concept of loving your own. enemies. Right. If you define love incorrectly as nearly everyone does, because the culture defines it incorrectly, you cannot begin to comprehend the idea of loving your enemy. It's an absurdity. The whole sermon on the mount is nuttiness if you're being guided by your feelings. Right. It's just impossible because the servant on the mount is a master class and in managing your

emotions so they don't manage you, which is the essence of being a fully alive being in God. God's image. This is for a behavioral scientist, holy, holy. This is, I mean, the sermon in the mouth is the best thing ever. And Matthew 544 is the apex of that. You know, you've heard that you should love your friends and hate your enemies, but today I give you a new teaching, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. He might as well just put in parentheses, I don't care about your feelings. Because you're bigger than your feelings if you're living in the image of God. And that's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. This is what sets us apart from the animals. And, you know, it's interesting because, you know, that people often talk about how, you know, the Christian spirit is somehow at odds with the Enlightenment. And I know the Spirit of Socrates in the cities say, no, no, no, no, no. Because in point of fact, love your enemies is the basis of the Enlightenment. Only a culture and society that could embrace this at scale would say, you know, I don't have to coerce people.

I can persuade them. And the way that I can do that is willing their good by giving them better ideas than they currently have and not beating them over the head and forcing them, forcing these ideas upon them. Love your enemies is the basis of a good secular society and not just a good Christian society. Because even a society that thinks of itself as secular is bound by living in this thing we call reality, which happens to be invented by the God of the Bible, even though not necessarily, not everybody has to acknowledge that explicitly. You still are. obliged to live in the world of reality.

Yeah, well, you have to live in the world of reality, but also there are certain rules that you accept because you want to get along day after day. And there are a lot of people who would like to turn back the clock and turn everything back into force, to be sure. There are people among us, even here in the United States that would like to force us to bend to the will of what... And that's contrary, not just to my faith,

but it's also contrary to the principles of the Enlightenment. This is what we're going through with the kind of culture wars on campuses today, as a matter of fact. We're fighting over the Enlightenment. on campuses. I mean, that's so interesting. We've gone from,

I want to come back just to this idea of what love is because I, this is, you can tell already, this is the big issue for me because I think if I have to identify what is deeply harmful in Western culture,

that to me is it. Yeah. The idea that love is a feeling. Yeah. But it is, it's ubiquitous. It's taken over. the culture so dramatically over so many decades that talking about it as you've just done is radical. Yeah, no, it sounds weird and yet just the least radical thing possible.

And, you know, we got on this because we were talking about what is happiness. But if you don't understand what love is, you can't understand what happiness is, which also isn't a feeling. One of the biggest problems that we have, what lies behind the explosion among young adults of depression and anxiety, starts with a misperception of what happiness is, which is that it's a feeling. And I want that feeling. And I hope tomorrow morning I have that feeling. And I hope when I marry my beloved,

I have the feeling an awful lot. Well, good luck to you. Good luck to you. That's not the way it works, and that's not the way it's supposed to work. And life wouldn't even be good if it did work that way. So what then is happiness? If happiness is not the feeling that, hey,

everything's great and I'm happy and everything's going well for me now, what is it? Happiness and feelings are related, like the smell of your turkey is related to your Thanksgiving dinner. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Happiness is something for behavioral scientists that is a tangible thing. And like your Thanksgiving dinner, it has macronutrients. Thanksgiving dinner is a combination of protein carbohydrates and fat, if you're kind of a science nerd like me, or a nutrition freak. And happiness has three macronutrients as well that are identifiable, that are,

were able to study and get better at. Their enjoyment, which is to enjoy your life, satisfaction, which is to take joy in your accomplishments after struggle, which means there's unhappiness in there. And meaning, which is the biggest one of all, the why of your life, the coherence, the purpose, the significance of your life, those are big projects. And that's such good news because nobody's great at all those things.

So we all have margin, not to be perfectly happy, which we shouldn't be in this life, but to be happier. and to make progress. I mean, I believe that pure happiness does occur, just not on this side of the mortal coil. On this side, we're going to have negative experiences and emotions, and that's as it should be. You have what I would describe as a standard biblical view

that we're fallen, we're living in a world where things aren't the way they're supposed to be. So then the question is, what do we do about that? And it seems to me that your research and many of your writings have to do with answering that question. What do we do, given things as they are? Yeah, and the answer is what can we, I mean, the question is, what can we do not to be perfectly happy,

which is that's futile, but to become happier as a person. And to do that, you need to understand how happiness works, enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, to change your habits and behaviors. and then the most important part to make it sticky, which is what I teach my students, is to become a happiness teacher. Now, this sounds an awful lot like every good religion probably,

which is to understand how things work, change your own life, and pass on the good news. And that's exactly how it works in science as well. It doesn't sound like most of the religions that I'm familiar with, so we'll just skip that conversation. But I think it's... Read the Bible, change your life, and spread the good news. Well, it sounds like that religion.

Okay. But. Well, that one. And there are, but there are many people who, you know, even within the biblical tradition, would quibble. But the three things you mention, enjoyment. Right. Satisfaction. Satisfaction and meaning. Right.

Meaning, to me, you know, it's at the heart of everything, the meaning of, I often talk about the meaning of meaning. Why do we care about meaning? What does it say about us? What does it mean that we care about meaning? And maybe not everybody does care about meaning. So make the case for the meaning part of this equation. It's the big one. It's the biggest one of all, as a matter of fact.

And it lies behind the explosion of depression and anxiety among young people. I have data that very clearly indicate that there's no recession and enjoyment and satisfaction in young people's lives. But people are farther away from being able to articulate and understand the meaning of their lives. than we've ever seen in any time since we've been keeping good social science data on this issue. Does your life feel meaningless? The answer is more likely to be yes now than ever. And this inability to understand what the meaning of life might even be. I'm actually finishing a book right now called The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness,

that looks at the... Reading it or writing it? I'm writing it. Writing it's actually done. It's going to come out next April. Okay. April of 2026, God willing. And, I mean, it's supposed to.

It's April 14th. It's, you know, slotted. And the manuscript is done. And as you know well, as an author, this is the very end is the worst because writing a book is like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of death and dying. Anger, denial, bargaining. Finally, you get to acceptance. I'm not there yet. Depression. I'm not there to accept. Yeah. But one of the things that we find is that this idea of coherence, why things happen the way they do, purpose, the goals and direction in life. and significance why my life matters. This is almost impossible for people to articulate who've been completely inculcated in a culture that's been where they've distracted themselves with social media, with dating apps, with technology that's literally discouraging them

from using the parts of the brain that are necessary to apprehend the dark consciousness within which an understanding of meaning resides. Also, where you can feel God's presence. I mean, I think that there are a lot of people who, whether they would be able to do it explicitly, would nonetheless say, I don't know that life has meaning. In other words, I can say the life has meaning because I know that a God who is infinite love deliberately created me for his purposes.

How would you articulate the meaning of your life? How would I articulate the meaning? Yeah, the meaning of your life, I guess your personal mission statement, and probably you've done this before, but if somebody says, what is the meaning of Ertmetaxis's life according to Erickmanexis? What would you say? Before I attempt to answer that, I guess what I'm getting at is I can see a lot of people say, look, I don't believe in God, so I believe that we're just here.

We just evolved that of the primordial soup, which is scientifically preposterous, but everybody seems to believe it, that we just arrived here. If that is the case, if we arrived here as the end result of an accidental process, then it would follow logically. that our lives actually don't have meaning. You've been listening to my conversation with Arthur Brooks. Socrates in the studio recorded here in New York City. We continue that now.

For some reason, we have to talk about our lives as though they have meaning, where people will sort of say things like, well, I create my own meaning or something like that. But thinking on the larger level, why? Why would somebody need to think that their life has meaning or that they have value? They won't be happy. As an empirical proposition, people will have a much lower quality of life if they're either unaware of, don't understand or believe that their life doesn't have meaning. That's just a fact. And part of the reason for it is that we're teleological creatures.

We need a telos. And this is a very Aristotelian notion. We have to have a why of our lives. people who actually can articulate a wide of their lives, which, you know, by the way, there are a lot of pretty happy people who aren't Christians like you and I are, and they think not of meaning in a supernatural context, but they do think about it in a pretty robust and in a decent way, as far as I'm concerned. But what they all have in common is that they have an understanding of the answers to three

questions. Why are things happening the way they are? You know, some people will say it's, you and I say it's the work of the Lord. Some people will say it's science. Some people will say it's conspiracy. by powerful individuals. The second question is, what are your goals? Why am I doing what I'm doing?

What are my goals in direction in life? What's my intention in life? And last but not least, why does it matter that I'm alive? To whom? To whom does it matter that I'm alive? And if you have an answer to those questions, you do pretty well. Now, I happen to believe that there is a supernatural,

a true metaphysical dimension to it. But I do know also that true secularists, when they have an understanding of those three dimensions, they do well too. They do well too. I would take issue about whether or not they're metaphysically correct.

That's all. Yeah, but I think that's what I mean. I think that if we're to be intellectually honest, I think we'd have to admit that to posit that we're here by accident,

but that our lives have meaning, is to necessarily fudge a piece of it. And I think good luck to somebody if they can fudge it. Because I do. think it matters, you know, that, you know, if somebody says, you know, your, your life is important, you know, I would want to say, why? Why? Why? Because you said so. Right. Because you said so.

And I think there are a lot of people in despair. Yeah. And I think that they are asking a very honest question in saying, like, I don't think my life has meaning. Right. Why are you saying it does? I think you're wrong. Like, why, you know. And now we know that's not hopeful, but I think it's a legitimate question. For sure. And that's actually why I'm writing the book on. The hardest book I've ever written. I've been working off and on for five years.

And part of the reason for it is that it's one thing to write a book about standard behavioral science. It's something else entirely to ask the biggest possible questions that go beyond the realm of what the behavioral science will permit you to understand and explain. The problem with meaning is that meaning is adjudicated in the, the real world. right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere of the brain is where we deal with all, this comes from the hemispheric lateralization theory of a neuroscientist, a doctor named Ian McGilchrist, one of the greats of our time. Ian McGilchrist? Yeah. I just interviewed him. He's great. No, I actually did. And of course he's great. He's a visionary. Of course he's great. Yeah. And what he has understood is that the right hemisphere of the brain is where,

is where all the mystery in life is. And yet, it goes beyond articulation. So there's a reason I asked you to say, okay, what's the meaning of your life? The truth of the matter is, if you tried to articulate it right now, you'd have to filter it through the language centers of your brain, the Broca's area and Warnika's area of your brain, which are in the left side of the cortex. Did you say Warnika? Wernicke.

Wernicke's area. Wernicke, Bonhofer's father studied under Warnikie. Oh my gosh. I believe. I believe that's correct. I believe the name Warnikie is in my Bonhofer book. Yeah. But so he's such a famous brain scientist that he has a part of the brain named for him.

So I'm one degree of separation from Eric, who's one from Bonhofer to Bonhofer's father to Warnieke. I'm four degrees off from Wernicke. Okay, so forgive me for my really stupid, please forgive me for my stupid interruptions. I like it. You were just saying that. The whole point is that you'd have to filter through a metaphysical, deep idea to which you have a mysterious, wonderful understanding through the hopeless, helpless little channel of Wernicke's and Broca's areas of your brain.

It's the same kind of thing if I'd say, Hey, why do you love your wife? And you'd say, she's the mother of my children. She's a wonderful woman. I just really like her values. Anything you'd say would trivialize it. Wow, that's good. Yeah.

So the point is, if you're not spending time in the right hemisphere of their brain, which, by the way, neuroscientists have called, called dark consciousness. You know, when cosmologists, when astronomers, they don't know what's out there. They call it dark energy and dark matter, yeah. Right? The dark matter of your brain, the dark matter of your mind is in the right hemisphere of your brain, which is literally called by many neuroscientists the dark consciousness.

And therein you mediate questions of love and questions of faith, questions of all of the theological virtues, certainly. but meaning is that's what. And so here's the question. Why is that turned off? And so many young people today, why is that turned off? And we know why. Because our use of technology is actually shoving us

into the left side of the brain where we do tasks, where we do complicated things, where we neglect the complex. And it is therefore dehumanizing us. Completely. That's absolutely completely the case. That's when we distract ourselves because of our misery, when we fritter away our time on our devices,

we're neglecting even the possibility of experiencing our consciousness, where we might be able to understand, even beyond articulation, the questions of meaning in our lives, and that's what we need to get into. So that's why when you're in periods of deep and intense prayer, that's why you're conscious of the presence of meaning in your life,

even though you can't quite say why, because you're using the part of the brain, the God antenna, perhaps. Yeah. On board hardware to understand what really matters in life. Hey, folks, today we're playing my conversation from last week. Socrates in the studio with Arthur Brooks. You want to see the video? Go to YouTube, Socrates in the city.

Well, what's interesting to me about your decades of research is that it points through, through research, through scientific research, points toward God. In other words, even if you don't like the God hypothesis, you kind of, you get stuck because it seems, it seems that we are created in such a way that this works and that doesn't work.

And this feels good and that doesn't feel good. And this is ultimately satisfying and this is not satisfying. And so if you didn't really care too much what you discover. You're just looking like a scientist and trying to discover, trying to look at a human being

and you'd be drifting toward this God hypothesis. Because even when people talk about like dark, what do you call it? The dark consciousness. The dark consciousness. It's funny when people who don't, you know, they don't have a term

or they don't know what it is, so they come up with a term. And they go, okay, so it's that. Yeah. But what is that? Yeah, exactly right. And, you know, there are a lot of behavioral scientists who are not religious. They're not. But they tend to look in what we would call sort of partial equilibrium. They look at salami

slices of human behavior. And when you start trying to put it together, for me, it's just, I can't get away. I'm sucked in. I'm in the vortex. I'm in the God vortex. I can't, I can't escape. I can't escape. Because when I look all together into what these things, these things to which my life points, the science points, the experience of life on Earth, what it actually all means. I come up with, I come up with the Godhead. I come up with the, you know, the creator of the universe. I just can't, I can't find a better way to explain it. Well, that's the, that's the issue, right? Is that you, you know, I always invite people, can you, can you, if you can find a better way of explaining this, I'm open because I'm only

interested in what's true, not in my version of the truth. Well, so, so to get back to your, definition of happiness, it seems that, you know, part of the appeal of your books is that most people, wherever they come out on, you know, the theological or philosophical spectrum, they would like to be happy. And so you've kind of caught them there. You've caught their interest. It's a good market position. So what do you say? Now, I know in this book, it's a compilation of columns, but what are the things that you touch on as the points? The first thing that I ask people to do

is to think a little bit in their own lives about where they need the most work. Some people have trouble with enjoyment. They do. Some people have trouble actually having purpose and goals and achieving satisfaction or they can't delay their gratifications. And some people really do this have this crisis of meaning

that we've been talking about. So I ask people to self-diagnose a little bit and then work on the part of their happiness where their happiness is weakest. You know, I know about myself. My meaning is pretty good, could use work. My satisfaction is just through the roof because of the work that I've been able to do,

which is just a gift, but my enjoyment isn't where it should be. I don't enjoy my life as much as I should. Talk about that. What do you mean? Because what you're saying is that we ought to enjoy our lives. So you don't mean ought to be seeking pleasure foolishly, but we ought to have some kind of a balanced life in such a way that we will allow ourselves to enjoy life. What does that mean?

It requires that you understand enjoyment, which is not the same thing as pleasure. Pleasure is an animal phenomenon. Pleasure is a function of the limbic system of the brain, a console of tissue that was around up to 40 million years ago. This is pre-human in lots of ways. And what it does is it gives you signals. It gives you a universal language to tell you what's going on around. you below your level of consciousness. All of your positive and negative emotions are an

indication there's something you should approach or avoid, that these are opportunities or threats. That's what it comes down to. You know, people who think, you know, I hope I have more happy feelings and I hope I have fewer, you know, bad feelings. They don't understand feelings. The truth is, this is just information, is the whole point. Pleasure is just tapping a little thing in your, in your, a lot of it, tapping a little part of your limbic system called the ventral tag mental area and the ventral strayed them you do that and it's like oh nice that's just that pleasure that you actually feel from somebody saying i love you or or taking a bump of cocaine i mean we have we have these rudimentary brains that actually give us this feeling and if you pursue pleasure if that's

your goal of life well we'll be under you you're going to wind up in rehab if you're lucky if you're lucky you will be managed by your pleasures right the secret of enjoyment is actually moving the experience to the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the C-suite, right behind your forehead. That's your conscious brain where you make executive decisions. That takes pleasure. Pleasure's fine. Pleasure's a gift. But you have to add two things to it.

People and memory. You have to add people in memory such that you can have an ongoing experience of this. And furthermore, that it becomes social in a conscious way so that you can govern your pleasures and they don't govern you. That's what it comes down to. This is the reason that discipline is so critically important. This is the reason that you say, no, I think the fourth glass of wine isn't for me tonight, because that would be pleasurable but not enjoyable. Uh-huh.

This is the reason that you don't drink alone. This is the reason that internet use by yourself is a dangerous business. This is the reason at 1 a.m., you don't start watching Howard the Duck. You should probably never watch Howard the Duck. I never will. Did you know that that is the lowest rated film of all time? Is that the one that was like executive produced by Bill Cosby in 1986? I think that's right.

But Howard the Duck has been popularly voted on Rotten Tomatoes to be the worst film ever made. I obviously... And at 1 a.m. I only bring this up because you reference in your introductory essay having at some point made the very silly decision at 1 a.m. to leap into watching that movie. I mean, the funny thing is there are great movies. Right. that you shouldn't start watching at 1 a.m.

Yeah, yeah. The truth is that if something gives you pleasure, we're good at pleasure in certain things, different people in different things. The thing that scratches you rich that's different than other people. And it could be addictive, which many things can, everything from carbohydrates to internet,

not to mention all the bad and evil things in life, from drugs and alcohol to pornography, all the terrible things in life. If you're using something, something that could give you pleasure and is addictive and you're using it alone and you're doing it wrong. This is the sort of the rule that I give my students and my kids. It's almost a perfect rule, as a matter of fact, because that's an indication that we're in this together for all intents and purposes. You know, if there's something that we have shame when we're around other

people when we're satisfying our pleasures in unseemly ways, and this is one of the ways that we'll actually move the experience to our prefrontal cortex and govern ourselves. And Enjoyment is a gift. Enjoyment is a wonderful way that we can actually take the abundance of life, the abundance of creation, and make sure that it is a source of joy to us without making it into a source of misery. You've been listening to my conversation with Arthur Brooks. Socrates in the studio recorded here in New York City. We continue that now.

I don't know who said it or where I'm getting the idea, but the idea of ordering our desires, ordering our loves, that ought to be what education is about, right? It is to train a young person to love the right things or to like the right things or to desire the right things. This is a good deal of what I teach my students. Because when you have disorder desires,

even if they're not evil desires, immoral desires, satanic desires, even if they're just worldly desire, you will find perdition. And I'll give you a perfect example. This gets us back to St. Thomas. Thomas, the great behavioral scientist of 1265 in the Sumo theologia, he said that there's four idols, that there are four idols in life. What we really want is God.

That's what we want. But God, you know, it's kind of inconvenient. There's a lot of cumbersome rules in one-sided conversation. So a lot of people want to take a little shortcut with things that have kind of divine characteristics. And those are idols. And he said, furthermore, he asserted, and he's completely right, that there's four of them. Each one of us falls prey to one of these idols in particular. And if you know what your idol is, then, of course, you're moving the experience of the craving to your peripheral cortex,

and you're governing that idol, and you'll save yourself a whole lot of grief. He didn't talk about the reprimand cortex, so they didn't know it existed at that point. But that's what's actually happening. The four idols are money, power, pleasure, and honor. And by honor he didn't mean Two of my kids are Marines and they serve with honor But that's not what he meant He meant fame or the admiration of the world

The adulation of the world Money, power, pleasure and honor And he asserted and he's right That we like them all But there's one in particular that beguiles Each one of us and that's the dark one works through that idol To distract us from the thing that we really want And you have power

I play a game with my students called What's My Idol So that they know. They have to read a little acquaintance. These are my students at Harvard. Yeah. Do you all play? Do I want to play the game? Yeah. I was hoping we might. I was hoping we might, yes. Are you going to be a contestant on what's my idol? Do I have a choice? It's like I feel like I've lost control here. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I don't mean to lose. It's your show. It's your show. Yeah. So here's how the game works. We're going to find Eric's idol, which doesn't mean that you're subjugated to it. On the contrary.

It just means that in your weakest moments, that's the being aware of it as an idol. Exactly. Right. And everything that you regret in the past will always somehow be traced to that idol. This is the uncanny thing. When you think about a relationship that you neglected, you know, a corner that you cut that you wish you hadn't, it'll always have something to do with that idol. Interesting. So the way you play is that you don't say what your idol is. You eliminate what it's not in order.

Because one of those things you really don't care about, generally speaking, that's things. And when you eliminate something, it doesn't mean you don't have it at all. If you eliminate money, it doesn't mean that you're poor. It means you're the most normal person in the world. And if it's your idol, normal's bad. But if it's not your idol, normal's fine, is what it comes down to. So let's start with the one you would eliminate first. You've got to kick out one.

What's the one you care about the least? Or maybe even actively dislike. Money, power, which is persuasion over other people. These are not evil things. Pleasure, which might be comfort or security. Yeah. And the adulation of the world. Which one do you kick out first?

Do you care about the least? This is very hard. This requires a spiritual retreat, actually. I was going to say, it really is. But this kind of is, isn't it? Well, it's interesting because it does make you really think. What are your... Okay, so money is one.

Yeah. Power, which is the... Power. Which is the... Not the control over other people. but the influence over other people. Influence. They do the things that you think are right.

Pleasure is clear. We talked about that, but pleasure also encompasses comforted security. Comfort and security. Because, you know, that's important. A lot of people are like, yeah, I don't need to feel good all the time, but I sure as heck want to, you know,

tear down my barns and build bigger barns and fill them up so I can, you know. There are a lot of people like that out there. Yeah. Yeah. Or comfort. You know, I'm like, I'm not trying to get high all the time, but I sure like sleeping in or whatever. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. And then this, the Agil. of the world. So which one do you give away first?