CHAPTER 4 We Are All Control Freaks—and Need to Be

CHAPTER 4 We Are All Control Freaks—and Need to Be
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What’s the Big Idea? You can’t and shouldn’t avoid the anxiety that comes with work and freedom.
Note:L'IDEA

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Good luck trying to erase anxiety from your life. There is no escape route from anxiety even if one withdraws from contact with other people. Do you think hermits are happy?
Note:L'EREMITA INFELICE

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Escapism cannot make us happy for a meaningful period of time.
Note:FUGA INUTILE

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Why do kids like to be tossed in the air or whirled overhead like the Scottish hammer throw at the Highland games? When a child is tossed or swung in the air, his heart races, his pulse quickens,
Note:CERCHIAMO IL BATTICUORE GIÀ DA BAMBINI

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The toddling child is not just playing a physical game with himself—he is also re-creating himself, morphing from a crawling character into a walking character.
Note:RICREAZIONE. RISETTAGGIO

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Unfortunately, as adults we are often discouraged from going beyond baby steps. We even talk ourselves out of taking prudent risks. Why bother studying for that GRE to get into grad school? We might flunk. Why bother asking the attractive woman out on a date?
Note:SUBENTRA LA PRUDENZA

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It’s spectacularly easy to find doubters who will reinforce our fears. On the eve of launching her cosmetics company, Mary Kay Ash was sitting with her husband at the breakfast table, going through their business plans. They had saved up $5,000 and were ready to commit their entire bank account to secure a small office with a few desks and to start manufacturing sample skin creams. Suddenly, her husband grabbed his chest and slumped over. A fatal heart attack killed him. All of Mary Kay’s professional advisers told her to tear up her plans. She went forward anyway,
Note:I FRENATORI

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TWO KINDS OF ANXIETY
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The first comes from recognizing all the confounding choices we have to make in life. Should I quit my job? Where should I send my kids to school? Should I file my tax return using the 1040 long form or short form? Should I return the phone call from my mother (yes!)? Kierkegaard called anxiety “the dizziness of freedom.”
Note:ANSIA DA LIBERTÀ

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There is, of course, a different type of anxiety, and it is more dangerous and hurtful than the dizziness of freedom. It comes not from facing too many choices, but from seeing too few choices, a lack of freedom. This anxiety can emerge on a macro scale—for example, the Chinese government that won’t let you have a second child or move to another province.
Note:ANSIA DA SCHIAVITÙ

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the anxiety of freedom is far more inviting because it gives people the potential to re-create themselves.
Note:SUPERARE LA PRIMA

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THE TYRANNY OF THE TODDLER
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A two-year-old understands the command, but not the rationale. She understands “cause and effect” only when she is the prime mover, or when she witnesses the catalyst. She sees that some things she likes to do elicit applause, while other acts generate a scold. This dichotomy, write Ralph Ross and Ernest van den Haag, “literally puts the fear of God into us—the
Note:REGOLE INSENSATE

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research shows we get a high from exerting control over our environment; in contrast, we plumb depths of despair when we are shackled. Toddlers enjoy deliberately dumping their applesauce onto the floor and watching us clean up.
Note:BISOGNO DI CONTROLLO

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Little kids need to make things happen. It’s not enough for Mommy to push the stroller.
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THE SCIENCE OF CONTROL
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In The Trial, Josef K., accused of an unnamed crime by an unnamed authority, suffers humiliation, and devolves into a jittery wreck, so helpless he cannot even kill himself. His last words: “Like a dog!”
Note:tKAFKA E LA MANCANZA DI CONTROLLO

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For Seligman’s experiment, the immediate question was this: Could he demoralize mutts? Seligman harnessed a variety of dogs and divided them into three groups. One group would receive electric shocks but have the ability to turn off the shock by pressing on a panel. The second group would feel the shocks but have no tool to stop them. For this key group, the world became a place of unknown and unpredictable danger. Shocks were inescapable. Finally, a control group received no shocks. Seligman then devised a clever apparatus to test the impact of this conditioning. He put each dog in a “shuttle box,” essentially a box with two rooms divided by a low barrier. In the first room, the dog would again receive a shock. But the dog could avoid further shocks simply by jumping over the divider. Here was the question: Would the dogs take advantage of the easy escape route? Seligman witnessed that overwhelmingly the control group jumped away from the pain. Most of the first group, which had learned how to shut off a shock, leaped to safety. Yet about two-thirds of the second group, which had been demoralized by inescapable, mysterious shocks in a prior setting, could not muster the energy, drive, intellect, or morale to climb over the barrier.
Note:GLI ELETTROSHOCK DI SELIGMAN

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LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

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Learned helplessness turns us into emotional wrecks by robbing us of motivation and our ability to learn.
Note:ABBANDONO ALLA SORTE

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In Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago , prisoners are not emotionally destroyed simply because they are shivering in frigid “reeducation” camps. The brutal weather does not do them in. They are dehumanized because they feel they cannot escape the irrational,

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ARCOPELAGO GULAG

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As Seligman did with mutts, Hiroto divided students into three groups. The first group would wear headphones through which they would hear loud, irritating noises. A button on the headphone would allow them to stop the sound. Thus, the noise was escapable. The second group wore headphones and was told they could turn off the sound. However, the experimenter lied, and the button on the headphones did nothing. Their irritation was inescapable. The third group received no noise stimulus.
Note:HIROTO. IL SELIGMAN FATTO CON GLI UOMINI

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He sent all the students not into shuttle boxes for dogs but into rooms where they would hear a noxious, loud noise. But this time all groups had the ability to spot a lever and then push on it to turn off the sound.
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Would the students push on the lever, or endure the pain? Almost all of the control group and the first group quickly grasped the task, found the lever, and escaped the noise 88 percent of the time. The second group, hobbled by their prior experience, fumbled with the lever, deployed it inconsistently, and thus suffered through the noise in about 50 percent of the instances.
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We are born helpless, quickly become control freaks as babies, and then spend our lives deciding when to relinquish power and when to take it.
Note:PARABOLA

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Perhaps this overriding issue in our lives explains why the Alcoholics Anonymous “Serenity Prayer,” made most famous (and likely composed) by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, shows up glazed onto coffee mugs, printed on posters, and knitted into wool caps sold at church flea markets: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; and Wisdom to know the difference.”
Note:SERENITY PLAYER

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WATER PLANTS, SAVE LIVES
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More control over our lives tends to build up confidence. Now, I am perfectly aware that overconfident people can do a lot of damage. Just look at all those financial fund managers drunk on illusions of their own talent.
Note:ECCESSI DI FIDUCIA

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The effectiveness that a child experiences when he figures out how to hold a cup of milk without spilling, or how to tie his own shoes. This boosts pride, and it is a pride based on actual accomplishment,
Note:ORGOGLIO

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In 1976, Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin, two intrepid psychologists, visited a 360-bed nursing home in New England called Arden House. On one of the floors, they placed houseplants in each of the rooms. Caretakers watered the plants. This was the “baseline” floor. On the fourth floor, they put the old people to work, forcing them to choose the plants, the location for the pots, and then left it to the elderly to fetch and pour water into the pots from time to time. Eighteen months later the psychologists returned, expecting to see a lot of dead rhododendrons. They tested the residents and found that though all the participants were quite frail at the start, the fourth-floor residents proved more alert and cheerful.
Note:PIANTE NELLA CASA DI RIPOSO: L'IMPEGNO CI FORTIFICA

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John Cage provides experimental “chance” music, and Dali bends dreamy watches like limp body parts, but they still end up with more order than the buckets of ink they start with.
Note:L'ORDINE SI IMPONE

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So many of the critics who portray our lives as an empty rat race, in which we display the moral character of acquisitive rodents, misperceive this race. We are engaged in an effort to create value in the world, to take the stuff we see about us and reimagine it.
Note:CREAZIONE DEL VALORE

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WHY DO PEOPLE WHO DON’T NEED TO WORK,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Here is a simple question: If the world is a wicked rat race, why do people with so much money work so many hours?… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:PERCHÈ PECCHe I RICCHI LAVORANO DI PIÙ

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First, “they just want more stuff so they can show off.” But if bragging were the motivation, what is more… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:LA RISPOSTA SBAGLIATA

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Second, “they may be paid a lot of money as lawyers or bankers, but they are like slaves to their bosses.” But if hardworking people put in extra hours because they must kowtow to some pooh-bah, why do entrepreneurs and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:SCHIAVI DEL LAVORO?

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Thorstein Veblen, the colorful Midwestern economist born the son of Norwegian immigrants, suggested in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) that rich people love to lounge around and hope others catch them with umbrellas in their drinks. Veblen thought the walking stick was a great advertisement, for a… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:VEBLEN

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Now, I have seen enough clips of Paris Hilton and other “celebrities” to know that rich, ninny layabouts do exist. And I will sprain my finger to flip a television channel as fast as I can to avoid seeing them. (But, my gosh, don’t Paris Hilton and her cohorts work awfully hard to get themselves looked at?) When we examine the data for high-earning people, we see far less… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:PARIS HILTON È UN'ECCEZIONE

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Though I am loath to give Paris Hilton one more pixel of attention, let me contrast her to the patriarch of the family fortune, Conrad Hilton. Like Veblen, Conrad’s folk came from Norway, but while Veblen’s folks settled in Wisconsin, Conrad’s headed south to the New Mexico Territory, where Conrad was born in 1887. A tall, lean man who always watched his weight, Conrad built a worldwide hotel brand from a small boardinghouse in a two-horse town. And he did it with hard work. That first hotel, bought in 1919 in Cisco, Texas, was in his eyes a “cross between a flophouse and goldmine.” In the 1920s he added a dozen more. Then the Great Depression hit, the hotels suddenly emptied, and the remaining guests ducked out without paying their bills. Conrad lost his fortune. But he climbed out of debt working six days a week and scanning the country and the globe for new opportunities. In 1963, Time magazine paid tribute to his work… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Note:CONRAD HILTON

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When I was doing research for a book on legendary CEOs, I was stunned to learn how bold, fearless, and energetic entrepreneurs like Akio Morita from Sony and Estée Lauder were.
Note:ENERGIA!

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This phenomenon is not limited to the phenomenally rich. Wide-ranging surveys show that highly paid people do put in more hours than just about anyone else. Are they tricked into putting in more hours? Unlikely, since the hardest-working people seem to be the ones with the most education.
Note:REGOLA: PIÙ ISTRUITI PIÙ LAVORATORI

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When I was teaching economics to Harvard undergraduates, I would occasionally bring up the “backward bending supply curve.” This was a fancy graph that basically conjectured that if you paid people too much, they would cut back their hours. Obviously, having reached their financial goals, they would substitute leisure for work. In reality, few people cut back on their hours when they get a raise.
Note:EFFETTO REDDITO SUL LAVORO

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So, why do rich people keep working? Why do smart, highly paid people work more hours? Why do the self-employed work more than anyone else? Get ready for this answer: Work makes us happier, more eager to wake up the next morning. Those frontal cortexes of ours like us to move forward.
Note:TESI: IL LAVORO C RENDE FELICI

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Why do the wealthy and the self-employed work the most? Because they can! Because they have the control and power to put in more hours. Moreover, they clearly see a connection between working harder and achieving the psychological glow that comes with success. They want to be proud of themselves more than they want to be surrounded by fawning waiters at the beach club. Self-employed people are 29 percent more likely to work over forty-four hours a week than the average, and 63 percent more likely than those who work at nonprofit foundations.
Note:L' IMPRENDITORE

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PEOPLE LIKE THEIR JOBS, EVEN IF THEY DO GRIPE
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In fact, most people really like their jobs. A random sample of over twenty-seven thousand Americans between 1972 and 2006 showed that 86 percent were satisfied with their jobs, with nearly half describing themselves as very satisfied.

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MASHMELLOW

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FORWARD MOTION + HOPE = ENTERPRISE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Note:TITOLO

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Our brains allow us to “see” the future. Not predict the future but envisage a future, whether it be a vision of tonight, next week, or after our death. However, seeing is not enough to bring happiness. Even achieving goals is insufficient. We also need hope. Our greatest moments of happiness come when we are engaged in an effort, trying to achieve, armed with a vision and with hope.
Note:VEDERE NN BASTA

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VISIONE

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slave feels demoralized because even if he can concoct a vision of freedom, he loses hope.
Note:SCHIAVO

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Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” but at the same time those spirituals try to find a reason for hope “nobody knows, but Jesus.”
Note:BUT JESUS

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MAN IS NOT A LOGIC MACHINE
Note:TITOLO

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The frontal lobe helps us assess our behavior and how others will perceive our behavioral choices. In Freud’s world, the frontal lobe is home to the superego.
Note:SUPER EGO

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Listen to this strange story. A man fell off a stagecoach, smashed his frontal lobe, and then revolutionized motion pictures. Along the way he turned into a madman and murdered his wife’s lover in cold blood. Meet Eadweard Muybridge.
Note:STOP MOTION

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For neuroscientists, though, the case was breathtaking. Muybridge exhibited all the signs of frontal lobe trauma. In addition to being unable to control his emotions, and lurching back and forth between coldness and hot anger, he disregarded risks. His business associate testified that Muybridge photographed himself on a dangerous rock in Yosemite, “where a biscuit, if slightly tilted, would have fallen down 2,000 feet.”
Note:DANNI AI LBI: SENZA PAURA

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A dozen years before Muybridge, a railroad foreman named Phineas Gage was blasting train routes in Vermont with powerful explosives. He was known as a kind, even-tempered supervisor.
Note:PHINEAS

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He lived another dozen years, a fitful wreck of a personality—irreverent, profane, and annoying.

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YOU CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT WITHOUT EMOTIONS
Note:TITOLO

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Cases like Muybridge’s and Gage’s show up again and again, whether through tumors, industrial accidents, or torn arteries. When that modest web of tissue just behind the eyes, more specifically the orbitofrontal cortex, rips, it is like offering another drink to Dr. Jekyll or letting Lon Chaney watch the rise of a full moon. To be fair, the results are seldom murderous or sociopathic. Instead the warmth of human personality tends to chill.
Note:SOCIOPATIA E RAFFREDDAMENTO

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In fact, patients with frontal lobe damage can perform wonderfully on IQ tests, and they might beat you at Trivial Pursuit.
Note:L IQ DEI SENZA LOBI

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But if you give them a test that requires any planning, or if you ask them to plan a picnic in the park, they will either not show up or appear at midnight dressed in scuba gear. They cannot begin “thinking about tomorrow”
Note:PIANIFICAZIONE

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Here is the argument: Evolution gives us the frontal lobe—our windshield looking out to the future—which then allows and inspires us to think about tomorrow and the day after.
Note:L ARGOMENTO

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The frontal lobe, then, is the part of the brain that tells us we will be happy only if we have some forward momentum in our lives. A life of stasis, a life of murmuring mantras, a life of staring endlessly at the surf armed with a piña colada will confound and frustrate the frontal lobe. It is literally in the front of our brains, but metaphorically our frontal lobe is aiming human beings to go forward.
Note:FUTURO E FELICITÀ

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A competitive economic system acknowledges and applauds such drive and ambition. Attempts to staunch competition simply induce guilt, and worse, gear us up for an emotional and economic car wreck.
Note:COMPETIZIONE NATURALE

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YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT LIKE ALGEBRA: LEFT ≠ RIGHT
Note:TITOLO

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Inside, the left and right sides of the brain are vastly different, yet are so interconnected that we cannot make rational decisions with only the rational part of our brains. Nor can we show emotion if we use only the emotional part. Here are a couple of startling examples.
Note:DESTRA E SINISTRA INTRECCIATE

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While we think of ourselves as a single “I,” the left and right sides can play tricks on our “I.”
Note:IO

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WINK, BLINK, AND THINK
Note:TITOLO

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three important concepts in any pursuit of happiness. First, happier people tend to have more left-side brain activity. Second, happiness is not the exact opposite of sadness. This is not simple algebra, where one unit of sadness on the right side of the brain can be wiped out by a unit of happiness on the left. Third, while the left side of the brain is often touted as the “analytical side,” it needs to consult with the right side in order to make reasonable decisions.
Note:TRE VERITÀ

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SINISTRA. OPPOSIZIONE. CONSULTO

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How do we know this? It was harder in Dizzy Dean’s day. Now we look at an fMRI of a crying baby’s brain and see the right hemispheres lighting up, while a cooing baby’s lights up on the left.
Note:FMRI

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In Descartes’ Error, the neurologist Antonio Damasio points to numerous examples where patients with access to pure reason divorced from emotion become socially paralyzed. They would even have trouble ordering a baloney sandwich at a deli because they could not call upon their memories and tastes for salty meat. Our emotions, feelings, and memories penetrate decision making.
Note:PARALITICI

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Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink argues that our instantaneous impressions are often right because they actually take into account nearly all of our prior experience—even if not laid out in an analytical spreadsheet.
Note:BLINK

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recent research shows us that our instant impressions do seem to call upon our lifetime of experiences and whatever helpful tools are encoded in our DNA, allowing us to distinguish friend, foe, predator, and prey.
Note:A PRIORI

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We can see the link between reason and emotions among investors.
Note:INVESTITORI

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Edenists will disdain busy working people. They will portray them as heartless robots of a soulless capitalist system. They don’t understand that most of those purported robots are driven both by their rational and emotional brains. They do not represent pure reason or pure greed. Most of those who succeed in moving toward their personal and business goals have integrated their drives for forward motion and hope.
Note:AFFARI EMOZIONI SPERANZA

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MIND OVER MATTER OR MATTER OVER MIND?
Note:TITOLO

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in the James worldview, we need external stimulus in order to generate internal energy. A life of meditation and inner searching leads to a dead end of boredom and stasis.
Note:WILLIAM JAMES

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STASI

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A busy life actively engaged in the world allows our bodies to take in external stimuli and convert them into internal energy.
Note:STIMOLI

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The father of pragmatism and the brother of the novelist Henry, William James presented his ideas in simple but cogent fashion: In his parable of the bear, James argued that we do not see a bear, fear it, and then decide to run. No, we see the bear, begin to run, and our bodies become aroused as we get ready to run. Our palms sweat, pupils dilate, veins pop, all of which are pathways to transmit fear to our brains. Nanoseconds later we recognize we are scared to death. Emotions are bodily functions, not signals to the body.
Note:PARABOLA DELL ORSO

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James’s ideas were mocked and discarded during the reign of behavioralists like B. F. Skinner, who thought emotions were bad for our well-being and did not see much difference between laboratory rats and graduate students.
Note:SKINNER

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Ekman was going to study faces. Ekman had read Darwin and a French neurologist named Duchenne de Boulogne, who had mapped faces and the emotions they signaled. Ekman’s task: to prove that there was a universality among facial expressions.
Note:LE FACCE DI ECKMAN

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If he could do this on Margaret Mead’s terrain, he would also kick sand on her contention that the people in New Guinea were emotionally distinct from Westerners.
Note:CONTRO LA MEAD

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Ekman was pilloried in the profession and faced protests led by Mead, who declared him a “disgrace,” and the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, who stood up at a meeting of the American Anthropological Association, called Ekman’s ideas fascist, and said he should not be allowed to speak.
Note:LOMAX

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Sure enough, Ekman’s findings seemed to back up Darwin, de Boulogne, and James. The external stimulation can inspire the internal reaction. Moreover, common terms like “cold feet” and “hotheaded” are not just metaphors but actual descriptions of our bodily sensations during emotional changes.
Note:ESTERNO=>INTERNO

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NEUROTRANSMITTERS AND MUHAMMAD ALI
Note:TITOLO

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How do these signals get transmitted from the body to the brain and back to the body?
Note:CHI TRASMETTE?

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Dopamine urges us to take action, to engage, to try new things, and it gives us a feeling of pleasure when we do so. Dopamine may also help people see patterns of behavior so they can assess and refine their predictions about cause and effect.
Note:EFFETTI

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For healthy people, though, dopamine is an elixir, a chemical that delivers a rush, a natural high. It makes us feel alert, interested, and, well, alive.
Note:SENTIRSI VIVI

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Because our bodies are engineered for pleasure and learning feedback, I argue that any economic or social system must do the same, if it is going to allow human beings to flourish and search for happiness. Let’s go shopping
Note:TAKE ACTION

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At the same time that dopamine helps us predict and learn, dopamine is the molecule of urge. When we reach for a chocolate éclair, or the hand of a lover, dopamine is at work.
Note:FRETTA E CHIATEZZA

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We feel the flow before we get the result we seek. And this is key. Dopamine is not the reward for winning, for conquering, for finishing the race, the task, or the job. Dopamine is the reward for trying . As dopamine flows, the goal seems within our reach, and we thrust our hands outward to grasp it. This is the key to human life, the key to successful social and economic systems, and the great flaw in the thinking of happiness gurus and egalitarian political regimes.
Note:REWARD FOR TRYNG

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BEYOND DOPAMINE: OTHER IMPORTANT NEUROTRANSMITTERS OF HAPPINESS
Note:TITOLO

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While dopamine charges us up for a new task, beta-endorphins flow when we feel the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat.
Note:ENDORFINE

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Serotonin, which is found in fruits, mollusks, and humans, is one of the earth’s oldest transmitters. It stabilizes moods and feelings of dominance and submission.
Note:DOMINANCE

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Oxytocin triggers caring and maternal feelings through the nervous system.
Note:OXYTOCONA

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in order to feel happiness, we had best be (1) moving forward, and (2) anticipating new surprises and experiences.

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SODDISFATTI

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If the social critics are right and we are in a vicious rat race, shackled to a quick-spinning hedonic treadmill, wouldn’t you think that knowing someone’s income would help you predict his happiness level? After all, those who slip in income would slide off the treadmill as their “superiors” go shopping at Saks. But here’s the truth: Personal control predicts happiness much better than income. Someone who earns peanuts at the zoo, but decides when to feed the elephants and when to take his own break, may be happier than (a) the emeritus executive who still gets a fat paycheck though no one listens to him anymore, or (b) the harried dentist who has to ask his office manager when he can slip out to the bathroom.
Note:REDDITO CNTROLLO FELICITÁ

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GO WITH THE FLOW—TO WORK
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept of “flow,” a state of mind that arises when we are completely entranced, enthralled, and absorbed by an activity. Time flies when you are a potter and love the whirl of the wheel, or when you are Dizzy Gillespie lost in a bebop riff.
Note:FLOW

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Do you ever wonder why Norman Mailer always looked like he was scowling? Writers, musicians, and artists, who would seem to score high on a flow scale, tend to be more prone to depression. Extroverts are happier. Showing up for work and bumping into coworkers in the restroom and around the coffeepot points us toward happiness. Entrepreneurs are happiest when they begin bringing other people into their venture, and sharing their enthusiasm. In contrast, flow in front of a lonely typewriter is not a recipe for happiness,
Note:ESTROVERSI BISOGNO DI OSTENTARE E CONDIVIDERE

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WORK HELPS US RE-CREATE OURSELVES AND CREATE TOMORROW
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Greed and envy do not explain the extra hours of work, despite the Edenist screeds. A different psychological/neurological drive is playing out: Work rides the waves of chemicals we discussed in the previous chapter. Work charges up our brains with dopamine when we start anticipating a new success.
Note:LAVORO E DOPAMINA

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Daniel Gilbert has cleverly noted that we get no kick from watching a recording of Monday Night Football on Tuesday, even if we did not know who won: “Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!” We want the freedom to control
Note:PARTITE REGISTRATE

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We want to feel good about our success. We want to deserve our pleasure. Guilty pleasures are reserved for Godiva chocolate. People who do not feel responsible for their own success feel sadder 25 percent of the time. That’s why lottery winners usually lose their giddy smiles pretty quickly.
Note:SENTIRSI RESPONSABILI

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Bill Gates did not have a vision of dollar bills stacked up to the moon and back. He had this vision: I can see a computer on every desk. Steve Jobs imagined an iPhone in every hand.
LA VISIONE DI GATES