Forget Iceland!-

I'd still like to visit Reykjavik, but I'm retiring to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth... Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4... Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country... Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad... Nick Kristof


Trouble is, we're all up against a deep ancestral tendency to "coalitional" conflict, especially us guys. But Andy Thomson agrees: education is our only hope:
 

 
I'm ready to get back to school!
 
And then, eventually, to Costa Rica.
 
In our dreams.

Philosophy, children, nature

Times notes. The fantasy play of young children is obviously fun for its own sake, but (as noted by Anthony Gottlieb in his review of Alison Gopnik's The Philosophical Baby) it's also instrumental in their growth. So maybe it is sometimes too late to have a happy childhood.

"Playful immersion in freely conjured hypothetical worlds is what teaches us how to make sense of the real one... small children’s grasp of “counterfactual” situations enables them to calculate the probabilities of alternative courses of action.. invisible friends... seem to help youngsters learn how to interpret the actions of others."

I'm pleased to note that Gopnik backs up a point I tried to press upon a Montessori instructor a few years ago who insisted that anything like a moral sense is developmentally absent not only in very young children but in teens as well, as a matter of biological necessity. It's "heartening news for optimists about the human race... that children are naturally empathetic from birth and tend to exhibit altruism (though fitfully) from the age of 1." I've seen it myself.

Gottlieb is less enthusiastic about Gopnik's overall confidence in the philosophical relevance of childhood, and her speculation that its traditional neglect has been due to the patriarchal history of the discipline. "The notion that children's minds have much to tell us about the meaning of life seems rather a fond exaggeration." Maybe, but I'm fond of it too. I'll read the book and report back.

Also in today's Times, Nicholas Kristof has sound advice for us all (and especially for the sedentary young) who suffer from nature deficit disorder. Take a hike, travel light, don't fret about bears. He offers "more backpacking advice on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground."

Opening minds

A conscientious young liberal of my acquaintance, a "rising 9th-grader," told me yesterday that he makes a point of listening periodically to local talk radio troglodyte Phil Valentine. Exposing himself to narrow and intolerant thinking (if you want to call it that) will better inform his own burgeoning progressivism and balance his own perspective, he supposes.

According to Jonathan Haidt (as related by Nicholas Kristof), that's a well-intentioned but unpromising strategy. Listening to Limbaugh and other shouting ideologues, on whichever end of the spectrum, does not create sympathy for their views in those not predisposed to sympathize.

A study by Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania found that when people saw tight television shots of blowhards with whom they disagreed, they felt that the other side was even less legitimate than before... we often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality...

“Minds are very hard things to open, and the best way to open the mind is through the heart,” Professor Haidt says. “Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”

So what should my young friend do to expand his openness to those with a different point of view? Don't tune in to the loudmouths. Take a quiet conservative to lunch.