How to Find Happiness ft. Arthur Brooks

0:02 and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Junior Forum at the Institute of Politics. My name is Alex Levy. I'm a sophomore studying government at the college and I'm a member of the JFK Junior Forum Committee. Before we begin, please note [clears throat] the exit doors which are located both on the park side and the JFK street side of the forum. In the event of an emergency, walk to the exit closest to you and congregate in the JFK park. Tonight's program will be livereamed and archived online and will include an audience Q&A segment. Audience members asking questions are asked to identify themselves if they wish, but they are not required to do so. Please also take a moment now to silence your cell phones and join me in welcoming Harvard College undergraduate Matteo Gaglier. [applause]

0:47 Good evening everyone. Uh my name is Matteo Kegliero. I am a senior at the college studying applied math to computer science with economics and I'm a member of the Johnf Kennedy Junior Forum Student Committee. It is my pleasure this evening to welcome you all to this incredible conversation about leadership and meaning uh between two truly incredible uh speakers. But before that some numbers which are today more than 45% of Gen Z report a distinct lack of meaning in their day-to-day lives. Now zooming out, the same numbers hold for young adults between the ages of 18 and 25. Uh when it comes to these people, they see their lives. They describe the patterns of their daily lives as simply being wake up, work, scroll, and repeat. Now, just adding fuel to to the fire of this conversation have definitely been all these

1:32 incredible changes that we have witnessed over the past few few years. Despite myself of course being a naive 20-some year old stu student uh with a few years of experience that I do have I can definitely attest to the fact that these changes when it comes to technology to culture and to the geopolitical changes are definitely undeniable. So how exactly should we go about instilling purpose in our lives and maybe even more importantly how exactly can we help others who are struggling to find theirs? To address and answer this conversation tonight, we have two exceptional speakers. Arthur Brooks is an American social scientist, an author and professor whose work sits at the intersection of public policy, leadership, and human happiness. He is a New York Times best-selling author, a

2:19 current professor at Vanderbilt, as well as a senior fellow fellow over at the Harvard Business School. He is also a houser leader at the Center of Public uh leadership. And last spring, he published the book, The Meaning of Your Life, of which I'm sure we're going to hear plenty about tonight. Moderating this conversation is Anthony Fox. Anthony Fox is the Emma Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and the Director of the Center of Public Leadership over at the Harvard Kennedy School. Anthony Fox served as a 17th US Secretary of Transportation between the years of 2013 and 2017, receiving a extremely rare unanimous confirmation by the US Senate. Before that, he served as the 54th mayor of Charlotte, where he led a record where where he led record investments in

3:05 transportation as well as infrastructure. But now, enough of me. Please join me all in welcoming our fantastic speakers to the stage. [applause] Good evening everyone. It's great to be here with uh my good friend Arthur Brooks and uh our how a leader here at the Center for Public Leadership. Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Um we're going to have a nice conversation tonight about uh meaning and purpose and leadership. And I want to start by asking a question prompting off of your most recent book, Arthur,

3:51 which is entitled The Meaning of Your Life. And then the subtitle is finding purpose in an age of emptiness. A lot of important words there and I want to focus in on age of emptiness. >> Um it's a strong phrase and yet babies are still being born. People are still crying at funerals and people still root for their countries to be successful. Where do you trace the emptiness? >> Thank you and and thanks to all of you. It was so wonderful to be back for those of you who I'm meeting for the first time. I was a professor here at the Kennedy School um for 7 years until July 1st. So I'm, you know, I come back and I know the place like the back of my hand, but I'm an outsider now, which is really weird. But it's always wonderful and

4:38 warm to be here. Truly, this is a great place and and to be part of this community as a Hower leader is especially meaningful. So thank you so very much for that. Um the book uh that I wrote, it came out at the end of March. Um the meaning of your life is the culmination of about five years of research, but it really comes down to something that I've been noticing for a long time. Um I was a professor for a very long time until 2008 and then I left for 11 years and I left to become the president of the American Enterprise Institute which a big think tank down in Washington DC and that was completely consuming. I mean this is look this is you all know a lot about leadership. I mean the Kennedy School is about public leadership among other things and when you're leading a big institution you're not paying attention to a lot of other

5:24 things. But what I wasn't seeing was that my old home academia was changing. Now academia really is my home. My father was a professor. His father was a professor. It's the family business. I grew up on a college campus. And one of the things that I knew, one of the reasons I wanted to be an academic is because academia is happier than the rest of life. It's an oasis in a and and sort of this is what people my age, they think, oh, college, man. I mean, it's when I made some of my best friends. That's when I learned all these weird ideas. That's when I fell in love every Thursday. I mean, it was like and and and and so I I went away and I ran this big organization, this big nonprofit organization, and I and and then I retired from it. Didn't retire. I quit. 55 years old, tender age. And Doug

6:13 Eldorf, who's here, hired me to be a professor at the Kennedy School. And I came back. It's like, oh, good. I get go go go back to the happy place, but I wasn't as happy as it was. It was completely different. Now, I've been studying human happiness for decades. Human happiness is my bag. Uh, and and one of the things that I've been testing my students on is this idea if they have a meaning crisis. Why? Because happiness is is not a feeling. People get that wrong all the time. If you're struggling with your happiness, probably it's because you think it's a feeling, which it isn't any more than the smell of your dinner is your dinner. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Don't go for feelings. Feelings are liars. Go for the macronutrients of happiness, the protein, carbohydrates, and fat of happiness, which are enjoyment of your life, satisfaction with your

7:00 accomplishments, and the meaning of your life, the why of your life. And for the longest time, decades, I've had a test of meaning to see whether or not you have a meaning crisis to see if that macronutrient is deficient. It's based on the psychological definition, which is empirically very sound, has a big literature behind. I won't trouble you with it, but here's the test. I'll give it to you. Why not? This is a two question exam. If you have answers to these questions, you you pass. If you don't have answers, or say there aren't any answers, you fail. And that's okay because that means now you know what to go looking for, which is good news, too. Okay, here are the two questions. Number one, why are you alive? Now, who maybe it's who created you or for what purpose

7:47 or both? You can't Google that question. It's ungooable. I'm not sure that's a word. It has it is now. And why? Because if you if you put that into chat GPT, hey, why am I alive? It'll first start by kissing up to you. It'll first type of saying that's a very astute question. The smartest people in history have asked that question. And then it'll give you five examples from philosophers that mean nothing to you. Okay? You have to live with that. Sit with that. The second question is easy for people my age and harder for people my students age which is for what would you die right now happily right now it's easy for me kids my kids my grandkids totally right but I always press people my age what else would you die for your faith would you die for

8:34 your country would you die for your beliefs would you die for a stranger and and the more that you actually push that the more meaning finds you anyway so I've been giving this exam for ages And I noticed that typically with my graduate students, I've never taught undergraduates. I've only had graduate students average age 28 for my entire academic career, that they they're about 85% pass that test. 15% fail it. Okay, which is once again good news because I know what to put them on the path to. But after 2008, it turns out without me knowing it, that percentage started creeping up. By the time I came back in 2019, 50% of my students were failing that exam. And I looked at the data from

9:19 a group called Monitoring the Future, which asks the question to young adults, does your life feel meaningless? And sure enough, about 15% said yes until 2008. And then it started to creep up and now it's about 50% of young adults say, "Yeah, my life feels meaningless." It's almost as if something happened in 2008. It wasn't me leaving academia. It was almost as if something entered our lives. What What is it? What can you think of? Something that that that that made it harder for us to connect to other human beings. Made it harder for us to make relationships. Harder to have a real life experience of life. Something that made life into a simulation. Some of you are holding it in your hand right now. And the rest of it, rest of you have it in your pockets. And some of you are not

10:05 listening to me right now because you're distracted. But that's what happened. And so what I found was this profound meaning crisis provoked by not by your cell phone. It's not provoked by your smartphone. It's provoked by a change in our culture, an engineering culture that basically said that there's a there's an app for that. That there's a complicated solution to your complex life. And what that led me to, believe it or not, the great thing about being a behavioral scientist today is you have a very, very wide interdicciplinary toolkit that spans philosophy, in my case, a lot of Eastern wisdom traditions because I've done a lot of work for the last 13 years with the Tibetan Buddhist community. Um, and and and very very far into

10:51 neuroscience as well. And it led me to the most interesting area of neuroscience today, which is called hemispheric lateralization. a fancy way of saying your brain has two sides to it and they do different things. Why don't they just say that? Because we got to get tenure. [clears throat] And what hemispheric lateralization chose shows us is that the right hemisphere of your brain deals with the complex problems of why, the mystery, the meaning, the love, the happiness, your relationships, the things you truly care about. And the left side of your brain deals with the complicated problems of life of how to and what the engineering, the efficiency, the information you didn't ask for, the GPS of your life. And you need both. I mean, this is my I'm doing my job right now. And it's a lot of how-to and what I'm

11:37 explaining neuroscience to you right now. But it wouldn't be worth anything if I didn't have the right hemisphere of my my my brain saying why why am I doing this? Because I love the Kennedy School. because I like to support my family, because I care about these ideas, and I'm going back and forth. Why? How to, and what, and that's an integrated life. But guess what? Every time you look at your phone, which for the average American is 205 times a day, your results may vary, but they probably don't, you have actually kicked your brain activity into the left side of your brain where meaning is absent. We broke our brains, my friends. That's what happened. And a lot of people, my [clears throat] students, they don't remember the before times. I do. I mean, I I can't get interested in Instagram. I have a million followers on Instagram

12:23 and I can't get interested in it because it's boring. Because it's not engaging to my 62-year-old brain. Thank God. My grandkids are more interesting to me than my Instagram feed. But guess what? If that's what you grew up on, then the neural pathways are so fortified and so strong that that's actually the case. And that's what we face today. We have a meaning crisis which is the number one predictor of depression and anxiety. You'll get a million explanations from the media that depression and anxiety for people under 35 has all these exogenous explanations from environmental degradation to income inequality to by the way be worried about those things for sure. We care about those things at the Kennedy School. That's not why people are depressed and anxious. They're depressed and anxious because their brains are

13:10 broken by the way that they're engaged in a in an engineering culture that says there's a complicated solution to their complex needs. That there's an app to meet the love and happiness that they actually seek. And that is the age of emptiness. [applause] So man, when the age of emptiness is an applause line, I'm I'm >> Yeah, right. >> I'm in the zone, man. Yeah, >> I think they're applauding your observations about it. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. [laughter] >> Um, now if our brains are broken, can they be repaired? Is is a conversation with someone likely to inspire something in a young person who's phone addicted

13:56 as you're talking about? >> Yeah. And the I wouldn't have written a book if the answer were no. >> I don't write doom books. There's enough doom out there to go around. It really the way that the book works is an explanation of the problem and proof that it exists. Then the neuroscience of how our brains are broken. Hemispheric lateralization, left, right, what's a complicated problem, what's a complex problem, how life has become a simulation, how we're living effectively in the matrix, a left a leftbrain simulation for the right brain cravings for love that we need. But twothirds of this book is the solutions to it. And and it's based on the best neuroscience and behavioral science literature that shows how you can activate the right hemisphere of your brain, which happened automatically. I mean, my great-grandfather, Leroy Brooks, he

14:43 didn't have to activate the right brain. He was just like plowing the fields behind a mule with no podcast to listen to, not even mine. He was just doing his life and he was coming home and and his life by the way his life was super boring moment to moment but his life overall was really interesting. The irony is for a lot of people today there's no boredom moment to moment but life is grindingly boring. That's the problem. I mean that's life in the matrix by the way. That's the plot of that movie in 1999 where a far out, you know, super science fiction artificial intelligence was sucking the energy out of people by keeping them pacified in in a simulation where they

15:28 wouldn't move so we could take their energy and attention. My friends, we're in the mat. It happened. We're in the matrix is the whole problem. And and that wasn't even a thing. So what used to be the ordinary life of boredom and love and relationships and experiences and in real life, your brain is made to interact with people in real life. Your brain is not made and cannot accommodate virtual experiences to the screen. They are not a substitute for the love that you want. And so the result of it is we have to live like my great-grandfather Leroy Brooks who never came home to his wife, my great-grandmother Mary Ellen, I am sure, and said, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today. [laughter] Maybe you had a panic attack. No joke,

16:15 but there's a reason it's happening now and it wasn't happening then." And that's what we actually have to repair by living in an distinctly old-fashioned way. Arthur, before we go any further, I want to [clears throat] pull up a a quotation from you. You once wrote, "I choose to study happiness because I was failing at it." Are you doing better with it now? And should we really listen to you? >> Yeah. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. I mean, I mean, I I wouldn't have much much credibility if I were a barber. Let that sink in. Anyway, so so I actually, you know, it's one of the great things about behavioral science is you study what you need, right? If I were a physicist, I wouldn't, you know,

17:01 study what I needed because we all need more or less the same things when it comes to the laws of physical science. But in behavioral science, you can study the thing that's actually most lacking in your life. It's it's the old joke is it's not research, it's me search, what it comes down to. And what happened was I had a I had a had a very interesting experience when I was leaving the think tank and and and coming here which is what am I going to dedicate my research activity to and I had this very a fundamentally you know very profound emotional experience. I was I overheard an a conversation on a plane where there was a a couple behind me on a plane very late at night so it was dark and I couldn't I couldn't see them but I could hear them. And I could tell by their voices it was a man and a woman. I assumed they were a couple. I could tell by the by their voices they were

17:46 elderly. And the man's voice was a little muffled. So I couldn't sort of mumbling, but his wife's voice was very penetrating and coming right through the seats. So I heard this one-sided conversation. It was like and then she said, "Oh, don't say it would be better if you were dead." No, I'm not indiscreet overhear people's conversations. But I have to tell you as a behavioral scientist, my laboratory are your overheard conversations. So if you're you're telling somebody in the Starbucks line behind me that somebody has just broken your heart, keep your voice down. That could be my next book. So So I hear this going on and on and and he and he's he talks forlorly and she says, "It's not true that nobody remembers you. Nobody cares about you." And I got

18:32 into my head, you know, that this must be just some guy who never lived up to his own ambitions. He wasn't Anthony Fox. He wasn't doing the things he Look, I mean, people would dream to have your career, >> but we have problems. >> But [clears throat] still, you don't assume that. And okay, they finished and and I went back to work on my laptop and we landed at Dallasos airport about an hour later and the lights went on. We all stood up and I wanted to get a look and it was one of the most famous men in the world. This is somebody that literally every single person in here knows. Not personally. This guy's a hero for what he did in public life decades ago. And I heard him, [clears throat] he's rich, he's famous, he's beloved, telling his wife, he might as well be dead. And I thought to myself, I don't

19:19 want to be this. And so I went home and I told my wife, Esther, I said, honey, I overheard this conversation. She said, who was it? And I told her, she said, huh? I said, yeah, huh? I don't want to have that conversation with you in 40 years. I don't want that. And she said, "So, figure it out, man. Figure it out." And I said, "What do you mean figure it out?" She says, "Don't you have a PhD? Why don't you use it for something helpful to you?" And she had a good point. And so, I dedicated myself to actually figuring it out because I was bad at it. I'm a complete stver. You know, I've spent my whole life just simply trying to, you know, earn the admiration of strangers for my work, which is completely pathetic. And by the way, an exercise in futility. And and so I set to work using a method

20:06 which everybody knows works. If there's a a hard problem that you want to crack and it requires a whole lot of knowledge and learning, here's how you learn it and keep it and apply it in your life. You need to learn the science. You need to practice and change your habits and you need to teach other people. That's how you learn golf. That's by the way over at HMS in the medical school. If you want to become a surgeon, you know what the the method is? Watch one, do one, teach one because that's how you learn anything. You want to learn how to golf, learn about golfing, golf, and teach somebody to golf. My father, I saw him lecturing. My father was a mathematics professor, most brilliant man I ever knew. And I saw him giving off the cuff with no notes a 90minute lecture in advanced calculus. It was like watching Yasha Hifetsz play

20:51 the violin. And I was old enough to respect it and be amazed by it. And afterward I said, "How did you learn that?" He said, "I learned the science. I did a million problems and I taught it 40 times." So I said, "All right. All right. I got it. If I actually want to become a happier person, I need to learn the science of happiness and create a method behind it. By the way, I needed to retrain in neuroscience, which I fundamentally have done over the past seven years. I need to write a lot about it and commit myself to changing my life and I need to teach it, which is what I've dedicated myself to doing. And my happiness, according to the best metrics available, which I give to my students every semester, has risen over the past seven years by 60%. my friends, it's

21:37 sticky and it works with the right kind of commitment. So the answer to your question, I'm sorry it was longwinded >> is yeah, I'm a lot happier. I'm a lot happier and I'm not going to be the man on the plane. >> Tell me a little bit about how your thinking scales. So [clears throat] how much of it is we as individuals can read what you write, practice in our lives, teach other people. >> Yeah. But you look at the world right now, it doesn't seem like a particularly happy place, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Is there is there a a scaled version of this? >> Yeah. So, I wish I could say yes. But fundamentally, this is not a sociological construct. It's a psychological set of constructs, which is the unit level. We're each responsible for the startup of our own

22:23 lives. That's what we're responsible for. Now, a lot of us, look, my PhD is in public policy analysis. I worked for years at the Rand Corporation. I was president of the American Enterprise Institute. I taught at the world's greatest policy school. I wish policy could solve the unhappiness problem. But it can't. And it can't. And the reason for that is actually I racked my brain. What are the happiness policies? And people have written books about this. They're utterly uncompelling. More parks. I don't know. Right. Good. Parks are great. But it it doesn't work. I mean, I've got the data on that. Almost everything that people do, the happiness indices don't budge very much. be like Denmark. So I went to Denmark. I went to Denmark and I actually I made

23:09 a movie and I in the movie I interviewed the Danish speaker of the house, right? Danish speaker of the house, democratic socialist, very different than my own personal ideology, but the guy was good. And I said, "Sir, what are the policies that you use to make Denmark the happiest or whatever you believe?" second those all those indices of world happiness are all nonsense but the second happiest country in the world or whatever what's the secret he said oh no there's no policy that can make people happier that can make people happier I said so what's going on here he said policy can only eliminate sources of unhappiness this is a very important insight right here's what we can do at the Kennedy school we can eliminate barriers to happiness we can eliminate sources of

23:55 unhappiness but happiness per say is built on the foundation of the entrepreneurship of each individual's lives and that comes down to one single thing which is love. That's what it comes down to. I don't I want to make it easier for people to love. I want to make it easier for people to know each other but I actually can't instantiate love in people's lives through public policy. If there were a a you know a cabinet secretary for love I would head for the hills. That's the scariest thing I've ever heard. I don't want that. But what I can do once again is to eliminate these big barriers. And I think that's a very very noble thing. And I think that's where the big policy conversation needs to lie. How do we eliminate the barriers to unhappiness? Is it with more regulation of predatory industries and

24:41 the more leveling of economic outcomes? Or is it getting out of the way of people so we have the true opportunity society that people actually have envisioned since the founders? These are legitimate areas of disagreement, but they really should be about how can we get out of people's way so that they can love better and live better and then their happiness can truly be more in their own hands. >> So I have a follow-up question to this which is [clears throat] we have lots of students here who aspire to be public leaders. >> Yeah. >> How important is happiness to them in their career paths and and what would you advise them to do now? >> Yeah. for them their own personal happiness. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Um I advise lots of leaders, lots of politicians, lots of people in public

25:26 life and they don't come to me to say what are the best policies for happiness. They come to me because they're not happy. It's tough. It's tough. I remember um one time I wrote a column um I had a column for five years in the Atlantic. Now it's at a place called the Free Press. So I've been writing a a weekly column for a long time. And I wrote one about a bunch of literature that I had read because I'm always reading the academic literature to see what I'm going to write about next. And I found these interesting set of articles about the emotions that leaders feel when they when they become a chief executive or the equivalent of a chief executive, maybe a cabinet secretary. What? And everybody thinks, you know, man, if I got that job, that gig in the corner office, and you think to yourself, how am I going to feel? Good. Nobody says miserable. Nobody

26:14 says, "I sure hope I can get promoted to CEO so I can be angry and lonely all the time." No, that's not what you think. Unfortunately, those are the two prominent emotions that people think when they're promoted to CEO or the equivalent of a a running a big organization. The two most salient emotions are negatively veanced. They are fundamentally anger and loneliness. anger because you have less control than you thought and you're getting basically thrown about and everybody's mad at you and telling you to do things that you can't do and lonely because all your friends back in the ranks they're like Anthony it's like cabinet secretary mayor I I can't I you know he could he might I don't want him evaluating me that literally conan and deon down at

27:01 Princeton they did a study that showed the unhappiest moments in people's day you know the unhappiest moment in the average worker's day is time spent with her or his boss. It's like it's misery to hang out with somebody who's evaluating you. It's not because they don't like the boss, but because we don't like to be bossed. That's a normal human thing. But we need to be bossed and we need bosses. And so the point of all of that is that that your as public leaders, what you aspire to be will not bring you the happiness that you imagine, which means that you need to be better at happiness. It's urgently important that you actually pay attention to the what will actually bring happiness in your life. And what will bring happiness in your life are the habits of the people who have the most enjoyment, satisfaction and

27:46 meaning. The three macronutrients they are, by the way, your faith or life philosophy, your family life, real friendships, not deal friendships. And you know the difference between real and deal when it comes to friends, right? Leaders have tons of deal friends. Tons of deal friends. not very many real friends and they actually are dedicating their work to service and the feeling of earning their own success so they can get proper amounts of satisfaction. And that's what it comes down to. And so what I when I'm working with leaders, this is what I'm working with. I'm I want to make sure that they have a proper 401k plan for their that's properly diversified with respect to their happiness. And a lot of time it's just all work, all work, all work, all work. I'm like, "Okay, let's talk about your spiritual life." I I wind up with leaders always talking about spirituality all the time. You know,

28:33 I've talked about this. >> Yeah. >> I talk about their family lives. No, no, no. How's your marriage? No fooling. You You can't marginalize that. I talk to them about their friendships. Who are your best friends? Who are the 20 people you spend the most time with every week? Write them down. Then put Rs and D's after their name. That does not mean Republican and Democrat. That's real and deal. And that's actually the inventory that I go through. You must put your own oxygen mask on first before you assist others around you. Yeah, I find myself having the same conversations with public leaders. Um they're surprised a lot of times that the first thing I ask them is how are you sleeping? How's your family? How you know the personal things? >> Yeah. >> Um >> because you know it, you've been there. >> I've been there. And it is lonely. It is

29:18 lonely. >> Super lonely. I What was by the way, what was lonier? Being the mayor of Charlotte or being the cabinet secretary? >> Being the cabinet secretary >> because it's a much bigger span of control, right? And it's in the it's in the under the limelight of national politics right? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And as a mayor, you're you're in a community. People know you, but your family's closer to you, right? >> You know, when I when I when I started in the White House, they they showed me what happens on the worst day the country could ever face, right? >> And they're like, "Well, we'll take you to whatever the secret location is. your wife will have to drive there. [laughter] >> That kind of kind of tells you all you need to know about how works. >> Yeah. No. No. And the people that you love as mayor are the people that you're

30:04 helping to take care of. >> Yes. >> But then again, when you go back to your old neighborhood, then they're asking you for stuff. Yeah. >> Right. So, that's a little tricky. >> Right. Right. [laughter] It's very tricky. >> These potholes, Anthony, these potholes can fix these. >> Um I'm compelled to ask you one more question, then we'll we'll turn it over to the audience. Um, so last week we received dire warnings about artificial intelligence, >> extinction risk, right? Let's say, >> and that it will potentially destroy humanity. >> Um, what does the creation of this tool say about humanity? >> Um, and does it further evidence the diminishment of meaning >> that we're having these conversations at

30:50 this point? >> Yeah. So a lot of people ask me about AI because a lot of people ask everybody about AI in every single context. It's like anything you're doing, you know, tropical animal husbandry. It's like but what about AI? You [laughter] know, it's like you have a cooking show. What about AI? You know whatever. So, but it's actually really germanine to what we're talking about here. Um for a lot of different reasons for those of you who are I I'm I'm a Catholic and most important thing in my life. And one of the great privileges that I've had recently is that the English translation of Humanitab Magnifica Humanas, which is the Pope's latest encyclical, I got to write the forward to that for the English translation of that for the and and it was a wonderful thing. I got it I got the embargoed version of the Pope's encyclical. It was really cool. Um but

31:35 it was a big responsibility [clears throat] and it was about AI. It was his encyclical about AI. What does the Pope have to say about AI, man? And basically he said this. She said exactly the right thing as far as I'm concerned whether you're Catholic or not. And by the way, there's a brochure under all your seats. So no um so um and what he here's what he said. AI is only beneficial if it makes us more human and not less human. Right? Everybody's assuming it's going to make us less human. So we can talk about the catastrophic cases. I'm actually way less as a public policy guy. I'm way way less worried about the catastrophic circumstances that we're all talking about right now because I think there's a lot of scop in that that's going [clears throat] on. But also I know from

32:22 policy experience from national security and economic catastrophes that it's always the unknown unknown unknowns that get you. So if you're actually envisioning a particular problem that's probably not it is what it comes down to. So, we should be worried just not about anything that some guy is talking about on the television shows probably. Okay. All right. So, now how do you make it? But I'm more worried about if it will make us less human or more human like the Pope talks about because I'm more worried about whether it'll make us more happy or less happy for my particular work. Now, let's get back to the vernacular that we've developed already. If you use it to enhance your right brain activity or try to do so, it will ruin your life. If you use it for your left brain activity, how to and

33:08 what, it can free up a ton of time for you to go live in love. That's really what it comes down to. So, how can you use it appropriately for all the how-to and what questions and figure out actually how it works and make things more streamlined and more efficient in your life so that you can spend more time with your loved ones in real life. IRL, that's what it comes down to. But if you're using it for friendship, if you're using it for the girlfriend experience, if you're using it as a therapist, woe be unto you. It will fool you at the outset. It will appear to sort of pass some version of the true ring test. But your brain knows, the right brain craves true and authentic connection, and it knows the difference. Most people,

33:54 especially people under 30, they know when people my age, are using AI to to answer their Gmail. We think they don't know. We're like, "Wow, that looks like it sounds like it's for me." And and alarms are going off in my kids' heads in people the age of my kids. They know because they have a sensor for it that we actually we don't have that chip in our 60some year old brains for that. But the truth of the matter is that we know when we're actually trying to simulate the experience of love and it doesn't work. and it will leave you progressively more depressed, more anxious, more lonely, more prone to self harm. Sure as I'm sitting here, that's the way it's going to do it. So, how do you actually use it appropriately? Think about in your work ways that can make you more efficient and then use the efficiency for more love. That's how AI

34:42 can make us more human and not less. >> Thank you. We're going to open the floor to questions. Uh there are microphones here and here on the lower end and and up on the second level. How about uh starting here? >> Hi, my name is Ricardo Deluente. Dr. Brooks, I recognize that we are privileged to be gathered here safely in Boston. While people represented in this room may come from countries experiencing war, conflict, and profound instability. In times of uncertainty and crisis, when basic security itself may be threatened, how can individuals and societies cultivate authentic happiness? Yeah, >> without ignoring the suffering around them. >> Yeah, it's a great question. That's a question that that uh I contemplate all the time. The truth of the matter is that we have tons of information. We

35:28 have unbelievable amounts of information about all kinds of nice things, but also not so many nice things. The problem with that, I mean, I'm glad of that. I'm glad that we're informed to be sure. The problem with that is that it tends to make us feel like our span of control in our own lives is much larger than it actually is. So here's I believe the answer. To be informed, to vote, to be able to talk about things with proper information is great. And if you're blessed to have a span of control that includes national security for your country of the United States, even better. But if it isn't, then what we need to be paying attention to fundamentally is what's in front of us. Because one of the things that we find there's a political scientist up at Tufts who actually has found that people will substitute information gorging

36:14 about problems for proper citizenship. What it's Ethan Hirsch who's written about that up at TUS. He says that people will watch cable television and talk about the biggest problems in our country and in the world and not actually get involved in their city council or their school board. The truth of the matter is if you want life to get better, make life better where you can. And in so doing, this is the hack. This is the glitch in the matrix of unhappiness. You will get happier when you become a problem solver. But you can only solve the problems that you can solve. Pay attention. Vote. Absolutely. Have opinions that are appropriate. And then go do good. Then go love somebody. then go get married and have your own children and take care of them and take care of other people's children around you as well because that's what makes a

37:01 better world. What doesn't make a better world is to be fretting about everything all the time that we actually can't control. And that's what I'm how I'm trying to live my life as well. I know it's hard. It's hard to do because you're getting pecked at a million times a day by the media that are trying to freak you out constantly and there's a lot to be freaked out about, isn't there? But that's actually the exact wrong approach. If you're glued to the screen and you're reading news and updating the New York Times and the NPR website every 15 minutes, you will be miserable. As sure as I'm sitting here, you will be miserable. But the more that you serve and love the people around you, the better off you're going to get and the better the world's gonna get as well. >> Thanks so much for coming. Um, my name

37:47 is Kelsey. I am a dual degree MBA MPA uh here and I wanted to ask you a question that's about happiness outside of the context of the phone. um my best [clears throat] friend was the student you might have heard about at HBS last year who passed away uh at 29 from cancer and that she's the reason I'm at the at Harvard and um one thing I've been thinking a lot about you both mentioned your wives as one of the the key people who would be there and what happiness looks like is finding you know love after loss once you had that love and you understood it and it's no longer there you're searching right for the connection that cannot be you know refound so I just love to hear a little bit of your thoughts You know, I don't think this is related to the phone of uh re for me elusive happiness has been elusive in my grief and I'd love to hear

38:34 your thoughts on what that looks like after loss. >> Yeah. Thank you. And and and I'm I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm very sorry for the loss of at the whole HBS community, but particularly of the personal friends. Um grief is real and and grief exists physiologically for a reason. There are a lot of people who say, "I want to live without sadness." No, you don't. All of your negative emotions exist as a function of the limbic system of your brain to give you information about threats in your environment. Without negative emotions, you'd be dead in a week. But they're not fun and they're not good. Now, here's the other point that actually I want to make. Grief, which is profound unremitting sadness, is your teacher, which is what everybody finds in retrospect. Nobody actually says, if I say, you know what, where'd you learn about yourself? How'd you learn about your, you know, the deepest

39:21 you? Nobody actually ever says that week at the beach in Ivita. Nobody says the Disney World. No, they talk about loss. They always talk about loss for a reason because suffering is a profound and and by the way neurobbiologically suffering illuminates the right hemisphere of the brain. We know when people are are are are experiencing affective pain which is to say emotional pain. We know this because the left musculature of the face is more active which means the right side of the brain is more active. This is work. This is the work of Richard Davidson out at at at University of Wisconsin Madison. It's phenomenal stuff. Okay. But that's scant comfort. The part of the brain that's most effective affected when you are grieving is a thing called the dorsal anterior singulate cortex. And and the reason

40:07 that it's really active when you lose something is because you need an incentive to not lose it. And if you can't get it back, but you can't. There's nothing you could have done and there's no way you can get it back. And so therefore that grief feels unremitting but it isn't. Now the problem with grief is very the the worst grief that people ever feel by the way is the loss of a child. That is far and away the worst grief that almost anybody will ever encounter in their lives. And they feel like it's never going to be better. It's never going to be better. And it it does lessen. It does lessen because you can't the brain doesn't want you to be permanently disabled in that particular way. But here's what the research says is the way to deal with it most effectively. When people have lost a child, the way that they accelerate

40:53 the process of managing their grief is by finding somebody in the same situation whose grief is fresher and helping them. This is the profound teaching of love. The fundamental teaching of love. Love according to Aquinus Thomas Aquinus is to will the good of the other notwithstanding your feelings. There's almost nothing that's harder than serving somebody when you're experiencing grief. Almost nothing is harder. But doing that is the ultimate and the only way to have a lessening of the grief or to put grief into perspective faster than it otherwise would. You have an aposttoate. You have a mission to help somebody with a fresher loss than you. That's what it comes down to. And I only pray that I

41:39 can remember that the next time I have that kind of loss in my life, too. I'm sorry. And thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hi, Dr. Brooks. My name's uh Tim Lynch. I am a joint degree student with the law school in uh business school. My wife took leadership and happiness with you last year, so bummed I can't uh do the same. But >> um I I was wondering I liked that story uh the go deeper go home the dinner party in Madrid. I I'm just curious uh like what other kinds of topics do you find really make that go deeper, go home philosophy come to life? In what settings does it tend to work? >> Yeah, I should probably refer to that. That's actually referred to a column that I wrote about [clears throat] how to use our scarce social time in a way that makes it most meaningful. And

42:24 my wife and I have moved a lot. We've actually moved house 20 times in our 35 years of marriage. I'm not in the witness protection program in case you're wondering. and and we we've it's easy to be lonely, you know, and so one of the things that we do is when we move into a new place, we act like we've lived there for 20 years and start inviting people over, right? And you know, we do we do social things and we become sort of the hub of that activity. And inevitably the people who've been there 20 years, they'll be like, "Hey, we never we never do this. This is so great." Because they don't think of it. The other thing that we do is that we have I mean, we're like Mr. and Mrs. Intense. Now, you have to understand my wife is Spanish and so she's complex and highly intense, right? Some of some of you here are, you know, friends with my wife too. She's awesome, right? And so, what we had, we have this go deep or go

43:10 home policy. If you're coming to dinner at our house, you're going to get a question like, "What are you most afraid of?" [laughter] And and you're going to we're going to talk, man. And if you don't like it, that's all good. You know, you can go talk about golf or something dumb with somebody else. But the whole point is look, we're going to make a connection or we're not going to do it because time is short. You know, it's scarce. It's a scarce commodity and we actually really really want that. We try to apply that to most of the things that we do. We try to go deep, by the way, in our own connection. I travel all the time. I travel 200,000 miles a year. I'm on the road three nights a week, 48 weeks a year approximately. When I come home, it's we're in it. There's no subtlety.

43:56 There's no subtle. We're talking about the things that actually matter. We have the we have the habit of talking about the things that actually matter. It's like when you're talking to leaders, it's like tell me about >> you sleeping. >> Yep. >> Go deep or go home is what it comes down to. Now that's weird, right? That's the that's the lack of the small talk. In some countries, that's absolutely anathema. There's some countries where it actually works better. You have to decide. Your results may vary. You have to decide whether or not that works for you. But let me tell you, it really is really very important because I I feel the passage of time really acutely >> and I don't want to I don't waste it. I don't want to waste it. I won't waste it as a matter of fact, which is why I'm I'm not going to come here and talk at the Kennedy School about something I don't care about. I'm going to talk about the things that actually matter

44:41 the most to me and that I hope that matter the most for you because I'm trying to go deep here or I'm going home. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Hi. Good evening. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. I hope to live a bit more as you were describing. I think the question I have tonight, sorry, my name is Rasan Hadad and I'm an MCMPA at the Kennedy School. Uh the question I have is something I struggled with both personally with family and at work is two realities, let's call them. Going back to your analogy of the matrix, I think we did a good job diagnosing what's the problem in society today. Very good description of what we should do to get happier. What I struggle with is how to get people out of the matrix or how to get my teams out of the matrix, my family out of the matrix. >> Hopefully, I'm out of it, but >> any advice or thoughts on, you know, get

45:27 them to take the red pill? >> Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. Yeah. No, no, for sure. I mean, it's like um so this can be really tricky in what you're trying to are. So, my my guess is you came from a a highowered career before you came here. >> Yeah, I worked in government and private sector before. It was very much intense. And you've been in management at very high levels is my is my guess. Right. And so you were responsible for making teams work well is what it came down to. That's hard to actually change the culture of what's actually going on um with teams to be sure because we're all interconnected using technology and the technology itself is what facilitates the efficiency but takes the life >> at the same time. It's much much more straightforward with your family. >> I mean nothing straightforward if your kids are teenagers, right? That's just

46:13 like not great. It's like, don't use your phones, kids. I mean, good luck with that. >> That's um but but the truth is when I talk to people a lot about how to get out of the matrix in family life, the number one way to deal with this is to get out of the matrix yourself. >> You know, it's amazing. People always ask, "How do I people ask a very common question for example is how do I how do I get my kids to follow my faith? How do I get them to do that? What do I do so my kids grow up and you know and and are you practicing Muslim for example? I'm I'm Catholic also. Catholic. I'm not practicing. My wife is. So that's something I'm also thinking about. >> Well, welcome home. Anyway, so [laughter] um but so how do you how do you how do you do it? And the answer is it doesn't matter what you say. All that matters is

46:58 what they see. There's a secret to parenthood. By the way, >> you could speak to your kids in a foreign language. >> I don't remember a single thing my dad taught me about my faith. A single thing. But here's what I remember. every night before I went to sleep, he was on his knees next to my bed saying his prayers too. >> That's what I remember. >> And so, I mean, he was the biggest guy I ever met. He was a big strong man. He seemed to me I thought I remember asking my my brother Jeff, "Do you think dad could lift the corner of the house?" >> He was a math professor. He couldn't, [laughter] right? But he was on his knees because the despite the fact that he would he would never have been on his knees before any other man that had a huge impact on a little guy. Right? The same thing is

47:45 true. >> Is your phone open on the table? >> Are you talking to your child or are you looking at your device? >> Are you fully present or not? >> That's what it comes down to. When it comes down to giving somebody else the red pill, you better take the red pill. >> That's what leadership is all about, by the way, right? >> I mean, when you're when you're on your worst day, >> I mean, I I didn't lead a a cabinet in the in the administration. That's a big job. That's a scary job, right? Doug ran the Congressional Budget Office. That's a big job. I just ran a think tank. >> But when I didn't know what to do, I just tried to be the person I wanted them to be. that that's what I did is what it comes down to. Don't worry about

48:30 pulling people out of the matrix. Just make sure you're not living in it. >> Thank you. >> Hi. Thank you. My name is Lydia and I graduated from HKS this year and I took your class which I love. Lydia, of course. >> Um, I have been reading a lot about the crisis in higher education and the crisis in the humanities and I know you've spoken about meaning as being a very personal thing, but I'm curious if you see solutions to some of these crises that we're seeing about the meaning of higher education, the meaning of the humanities and how that relates to our own personal meaning and our personal happiness. Yeah, I mean I of course I have a lot of opinions about higher ed and the problems because higher ed is I love higher ed and I think American universities are just the best thing and so I I mean I'm I'm troubled a lot by the problems that

49:17 higher ed has had but but really I'm sort of excited by it because I try to have an entrepreneurial mindset and what entrepreneurs like you took my class you know the social entrepreneurs when they see a tragedy they see opportunity this is the opportunity this is the opportunity for and and by By the way, we're in the greatest university in the world right here. It really is. It's not hype. It's not just marketing. Our marketing at Harvard is pretty bad. As a matter of fact, it's actually true. And so, what does that mean? That means we have this opportunity in the midst of being under the spotlight, being in the under the magnifying glass with a lot of hostility to do all kinds of wonderful things, right? And here's really what it comes down to. that also bears on the experience of happiness that people can actually have in the intellectual

50:03 endeavor. There's really three things that are happening all the two things that are how many fingers do I have here? There are two things that are happening all the time. There's inquiry and there's advocacy and they've always coexisted in the in the intellectual endeavor inquiry and advocacy. The problem is when advocacy is more salient than inquiry. What happens? Why is that a problem? because the whole enterprise turns upside down, right? What what it is is, you know, this is something you care an awful lot about. Humility and leadership, humility and leadership. Advocacy is not based on humility. Inquiry is fundamentally based on humility. That's the idea behind the enlightenment, which is not pull up a chair, I'm going to tell you what's what. It's tell me more. That's what

50:48 inquiry is all about. This is the opportunity. This is the opportunity. Look, I'm an advocate for lots and lots and lots of stuff. But here, this is about learning from each other, including stuff that's crazy sounding to me. And that's really where the humility comes from, which is more effective for saving the endeavor and at the same time making you happier because we the research is clear. Advocacy will not make you happier. It's important, but inquiry will make you happier. And it is also, I believe, in academia even more important. That brings the humility, that brings the excellence, and that brings the well-being. I think that's the secret. We show that. Watch the whole ecosystem change. Thank you. Nice to see you again. >> Good evening, Dr. Brooks. Hi. >> Hi.

51:34 >> Hi. Thank you so much for this conversation and revealing your personal journey to us. Yeah. >> My name is Bonnie McDonald. I'm a lobe fellow at the graduate school of design >> and I'm very curious about your thoughts about Bhutan because in the 1970s Bhutan uh really exchanged their GDP as a measure of their economic success their success as a nation for the gross national happiness index. Do you think that we should follow their lead? >> Yeah. So the answer is no. The answer is no. But that that that's not that's not a sufficient answer that the real the real answer is why because happiness doesn't scale up in that particular way for all the reasons that we actually talked about. I think that's a bad policy goal and it would be particularly

52:21 dilitterious and ineffective and exercising futility in a culture like the United States which is one of the blessings you know the blessing of the United States is you how many of you are not born in the United States thank you for choosing America please stay right because this is this is the secret this is the secret that doesn't work that's not a collectivist idea It's I want to find the best, most entrepreneurial people that want a big scary adventure in a foreign country where lots and lots of things are possible. I'm a very patriotic American in this way. This is why I'm extremely hardcore pro-immigration in the same way because I need we need this like this is really where it's at as far as I'm concerned. So that's a a collectivist

53:07 approach to an unmeasurable construct. That's what it comes down to. But here's what we can actually get from the Bhutanese idea of gross national happiness that gets away from traditional measures of GDP per capita and it gets more toward what will lead to life satisfaction with respect largely to community and relationships. This is this gets us back to Aristotle, Avarose um Aquinus that sort of the neoplatonists Aristotle and the neop and the neoplatonists in the 13th the 12th and 13th century. We are beguiled. The danger that we have in a society like the United States or any society that's relatively individualistic, we are beguiled by idols. Now, what did Avarose mean by that? Or what did what did

53:53 Aquinus mean by that? We want God. Now, okay, we want happiness. You want to be happy, right? The problem is you don't know how to get it. So, you follow your animal instincts. and your animal instincts say that you will be happy if you follow four things. These are the idols. This is an exhaustive list. As a behavioral scientist, I'll tell you this is he's like the best behavioral science ever done is in the 13th century, which is sad. That that here are the four things. Money, power, pleasure, and honor. And I don't mean honor as in serve with two of my kids are Marines. They serve with honor. That's not what I meant. That means fame, admiration, prestige, the love of strangers. Those are the four idols. And when you know yours, then you have power because

54:40 then you can turn away from it. That's what it comes down to. So what we need in an individualistic society is an individual set of constructs where we can be self-governing such that we are not chasing our animal impulses, but we can choose to live in a space of our moral aspirations. That's what the human prefrontal cortex allows you to do. But your golden retriever can't. Your golden retriever only has animal impulses. It acts like it has moral aspirations. It doesn't, right? That's because canines and homo sapiens evolved in parallel. So, they match our weirdly our emotions. A ton of research on that. Okay, that's the side note. I don't mean to go to the rap the the the golden retriever hole on that. So, but we choose because we can. And that's what it comes down to. And when you know, oh, I'm chasing that

55:26 thing. I'm doing that thing. Be a little bit booties and say, I actually choose love. I actually choose love and it'll never stir it'll never steer you wrong and I'm going to get that wrong for the rest of my life. I just hope sometimes to get it right. Thank you. >> All right, one more and then we'll wrap up. >> Yes, sir. >> Hey, good evening, Professor Fox, Professor Brooks. My name is Tenny Suyleman. I'm an MPA here as al as well as a dual degree MBA from the Tuck School of Business. First of all, I have to say great haircut. >> Thank you. Thank you. [laughter] Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. >> No, man. >> Sorry, I couldn't resist. >> Uh, I have a question on evolution. >> One millimeter or two. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] I >> I have a question on evolution of meaning.

56:11 >> Yeah. >> Um, you had an interesting conversation with Patrick Bet David recently where you talked about peing at different areas of life throughout your career. And I'm curious, you know, when I think about the the two question quiz, maybe you have different answers to that question over time. >> Yeah. What are your thoughts on how your meaning of life can change and and how do you kind of work through that? >> Yeah, so the the two the two question exam it really really does change over the course of your life. You know, why am I alive? But mostly what would I die for? I mean, when I was in my early 20s, I didn't have children. I wouldn't die for my children. I would they were theoretical children. So, what would I have died for? I've actually seen that because I've given that test to my to my to my kids. I I made them write a business plan when they were 18. I'm a B

56:56 school professor, you know, and and and I can do that. And you where are you going to go? What are you going to do? They're entrepreneurs in their own life and I'm the venture capitalist, so I deserve a business plan, right? And and and you know, watching them try to say where they were going to go and what they were going to do to find the answers to those questions was very interesting. And then actually finding out what the answers to those questions were. And you know, I have one son who is my problem child in my middle son that the literature on middle children is actually it's true. So if you're a middle child, you should call your mother and apologize. And there you go. There you go. And and you know, he had no idea why am I alive for what am I willing to give my life? And he wound up I said, "So what are you going to do?" And what he did to find the answers to his questions, he did

57:42 something completely completely unconventional. He didn't go to college. Thank God. You should have seen his grades in high school. and he joined the Marine Corps. He worked in a farm and then he joined the Marine Corps. He was a scout sniper in the Marine Corps, which is a very, very dangerous job. And when he came out, he had answers to his questions. I said, "So, you know, why are you alive?" He said, "Because God made me to serve." I said, "For what would you give your life?" He said, "For my faith and my family and for my fellow Marines and for the United States of America and for our allies." Anyway, so [laughter] he knows his dad, you know. That's right. So, so what does this tell us? This tell us that this is a moving target, but it's it's an if it's an unconssidered set of questions, that's the problem.

58:28 >> And this gets us back to the whole concept of meaning. Meaning isn't something that you can precisely define with chat GBT. It's a series of queries, the answers to which you understand even though you can't articulate them and that you live with with love. That's how meaning actually works. So people who have the greatest sense of meaning are the ones who know their answers but actually kind of struggle with the with with the articulation of them which biologically interestingly you're for for most people the language centers of the brain are concentrated in the left hemisphere. So if you have words for it it's probably not it right. So my son is probably something deeper than that. Right? How do I know he had meaning? Because when he was 23 years old he was married and had his first child. You'll

59:14 know them by their fruits. He was living a life of love. Again, that doesn't mean

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