Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: We live in a fundamentally unhappy time. Modern life and modern culture have led many to be profoundly unhappy and to seek happiness in many directions. How do we truly find happiness? That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast. Hello, Merrick Sammager, host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to hit the like button, to subscribe to Channel, let other people know about what we're doing here. Also, you can subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com and fill in your email address and you'll be subscribed to our newsletter. You can also follow us on social media rsismag okay, so today we have a great guest today. I'm very excited about this. Father Robert Spitzer. He is the founder and president of the Magus center, which is an excellent organization. We're not going to talk about it very much today, but I just want to recommend people to it very highly. He's a scholar, a teacher, and author, and a seasoned leader. He is a preeminent theologian, philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science. His other areas of expertise are ethics and leadership. He's the author of many books, but the one we're going to talk about today is one of his most recent ones, which is the four levels of happiness. Your path to personal flourishing. From Sophia Institute Press. Welcome to the program, Father.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: This is great to be with you again, Eric. Thank you.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: So we're going to talk about this book, but I have to just ask you first to just.
Magus center is doing great work. Could you just give us a brief kind of, for people who might not have heard of it, maybe give us a brief kind of overview of what is that the Magus center is doing.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Sure. Modus in Latin means the even more. And so we really wanted to answer a question and a need that is going on in the Catholic Church for the last 15 years. In other words, the precipitous drop in our young people from not only the Catholic Church, but belief in God altogether. So when the pew survey came out and then the next Iqara survey predicting that about 50% of our church going young people would leave the church and believe in God by the time they got to their second or third year of college, you know, I mean, that's a real problem of historical proportions. I mean, 50% is a lot of kids. And more than that, they identify two principal reasons why this was occurring. Number one, the belief, and of course, this is a mistaken belief that there is no evidence for God or Jesus, life after death or the church. They believe there's no scientific or rational evidence of any kind. And they might have learned about the proofs of God in high school or middle school, but I don't think they did. They're leaving in droves. And secondly, they believe that faith and science are in conflict. And because science is truth, faith must be obviously some kind of a myth. And they seem to think that, well, it can be summarily ignored or actually rejected. And so this is a problem. It needed to be met. When I was president up at Gonzaga University for eleven years, I could see this. You know, I was teaching classes of, you know, over 100 kids would be in my classes on, you know, the evidence for God from science. And I knew this was going to come down the pipe way before the Pew survey started measuring it. But, I mean, it came in 20 12, 20, 15, 20 18. So this is no news. But the real thing that, the real thing that got to me was the fact that the very moment Pew is looking at all of our kids leaving the church and believe in God, the scientists are believing in God more and more. So the Pew survey did a big study from the American association for the Advancement of Science scientists are today, and they determined that 51% of scientists overall said that they were believers in God or a higher transcendent power. And 21% agnostics, about 20% atheists. But the young scientists was the really interesting one. These are 35 and younger scientists. Those scientists, 66%, a supermajority, said they were believers in God or a higher transcendent power. About 15% agnostic, 15% atheist.
And then you look at the physicians, 76%, that's over three quarters of physicians believe in God or a higher transcendent power. Only 12.5% are agnostics and 11.2% are atheists. So you look at that and you go, how can our young people, zooming out the door, believing that most scientists are atheists, believing that there's no evidence for God, life after death, or Jesus, believing that faith and science are in conflict? Well, all these scientists, and especially the young scientists, are moving toward God. And finally, I decided, in conjunction with some partners, Timothy Bush and a variety of other people, start the Maja center to address this specifically. And that's what we did. I came down to the Majus center. I came down here to Orange county and worked on this problem through the Majus center since 2009. So anyway, we've been all this time preparing high school curricula. We do this through Sophia so we're going to have. We have a. A middle school curriculum, a middle school program. We also have a high school program for senior year elective in this area of the catholic faith and science. Sophia is currently now integrating our program, all of our material with their curriculum for fifth through 11th grades. So in fifth through 11th grades, all the kids will be taking every year of the evidence of Goddess, the life after death, you know, Jesus, etcetera, to, you know, age appropriate, answering questions that. Common questions that they have. So, you know, I just decided not just to make the high school stuff, we wanted to put this into parish programs. And we have a parish program now. You know, mostly it gets implemented in men's groups. We're now doing a faith and science retreat, a weekend retreat for young people that could be integrated into confirmation classes and into youth ministries. And if you go to majicenter.com comma magis center.com, you can actually take a look at this. We also have plenty of free material on that website. If anybody wants to download those essential modules and show them to their young people, that would be great. We also have scholarly articles there free of charge. And of course, I've written 18 books, so, you know, that you'd have to pay for. But there's plenty of articles free of charge, lots of videos on this material free of charge on majestenter.com dot.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm glad that you did that overview because I want people who aren't familiar with it to understand what's going on with it. And a lot of the help it's doing of really helping, particularly young people understand that there is not a conflict between true science and true faith. And I think that's the key here. So we've talked about that on this podcast a few times. So now I want to really now focus so more on this book you've written, this most recent book, the four Levels of happiness. And I said at the beginning, I think most people understand that we live in a profoundly unhappy time. Meaning if you go beyond the surface of maybe instagram, most people realize that most people are just unhappy. And so why do you think that is, father, that so many people today seem to be unhappy?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just going to go right to that statistica survey that I think just came out about a week ago that said Americans are more pessimistic than ever before about life and their future, the country, etcetera. If you look at that, I mean, if you want statistical evidence, there it is. And then we have known that there have been two major surveys that have been done by professional psychiatric associations showing that over the last ten years, major depressive disorder. This is among our young people that would be between 15 to 25 years of age. In just ten years, the major depressive disorder has doubled. So it went up from 8% ten years ago to 16% today. And then on top of that, we can see that the depression, the anxiety and depression rate for the overall population has doubled in the last ten years. Suicides and suicidal contemplation has doubled over the last twelve years. So among the same population of young people. But this also extends over into young adults. They don't have as high a rate increase in substance abuse, suicide, suicidal contemplation, anxiety and depression, the 15 to 25 year olds, but they do also have a significant increase. So the millennials are not going to escape the fate of the Gen zs. So for all intents and purposes, statistical evidence shows now that we are in a really, really tragic situation, if I can put it that way, because truly, I mean, never before in our history have we even come close to having, like, 30% of our population experiencing significant depression and anxiety. I mean, this is bad. And so we, you know, I mean, even the ethical, you know, belief in objective standards of ethics, or just even in that recent Gallup polls that ask Americans, well, what do you think that your fellow Americans are like morally when you have the majority of Americans saying that most other Americans have poor morals?
I rest my case. There's not going to be any trust in that culture. I mean, we are ready for division. We think that people will exploit us at the drop of the hat. We don't trust them. We don't trust that they have any objective moral standard, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, people have abandoned our young people, our millennials have abandoned religion in unprecedented rates. And at the very same time, the depression, anxiety, suicide, suicidal contemplation, substance abuse, familial tensions, and major depressive disorder have just skyrocketed over a 100% increase in just ten years. So, I mean, a doubling in just ten years. Yeah. You know, the scenario, though, it all makes sense, because there's a very high correlation between religion and happiness, a very high correlation between religion and the absence of depression and anxiety. So a very big study was done by the American Psychiatric association longitudinal study in 2004 by Kanita Dervik and, I think, about seven other people.
But in that study, they compared non religiously affiliated people to religiously affiliated people, non religiously affiliated people, those who the Pew survey would call a nun. None. The nuns actually had much, much higher rates of depression, anxiety. Just what we were talking about, suicide, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, familial tensions, and antisocial aggressivity. I mean, it's like, hey, this is exactly what we're noticing in young people. Young people's religious commitment declines, and then we can see this huge increase in depression, anxiety, and suicides. And at the very same time, we've got this study from the American Psychiatric association that says, hey, you know, non religiously affiliated people have, you know, a doubling of depression, anxiety, suicide, and suicidal contemplation, etcetera. You look at these things and you go, I think I get it. And furthermore, the emotional health in general of non religiously affiliated people is lower, significantly lower than religiously affiliated people. They feel much less emptiness, alienation, loneliness, malaise, and guilt. But more than that, religiously affiliated people have a kind of a. A mooring in the absolute, a hope in an eternal future, a belief that there really is a perfect truth, love, goodness, beauty and home out there, and some intuition that, that God of perfect truth, love, goodness, beauty and home is present to them. You put all these things together, and it translates into significantly lower rates of depression, anxiety, suicides, suicidal contemplation, substance abuse, etcetera. So I just put it right out there. And I have these statistics and the various, the six studies that actually show these correlations of religious people being happier, looking at the decline of religion, and at the very same time, the huge increase in depression, anxiety, suicides. And it's not just that. There's another thing called ego comparative happiness, what I call level two happiness. And with Instagram and social media acts and TikTok, etcetera, with the constant checking of these things and the kind of narcissistic underpinning of these things, how many likes do I have? Do people really appreciate me? Oh, my gosh, this guy doesn't like me. And constant checking, this has really exacerbated the depression levels, and that's why you have so much major depressive disorder increase.
A lot of this is due to what I call very enhanced ego comparative happiness, level two happiness. And it's just pushed at them by, like I said, social media of various times. And so my formula, frankly, in the long run, is we got a first increase the religious commitment. And I don't mean just sitting around in my room going, I'm a spiritual person and I pray and have faith. That won't do it. Religion means belonging and practicing within a religious community.
That's what pushes down the depression, anxiety and suicide statistics. That's what gives this positive sense of being moored in something absolute and perfect, perfectly true, loving and just or good, and at the same time of having a hope in an eternal future, and in a sense of having some kind of an absolute dignity and destiny and fulfillment within one's reach. All of these things, the positive side and the negative side, are actually proven by studies. So I think practicing within a religious community is the first step toward emotional health and getting the, you know, some kind of detachment, at least cutting in half the social media usage, because underlying social media is this level two stuff. Who's achieving more, who's achieving less, who's got more power, who's got less power, who's more intelligent, who's less intelligent, you know, who's more popular, who's less popular, powerful, less powerful, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, these are the questions of level two ego comparative identity people. And if that's all you care about, day and night, and if that's where you think your success is going to happen, this is true. Quality of life is. This is the meaning of your life. Get ready for depression, fear of failure, fear of loss of esteem, anxiety, narcissism, emptiness that comes with narcissism, ego, rage, ego blame, self pity, jealousy, and a variety of other things that make our lives perfectly miserable. Decreased level two ego, comparative happiness, increased level four religious happiness. And I. Eventually, you will not only be happier in this lifetime, I think you will find yourself on a very strong pathway to eternal life as well.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to break down in a minute these different levels, because I think there's a lot. There's a lot there that I think really help us to understand. Because when I was going through the book, I thought the same thing. I was like, okay, understanding this. But before I do that, I just.
I think for some people, maybe not religious people as much, but some people, the fact that we're so unhappy today is almost counterintuitive, because for decades now, we've been given ways to supposedly make us more happy. We have less work to do around the house, for example. We have. Things are easier. We can buy any. We can get almost any type of food we want to at any time, very easily, usually cheaply. We can buy lots of different things. Hobbies or just things for a house, whatever the case may be. There's all these things that are geared towards, at least if you listen to the commercials, making us happy. And so why is it that literally, at a time where we have a million and one things that supposedly make us happy, that we're actually unhappy. It seems like there's an inverse relationship. But why is that?
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Because all the things that Madison Avenue promises will make you happy are not making you happy. And they're not only not making you happy, they're making you more unhappy. They're making you more level two, ego comparative, or more level one, materialistic and pleasure happiness oriented. So, in other words, Madison Avenue serves Madison Avenue. They serve the marketing community. They're there to sell products. That's their deal. And, you know, I mean, that's a legitimate deal. If you want to do that, fine. But I would not go to Madison Avenue to find out what will make you happy, objectively. I mean, first of all, I think if you're a dedicated religious person, you will know what makes you happy ultimately, and even what makes you happier on this earth, namely, your relationship with goddess through your religious community. For me to be the catholic church, now, I would say also, if that's not what convinces you, then I think you really ought to go to the archives of general psychiatry and look at some of the articles and the studies that I have been citing, by the way, in the book there. I have these studies already cited, so you can just look at them in the footnotes there and see the studies for yourself. But I think the studies show conclusively that eco comparative happiness is not going to do it for you. But ego comparative happiness will sell products like Mad for Madison Avenue, and religious happiness will do it for you. Contributive happiness, which is level three happiness, will do it for you. But unfortunately, contributive happiness and faith based happiness is not going to sell a lot of products. So, I mean, it's basically not going to be a great interest in Madison heaven. So my one thought is, hey, who's forming the popular culture out there? Well, yes, there's a lot of academics that have influence, but let's face it, you know, I don't want to blame everything on Madison Avenue. Far from it. I think you've got a lot of people in the digital media world who definitely want to plug eco comparative happiness. Hey, that's what sells Instagram. That's what sells X as it sells TikTok, you know, I mean, no problem. Let's, you know, let's push that form of happiness, religion, religious happiness, even though it is the most fulfilling, both in the present and of course, we believe ultimately and eternally. I mean, that's not going to push Instagram. You know, I mean, there are religious websites, they do get a lot of following, but I mean, and I think they're very important. But the ones that cater to, you know, you're going to look beautiful. More beautiful than other people or the ones that cater to, hey, you know, you're going to be at the right parties with the right people. I mean, I hate to say it, but maybe the pre sent the right people, or maybe, you know, that people who are part of your Bible group are not the right people. I mean, let's face facts, those are not the winners in the culture that's not going to sell Instagram. I mean, there's a lot of ones too, that, hey, you can belong to a mensa society. Just take a few of these courses from us and you will be considered intelligent by all. And there's a lot of them, you know, how to get power and promotion and ten easy. Hey, you know, that's what sells. My one thought is, of course I'm not blaming it on Instagram. I'm not blaming it on Madison Avenue. I just think there is a cultural problem.
And you say, well, what came first, the culture or Madison Avenue and Instagram and social media, etcetera? Well, to be honest with you, it's a chicken and egg deal. Because after World War two, as our technological capacity increased and our material welfare, our GDP increased considerably, you can see that this became of greater and greater interest to the american public. So, you know that that has become a very important dimension of our lives. And as that happened to, as ego comparative and materialistic and pleasure happiness, level one, level two became more popular, you can see that level four, religious happiness, has decreased. Level three, contributive happiness, has decreased slightly. But it's staying kind of, you know, on a good line. And a lot of our younger people do have a very strong sense of contributive happiness. At least they have fear feelings of contributive happiness. And some of them actually get out there and do a lot of service as well. So that one is still intact to some degree. But religious happiness has fallen considerably. At the same time, ego comparative and materialistic pleasure happiness has gone up. So the main thing is, you know, well, did that Stoke Madison Avenue? Absolutely. Imagine everybody takes its cue from what sells. And did that Stoke Instagram? And I mean, Facebook started as definitely an ego comparative deal. I mean, that's what it's all about. I want to show you my life and how successful and what a good guy I am. And I want you to like me, give me a lot of likes, okay. And so forth. And, of course, Instagram. That's. It's life blood is coming from ego comparative happiness. So I would say that our interest since World War two and more materialistic and ego comparative happiness, that has stoked Madison Avenue and the social media groups in a lot of ways to, hey, let's get going. There's profits to be made here. And then, of course, once they do that, why it obviously increases the level of interest in level two eco comparative happiness, and that in turn, increases social media use and medicine Avenue use of Madison Avenue promoted products. And it just goes right around in a vicious, ever increasing, ongoing spiral that just continues to spiral out and grow and grow and grow. So that's.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah, if you have these four. Yeah, so you have these four levels that you call each happiness. The first materialistic thing, you have ego comparative. Then you have the contributive, and then you finally the religious. Would you say then that the fir. You're calling them all happiness? So can the first two, the materialistic. I kind of can think that the materialistic and the ego comparative, there's a level in which that's not unhealthy in the sense that obviously, if you're completely destitute, you have nothing. You're gonna be more. You're actually gonna be more legitimate happy. If you can feed yourself, have some material, you can clothe yourself. Same with ego comparative. There's some level which. It's good to be accepted by people around you, for example. So what's kind of the difference between unhealthy level on those first two levels and a healthy level of happiness?
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Sure. Let me just give both your questions first. Yeah. They are all called happiness in English, but, you know, for, you know, somebody like St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, they had four latin words for it, which we really don't. We just have happiness and happiness. But, you know, happiness one, which is a materialistic pleasure, one that was called lytus laetus. And then, of course, level two, the latin name for ego comparative happiness was felix f e l I xdhdemen, from which we get the word felicity. So there's something there in English. And then Beatus was level three contributive happiness. That's where Jesus is calling beate tuto. It's translated in Latin, right? But it comes from the root Beatus, which is a contributive happiness. And then sublimitas. Right? That's the, like, joy or gaude or sublime to would be level four happiness. Now, the problem is, in English, you got happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness which, of course, is going to lead to a world of confusion, not certainly for just for our young people, but for our adults. So then, getting to your second question, what about the unhealthy parts of it? Absolutely. I mean, God created us with these desires, and happiness is essentially the fulfillment of a desire, right? So, you know, we have desires for material well being and for pleasure, like pleasure that can be taken from a good wine or a bowl of linguine or a steak or, you know, feeling german engineering in my car. So do you need some degree of that? Of course we do. If we didn't have that sense, we wouldn't eat, we wouldn't seek shelter. Shelter. We wouldn't work and exert effort in order to, you know, build a home and to shelter our families. So we need these desires. But the point is, is, well, once, you know, the old thing my mom used to say, well, are you eating to live or are you living to eat? You know, and, you know, and I'd always have to say, every once in a while, maybe I'm living to eat. You know, when you get to the living to eat stage, that would be unhealthy. So what we, in order to distinguish, just think of it this way.
If you are just want a modicum of level one happiness, material and pleasure happiness in order to, you know, sustain yourself, to have, you know, so you're not suffering from wind and cold. You're comfortable, your family's comfortable, and you have the capacity to advance yourself in life, that's good. But if you're living through material happiness, so you have the best car in the whole neighborhood, the best car in Orange county or whatever it is, if that's what you're living for, if you're living for a great bottle of wine, etcetera, as an end in itself, then that is a very unhealthy form of level one happiness. It can never bring you the absolute. It can never bring you ultimate fulfillment in life. God didn't create you for that. Secondly, ego comparative happiness, of course we need ego comparative happiness. We have to compare ourselves to others. We have to make sure that we're doing a competent job, that we are competitive on the job, that we're competitive enough not to. To run in fear from our, those who want to compete with us, right? That we are willing to exert the effort, the courage, the fortitude to not only be competitive, but excellent. And that's a very good thing.
But when you start living for level two happiness, ego comparative happiness, who's achieving more, who's achieving less? I'm living for this as an end in itself. I'm achieving more than all you bums. And that's what makes me happy. If that's what we're doing, then we're in trouble. Because just on the other side of that is emptiness, alienation, loneliness, fear of failure, fear of loss of esteem, inferiority, superiority, jealousy, depression, anxiety, ego, rage, ego, blame, contempt of others, etcetera. In other words, you're going to get a ton of payback material. And I give this talk, by the way, to people who are in 7th and 8th grade, not just people who are in high school or college or in professional lives. When I give this talk, those kids recognize right away, oh, that's me. I'm the guy who's doing all these things. And maybe I am living for being the highest achiever or the most status, or the most popularity, or the most recognition, or the most power, etcetera, etcetera. Maybe I am living to be the recognized winner instead of the recognized loser. So they can see the depression, anxiety and fear and all that in the wake of, you know, just making level two and in itself. So there is a healthy level? Absolutely. But there's a very unhealthy level. Now, level three, too, you think will contribute to.
There must be a healthy and an unhealthy level there, too. And there is, as a matter of fact. So for, you know, contribution to others, I mean, I can tell you right now, when I'm making an optimal positive contribution, or trying to make an optimal positive contribution to my family or to my friends or to my parishioners or to the community around me, you know, maybe to a community organization or to my church or to the kingdom of God or to, well, if I'm so lucky, the society or the culture, etcetera, if I'm trying to make an optimal positive difference, man, when I'm having a good influence and I'm doing something good for somebody, and, you know, somebody says, gosh, you've just made my life better, thank you so much for, you know, exerting yourself. You didn't have to, and you did. And my life is so much better because of it. You took the time to write this note or to do this thing or to help me out when I really was in need. Whatever the case is, you can get hooked on it. And of course, you can get so hooked on it, you can start again thinking that this is ultimate happiness, that there is nothing else but really trying to be good for other people. To other people. But as Aristotle said a long time ago, and of course, this certainly holds in the catholic and christian traditions, right? You can certainly see you are an ultimatizer. Plato said, deep within us, all of us, for these transcendentals, we don't want just some truth. We want perfect truth, a complete set of correct answers to the complete set of questions. I have these nieces, you know, that when they were little kids, you know, they just walk up to me and go, Uncle Bobby, why is this? I say, well, because of this, but why is that? Well, because of that, but why is that? And finally you have to go time out because you're in the deepest modes of quantum theory. I mean, you know, they're just, they're like, you know, they're going to keep going because they really do want to know. And they've got this instinct that you haven't given them everything yet, that there has to be another answer beyond what you have said and so forth. And again, my little nieces, you know, they could, you know, sit on my lap when they were kids and they would look into your eyes. Oh, they would look to see if your love was authentic, that you really love them. And you go, well, nobody taught those kids how to figure out when your love is kind of authentic or when you're just sort of going through the motions. But they know, it's almost like they got this 6th sense. They want perfect love. They don't want just some love. And the same thing. You remember, you probably have kids, you know, and, you know, they're ten years old, and they figure out, hey, dad just did something that wasn't perfectly fair. And you remember how the reaction is right with the lower lip extended? That's not fair. As if the entire, you know, world is coming to an end, you know, at this moment. Well, they do experience it that way. There's something in them that expects this kind of perfect fairness, not just perfect truth and love. They want perfect fairness and they want a perfect home, too. They really do. They know that this is not, you know, you know, the perfect home. There's something about this world where they don't fit in, where they're out of kilter, where there is darkness out there. I mean, every kid, you don't have to tell every, any kid, there's a bogeyman out there. It's just implacably within their subconscious mind. They know there's evil. Even there's a principle of personalized evil out there. They may call it different names and different cultures, but Boogeyman is ours. And you can pretty much say, that guy is evil. He's got the vapid look in his eyes, and he means you no good. Of course, parents will say, now, now, you know, there's no boogeyman under your bed. I just checked your fine, you know, everything else. But where did they get that from? Certainly not from their parents, right? There's something inside them that has a sense that there is something, but they also have a sense of God. They have a sense that there's something good out there beyond themselves and so forth. My point is, of course, we definitely are born into the world, as Aristotle would say, with the desire for perfect truth, love, goodness, beauty and home. We're born into the world with a sense that we're caught up in some kind of cosmic struggle between cosmic good and cosmic evil. Right? In other words, that there's some higher powers of good and evil out there, and we're caught up in this. And the vast majority of kids who are not sociopathic, you know, will basically say, well, you know, I want to be a hero. I want to be on the side of perfect good, and I don't want to be on the side of, you know, this spiritual evil and so forth and so on. So we're born into the world with that. But even if, you know, Rudolph Otto and his group are correct in that great classic, the idea of the holy in there, he talks about the numinous experience that we really do have a sense of a mysterious and fascinating creator kind of energizing, inviting, but awesomely beyond us being that's interiorly present to us. All of us do. And we call that being the sacred. And we tend toward the sacred. We know that the sacred is good. And that's why St. Augustine, in his, one of his most brilliant, and he has many brilliant turns of phrases, this is one of the most brilliant terms of phrases is he says, for thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. And so in a way, what we're dealing with here is, you know, Augustine's recognition that we'll never be happy without perfect truth, love, goodness, beauty at home. We'll never be happy without, in a sense, being vouchsafed with, you know, what I would call a cosmically spiritual good and protected against cosmically spiritual evil. We're never going to be happy unless we're somehow in relationship with this numinous experience that's within our consciousness that's present to us, fascinating us, drawing us to itself, drawing us to worship, drawing us not just to fascination, but to devotion toward it as it is, you know, the holy other, as Rudolph Otto would call it, w h o l l y, you know. And so at the end of the day, what we can, you know, say is, yeah, that's, you know, how we were built. We were ultimatizers. Like I said, the pagans, Plato and Aristotle, they recognize it just as much as any jew or Christian recognized it. So, you know, for all intents and purposes, you know, you don't have to be religious. And what, you know, Thomas Kleinus, in all sagacity said, you know, was, hey, you can ignore this thing. You can ignore God within your conscious and subconscious mind. You can ignore him. He's there. If you do ignore him, you'll be emptier, you'll be more alienated. You'll be loneliereghe. You'll be guilt here, and you'll be filled with malaise. That's what's going to happen to you. And if the American Psychiatric association are measuring it, and they have, then you'll be more depressed and anxious. You'll have more familial tension, more substance abuse and more antisocial aggressivity, more suicides and more suicidal contemplation. Great. So, you know, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, you can ignore or you can say, yes, I want to be part of this bigger, cosmic, mysterious, holy other. And that's why we are all instinctively religious people. I mean, why was it that up to 100 years ago, almost 100% of us were religious?
More like 250 years ago, and we got, of course, the enlightenment and all that stuff we kind of cast away. But still to this day, 84% of the world is still religiously oriented because each and every one of us has the numinous within us, the call of the transcendent within us. All of us, whether we live in India or Antarctica or here in the United States, all of us have this sense of the mysterious and the sacred as opposed to the profane. All of us have within us the sense that there's cosmic evil and cosmic good out there, that there's something of immense, you know, a battle struggle between these two good and evil dimensions out there. And that, you know, need to belong to the side of cosmic good versus cosmic evil, etcetera. Now, of course, you know, as Aquinas would say, you could ignore it if you want to, but you're never going to get away with it. I mean, your emotional health is going to decline. Your spiritual health will certainly decline. Your relational health will ultimately decline when your emotional health declines. And of course that's going to affect your marriages and family and everything else. So, you know, I just think, yeah, for God has made us for himself and our hearts are going to be unhappy, restless until they rest.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: I want to get practical here. I think we'll probably wrap it up with this question because I think this is the one that most people want to know, is I think most people listen to this podcast and a lot of just most religious people, they say, yeah, you're right, father, I agree with you. I acknowledge that true happiness comes from faith in God, being a religious community.
But I tell you what, it ain't easy because I get pulled into the egocentric happy happiness, I get pulled into the materialistic happiness and I feel like I can't. Also, I find I'm very unhappy, even though I do believe in God. I do. Even I, even I go to mass each week or whatever, but I just, it's just hard and, and I feel very unhappy. Anyway, so what is some practical advice for those of us who acknowledge what you're saying in theory is right, but yet we're have such difficulty practicing it in real life.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Let me break it up into two answers. First, for those who don't have faith, I spent the majority of time in chapters eleven and twelve giving the scientific evidence for God, life after death, from peer reviewed medical studies of near death experiences and terminacinity, etcetera, looking at the evidence for God from contemporary cosmology, fine tuning of universal constants, looking at the evidence for God too from a variety of other scientific sources, and of course presenting those statistics on the scientists. There's a lot of good reasons for it. But I spend eleven and twelve there because I think a lot of people say I just can't get to level four. And if I don't have enough objective evidence, even contemporary scientific evidence, regardless, I'm not buying it. So that could be the cause of the unhappiness because they just can't get there. So I did spend chapters eleven and twelve giving that evidence specifically so that they could get intellectual conversion is what it's called. And once they can get to intellectual conversion, they can then move to spiritual and moral conversion. But in order to answer your question, like I said, it's not enough to be spiritual in your room. If you're going to first of all be happy, you're going to have to make a move to start practicing, you know, a religion and to practice prayer, personal prayer in your own life. Now, let me just say, make a quick distinction here. There is what we call a generalized unhappiness. So the free floating anxiety and the continuous depression and anxiety, and also the, you know, the kind of more general malaise.
That is what I'm talking about. In other words, if you want to get relief from, I mean, religious people just feel much less emptiness, you know, ontological and existential emptiness, right? Then non religious people, they just do. And they feel much less, you know, what I'm going to call alienation, existential alienation, where I basically feel not at home. I feel out of sorts, out of kilter, with the cosmos around me, sort of feeling the non religious people, I mean, than religious people do, they just feel more of it. And so there's a lot of generalized anxieties. I call them emptiness, alienation, loneliness, malaise and guilt. There's just no question religious people feel much less of that. Secondly, religious people feel more secure in their overall identity, moment to moment. So they feel like at least there's God, even though they're situationally unhappy, which I'm going to talk about as different from generalized unhappiness. Even though they may be situationally unhappy because of various stresses at work or stresses in the family, etcetera, etcetera. Even there they feel more secure. They feel that there is a solution, that God is somehow there present. Sometimes if you have great faith, you feel that everything is going to be alright, even though the situation seems rather bleak, etcetera, etcetera. So there is much less of that generalized unhappiness for religiously oriented people. Now, of course, religious and non religious people have the same amount of situational unhappiness. You know, there's going to be some problem at work. This is going to cause situational unhappiness. Let's just call that a situational cross. Right? And religious people have them, not religious people have. There's going to be situational problems in the family. Now, it is true that religious, you know, marriages are stronger, right? Religion is the second most predictable quality or characteristic guaranteeing satisfaction and longevity in marriage. The only one that religion is less than very slightly, is the commitment at the very beginning of the marriage to make this a lifetime proposal, and the desire to continue that lifetime commitment, you know, throughout one's life. So if there's a real commitment there at the beginning, you combine that with religion, you're likely to have a good marriage, a longer marriage, are going to have fights in marriage. Yes. You're going to have fights in America, but you're going to have, at the end of the day, you're going to have a basis where God is present or your religion is present, or there's something, you know, if your prayer life is there, a desire to forgive, a desire to find, you know, a place where things can be worked out, etcetera. No question, religion is extremely important there. So again, a religious person, you know, will have that stronger family, as well as that strength and relationship with God, the relationship to the sacred rather than the profane. So what can you do to make your religion and family come to the fore when these moments of the cross, these situational unhappinesses, occur? I mean, the first thing, of course, is if you've got a regular prayer life going on, my thing would be to encourage family prayer. The second thing is I would definitely.
I've got a group of spontaneous prayers that I have mentioned. I believe it's in chapter 14 of the book. Just look at those ten spontaneous prayers that are prayers when we really need help. Some situational suffering has come up, and I've got those prayers kind of listed there. They're very easy to remember. Help, Lord, make good. Come out of whatever harm I might have caused. Lord, make some good. Come out of this terrible situation for me, my family, for the church, for the kingdom of God. Make some good. Maximum. Come out of this suffering, Lord. I offer this up for the parcels or for my family or for this guy I know who's suffering. Again, Lord, I give up. You take care of it. Or just my prayer. When you start feeling that depression foreboding, Lord, just push back the depression foreboding in the darkness. Just push it back. So all these things, basically, those spontaneous prayers are very, very helpful. But communication with your family, or in my case, communication with the people around me or my religious order, right, this, you know, that open communication, talking about what's going on, talking about needs, bringing God into the family and bringing God into the problems that we are meeting together with our family and our friends. Those are real good habits that I talk about there in the book. And, you know, again, I think there's a lot of other things we can do religiously that I do recommend in chapters 14 through 17. So, anyway, that's in a nutshell, what we can do to make use of our strong family, make use of our strong religious basis, and make use of the communication skills that we get from those relationships. And then when utilizing it, allow ourselves to really, you know, when we get to the situational process. We can rise above it through our faith. I have a whole book on this called, you know, the light shines on and the darkness transforming suffering through faith. But that's a matter for a different time.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: This has been great. I really do appreciate this because I do think this is something that most people generally feel like at different times, a certain feeling of unhappiness, and they don't really recognize what's going on. So I think this is very good to kind of break it down, because I think now when, like, for me, I'll give. I just give my own self as an example, when I feel like, okay, I've got. I've been on social media too long. I've been on. I've been on x too long. And I do feel an anxiety that's kind of almost like a base level anxiety there. It's good to be like, okay, oh, this is my egocentric whatever, you know, happiness that has gotten out of kilter. So I need to adjust that. And I think everybody has their own things, and I know, you know, whatever they might be, but I know that's one for me. So I think this is a very good and helpful and productive practical conversation.
[00:53:11] Speaker B: So I do really, teachers could benefit from it and parents, just to digest this material in this book, right. The four levels of happiness, you know, your path to personal flourishing as Sophia Press. Just get that book. Read it. Don't read it to your kids. Digest it for yourself and sort of give it to your kids or to your students. If you're a teacher or something, I am telling you, it will make a difference to them. I use this all the time in classrooms. It really is the fundamental difference. You can change a student's life and have them change their lives for themselves by just giving them a digestive form of this book. It would really make a difference for them.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: I agree. I agree. Yeah. I think it's a great point of parents getting this, reading this not only to help themselves, but to help their children as they go through, especially to get to teen years and things like that and understand that. Well, thank you, father. I appreciate your time. This has been great. And I'll put up links to make sure you get to book the magic center so people can check out all the stuff that you're doing.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: All right. Hey, thanks so much. It's been great being with you, Eric. And as I say, I'll talk to you later.
[00:54:22] Speaker A: That's right. Until next time, everybody. God love.
We live in a fundamentally unhappy time. Modern life and modern culture have led many to be profoundly unhappy and to seek happiness in many directions. How do we truly find happiness?
