Perhaps no one is more pleased to see the Dow Jones average dancing around the 10,000-point barrier than John Templeton, the 80-something investing genius who made most of his fortune on Wall Street back when the health of the New York Stock Exchange was measured in three-digit numbers.
But even though Templeton is encouraged about America's increasing economic wealth, he is discouraged about America's decreasing psychological health.Or at least troubled by the fact that America is experiencing what University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman calls an "epidemic" of clinical depression.
That America is in the throes of a Great (Clinical) Depression seems odd to the ever-optimistic Templeton. Indeed, in his new book, "Is Progress Speeding Up? Our Multiplying Multitudes of Blessings," Templeton points out that "people today are better fed, better clothed, better housed, and better educated than at any previous time in history."
Templeton argues that in nearly every material domain -- including working conditions, food production, housing standards, health-care quality, life expectancy, environmental safety, computer technology -- the rate of progress is accelerating. In other words, things aren't just getting better, they are getting better and better at a faster and faster rate.
When researchers at the National Institute for Mental Health began tracing the lifetime prevalence of depression about 20 years ago, they expected Americans who had lived through the Great (Economic) Depression and World War II to have the highest rates.
But NIMH found just the opposite to be true. Among women born around the time of World War I, only 1 percent had experienced serious depression at some point in their lives. For those born around the time of World War II, the figure was 3 percent. Among those born around the time of the Korean War, 7 percent. For those born during the Vietnam era, 10 percent. And among those born in the post-Vietnam era, between 12 percent and 15 percent had a serious episode of depression by the end of high school.
Templeton believes some of the blame for this growth in gloomy thinking lies with the mass media and its tendency to focus more on problems than on progress.
"There is no denying that ills exist," Templeton says but adds that in their zeal to cover pain and conflict, the news media often miss the larger story of unprecedented human progress.
As is the opportunity to read or see or hear advertising messages that encourage people to focus on what they "have not" instead of what they "have." This is significant because Seligman, the psychologist, says "hopelessness is a disorder of the eye" to which the psychological profession has also contributed by being "preoccupied with the negative side of life."
Now, neither Templeton nor Seligman is suggesting a simplistic Pollyanna-like perspective on life. But Templeton believes that in view of our "multiplying multitudes of blessings," we should see the proverbial glass as (at least) half-full rather than half-empty. And he believes that Americans need to be reminded that "true happiness comes from spiritual rather than material wealth."
This last point is important. For it could be that one of the main reasons we are witnessing a Great (Clinical) Depression in the midst of unprecedented peace and prosperity is because many Americans are gaining the whole world, but losing their soul.
This essay by William R. Mattox Jr. is adapted from an article in The Heritage Foundation's magazine Policy Review.