By Dan Wellock
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
“I can’t do this. Nothing I do matters. It doesn’t mean anything in the end.”
Dread words, but ones we have all said in the benighted times of our lives. Myriad challenges lead us this mindset: betrayals, setbacks, failures, mistakes. The shadowed condition of our minds in this state is miserable.
Yet, psychologists have shown that we often bring it on ourselves.
This dark mindset is named “learned helplessness,” and it was coined by Martin Seligman in his fascinating experiment with dogs. A group of dogs were administered shocks that they could stop by pushing a panel. Another group were administered shocks with no way to stop them. The last group was the control group and were left alone. Later, all dogs were placed in boxes and administered shocks. This time, however, they could escape the shocks by jumping over a low barrier. Seligman found that the dogs that had learned to press the panel and the control group all jumped out of the box. The second group that experienced the inexorable shocks simply laid down in the box and didn’t even attempt escape, even when it was apparent they could do so. This experiment demonstrated that when continually faced with an inescapable pain, dogs learn to stop trying to escape it—even when escape is possible.
We cannot, with intellectual honesty, make the jump from dogs to humans and claim an equal effect. That being said, this study launched several human experiments that sought to demonstrate the same behavior. Hiroto (1974) showed that humans exhibit learned helplessness when faced with an inescapable unpleasant noise. Hiroto and Seligman (1975) found that learned helplessness with unpleasant sounds can transfer to other areas—in this case, unrelated puzzles. These studies seem to suggest that a similar phenomenon occurs with humans as it does with dogs.
Far be it for us to claim that behavior is sufficient to explain experience and furthermore for us to regress into a classical-conditioning behaviorist view of humanity. However, we know that beliefs and mindsets often drive behavior. This being the case, we can assume that participants in these studies were experiencing the kind of paralyzing pessimism introduced above. If we allow it, our circumstances can influence our thinking and color our worldview into a helpless haze of despair and resignation. As William James wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience, “So long as the egoistic worry of the sick soul guards the door, the expansive confidence of the soul of faith gains no presence” (James 1902). A thoroughly pessimistic perspective dams any joy or contentment to be found in the present.
So what is the alternative?
Many instead go to the far end of the spectrum, choosing to live in a state of euphoric denial. William James called this “healthy-mindedness” (though don’t be fooled by its cheery name), and he explains this perspective when he writes, “we all have some friend…whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden,” (James 1902). This is the “sunshine and rainbows” perspective that ignores all that is dark and evil in the world, blindly holding on to the view that everything is near-perfect. But wars rage around the world. Individuals suffer unimaginable horrors every day. Evil is very real, and its terrible jaws of despair open wide for many daily. Many choose to live in this state of ignorant bliss—often willfully—because they believe it will preserve their wellbeing. Yet, we all will face extreme adversity at some time or other during our lives, and if we are caught unawares, the devastation will be so much the more terrible.
William James, in his distinction between the “sick soul” and the “healthy-minded”, notes the tradeoff of both positions.
The method of averting one’s attention from evil, and living simply in the light of good is splendid as long as it will work. It will work with many persons; it will work far more generally than most of us are ready to suppose; and within the sphere of its successful operation there is nothing to be said against it as a religious solution. But it breaks down impotently as soon as melancholy comes; and even though one be quite free from melancholy one’s self, there is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth (James 1902).
We are therefore in a kind of “Catch-22” situation here with life perspectives if we present it as a dichotomy. On the one hand, we can choose to be pessimistic and dwell on the dark realities of the present. On the other hand, we can ignore the shadow and choose to focus solely on the good. Both have consequences. In the first case, we live in perpetual sorrow, as even the happy moments are framed by their transitive nature. In the second, we are unprepared for the inevitable showdown with despair. Both ends of the extreme are not sustainable. So what can we do?
In presenting the divide between the “sick soul” and the “healthy-minded”, William James proposes a middle path: meliorism. Meliorism was a central tenet of the pragmatist movement (a 20th century philosophy that emphasized the “cash-value”, fit, utility, and end product of ideas as an arbiter of truthfulness), and its founders wrote much about it. Charles Sanders Pierce, the first pragmatist, defined meliorism as, “the doctrine that the world is neither the worst nor the best possible, but that it is capable of improvement: a mean between theoretical pessimism and optimism” (Peirce 1891). This quote tells us that meliorism is the place between the dreary sick soul and the blind healthy mind. It keeps us from a benighted, depressed mindset, but also from sudden devastation. It also opens a vista of agentic action because it is based on the idea that we can improve the world.
Meliorism is then essentially similar to the definition of optimism provided by positive psychology: optimism is the ability and willingness to observe the entire inner landscape of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions (whether judged as positive or negative), and choosing the perspective and subsequent action that maximizes one’s well-being. We do not cling to an ultimate conviction that every endeavor will succeed, because that is bound to bring us pain and disappointment. Rather, we trust in our ability to improve the world, and thereby gain purpose and perspective.
Meliorism gets its name from “ameliorate”, and its practice lives up to its namesake. Meliorists believe there is not some ultimate abstract good to which we all aim and from which we will ultimately prevail. Rather, they believe that the world is filled with individual problems to be solved. The “good” comes when we focus on solving those problems. Each solution is an end in itself. And there may be times where two goods are pitted against each other. In these cases, one must fail so the other can prevail. Ultimately, despite the outcome, meliorists hold to the conviction that they can do something to improve the condition of the world.
This is not wishful thinking. It is realistic without being pessimistic. Indeed, the path between is the better one because it does not suffer from the frolicking paralysis of the healthy minded. Nor does it wallow in the polluting haze of the sick soul. Instead, meliorism encourages productive action. It is purposeful. It is meaningful. And it is valuable beyond measure.
So, when darkness overshadows our minds, and we “learn” helplessness, we can hold to the belief that no matter how bad (or good) it gets, we can do something to improve the world. It may fail. We may incur more misfortune. We may have to face debilitating disappointment and frustration. Yet, there is still something we can do. As Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and psychiatrist wrote, “We could say that most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.”
Let us be improvers and actors, turning the darkest night of despair into a brilliant morning of meaning.
“The world is full of pessimism; what an accomplishment it would be to change it to optimism. Can you imagine saturating this place with meliorism?”
References
Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man's search for meaning. Beacon Press.
Hiroto, D. S. (1974). Locus of control and learned helplessness. Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 102(2), 187–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0035910
Hiroto, Donald & Seligman, Martin. (1975). Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology. 31(2), 311-327. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076270
James, W. (2012). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature (M. Bradley,
Ed.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1902).
Peirce, C. S. (1889–1891). Meliorism. In W. D. Whitney (Ed.), The Century dictionary and
cyclopedia: An encyclopedic lexicon of the English language (Vol. 5, p. 3697). The Century Co.
Seligman, M. E., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0024514