What We Can Learn About Happiness from Babies | Alison Gopnik
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2022
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Alison Gopnik is a psychologist at UC Berkeley and one of the world's leading experts in cognitive development. She is also the author of several books, including The Philosophical Baby and The Gardener and the Carpenter. This episode with Dr. Gopnik explores two big and fascinating themes.
The first is enlightened self-interest. We all want to be happy. Every sentient being has that in common. One of the most successful, although counterintuitive, strategies for getting happier is to get out of your own head and help other people. Alison argues that caring is a skill that we can all develop, and there are ways to scale it so that we can improve our entire society.
The second, and related theme, explores what we can all learn about happiness from babies. In this episode Alison discusses: the "learning trap" common to adults that four-year-olds can help us avoid; the potential role of meditation in helping us see the world and solve problems more like children; the difference between our spotlight attention and children's lantern consciousness; the strategy of solving problems by not trying to solve problems; and her critique of our modern conception of parenting, and what she thinks should replace it.
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/alison-gopnik-414
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. |
| 0:06.3 | I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:07.9 | Hey, we've got two big and fascinating themes we're going to explore on the show today. |
| 0:15.6 | The first is Enlightened Self-Intress, one of my favorite subjects. |
| 0:20.4 | We all want to be happy every sentient being has that in common. |
| 0:24.9 | It turns out that one of the most successful, although a little bit counterintuitive strategies |
| 0:29.0 | for getting happier is to get out of your own head and help other people. |
| 0:34.2 | My guest today argues that caring is a skill that all of us can develop, and further there |
| 0:40.0 | are ways she argues to scale caring so that we can improve our entire society. |
| 0:46.9 | Long before I met her, years before I met her for this interview, I actually heard Allison |
| 0:51.6 | Gopnik drop a wisdom bomb on another podcast, one hosted by previous guests on this show |
| 0:59.2 | Ezra Climb. |
| 1:00.9 | In the course of that interview with Ezra, Allison Gopnik said the following, and I'm |
| 1:05.2 | quoting here, we don't care because we love, we love because we care. |
| 1:12.0 | In other words, it is the act of providing care, the labor of love to be a little cute, |
| 1:18.0 | that produces the love. |
| 1:20.0 | I have seen this play out in my own life repeatedly and powerfully. |
| 1:24.4 | For example, when we had our first and only child seven years ago, my wife and I, that |
| 1:29.0 | relationship caring for that screaming and pooping little beast produced a lot of love. |
| 1:36.1 | Or when my wife went through breast cancer, which ended up improving our relationship, |
| 1:40.0 | immeasurably although it was horrible in many ways too. |
| 1:44.2 | Or more recently when my aging parents, as I've gone through a complete kind of role |
... |
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