On the flight out to the conference I’m attending, I had the opportunity to read a lengthy article by Diener and Seligman called “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being.” It’s a very interesting article essentially making the case that societies across the world rely too heavily on measures of financial growth to index success and base policy decisions. They argue that, in addition to this, we also might do well to consider the more direct outcome of interest, which is well-being or happiness.

Some more specific points the authors make follow:

Although gross national products have risen across the world in the past 50 years, well-being has not followed the same trajectory. “For instance, depression rates have increased 10-fold over the same 50-year period, and rates of anxiety also are rising. . . Indeed, . . . the average American child in the 1980s reported greater anxiety than the average child receiving psychiatric treatment in the 1950s.” In fact, “by age 30, about 65% of the women born in 1950 had had one depressive episode, whereas fewer than 5% of the women in the 1910 cohort had had such an episode by the time they were 30.” In contrast, the Old Order Amish (living in Pennslyvania) have a 5-year prevalence rate of depression of only .5%.

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The older that I get, the more I realize that nothing can be known for certain. Surely, this is true with relatively unobservable phenomena, such as the existence of God, but it’s also true for other matters that seem “proven” as well, such as the benefits of exercise on physical health. When one looks closely at the evidence behind any claim, it is easy to see that everything is a matter of probability or logic. Some things may be more probable, but they are never completely proven. The law of gravity, even, can only be shown to have worked in the past (not the future). Einstein showed that time doesn’t really exist as we all naturally think. And, even my apparent consciousness right now could be a dream.

For some, this realization can be scary. It is difficult to “rest” when one realizes that one’s resting point is, to some extent, uncertain. Still, individuals must make conclusions and have occasional “stopping points” from which to base thought and action. It seems to me that these points best are based on science and reason (with a full appreciation of the limitations of these ways of knowing).

One of my favorite lines of thought concerning this comes from the Christian psychologist David Myers who once wrote the following:

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