Pain, praise, community, and happiness - a selection of articles

Here's a scan of an article from the June 2005 Harper's (.pdf) that I have had lying around for yonks; I'm not usually a Harper's reader (the New Yorker is my reading preference) but I bought this specifically for this article, as it is compelling and thoughtful reading. I finally figured out how to use the auto-scan function of the copy machine at my work, and so I ran this off on my lunch break, because I keep wanting to reference it when I talk to people and not being able to. It's an interesting meditation on the 1-10 pain scale, and talks about how subjective and contextual pain is. I think this is fascinating, not only in the physical sense covered here, but as a larger look at the relativity of human suffering. Adrienne Rich once said, "Quantify suffering, you could rule the world" and that has really stuck with me; this is an article about literally trying to quantify suffering, and how that breaks down. The Situationist, one of my favorite "thinky" blogs (it's associated with The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School), had an interesting related article last week on the relationship between happiness and emotional equilibrium.

A couple more random pieces of interest:

A fascinating article on praising children for being "smart" and what that actually accomplishes (hint: less than nothing).

The latest from Robert Putnam (.pdf file): greater levels of diversity decrease trust within and between groups and contribute to community breakdown. There are some holes in this argument, IMHO, but he's a very interesting social scientist who does compelling work, and it's worth reading. I really, really don't want to believe it, though.

And not to end on a grim note, here's an older Time magazine article on happiness studies (.pdf) - I no longer collect links to happiness research, as the field has grown tremendously over the past decade and there is too much to keep up with, but this is a good one-shot overview. I particularly like that they've confirmed the role of giving and gratitude - so many companies would like you to believe that to have more things is to be happier, when any happiness practitioner can tell you that to give more away and be more thankful for what you have is a surer route to contentment.

Of course, if I could get my meds balanced out, that would help too.