In her textbook Development Through the Lifespan, 4th ed. (2007), psychologist Laura Berk describes several factors associated with well-being in middle adulthood. She cites good health, sense of control over life events, commitment to meaningful goals, positive social relationships, a good marriage, and successful mastery of multiple roles. Middle-aged adults who have most or all of these characteristics are likely to report that they are satisfied with life—in other words, they are likely to be happy.
What about those who have reached middle adulthood with few or none of these characteristics, though? I thought of Berk’s list when I recently read a Newsweek article about Tang Yongming, the Chinese man who during the Olympics killed American Todd Bachman at Beijing’s Drum Tower, and then leapt to his death. The article, written by Melinda Lui and published in the November 24, 2008 Newsweek, can be found online here. Tang was 47 years old, and so grew up during the Cultural Revolution of the late 60s and early 70s, reaching adulthood soon after the start of the economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping. During Tang’s life, China was transformed from a centrally controlled economy to today’s competitive capitalism. He didn’t adapt well to the changes, and they seem to have eventually been his undoing.
In the early ’80s, Tang was a skilled machine-tool operator at the Hangzhou Meter Factory, a government-owned business that produced machine gauges. The factory not only provided an income, but also housing, medical care, and a pension. Tang
Drum Tower, Beijing
married a co-worker, and the couple had a son in 1987 (but there were no more children because of China’s one-child policy). Life was good. In 1999, the government sold the company to entepreneurs, and the new owners promised to maintain wages and benefits. However, after a few years, the owners started eliminating unprofitable segments of the business and reneged on their promises to workers. Tang’s wife was laid off. He was reassigned to be a guard at the factory gate. He accepted early retirement in 2003, getting in exchange a cash buyout and ownership of his apartment.
Tang’s life deteriorated rapidly from then on. He and his wife began arguing, and divorced in 2005. He married again in 2006, but the marriage failed after less than two months. Tang started his money on Wenjun, his now-adult son, selling his apartment to meet his son’s constantly escalating requests. His savings were soon gone, and he was living in a single room, without enough money to feed himself. Others tried to help him get work, but he resisted. A neighbor suggests that his had to do with loss of status: “Tang didn’t want to lose face by doing menial work.” He left the area for a time, possibly because it would be less humiliating to work as a laborer in a place where no one knew him. Unfortunately, he happened to go to Sichuan, which was devastated by an earthquake on May 12. He returned to his hometown of Hangzhuo breifly, then left again on August 1, saying he was going to look for work. He stabbed Todd Bachman and committed suicide eight days later.
Tang lacked all of the factors that Berk associates with personal satisfaction in midlife (with the possible exception of good health). He had no control over key events, he doesn’t seem to have had any meaningful goals (at least not ones that could be realized), he had few social relationships, he wasn’t married, and toward the end he seems to have not been successful in any social role.
In describing the vast social changes that occurred in Tang’s lifetime, Lui states, “three decades of reforms have shredded China’s safety net and transformed society beyond recognition.” Life involves adaptation, and, the more society changes, the more the adaptation required. Lui suggests that Tang’s misery was unexceptional. She cites a community worker who called him “ordinary,” and notes: “The troubles that destroyed Tang—the loss of his job, the collapse of his marriage, heartbreak over his wastrel only child—are all too common across China.” Maybe rapidly evolving societies will always have substantial numbers of people who can’t adjust to change and become psychological casualties. Perhaps this would be the case even if the changes that take place benefit most members of society. This idea was popularized by Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, published in 1970. Toffler predicted that many people would be unable to keep pace with ever-accelerating technological innovation, and proposed that society establish mechanisms to rein in uncontrolled change. An article critically analyzing Toffler’s thesis can be found here.
If change is related to decreases in happiness for at least some of the populace, the other extreme—stagnation—doesn’t exactly make people gleeful. Perhaps the greatest happiness is associated with gradual changes that don’t tax people’s capacity to adapt. Or maybe the issue isn’t so much the rate of change but the person’s willingness to accept it. My parents feel left out when their offspring communicate by emails or text messages, but their exclusion is the result of having decided years ago to not learn the technology. Lui’s interviews with those who knew Tang suggest that he saw the present order as unfair and resented those who were doing well under that order. Maybe one of the greatest sources of unhappiness is the refusal to accept things as they are.
Life Assays 