Quotes from Paul Bloom

WE'VE BEEN TALKING about meaningful pursuits, but there are meaningful experiences as well. Here the bar is dropped somewhat. These can be more passive and don't necessarily involve achieving a goal. What seems to be key here is that they will change you in some way.

The first involves attachment. Most parents love their children, and it seems terrible to admit to yourself and others that the world would be better if someone you loved didn't exist. More than that, it's not just that you feel compelled to say that you are happy they exist—you are happy they exist. After all, you love them.

It's not just me. When you ask people, "How often, if at all, do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?" or "In the bigger picture of your life, how personally significant and meaningful to you is what you are doing at the moment?," parents—both mothers and fathers—say that their lives have more meaning than those of non-parents.

It turned out that the most meaningful events tended to be on the extremes—those that were very pleasant or very painful. These are the ones that matter, that leave a mark.

This distinction between empathy and compassion is critical for the argument I've been making throughout this book.

Roy Baumeister and his colleagues. They posit that mental effort (or self-control, willpower, or grit) actually is a lot like a muscle. Like a muscle, it can work for only so long before it gets tired; like a muscle, it can be strengthened through exercise.

Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.

Traditionally, psychology has been the study of two populations: university freshmen and white rats.

Just like mountain climbing and going to war, then, raising children is an activity that has an uncertain connection to pleasure but has the potential to enhance meaning and

But, again, since there aren't muscles in the brain, why do we get mentally tired? Perhaps, like muscles, brains feed off a limited resource. Baumeister and his colleagues suggest that this is glucose (sugar). This theory is supported by the fact that sugar does seem to have an energizing effect. Running out of steam? Have a candy bar.

There is also a practical difference. When people were asked to empathize with those who were suffering, they found it unpleasant. Compassion training, in contrast, led to better feelings on the part of the meditator and kinder behavior toward others.

Baumeister and John Tierney called Willpower. One piece of advice they offer is that one should be careful not to use up one's willpower on unnecessary tasks. You wouldn't tire out a muscle before a weight-lifting competition, would you?

I told a story earlier from Jonathan Glover about a woman who lived close to a concentration camp and felt empathy for those being tortured. Her response was to ask that the torture be done elsewhere, where it wouldn't disturb her. This was one of a series of examples meant to show how empathy need not make us good.

Asking people to feel as much empathy for an enemy as for their own child is like asking them to feel as much hunger for a dog turd as for an apple—it's logically possible, but it doesn't reflect the normal functioning of the human mind.

THIS BRAIN-AS-MUSCLE THEORY captures everyday experience in an elegant way. But it has some serious limitations. The claim about glucose is the weakest part

what really drops glucose is exercise—but, contrary to the predictions of the glucose hypothesis, exercise tends to make you better at subsequent tasks requiring mental effort, not worse.

My friend does get into her clients' heads, of course—she would be useless if she couldn't—but she doesn't feel what they feel. She employs understanding and caring, not empathy

When you bring your car into the shop, you're charged for "parts and labor," and you've never questioned for a second that the more labor it takes, the more you have to pay. Indeed, the relationship between effort and financial cost is so tight that we often talk about our everyday efforts in economic terms

This is a theory of why effort is often unpleasant. The phenomenology of getting tired doesn't reflect a diminishing resource; rather, it is about growing opportunity cost. This feeling of difficulty is a signal that there are better things to do elsewhere.

But what about the more emotional side of empathy? Here it's more complicated. He seemed to get the most from doctors who didn't feel as he did, who were calm when he was anxious, confident when he was uncertain. And he was particularly appreciative of certain virtues that have little directly to do with empathy, such as competence, honesty, professionalism, and certainly respect.

empathy is a negative in human affairs. It's not cholesterol. It's sugary soda, tempting and delicious and bad for us.

We will often choose to do something rather than nothing, even if the something is effortful and provides no tangible benefits. Effort itself can be a source of pleasure.

Effort sweetens the value of the products of labor.