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John Templeton's Universe
What is the purpose of the universe, anyway? I hadn't started reading the Sunday papers with this question in mind, but after slogging through mass rapes in Congo, bombings in Baghdad and K-Fed's worthiness as a father, I could no longer dodge it. Then, in the middle of the New York Times Week in Review section--some of the priciest real estate in the print industry--I came across a two-full-page ad under the headline "Does the Universe Have a Purpose?"
The text of the ad was the responses of twelve scientist-and-philosopher-types, ranging from the purposeless (biochemist Christian de Duve) to the purpose-driven (Jane Goodall) and the just plain whiny, as in astronomer Owen Gingerich's "Frankly, I am psychologically incapable of believing that the universe is meaningless." (Suck it up, Owen, it's the only universe you've got.) I was miffed that I had not been asked to contribute my theory that this is a trial universe that has turned to be defective. But I was even more distracted by the sponsor of the ad--the John Templeton Foundation.
Just a couple of weeks ago the Templeton Foundation had showed up in the news in a somewhat less exalted context. John Templeton Jr., the president of the foundation, turns out to be one of the funders of Freedom's Watch, the new right-wing group that has been running pro-war commercials conflating Al Qaeda with whomever it is we're righting in Iraq. You may have seen the one in which a veteran complains that stopping the war now would render the loss of his legs meaningless, much like the universe itself.
This is not John Templeton Jr.'s first or only venture into right-wing politics. In 2004 he started the group Let Freedom Ring, aimed getting out the evangelical Christian vote for George Bush. He recently joined the Romney campaign's National Faith and Values Steering Committee, a group that includes an antiabortion activist and a fellow from the Heritage Foundation.
So the real question may be, "What is the purpose of the Templeton Foundation?"
Founded by John Templeton Jr.'s father, Sir John Templeton, the investor, the foundation set out to bridge science and spirituality while--on a not obviously related track--promoting free enterprise. In just the last ten years, it has become a serious force in the academic world, generally funding anything too soft and fuzzy for the governmental grant-makers--studies, for example, on optimism, happiness, character, forgiveness and faith. This year, its $1.5 million annual Templeton Prize went to Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who states, on the foundation's website, that "We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence."
Maybe he should have started by querying John Templeton Jr. on that one. Or maybe there was a mistake, and the foundation had intended the award not for the Canadian philosopher but for the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. And what are we to make of Templeton's stickiest project of all--an $8 million grant to create the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, that last being defined by Templeton Sr. as "total constant love for every person with no exception"? Are there some major Oedipal issues between the Templetons, or is the universe just a little too tricky for me?
But the Templetons' most famous baby is the young field of Positive Psychology, launched by University of Pennsylvania's Martin Seligman after his five-year-old daughter accused him of being a "grouch" and he resolved improve his outlook. Pos Psych carves out everything ordinary psych, with its bent toward pathology, ignores, which is in itself an admirable ambition. In practice, though, it tilts dangerously, for something that considers itself a science, toward the prescriptive. If you're not happy--or optimistic or upbeat--you better get to work on that now, and we have the "coaches" to help you.
Put all this happiness and optimism together with John Templeton Jr.'s political agenda and you could come up with some pretty paranoid scenarios: for example, that the Templeton Foundation is a plot to numb Americans into smiley-faced acquiescence to the status quo. And could it be a coincidence that Templeton helped finance the re-election of the most optimistic President we've had since Ronald Reagan?
So I attended the Sixth Annual International Positive Psychology Summit conference in Washington, DC, last week to see what was up, and am happy--make that also optimistic, hopeful and almost positive--to report that this Templeton-spawned group could probably not plot its way out of a paper bag. The presentations I sampled occupied the full range from mediocrity to silliness. At the mediocre, or submediocre, level was a paper on the effects of a Christian summer camp on teenagers, suggesting that it enhanced such virtues as self-control and patience. For silliness, you couldn't beat a couple of sessions featuring "coaches" and management consultants using their power points to illustrate how to make corporations more "positive" and "strength-based."
Strangest of all, Pos Psych founder Martin Seligman appeared, to the dismay of many in the audience, to renounce the whole enterprise, stating from the podium that "I've decided my theory of positive psychology is completely wrong, so I've put forth a different notion." All I can report is that the new notion expands Pos Psych's jurisdiction to include anthropology, political science and economics, and seems to be based empirically on Seligman's love of bridge--the card game, that is, not the link between the spiritual and the scientific. Beyond that, my lengthy and detailed notes offer no enlightenment.
When that session came to an end, I cornered the young psychologist who had been appointed by the Templeton Foundation to give out this year's Martin E.P. Seligman Award for Outstanding Dissertation Research in Positive Psychology. "What about John Templeton's funding of pro-war commercials?" I asked him. "No comment," he responded at great length, mentioning along the way that he's been asked that question before.
And well he might be. The Templeton Foundation's academic beneficiaries include not only opportunists and self-help gurus but some serious scientists, and they need to dissociate themselves from the reckless belligerence of John Templeton Jr. I'm not saying they should return their grants, just chip in a little of that Templeton largesse for a full-page ad in the New York Times with an intriguing headline like "What Is the Purpose of Science? Clue: It's Not War." Charles Taylor, with his $1.5 million award, should organize the effort.
13 Comments so far
Show AllAs long as people can make a buck on war we will continue to have them. In fact, our government is in the business of war. We have been since the founding of our country. Over the centuries we have made war into a product that we market and sell worldwide. The first step to get off this track is to establish a Department of Peace and start being a better neighbor.
Hoa binh
Perhaps I am being foolishly optimistic, but so the universe has no purpose...
Let us give it one, a positive one, at that. How about the purpose of the universe is to raise generations of people who are respectful and kind to each other, the world and its other inhabitant. A purpose that gives everyone a long life of health with sufficient food, clothing and shelter, and the educational / recreational opportunities to enrich everyone's life.
A pipe dream, perhaps, but a purpose none-the-less.
It's a curious thing that John Templeton (conservative)and George Soros (liberal) could both be gazillionaires from investment activities and have such differing worldviews and political positions. The problem is that there are more Republicans willing to spend big money on ads than there are Democrats who can do the same.
The ads from "Freedom's Watch" mentioned by the author are just the opening salvo of issue ads we'll see for 2008. The new Bush Supreme Court (Alito instead of O'Conner) just loosened the restrictions for these, of course, and we'll be just darned lucky if the liberals can find enough financiers like George Soros to keep from being steamrollered with Republican lies flying into living rooms on "Freedom something-or-other" ads. Tens of thousands of them are coming our way.
As near as I can tell, this is just another promotion for Prozac, Paxil, Xanax, etc. How much money do the Templetons have invested in Big Pharma? All the wingnuts need is a nation of smiley face zombies a la Brave New World while they promote their 1984 policies.
In the 1940s, a French scientist, I believe his name was Lecomte de Nuay ( [?] spelling?) proved mathematically the existence of God.
Its curious and strange to see how Christ's message of peace and forgiveness has been perverted into war and death.
"...for example, that the Templeton Foundation is a plot to numb Americans into smiley-faced acquiescence to the status quo."
A little more Prozac and Effixer here and there and...
Mission Accomplished.
The Templeton Foundation also sponsors a ton of PBS programming which isn't necessarily sinister, like "The Question of God," "Faith and Reason," etc.
Namvet67...Always look forward to your comments; thanks a bunch.
Read this quote a few days ago:
"The world is round; it has no point." Adrienne E. Gusoff"
Did Jesus make campaign cotributions?
Like Ms. Ehrenreich, I also was at the Sixth Annual International Positive Psychology Summit. After reading her comments I believe we must have attended different events. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess that I am a positive psychologist, so my remarks are colored by that perspective.
I am extremely disappointed that Ms. Ehrenreich, whom I admire greatly, has so misrepresented our field. She clearly has an ax to grind against John Templeton, and I think the glare from this ax has blinded her to most of the conference's content.
To begin with, the presentations she mentions represented only a small fraction of the material presented. Her snippets from them were taken out of context. Had she done more than skim the agenda for supposed right-wing plots (of which I am unaware), she would have found multiple presentations linking employee well-being to company performance, and well-being to humane wages, decent working conditions, and autonomy and dignity. Assuming corporations and governments are driven by the bottom line and not humane principles, I would think that a so-called proponent of the working poor would embrace another reason companies should treat people well. (And, I might add, a reason that heartless but greedy corporations would actually listen to.)
No, instead this work is ignored in favor of a caricature of the field as "be happy or else." She must have missed the multiple presentations I attended describing positive psychology and positive psychotherapy as attending to both positive AND negative events, emotions, and traits. She must have missed an emphasis on human strengths and dignity. She must have missed a concern that policy makers actually listen to people, rather than to corporate leaders or their own ideological agendas.
One of the best instances of this came early one, when Jim Clifton from the Gallup Organization described how he was talking to a group of legislators right before authorization for one of the many foreign policy disasters we seem to have caused. OK, Clifton didn't call them disasters, but that was the implication to me. He asked the legislators what percent of residents of Muslim nations actually hate America. To his horror (and mine), they had no idea; they went with their gut, some guessing huge percentages in the double digits. Needless to say, if you think half of a group of people hate you, it's much easier to bomb them in to oblivion. According to Gallup data, 8% of residents of Muslim nations hate Americans, while 35% love Americans. The reason these 8% hate Americans? Pure gravy for the left: they don't hate our freedoms, they hate our occupation of their lands and our support of corrupt governments. Hmm. This sounds like empirical validation of what the left has been saying for years.
Sorry to say it, but if the message comes from someone who talks the language and wears the suits of corporate America, policy makers may be more likely to listen than if it comes from a hand-carried sign. That's just people for you; we like those who seem like us. Anyway...
Regarding John Templeton and his foundation's support of Positive Psychology: You may not like him. You may not like a lot of his agenda. But, don't let that blind you to what thousands of dedicated scholars are trying to do: improve the lives of our fellow human beings. The great majority of this research, in my experience as a research psychologist and a died-in-the-wool lefty, supports the agenda of the left AND provides mechanisms for change. If more organizations would be willing to fund research on strengths and well-being, then fewer of us would need to go begging to anyone who will listen. Blaming Positive Psychology for taking money from Templeton is like blaming the single mother of three for working at Wal-Mart. Give her (and us) another option and you might be surprised.
p.s., The idea that Positive Psychologists or coaches would be somehow linked to Big Pharma and the anti-depressant industry is silly. The whole point of coaching is to learn to live your life authentically, and to use what we know about people to actually make your life better. If your life is better, you will be happier. A better life, not a better mood, is the goal. This normally cannot be achieved with a pill.
If anything, Positive Psychology cuts into the profits of Big Pharma and their happy pills.
Both the drugs mentioned in the comments and pos psych applications seem directed towards middle- and upper-middle class folks who have found their frenetic pursuit of ever more stuff and respectibility has left them feeling empty. That psychological state is a bit worrisome since people who are dissatisfied might look around to change something, like maybe the fashionable politics of give it all the to rich they deserve it as we can tell by their wealth. You know, the politics propounded by Templeton's right hand while the left sooths the angst of the wannabe wealthy. Moreover, since the recommended shop til you drop cure is been there done that for these hurting folks, their emptiness must be filled somehow so they keep up their 2/3 share of the Economy, that machine for funneling more money into the pockets of those already richer than God. Hence too Templeton's interest in the spiritual--gotta know who you're dealing with to make a deal to silence the almost universal connection between spirituality and renunciation of the world. Bad for business. Since they haven't the genetic route in hand, we get Brave New World by other means.
Most of us--George and Dick are counter-examples to 'all'--have experienced how good you feel when you genuinely help someone improve their lives. 'Course focusing on that source of psychological well-being points to a politics rather different from that favored by Templeton. Socialism, the welfare state, pink, tax and spend, special interests (used to be the rich; no more), bleeding heart, weak, are some of the words for those politics. That connection's a state secret now? Oops!
When I bothered to read some stuff by and about Seligman about a decade ago, he impressed me as a shallow, giddy self-promoter. People like him are determined not to let horrible conditions in the world effect their manufactured sense of well-being, which largely depends on their being affluent. There's a difference between a "positive" outlook which permits one to pretend that social injustice is inconsequential, and an outlook that supports social involvement, or at least compassion.