Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert - Essay Example

Daniel Gilbert In his book Stumbling on Happiness, through the chapter d ‘Reporting Live From Tomorrow’, Daniel Gilbert seems to address the best part of us. With his theory of super-replicators, we get to know about that part of ourselves that operates in the subconscious mind and leaves us half or completely aping a trend or practice that we see happening around us. To make things simple, we endeavor to study further into the concept of super-replicators and find out how it actually works in our daily lives, and in which stage of life we pick up the most number of beliefs. College: The Best Time of Life…And Super Replicators Most of us agree when we say that college is one of the most beautiful parts of life. The endless giggles, the class bunking, the cultural concerts, every aspect of youth that we share with our friends turns out to be an experience that is to be cherished for a lifetime. Let us quickly take recourse to our youthful practices and check for the theory of super replicators that Daniel Gilbert so stoutly professes in his book. At the very start, he has suggested that the super replicator system works best in transferring beliefs from one person to another. Yes, this holds true for our school and college lives. In fact, our society is one in which we grow up believing what our parents and elders teach us ever since school. When it is time to start developing our own notions, friends and their preferences take over. Most of us like to look good amongst our friends, and the definition of “good” is also based on what they think is proper or successful. In Early Stages of Life The Super Replicators Happen Fast Gilbert suggests that just like genes replicate fast enough to govern our health requirements and tastes (Gilbert, 2007, p. 171), the super replicators inside us, also develop upon the existing psychology that is rampant in society. And we pick up new ones as favorable or unfavorable depending on what we observe (Gilbert, 2007, p. 172). The fact shows when we communicate with people adopting strategies of communication which will have the best favorable results with them. And if you take a quick look at college life around you, or go back to the days when you spent hours with your best buddies, you will find ample reason to agree with the theory. A friend wishes to go to an amusement park while another wants to check out the latest movie. You are stuck in between but the decision happens once you give a nod to one of the choices. As soon as there is a majority to one of the decisions, the third person falls in line freely. That is where super-replication takes place. College life is full of simple and free-flow thinking that youngsters easily sport. If there would be a similar situation today, you and your friends would part ways, only due to ego problems. So, studying super replicators in college students and their interactions is definitely easy, since the doldrums of ego fights seem to hit less at this stage of personality development. The Positive and The Negative Side Of The Story According to Gilbert’s study, the genes which controlled good tastes in us may also be partly responsible for hereditary diseases. Therefore, children having positive-negative and negative-positive combinations of both traits are born. Today, he says, positive and negative beliefs get transmitted in a similar fashion. In his study, Gilbert cleverly incorporates genetic theories in his understanding and developing of theories in human psychology. The super replicators theory that he has propounded further calls to attention the tendency of people to keep on earning even after they have earned enough for a lifetime. We agree when he says that people continue earning although they have enough, and this does not surprise us humans. It is at this point that we come across an extension of his super replicator theory. Why Do We Not Like To Follow Boundaries? Strategic thinking cannot outperform themselves and stick to ‘marginal utility’ (Gilbert, 2007, p. 173), but we as humans do not care about margins. Instead, the more we acquire the happier we feel. This is the super replicator psychology that most of us tend to miss out upon. And the process of pruning up on our belief that more is happier starts from college life. That is when pick-up these beliefs fastest and stick to them all along. For example, when we talk to people around us, we tend to ensure that our reputation is best maintained through careful usage of words. How many times have we resorted to the use of a little touch of boasting as to how much we have in surplus than to what the listener has in order to convince him or her of a point that we are making. Be it in terms of experience or monetary gains, we are forever trying to keep attention to ourselves by ensuring that we look like happy owners of what the world thinks is worthwhile having. In the words of the author, “The pleasures of wealth and greatness…strike the imagination as something grand and beautiful and noble, of which the attainment is well worth all the toil and anxiety which we are so apt to bestow upon it” (Gilbert, 2007, p.174) The study of human psychology has always been interesting for those of us who try to un-fathom specific tendencies in our nature and find out specific trends in it. Since Gilbert has pointed out that super replicators are here for a long while, just like our genes which are the basis of our existence and are prone to replication, no matter whether the information they hold is good or bad, we find many instances of the same trait in our behavior and psychology. Human imagination governs the behavior traits that we sport. We see transparent examples of this super replicator tendency in our days from college life which is a tad bit lower in later stages of life. With this we conclude that the younger we are the tendency to form beliefs on the basis of super-replicators is highest, the peak being when we are in our twenties. References: Gilbert, D. (2007), Stumbling On Happiness, London : Harper Collins Publishers Ltd Read More