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The United States ranks 24th out of 100 on the list of happiest countries, according to the latest World Happiness Report. Being in the top 25% seems fair when you consider everything thats happening in the world, but the stats arent great when you look at the happiness of people aged 30 and younger. In this demographic, the U.S. falls to number 62 on the list. Its unsettling, because it was always youth that pulled the happiness levels up on these scales, says Jennifer Moss, author of Unlocking Happiness at Work: How a Data-driven Happiness Strategy Fuels Purpose, Passion and Performance. They’re the ones that are supposed to be the hopeful, pushing-back-against-the-status-quo generation. Right now, they’re struggling, and I think this is the canary in the coal mine. Still, the report found a lot of good in the world. Participants were asked Have you helped a stranger or someone you didnt know who needed help in the past month? Seventy-one percent of Americans said yes. That seems like a reason for hope, right? In reality, we’re actually more prosocial than we’ve ever been, says Moss. We just hear about how awful and terrible and unhappy the world is. Happiness is ultimately a choice, says Moss. If you are feeling unhappy, its possible to rewire your brain for more positivity. Here are five things you can do today. 1. Surround Yourself with Happy Friends Ever walk into a room after two people are fighting and immediately feel awkward or tense? Or maybe you hear laughter down the hall, start smiling yourself, and get up to see whats going on? Absorbing the emotions of others around you is called the contagion effect, and it can be beneficial. A study published in the British Medical Journal found that proximity and time spent with a happy friend, sibling, parent, or neighbor increases your own happiness by as much as 34%. We have a relational energy with other people, says Moss. We can use the contagion effect for ourselves [by spending more time with people who are happy]. 2. Look for Abundance Henry Ford once said, Whether you think you can or you think you cantyoure right. In other words, what you expect is often what you get. This attitude trickles over into happiness, as well. Instead of being disappointed by what you dont have, focus on what you do. Shifting your mindset from scarcity to abundance can rewire your brain, says Moss. It’s called attention retraining, says Moss. It’s an exercise for your prefrontal cortex. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. When you’re going through stress or feeling low, this exercise can pull you out of the feeling that everything is hopeless. Take it one step further by keeping a gratitude journal, recording three things youre thankful for each day. Research published in the Taiwanese Journal of Psychiatry found that happiness and gratitude are interconnected. Thankfulness for even small blessings is associated with an improved mood and a greater sense of happiness. 3. Choose Happiness for Others Another way to boost your happiness is to make someone else happy. For example, grab a coffee for a coworker, pay a genuine compliment, or simply let someone merge in front of you on the way into work. Acts of altruism or kindness stimulate the feel-good chemicals in our bodies, such as serotonin and oxytocin, which regulate our mood, says Moss. It also increases the connectivity we have with people, she says. It makes us more trusting. And when we are engaging in altruism, it lowers our cortisol, which is the stress hormone. A study published in the Review of General Psychology found that performing five acts of kindness in a single day increases your own happiness beyond that timeframe. It has a half-life, says Moss. It’s like taking medication and having it last for a month. 4. Seek Out Brief Positive Interactions Another way to boost your happiness is as simple as acknowledging strangers. Research by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that brief positive interactions, like eye contact or a smile, activates the Vagus nerve, which impacts your nervous system. She calls it the positivity resonance, explains Moss. It activates a part of the brain that calms you down. Consider this as you navigate the office hallways, step onto an elevator, or encounter people on a walk or in the grocery store line. Those minimal relationships you have in passing can help boost happiness and reduce loneliness. 5. Slow Down Finally, make a point to slow down and savor positive experiences. We’re all going really fast right now, trying to keep up, says Moss. Stopping along the way, though, can increase your brain’s capacity to notice and retain positive emotion. For example, take time to look at an unusual cloud shape or smell the blooming flowers. Reflecting on it can give you joy and appreciation, says Moss. Were in a state of chronic digital distraction, which is weakening the prefrontal cortexthe part of the brain that helps us manage our emotional regulation. Making Happiness a Habit Knowing how to rewire your brain is the first step. he second is to put the actions into play, which can be challenging if youre feeling unhappy and stressed out. Moss recommends putting reminders on your calendar that nudge you to take a walk in nature, record an entry in your gratitude journal, or make plans with a friend or family member who always boosts your mood. Make it a habit or ritual, she says. Knowing you have something to do or report to at a certain time can trigger those feel-good chemicals to start before the alarm goes off. Youll create preemptive healthy emotions, knowing youre going to do something that makes you happier. Dont be frustrated if in a month you haven’t completely rewired your brain, adds Moss. Rewiring is about consistency and frequency and fluency, she says. Celebrating small wins will provide the positive reinforcement our brains love. The more we do it, the more it becomes easy to practice.
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Have you been hearing about the dire wolf lately? Maybe you saw a massive white wolf on the cover of Time magazine or a photo of Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin holding a puppy named after a character from his books. The dire wolf, a large, wolflike species that went extinct about 12,000 years ago, has been in the news after biotech company Colossal claimed to have resurrected it using cloning and gene-editing technologies. Colossal calls itself a de-extinction company. The very concept of de-extinction is a lightning rod for criticism. There are broad accusations of playing God or messing with nature, as well as more focused objections that contemporary de-extinction tools create poor imitations rather than truly resurrected species. While the biological and philosophical debates are interesting, the legal ramifications for endangered species conservation are of paramount importance. As a legal scholar with a PhD in wildlife genetics, my work focuses on how we legally define the term endangered species. The use of biotechnology for conservation, whether for de-extinction or genetic augmentation of existing species, promises solutions to otherwise intractable problems. But it needs to work in harmony with both the letter and purpose of the laws governing biodiversity conservation. Of dire wolves and de-extinction What did Colossal actually do? Scientists extracted and sequenced DNA from Ice Age-era bones to understand the genetic makeup of the dire wolf. They were able to piece together around 90% of a complete dire wolf genome. While the gray wolf and the dire wolf are separated by a few million years of evolution, they share over 99.5% of their genomes. The scientists scanned the recovered dire wolf sequences for specific genes that they believed were responsible for the physical and ecological differences between dire wolves and other species of canids, including genes related to body size and coat color. CRISPR gene-editing technology allows scientists to make specific changes in the DNA of an organism. The Colossal team used CRISPR to make 20 changes in 14 different genes in a modern gray wolf cell before implanting the embryo into a surrogate mother. All thats left of dire wolves today are bones, like these skulls on display in a museum. [Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images] While the technology on display is marvelous, what should we call the resulting animals? Some commentators argue that the animals are just modified gray wolves. They point out that it would take far more than 20 edits to bridge the gap left by millions of years of evolution. For instance, that 0.5% of the genome that doesnt match in the two species represents more than 12 million base pair differences. More philosophically, perhaps, other skeptics argue that a species is more than a collection of genes devoid of environmental, ecological, or evolutionary context. Colossal, on the other hand, maintains that it is in the functional de-extinction game. The company acknowledges it isnt making a perfect dire wolf copy. Instead it wants to recreate something that looks and acts like the dire wolf of old. It prefers the if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, its a duck school of speciation. Disagreements about taxonomythe science of naming and categorizing living organismsare as old as the field itself. Biologists are notorious for failing to adopt a single clear definition of species, and there are dozens of competing definitions in the biological literature. Biologists can afford to be flexible and imprecise when the stakes are merely a conversational misunderstanding. Lawyers and policymakers, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. Deciding what counts as an endangered species In the United States, the Endangered Species Act is the main tool for protecting biodiversity. To be protected by the act, an organism must be a member of an endangered or threatened species. Some of the most contentious ESA issues are definitional, such as whether the listed species is a valid species and whether individual organisms, especially hybrids, are members of the listed species. Colossals functional species concept is anathema to the Endangered Species Act. It shrinks the value of a species down to the way it looks or the way it functions. When passing the act, however, Congress made clear that species were to be valued for their aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation and its people. In my view, the myopic focus on function seems to miss the point. Despite its insistence otherwise, Colossals definitional sleight of hand has opened the door to arguments that people should reduce conservation funding or protections for currently imperiled species. Why spend the money to protect a critter and its habitat when, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, you can just pick your favorite species and call up Colossal? Putting biotechnology to work for onservation Biotechnology can provide real conservation benefits for todays endangered species. I suggest gene editings real value is not in recreating facsimiles of long-extinct species like dire wolves, but instead using it to recover ones in trouble now. Projects, by both Colossal and other groups, are underway around the world to help endangered species develop disease resistance or evolve to tolerate a warmer world. Other projects use gene editing to reintroduce genetic variation into populations where genetic diversity has been lost. For example, Colossal has also announced that it has cloned a red wolf. Unlike the dire wolf, the red wolf is not extinct, though it came extremely close. After decades of conservation efforts, there are about a dozen red wolves in the wild in the reintroduced population in eastern North Carolina, as well as a few hundred red wolves in captivity. The entire population of red wolves, both wild and captive, descends from merely 14 founders of the captive breeding program. This limited heritage means the species has lost a significant amount of the genetic diversity that would help it continue to evolve and adapt. In order to reintroduce some of that missing genetic diversity, youd need to find genetic material from red wolves outside the managed population. Right now that would require stored tissue samples from animals that lived before the captive breeding program was established or rediscovering a lost population in the wild. Recently, researchers discovered that coyotes along the Texas Gulf Coast possess a sizable percentage of red wolf-derived DNA in their genomes. Hybridization between coyotes and red wolves is both a threat to red wolves and a natural part of their evolutionary history, complicating management. The red wolf genes found within these coyotes do present a possible source of genetic material that biotechnology could harness to help the captive breeding population if the legal hurdles can be managed. This coyote population was Colossals source for its cloned ghost red wolf. Even this announcement is marred by definitional confusion. Due to its hybrid nature, the animal Colossal cloned is likely not legally considered a red wolf at all. Under the Endangered Species Act, hybrid organisms are typically not protected. So by cloning one of these animals, Colossal likely sidestepped the need for ESA permits. It will almost certainly run into resistance if it attempts to breed these ghost wolves into the current red wolf captive breeding program that has spent decades trying to minimize hybridization. How much to value genetic purity versus genetic diversity in managed species still proves an extraordinarily difficult question, even without the legal uncertainty. Biotechnology could never solve every conservation problemespecially habitat destruction. The ability to make functional copies of a species certainly does not lessen the urgency to respond to biodiversity loss, nor does it reduce human beings moral culpability. But to adequately respond to the ever-worsening biodiversity crisis, conservationists will need all available tools. Alex Erwin is an assistant professor of law at Florida International University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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How many times have you used the words good or bad today? From checking your weather app to monitoring the progress youve made on your to-do list, to scrolling through social media, opportunities to make snap evaluations abound. And the more you sort things into these categories, the more instinctive making these judgments becomes. You may find yourself filtering everything that comes your way in terms of good or bad. A dark cloud triggers bad, a social media post of baby animals triggers good, a news story about a political scuffle triggers bad. Whether you think something is good or bad, or worthy of a like or not, is an important piece of information. But if that categorization is the only thing thats on your mind, the only lens through which you interpret the world, youll miss out on a lot. Im a philosopher who specializes in happiness, well-being and the good life. I study how ones state of mind influences ones experiences of the world. In my recent book, The Art of the Interesting, I explore the ways the evaluative perspective squashes your ability to experience psychological richness and other positive dimensions of life. The more you instinctively react with a good or a bad, the less of the world you take in. Youll be less likely to engage your mind, exercise curiosity and have interesting experiences. Evaluation narrows your mind When you instinctively label something as good or bad, you focus only on the features that make that thing good or bad. You look outside, and all you see is the darkness of the clouds, threatening your plans for the day. You dont notice the cooling shade those clouds create, nor the dramatic ways the wind makes them morph. You dont notice the flowers unfurling, nor the child walking by who is also looking up at the clouds, but with a wide-eyed look of wonder. When snap evaluations reign, you effectively shut yourself off from a wide range of possible experiences. When everything around you is just good or bad, nothing can be perplexing, mysterious, or intriguing. Nothing can be simply new, or simply challenging, or simply stimulating. Nothing is interesting, for your mind has filtered out these possible sources of cognitive engagement. It sees what it expects, and nothing else. Open your mind for more psychological richness Snap evaluations narrow your perspective and limit your minds potential to connect and engage with other aspects of your experiences. But you can unlock this potential simply by resisting any instinct to judge and instead viewing the world without trying to evaluate what you see. Right away, youll start to notice more, and youll activate your minds internal drives for curiosity and exploration. Freed from the dead-end judgments of good/bad, you can explore what is novel, allow yourself to be challenged, and tackle the complexities inherent to human experiences. Traffic jams can become sources of intrigue, rather than just a bad way to start your day. Delicious meals wont just taste goodtheyll spark your curiosity and stimulate your creativity. Youll go from seeing a coworker as difficult and irritating to recognizing them as an individual with human imperfections whos deserving of your compassion. Youll also feel the pains, struggles, and rewards that arise through these mental engagements. Youll experience rich, intense moments and a greater range of emotions. Youll find your life chock-full of unusual and unique experiences with very few instances of boredom and monotony. Over time, your mind will become more adept at finding connections, exercising creativity, and operating from a place of cognitive complexity. Youll start to view the world more holistically, as full of connections waiting to be discovered. All of these are signs that your life has become more psychologically rich. Expand your mind, expand your sense of self Psychological richness and, more generally, experiences of novelty and interestingness are valuable on their own. But theres evidence that theyre also important due to their effects on your sense of self. When you engage in new, interesting activities, you not only broaden your horizons and develop fresh perspectives, but you also become more confident in your ability to do whatever comes next. In these ways, you expand your very sense of self. The connection between psychological richness and self-expansion is intuitive. Novel, interesting activities stimulate the mind, challenging it to engage and explore. This process can expand your confidence in your abilities and provide you with a greater sense of control over your environment. As ones sense of self expands, ones very presence within the world shifts. One recent study explored the influence of psychological richness on pro-environmental behavior. While its common to feel sad, anxious, angry, powerless, and helpless in the face of climate change, developing psychological richness can transform these negative attitudes. Researchers found that people who experience psychological richness were more willing to engage in sustainable activities. They believe this correlation is mediated by self-expansion, which helps subjects feel more confident that their actions would have an impact on the daunting problem of climate change. Cut out good and bad, go for interesting instead Everyone has the capacity to develop a sense of presence and agency in the world that enhances the very experience of life. A habit of snap evaluations inhibits this capacity, but you can train your mind to be more apt to engage and explore. The easiest way to do this? Stop saying, or thinking, good and bad. When you find yourself inclined to do so, force yourself to say something else. Start right now and begin your journey to engage with the world in a more rewarding way. Lorraine Besser is a professor of philosophy at Middlebury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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