Apocalypse No

May 21 has come and gone, and we're still here. Apparently Harold Camping misinterpreted something in the Bible. Imagine that -- somebody misinterpreted the Bible.

Anyway, since the dis-confirmation of his doomsday prediction, Camping has gone missing, deserting his followers. This very predictable situation leaves reporters asking, "What will Camping's faithful believers do now?" But we can make some pretty good guesses based on history and social psychology.

A few days ago I started reading When Prophecy Fails by psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. The book serves as a sort of field test of Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. In 1954, when the book was first published, cognitive dissonance was a brilliant new theory of human behavior. Now, it has pretty much propagated its way into our pop culture. However, even after 57 years, the book remains a relevant and entertaining study.

From the start, Festinger explains that two beliefs are dissonant with each other if they do not fit together or are inconsistent. Dissonance produces discomfort, and a person experiencing such discomfort may do a few things to alleviate it: change one or more beliefs, acquire new knowledge or beliefs that will increase consonance, or reduce the importance of the information that produces the dissonance.

The failure of Camping's prediction likely creates such dissonance in his followers. If the prophecy wasn't true, how can they believe the rest of the ideology? And what about all the preparations like spending life savings, quitting jobs or abandoning all possessions? If the prophecy was a big part of their lives, then the dissonance will be strong.

A non-believer assumes the followers will discard the belief, but this is not always true. Instead what we'll likely see is a common pattern where the believers recover their convictions and resume proselyting with new enthusiasm. USA Today reports that "Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith." It doesn't sound like they're giving up on anything.

I have yet to finish reading When Prophecy Fails, but their study involves a slightly different breed of doomsday zealots: a small group with a sci-fi belief system centered around a woman who channels messages from aliens. It's entertaining so far, but -- spoiler alert -- I heard that the world doesn't come to an end.

Kafkaesque

Apparently being exposed to things that don't make sense enhances our "cognitive mechanisms."

This recent research comes from psychologists at the University of California in Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia. Test subjects who were asked to read A Country Doctor, a surreal short story by Franz Kafka, performed better on grammar learning tasks than test subjects who read a bowdlerized version of the story.

The story, by the way, is about a doctor who desperately needs to get to a dying boy, and is carried away by magic horses to a house where he is stripped naked and put in bed with the patient, but then the doctor escapes through a window in order to save his servant girl who is being molested by a man they found in the pig pen.

And only now did I remember Rose again; what was I to do, how could I rescue her, how could I pull her away from under that groom at ten miles' distance, with a team of horses I couldn't control. These horses, now, they had somehow slipped the reins loose, pushed the windows open from outside, I did not know how; each of them had stuck a head in at a window and, quite unmoved by the startled cries of the family, stood eyeing the patient.

Damn, if that's not a metaphor for the Baucus Bill and its 500 amendments!

That's what the Baucus Bill has become -- a punchline. Max Baucus is, of course, the Democratic Senator from Montana and current chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Finance. That's where our so-called health care reform is coming from.

A few months ago I didn't know who Baucus was, but now I've come to see him as a corporate-entrenched legislator with some seriously glaring conflicts of interest. He received $3 million from insurance and healthcare lobbyists between 2003 and 2008. I guess it's only appropriate he gives something back to his true supporters.

This "gift" straight to the insurance companies is in the form of the "individual insurance mandate" which will cost some families as much as 13% of their income. Ironically, one major reason for reform is to save families from medical bankruptcy...

And now that Baucus has lost the support of many Democrats, and Republicans weren't going to support a reform bill anyway, I guess you can say the legislation really is bipartisan. Everybody hates it.

Look, the cost of health insurance is out of control, and the only way we can have meaningful reform is with an affordable public option. I think people are finally coming to support this basic idea. Healthcare doesn't have to be bizarre and illogical. It doesn't have to be Kafkaesque.

Shockingly, even Bill O'Reilly supports the public option now.

Happiest Places on Earth

Where do people feel the most positive about their lives?

1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Netherlands
4. Sweden
5. Ireland
6. Canada
7. Switzerland
8. New Zealand
9. Norway
10. Belgium

The United States ranked number 11 -- behind all those other countries with their socialism and health-care. Yeah, somehow I imagine we Americans would be happier if we didn't fear that a chronic disease or tragic accident could bankrupt our families.

The happiness report was released by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. They used data from a Gallup World Poll conducted in 140 countries around the world last year. Some of the questions asked: Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesterday? Did you learn something yesterday? Were you treated with respect yesterday?

I wonder how many people answered with "go to hell."

But apparently this positive psychology research is a big deal. It is a recent branch of psychology that "studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive." Like in New York for example:

Although many economists agree that money doesn’t make people happy, disparities in income make people miserable, according to most happiness literature. Happiness, in other words, “is less a function of absolute income than of comparative income,” as Gilbert puts it. “Now, if you live in Hallelujah, Arkansas,” he continues, “the odds are good that most of the people you know do something like you do and earn something like you earn and live in houses something like yours. New York, on the other hand, is the most varied, most heterogeneous place on earth. No matter how hard you try, you really can’t avoid walking by restaurants where people drop your monthly rent on a bottle of wine and store windows where shoes sit like museum pieces on gold pedestals. You can’t help but feel trumped. As it were.”

So here is another list. These 10 things are scientifically proven to make you happy:

1. Savor Everyday Moments
2. Avoid Comparisons
3. Put Money Low on the List
4. Have Meaningful Goals
5. Take Initiative at Work
6. Make Friends, Treasure Family
7. Smile Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
8. Say Thank You Like You Mean It
9. Get Out and Exercise
10. Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Of course, the skeptic in me says nothing is ever as simple as a 10 point list. Also, they left out hugs.