Honors College lecture, April 8, 2024. Phil Oliver, Dept of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Middle Tennessee State University "Healthy Minds, Flourishing Lives: A Philosophical Approach to Mental Health and Happiness"

1. April 8, 2024
Healthy Minds, Flourishing Lives: A Philosophical Approach
to Mental Health and Happiness
Dr. Phil Oliver
phil.oliver@mtsu.edu

2. Thanks for being here, when you could instead have gone not very
far to see a total eclipse. Not everyone sees things the same way…

3. I always make too
many slides, but you
can find this and my
other presentations at
slideshare.net…

4. Honors Lecture Series ‘24: the lineup.
1/22 Course Introduction – Mary Evins, MTSU Honors College
1/29 Michelle Stevens, MTSU Center for Fairness, Justice, and Equity
2/5 Mary Kaye Anderson, MTSU Counseling Services
2/12 Rudy Dunlap, MTSU Health and Human Performance
2/19 Special Early Voting event, Vote Together Day, at the Rutherford Co. Election office
2/23 Special Tennessee Statewide Campus Civic Summit event, MTSU Miller Education
Center
2/26 Seth Marshall, MTSU Psychology
3/4 Spring Break – No Classes
3/11 Sarah Harris, MTSU Nutrition and Food Science
3/18 Kent Syler, MTSU Political Science
3/25 Rev. Susan Pendleton Jones, Belmont University
4/1 Bill Dobbins, NAMI-TN
4/8 Phil Oliver, MTSU Philosophy
4/15 Student Presentations
4/22 Tom Brinthaupt, MTSU Psychology

5. I’m delighted to return to this esteemed lecture series, I’ve
been honored to participate many times in the past–most
recently in 2022, when I was invited to speak about
Aristotle and friendship. In my Philosophy of Happiness
course last Fall we talked about the crucial importance of
friendships, and relationships of all sorts, in sustaining our
happiness, health (mental and physical, which on my
view are but two aspects of the same thing) and overall
well-being.
So that’s the first strategic advice I would offer: do not
neglect your relationships, in particular your
friendships. Very few mentally-healthy people do.

6. Who are you? Why are you here?
I’m the guy who teaches courses here
on the philosophy of happiness, Ethics–
environmental, bioethical, etc–and
others. I focus on American philosophy
and specifically that of William James.
I’m here today, I think, because Dr.
Evins wisely recognizes philosophy’s
relevance for the quest to attain and
sustain health and the flourishing state
Aristotle called eudaimonia.

8. Aristotle on the work of a
human being
"If we posit the work of a human
being as a certain life, and this is
an activity of soul and actions
accompanied by reason, the work
of a serious man is to do these
things well and nobly. …
But, in addition, in a complete life. For
one swallow does not make a spring, nor
does one day. And in this way, one day
or a short time does not make someone
blessed and happy either."

9. Followers of Aristotle were
known as peripatetics because
they passed their days strolling
and mind-wrestling through the
groves of the Academe [at
Aristotle’s Lyceum]. The
Romans’ equally high opinion of
walking was summed up pithily
in the Latin proverb: “It is solved
by walking”--Solvitur ambulando.
Gymnasiums of the Mind [More on
this *below, if time allows…]

10. I hope you’ll agree that
philosophy and ethics
are indeed relevant to
today’s society…
especially in the age of
AI.

11. Before I go any further, though…
If you ever get another chance to
see a solar eclipse in totality, take it
(instead of staying a couple hours’
drive away, in order to attend a
lecture you could have waited to see
in recorded form).
A mountain-climbing enthusiast
describing her experience of first
glimpsing sunrise near the summit of Mt.
Everest said she felt profoundly
“connected with something so much
bigger than herself, something that she
believed loved her.”
“The whole thing is very awe-
ful. A-w-e,” she said, meaning
full of awe…

12. “What I am realizing is, it was the
process the whole time. It was never
about the top of any of the
mountains”
“That is where the magic is. I’m not living in the
past, I’m not living in the future … I am just here.”
Most awe-inspiring of all was
simply being present to the
moment, both to the world and to
those around her as they suffered
together in the cold and cheered
each other on.

13. This feeling of presence in the moment, free of regret and worry and self-obsession, is what
William James identified as the pinnacle of the experience (the feeling or “sentiment”) of
rationality. It is a genuine mark of sanity, of mental and bodily health.
“Just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense feeling of
distress when the respiratory motions are prevented,—so any unobstructed tendency to action
discharges itself without the production of much cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly
fluent course of thought awakens but little feeling; but when the movement is inhibited, or
when the thought meets with difficulties, we experience distress. It is only when the distress is
upon us that we can be said to strive, to crave, or to aspire. When enjoying plenary freedom
either in the way of motion or of thought, we are in a sort of anaesthetic state in which we
might say with Walt Whitman, if we cared to say anything about ourselves at such times, "I am
sufficient as I am." This feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment, of its
absoluteness,—this absence of all need to explain it, account for it, or justify it,—is what I call
the Sentiment of Rationality.”

14. “Awe is an emotion when you encounter things
you don’t understand. Wonder follows
experiences of awe…” – and philosophy, of
course, begins in wonder.
“Today, half of American adults report feelings of
loneliness, and technology disconnects people
from lived physicality of the human experience.
Virtual realities promised an ‘awesome’ future but
have not delivered, Mr. Keltner said, and people
are hungry for something more, for
transcendent emotions, for a sense of loss of
self.”
You don’t have to climb a mountain (or drive to
Carbondale) to get that, but you shouldn’t miss an
eclipse if you can help it.

15. “Trans-end-dance: the ability to move
beyond the end, otherwise called the
dance of death.”
“The dance of death”-
I love Peter Ackroyd’s alternate
definition of transcendence, which I
sometimes think I achieve at the
ballpark or while walking the dogs…
Moving beyond is something you can do
here and now, with a philosophical
adjustment in your thinking.

16. “...we have a right ever and anon
to take a moral holiday, to let the
world wag in its own way, feeling
that its issues are in better hands
than ours and are none of our
business.
And you can do it daily, not just
on “vacation” or at the beach.
The universe is a system of
which the individual members
may relax their anxieties
occasionally, in which the don't-
care mood is also right for men,
and moral holidays in order…”
William James

17. It took him awhile to arrive at that
profound insight into mental health
and happiness. In 1870, young
William James confided to his journal
that he’d “about touched bottom”... but
then,
I think that yesterday was a
crisis in my life. I finished the
first part of Renouvier’s second
Essais and see no reason why
his definition of free will — ‘the
sustaining of a thought because
I choose to when I might have
other thoughts’ — need be the
definition of an illusion. At any
rate, I will assume for the
present — until next year — that
it is no illusion. My first act of
free will shall be to believe in
free will.”

18. “Make your interests gradually wider and
more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of
the ego recede, and your life becomes
increasingly merged in the universal life. An
individual human existence should be like a
river — small at first, narrowly contained
within its banks, and rushing passionately
past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually
the river grows wider, the banks recede, the
waters flow more quietly, and in the end,
without any visible break, they become
merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their
individual being.”
― Bertrand Russell, Portraits From Memory
and Other Essays

19. UH3000 Honors Lecture Series
Spring 2024
Mental Health and the Good Life:
Strategies for Happiness,
Wholeness, Well-being
In the environment of pressures to excel, pushing for success, overpacked schedules, way too much
screen time, work-life imbalance, emergence from Covid isolation, the quest for love, political
toxicity, fragile democracy, loss of we-thought-this-was-already-solved human rights, societal
injustices, rising global temperatures, and a world at war, human beings are struggling. Students
are struggling. How do we find and keep good mental health in spite of all that’s going on in our
lives and all around us? How can the arts and sciences inform us about creating a life of emotional
richness that flourishes and supports our bodies, minds, hearts, intellect, spirit, and hope? This
spring, let’s explore multidisciplinary strategies for improving, strengthening, and maintaining positive
mental health and building a life well lived. Let’s grow good together. Join us for the Honors Lecture
Series “Mental Health and the Good Life: Strategies for Happiness, Wholeness, Well-being,” Spring
2024.

20. “The moral
flabbiness born of
the exclusive
worship of the bitch-
goddess SUCCESS.
That - with the
squalid cash
interpretation put on
the word 'success' -
is our national
disease.”― William
James
“Although both love and
knowledge are
necessary, love is in a
sense more
fundamental, since it will
lead intelligent people to
seek knowledge, in
order to find out how to
benefit those whom they
love. But if people are
not intelligent, they will
be content to believe
what they have been
told, and may do harm
in spite of the most
genuine benevolence.” –
Bertrand Russell
“Hope” is the thing
with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune
without the words -
And never stops - at all
-
…
– Emily Dickinson

21. “The worm at the core of our usual
springs of delight can turn us into
melancholy metaphysicians. But the
music can commence again, and
again and again, at intervals."

22. "The really vital
question for us all is,
What is this world going
to be? What is life
eventually to make of
itself?"
The good news: “...the music [of life]
can commence again, and again…”
How? By identifying, cultivating, and
enjoying our respective “springs of
delight”--the people, places, things,
activities, habits, practices (etc.) that
make our lives worth living.
And by turning our gaze outward,
being curious and invested in
something “larger than ourselves.”

23. First answer
"Judging whether life is or is not
worth living amounts to
answering the fundamental
question of philosophy. All the
rest - whether or not the world
has three dimensions, whether
the mind has nine or twelve
categories - comes afterwards.
These are games; One must
first answer." — Albert Camus
Camus’s Sisyphus had it a bit easier

24. “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and
your belief will help create the fact.”
“My first act of free will,” he asserted, “shall be to believe
in free will.” With these words, James was reborn and his
life gradually—in fits and starts—transformed.”
…individuals tap meaning—and experience zest—in
singularly unique ways. In other words, we are the same
precisely because there is an irreducible difference
between the zests that make our worlds meaningful. And,
at the same time, the disappointment and tragedy of
zest-unrealized or zest-extinguished is a similar feeling of
utter alienation and loneliness. We feel ourselves apart in
the same way.”

25. Emerson, Thoreau, and James lived
through a unique moment in the history
of the West, a time when traditional
institutions like the church and the state
lost their grip on the hearts and minds
of average citizens. These citizens
were cut loose, tasked with living
meaningful lives without formal
guidance, tasked with sorting out the
jumble of human experiences on their
own—and these wanderers turned to
Emerson, Thoreau, and James.
Maybe you feel this way sometimes.
Unmoored. Lost…” Kaag: “WJ can
save your life. Kieran Setiya:
“Philosophy can help”

26. “...there must be some things that matter not because they
solve a problem or address a need that we would rather do
without but because they make life positively good. They
would have what I've called "existential value." Art, pure
science, theoretical philosophy: they have value of this
kind. But so do mundane activities like telling funny
stories, amatueur painting, swimming or sailing, carpentry
or cooking, playing games with family and friends—what
the philosopher Zena Hitz has called "the little human
things." *
(*“Little human things” = springs of delight)
It's not just that we need them in order to recharge so that
we can get back to work, but that they are the point of
being alive. A future without art or science or philosophy, or
the little human things, would be utterly bleak. Since they
will not survive unless we nurture them, that is our
responsibility, too.” ― Kieran Setiya, Life Is Hard

27. Adolescent mental health
began to decline across
Europe in the early 2010s,
with girls and Western
European teens hit the
hardest. Underlying these
regional changes is a story
about how adolescents from
wealthy, individualistic, and
secular nations were less
tightly bound into strong
communities and therefore
more vulnerable to the harms
of the new phone-based
childhood that emerged in the
early 2010s. Jonathan Haidt
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of
Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

28. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You wouldn't worry so much about
what other people think of you, if you realized how seldom they
do."

29. "...in order to feel social anxiety, you have to
believe that other people’s negative opinions
of you are worth getting upset about, that it’s
really bad if they dislike you and really
important to win their approval.
Even people who suffer from severe
social anxiety disorder (social phobia)
tend to feel “normal” when speaking to
children or to their close friends about
trivial matters, with a few exceptions.
Nevertheless, they feel highly anxious
when talking to people they think are
very important about subjects they think
are very important.
If your fundamental
worldview, by contrast,
assumes that your
status in the eyes of
others is of negligible
importance, then it
follows that you should
be beyond the reach of
social anxiety."
How to Think Like a
Roman Emperor: The
Stoic Philosophy of
Marcus Aurelius by
Donald J. Robertson

30. Gen Z angst
Mark Twain said there's nothing sadder than a
young pessimist... except an old optimist. (I'm
neither, I'm a meliorist.)
Members of Gen Z, ages 12 to 27, are
significantly less likely to rate their
current and future lives highly than
millennials were when they were the
same age, it found.
Among those 18 to 26, just 15 percent said
their mental health was excellent. That is a
large decline from both 2013 and 2003, when
just over half said so… nyt

32. I know this may not be the optimal therapy
for those who suffer serious neuro-
chemical imbalances or whose state of
health does not afford them the mobility we
dogwalkers enjoy.
But I do think it would work for a great many
who haven’t tried it. I’ve learned that my own
total health has benefited greatly from our
habit of daily dogwalks.
Days, go better, life goes better when you
stick with the routines that keep your feet on
the ground as it were. All ten of ‘em in our
case.

33. One thing I’ve learned from hewing
to our dogwalking routine (and from
baseball):
Our errors are surely not such
awfully solemn things. In a world
where we are so certain to incur
them in spite of all our caution, a
certain lightness of heart seems
healthier than this excessive
nervousness on their behalf. At any
rate, it seems the fittest thing for the
empiricist philosopher.
–The Will to Believe

34. * Peripatetics. “Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper
and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell
built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms
during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only
meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My
mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d
walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David
Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the
circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health
and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at
least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the
woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly
engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo
Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind.”
Gymnasiums of the Mind

35. Gymnasiums of the Mind
In order that he might remain one of the
fittest, Charles Darwin planted a 1.5 acre
strip of land with hazel, birch, privet, and
dogwood, and ordered a wide gravel path
built around the edge. Called Sand-walk,
this became Darwin’s ‘thinking path’
where he roamed every morning and
afternoon with his white fox-terrier. Of
Bertrand Russell, long-time friend Miles
Malleson has written: “Every morning
Bertie would go for an hour’s walk by
himself, composing and thinking out his
work for that day. He would then come
back and write for the rest of the
morning, smoothly, easily and without a
single correction.”

36. None of these laggards,
however, could touch Friedrich
Nietzsche, who held that “all truly
great thoughts are conceived by
walking.” Rising at dawn,
Nietzsche would stalk through
the countryside till 11 a.m. Then,
after a short break, he would set
out on a two-hour hike through
the forest to Lake Sils. After
lunch he was off again, parasol
in hand, returning home at four
or five o’clock, to commence the
day’s writing.
Gymnasiums of the Mind

37. Parents Are Highly Involved in Their Adult
Children’s Lives, and Fine With It
…Young people say their
mental health is suffering,
and recent data shows they
are much more likely to say
this than those before them.
Some researchers have
sounded alarms that one
driver of this is children’s
lack of independence, and
that overparenting can
deprive children of
developing skills to handle
adversity.. nyt

38. A recent Atlantic Monthly article
says we’ve “stopped hanging
out,” spending more time alone
staring at screens… a
dysfunctional form of self-
isolation that goes far beyond
healthy solitude.
From 2003 to 2022, American
men reduced their average
hours of face-to-face
socializing by about 30
percent. For unmarried
Americans, the decline was
even bigger—more than 35
percent. For teenagers, it was
more than 45 percent…
We’re a social species, as
we’ve known at least since
Aristotle. Our mental health
depends on regular
interactions with real people in
real space and time.

39. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19
reduced their weekly social
hangouts by more than three hours
a week. In short, there is no
statistical record of any other period
in U.S. history when people have
spent more time on their own.”
Humans are born craving the presence
of others, but a slew of factors—
spending more time with our screens,
being too busy to hang out, the
spreading-out of housing, and the
erosion of social infrastructure like
churches and sports leagues—have
wedged us apart and sucked us inward.
Solitude, anxiety, and
dissatisfaction seem to be rising
in lockstep. Teenage depression
and hopelessness are setting
new records every year; the
share of young people who say
they have a close friend has
plummeted.

40. “I don’t think hanging out
more will solve every
problem, But I do think every
social crisis in the U.S. could
be helped somewhat if
people spent a little more
time with other people and a
little less time gazing into
digital content that’s
designed to make us anxious
and despondent about the
world.”

41. “I find it wholesome to be alone in the
greater part of the time. To be in
company, even with the best, is soon
wearisome and dissipating. I love to be
alone. I never found the companion
that was so companionable as
solitude.” Henry David Thoreau,
Walden
But most of us aren’t Henry.

42. If I know anything about mental health and flourishing, it’s that
sitting around and brooding does not help. The Jamesian shrink
[not to be confused with “the Socratic shrink”]...
We teachers these days
can't avoid noticing
how many of our young
students are self-
diagnosing as anxious,
displaced from a
consistent core identity,
and pessimistic about
their prospects in life…
Young adulthood has always
been a challenging time of life,
but things seem different now.
It's become commonplace to
identify the Internet and social
media as the locus of difference
driving young angst. I guess
that'll do, in the absence of more
directly-life-threatening sources
of distress (like, say, a Russian
invasion or a war of
extermination)...

43. …a random sample of MTSU
students will receive an email
invitation to participate in a
confidential survey assessing
their mental well-being and
their attitudes and perceptions
of existing resources at
MTSU. We hope to use the
information gathered to better
understand your needs and to
guide our mental health
programs and policies moving
forward…

45. I likely have run out of time for this
lecture, long since. Or just in
general. But time permitting, I’d talk
about my discovery of the joys and
the health-and-happiness-sustaining
benefits of the peripatetic life in my
junior year of college at the
University of Missouri. I don’t recall
precisely what got me out there, but
it was the semester I declared my
Philosophy major. It’s also the time I
associate with my discovery of the
cosmic perspective as articulalted
by Carl Sagan: “we are starstuff,
contemplating the stars.”

46. The cosmic perspective not
only embraces our genetic
kinship with all life on Earth
but also values our chemical
kinship with any yet-to-be
discovered life in the
universe, as well as our
atomic kinship with the
universe itself.

47. I find the cosmic perspective aligns
nicely with the ancient stoic wisdom
of an old dead emperor:
“When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it
is to be alive-to breathe, to think, to
enjoy, to love.” And…
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch
the stars, and see yourself running
with them
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

48. …as freshly as in the first morning of
creation; and the hour is just as fit as
any hour that ever was for a new
gospel of cheer to be preached. I am
sure that one can, by merely thinking of
these matters of fact, limit the power of
one's evil moods over one's way of
looking at the Kosmos.”
–William James, 1868
“Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you,
that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the
most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is
whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming
down at the mouth of the Amazon…

49. "Keep your health,
your splendid health. It
is better than all the
truths under the
firmament."
–William James