Roots of Flourishing

The third of a four-episode series on redeeming work that introduces three areas of harm (money, bureaucracy, and ideology) and one area of positive enhancement (promoting engagement or flow) that the institution contributes to our work. The three harms degrade, dilute, and/or distort our work.  

The disordered love or prioritization of money can either be from an individual or institutional perspective.  Paid work or employment is not a necessary condition of achieving the good of work; however, since we all need money this is the most common avenue and unfortunately is a source of problems within the psychologic dimension.  Institutions should pay workers and reward them to include pay for excellence in work.  Insufficient time and/or resources given to us by the institution can result in degrading the quality of our work resulting in moral injury to our personal integrity.  Leaders need to measure outcomes that best reflect the excellence of our jobs while avoiding measures that perversely work against excellence.  

Bureaucracy is now a hallmark of our increasingly complex modern society. Additional forms, requirements, and training seem to be ever increasing and, in many instances, quite distant to the actual work of making the good or providing the service.  These additional requirements take time away from the primary job at hand resulting in dilution of work.   Additionally, workers are frequently expected to maintain output despite increasing bureaucratic requirements thus leading to degradation of our work.  Leaders must take a very critical view of any new bureaucratic requirements, and any essential ones should be streamlined and tailored to the needs of the workers including in person and just-in-time training whenever possible.  One-size fits all training should be rejected.  Computer-based training further isolates us socially leading to a degradation of our humanity while missing opportunities to enhance training. 

References

A Time to Build by Yuval Levin is a key read for understanding the healthy role that our institutions should play while he convincingly argues that our current institutions are not healthy which is adversely affecting our society.  An NPR interview hits the high points of his book. 

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

 Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson is a great book revealing and reminding us of the dangers of a fast-paced life.

Creation Regained by Professor Albert M. Wolters.  Brief review of the book here while a more technical and detailed one is here

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The second of a four-episode series on redeeming work discusses the importance of loving people we work with and for while highlighting the fundamental key of the spiritual dimension. 

The social aspect of our jobs is arguably the most important as it leads directly to more of the fruits of flourishing (three--meaning, positive relationships, and positive emotions) than loving our jobs for their own sake does (a single fruit--accomplishment).  The impact that our work has on people is increasingly indirect due to the digital world, and thus we need to become more mindful and seek to tangibly connect with those we are serving and working with.

The spiritual dimension with its virtues and intrinsic spiritual practices is key to enabling us to love our work and those people in it.  The virtue of selfless love is fundamental to loving others for their own sake.  The virtue of hope brings about an optimism in our work that can become contagious leading to the joy filled workplaces we all desire.  The spiritual practices of prayer, mindfulness, and gratitude all positively impact our human flourishing and need to be incorporated throughout our workday.

References

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman is a very helpful book to understanding how people feel love.  Dr. Chapman’s website has a variety of good resources.

Colin L. Powell’s 13 rules of leadership I think are fundamentally rules for life as well.

A Time to Build by Yuval Levin is a key read for understanding the healthy role that our institutions should play while he convincingly argues that our current institutions are not healthy which is adversely affecting our society.  An NPR interview hits the high points of his book. 

David Brooks article The Moral Bucket List published in the New York Times is an important tonic to “the culture of the Big Me” and a call to look to and serve others. 

Praxis’ A Rule of Life for Redemptive Entrepreneurs is a memorable and practical guide that can help us redeem our work.

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This is the first of a four-episode series on redeeming work.  The basic thesis is that we can redeem work only if we love the work we do for its own sake AND love those associated with our work—those we work with and work for.  The first two episodes will focus on the individual while the last two will address the contributions that the institution plays.

Overall human flourishing both in and outside of work is a necessary precondition to redeeming work.  Living a balanced, multidimensional harmonious life oriented to the basic goods is essential to give us the resiliency and equip us to love our work and love the people with it.  The fast-paced lifestyle that most of us live needs to be reined in to restore balance.  Restoring the concept of a sabbath rest is crucial to this.  

The root of self-transcendence is vital for us to transcend our own thoughts, emotions, and desires—our attitudes--to embrace and love our work for its own sake and the people with it. 

Work being a basic good is not only a philosophical but also a theological concept.  God does work through creation while the work of Christ is a redeeming one.  Our work should be either a creative or a redemptive work.  Making new things or ideas are examples of the first while restoring or making broken things whole are examples of redemptive work.

Being mindful through our thoughts, speech, and action is important to ensure that we focus on the internal excellence of our work for its own sake and this mindfulness is an important counterweight to any lesser and potentially destructive goals.

References

Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl.  A nice summary is given in this link

Mike Rowe has a nice summary of his insight on this video while I got some of his quotes from a Forbes interview

Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson is a great book revealing and reminding us of the dangers of a fast-paced life.

Creation Regained by Professor Albert M. Wolters.  Brief review of the book here while a more technical and detailed one is here

Article on intrinsic versus extrinsic goals by Drs. Vansteenkiste, Lens and Deci published in the journal “Educational Psychologist” in March of 2006

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

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This episode we review the contributions of positive psychology to human flourishing by summarizing and analyzing Dr. Martin Seligman’s book “Flourish.”  Positive psychology’s current contributions to understanding flourishing can be quickly summarized with the acronym PERMA (P: Positive emotions; E: Engagement or flow; R: Relationships—positive ones; M: Meaning outside oneself; A: Accomplishment for its own sake).  One needs to have a combination or balance of all these to achieve human flourishing.

The root of self-transcendence directly leads to Engagement, Meaning, and Accomplishment while self-transcendence is a key factor in achieving positive relationships.  Additionally, self-transcendence aids us to deal constructively or positively with all our emotions either positive or negative ones by enabling us to see how all these emotions can lead to personal growth in our virtues or the good.

The root of the spiritual dimension particularly the virtues of optimism or hope and self-control or temperance are highlighted and proven to have substantial positive effects on our biologic and social dimensions.  

Lastly, we discuss how the roots of harmonious multi-dimensional living with an orientation to the basic goods can answer some of positive psychology’s most pressing questions.  Those questions are: 1) how do we maximize our human flourishing, and 2) how can we ensure that we are truly achieving human flourishing not only subjectively but also objectively?  

References

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

Wikipedia has a nice review of positive psychology

Two additional books on happiness or human flourishing from two popular talk show hosts that have practical perspectives are Dennis Prager’s book Happiness is a Serious Problem and Hugh Hewitt’s The Happiest Life.   Professor of government and philosophy J. Budziszewski’s book entitled How and How Not to be Happy chronicles why so many areas within our lives do not lead to happiness and argues for supreme happiness in seeing God.

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We discuss the last criteria of how we can rightly order our four dimensions and promote the basic goods through the concept of mutual subordination.  Mutual subordination is akin to self-transcendence but takes this notion out of the psychologic and rightly applies it to all dimensions and all the basic goods.  No dimension or basic good can bring about its own end but is entirely dependent upon the other dimensions to bring about their end.  

 
We review all four dimensions beginning with health where our biologic health is entirely dependent upon the other three dimensions to bring about their fulfillment while the body, in turn, is an integral part of fulfilling the other three dimensions’ ends. The psychologic and social are then analyzed concluding with the spiritual which we contend to be the ultimate in mutual subordination.  

 
Quick summary of our six foundational episodes.   The constituent elements our humanity are the four dimensions (biologic, psychologic, social, and spiritual) with the basic goods being the primary ends or goals of each dimension.  The concepts of balance, harmony, self-transcendence, and mutual subordination describe how to best order each dimension and their interrelationships in order to bring about human flourishing.  

References

The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It (whole text online) and The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It (book and translation quoted in podcast) by St. Theophan

 What It Means to Be Human by O. Carter Snead 

 Carl Trueman’s book Strange New World is an excellent introduction to expressive individualism while his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is a deeper exploration.  There are multiple interviews and lectures with Carl Trueman on the internet to include this one from Crossway.

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This episode defines and lists the basic goods associated with each dimension which we should never harm and generally work towards promoting.  Basic goods are goods or ends that should not be instrumental to another good.  In other words, these should not be used to serve other ends.  A list of basic goods includes life, health, knowledge, work, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, marriage, personal integrity, and harmony with the divine.  

The biologic dimension includes life and health while friendship, marriage, work, and play reside in the social dimension.  Harmony with the divine is solely in the spiritual dimension while knowledge and aesthetic experience may either be in the spiritual or the social depending upon whether it is transcendent or not.  Personal integrity is left for the psychologic dimension and reflects a life well lived or the Greek word eudaimonia.

We get into trouble through the psychosocial dyad of dimensions where we mis-prioritize or disorder the goods.  We make some instrumental goods basic goods while relegating other basic goods to instrumental status.  This disordering of goods then puts things out of balance and since some basic goods are harmed this prevents them from working optimally together in harmony.  

References

The Way of Medicine by Drs. Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen 

Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends by John M. Finnis, Germain Grisez and Joseph Boyle

This actual list of basic goods I use is from Christopher Tollefsen’s article in Public Discourse entitled Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

The relationship between human flourishing and money is extensively addressed by Ed Diener and Martin E.P. Seligman in their article Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being and Ed Diener wrote a much shorter article summarizing their findings in his article Income and Happiness

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This episode reviews the importance of harmony to our human flourishing.  Harmony reinforces the notion that all the dimensions should not harm any other dimension but also that all the dimensions should work … together.  The effects of multi-dimensional living incorporating three or even four of our dimensions into all our activities result in full integration, human flourishing, and completion of our humanity.  Harms to a dimension result in dis-integration and a lack of flourishing.  Moral injury is an example where a harm to a virtue usually justice can result in dis-integration and psychologic harms.  Mindfully integrating three or four dimensions can be practically applied in nearly all of life’s activities including games, entertainment, and prayer which are all highlighted in this episode.

References

New England Journal Article entitled Early Palliative Care for Patients with Metastatic Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Dr. Harold Koenig and associates’ article in Military Medicine entitled Screening for Moral Injury: The Moral Injury Symptom Scale – Military Version Short Form

 A Biblical Theology of Human Flourishing by Dr. Jonathan Pennington

 Article by Peter Grinspoon, MD in Harvard Health Publishing entitled The Health Effects of Too Much Gaming

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This episode uncovers the root of how we can know whether we are truly in another dimension or merely a psychologic bystander.  By truly transcending our own thoughts, emotions, and desires, we can embrace the other which leads to both ours and other people's flourishing.  When we self-transcend, then we love someone or something else for their own sake and not as an instrument to gratify our own desires.

We reviewed the three major pressures and the one root cause that keeps us from self-transcending.  The pressures include:   1) it is not a habit many of us are trained in, 2) our consumer culture panders to our psychologic desires, and 3) the pressure of expressive individualism that is the zeitgeist of our culture drives us back to our psychologic desires.  Lastly, the root cause is due to the effects of the Fall that harmed our relationships with the biologic, social (people and environment), and spiritual.   

References

How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions by Dr. Marty Seligman and colleagues where they list six virtues with a total of 24 additional character strengths under one of the six virtues

A good series of lectures on the interplay of the brain and spiritual practices is by Dr. Andrew Newberg from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital available for purchase through the Great Courses entitled The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience

What It Means to Be Human by O. Carter Snead

A Shift in American Family Values Is Fueling Estrangement by Joshua Coleman in The Atlantic

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This episode explores the first of three criteria for human flourishing--balance.  Balance is everywhere in the universe and should also be established in our lives.  Balance amongst our four dimensions (biologic, psychologic, social, and spiritual) is essential for flourishing and we know that we are out of balance when we are not at peace.  Balance amongst the dimensions has elements of both quantity and timing where we need to engage in biologic, social, and spiritual dimensions throughout the day in order to avoid the tyranny of our psychologic dimension.  Practical applications include regular exercise and prayer/meditation that have been proven to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression. 

References

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

The Way of a Pilgrim

National Institutes of Mental Health Statistics
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness#part_2632

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression

Shanafelt and associates article in Mayo Clinic Proceedings Changes in Burnout and satisfaction with work-life integration in physicians and the general US working population between 2011 and 2020

Journal of American Medical Association Article Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

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In this introductory episode, we outline the four dimensions of our humanity that include the biologic, psychologic, social, and spiritual.  These dimensions are all interrelated and in order to achieve full human flourishing need to be in balance, working in harmony, and mutual subordinate to one another.  The spiritual is defined not as religious but as the transcendent.  The transcendent includes the good, the true, and the beautiful, and ultimately God. 

References:

George Engel’s article: The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine

Daniel Sulmasy's article: A Biopsychosocial-Spiritual Model for the Care of Patients at the End of Life

Virtue List Used in Podcast: Cardinal Virtues (courage, justice, prudence, and temperance) and Theological Virtues (faith, hope, and love)

Scientific Reports article:  Alterations in Brain Structure and Amplitude of Low-frequency after 8 weeks of Mindfulness Meditation Training in Meditation-Naïve Subjects

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