Doctor Mike

There's sort of a climate problem and there's a weather problem.

I don't mean that literally.

The climate problem is that the climate of happiness comes from what I just talked about, you know, faith or philosophy, family, friendship, and work.

And all four of those things have been getting more and more dysfunctional in the minds of ordinary Americans.

They're less and less likely to practice a religion or even have a coherent sense of their life philosophy.

They're less and less likely to get married and have kids.

They're less and less likely to have people who know them well, especially in the era of social media, where that's crowding out in-person relationships.

And they're less likely to say that their work is a source of meaning.

So that's the climate of happiness.

That sort of ticks us down by a half a percentage point a year.

And the percentage who say, I'm very happy about my life.

Then the weather problems.

There's three big weather systems that have come through, especially since the beginning of the 21st century.

The first is when everybody started looking at little screens and got apps on their phone.

that greatly attenuated relationships.

And it changed, I mean, I have a new book coming out, this book coming out coming in March called The Meaning of Your Life that talks about hemispheric lateralization.

And that just simply means the two sides of the brain do slightly different things.

The big theory, the big new cutting edge theory in neuroscience these days is that the right side of the brain is mystery and meaning, the why questions of life.

The left hemisphere of the brain is more how to and what, which is the technical things in life, the task part of life.

What the screens are doing is pushing us into the left hemisphere of our brain and slamming the door shut to the right side of our brain so that we don't know the meaning of our lives.