"Sick Souls, Healthy Minds" by @JohnKaag is a solid popular introduction to William James. It maps a very accessible course for sick souls looking to foster healthier minds. https://erraticus.co/2020/06/24/john-kaag-sick-souls-healthy-minds-william-james-pragmatism/

Part memoir and part history, Kaag's book is a testament to how one can build their life around fruitful ideas. Our technology-obsessed and materially-reductive age frequently neglects the salvific potency of ideas—to the great detriment of human flourishing.

If we experiment with ideas as “lived hypotheses,” as William James' suggests, we can arrive at those which will be of greatest use to us. Further, we can assuredly abandon those which tend to rot the soul or sicken the mind.

Those focused on societal injustices/economic inequalities are right to attend to the material lack of the many left behind—or oppressed—in America, but we shouldn’t be willfully ignorant regarding the impact ideas have to make human flourishing more abundant throughout society.

Political scientist Robert E. Lane suggests that there is no correlation between subjective well-being & material progress once individuals find themselves at the poverty line...it appears that increased material wealth does not lead to higher levels of meaningful living.

He was serious about the questions of life, the apparent reality that it was cruel and unfair—existence burdensome in a predetermined world...To James, life was serious business. What could he do, he wondered, to relieve his suffering and that of his fellow sick souls?

James knew our dearest beliefs could not be verified or falsified in any comprehensive way. Especially not in a narrow empirical manner that appreciates only that which can be measured and observed—particularly in a controlled, decontextualized laboratory setting.

James argues, “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.” An idea has the qualities of truth in as much as it is useful in helping us resolve the problems we face. In other words, the principle of gravity is true by matter of its practical consequences.

A purely empirical approach seems incapable of accommodating aspects of existence that are not easily operationalized or quantifiably measured—particularly our most cherished values and vital human ideals.

James’ philosophical work is an attempt to reconcile the seemingly difficult but messy facts of reality with the most deeply human values we hold—most of which are only made possible or meaningful in a world that accommodates some semblance of free will.

Truth...is something we moved toward as many individuals test lived hypotheses. We must accept that just about every idea we hold as true today will eventually prove false tomorrow, and that as a “community of inquirers” we only come closer to a completeness of truth as a group.

We iterate toward truth, experimenting with any given idea in our individual lives. If something proves fruitful in our unique circumstances, we offer it up to our fellow travelers as a promising idea upon which they can also experiment with in their particular context.

We must not resign ourselves to predetermined mental or emotional states. Our well-being is not fated by a reductivistic view of biology, neurochemistry, or social circumstances...we are more likely to rise above our melancholic stupor if we test out ideas as lived hypotheses.

In what is now known as the James-Lange theory of emotion, James argues that our emotions are often precipitated by our actions and not the other way around. We are, in part, depressed because we slouch our shoulders, frown, allow our living environments to be squalorly, etc.

As for the philosophical system James helped bring into existence, it is...“about life & its amelioration. That’s it. And that is enough,” says Kaag. I am not sure we can hope for much more than that which improves our situation a bit & better equips us to lift fellow travelers.

William James proclaims that neither our beliefs, values, or lives are fated. There might actually be a great deal that is still left up to us. And therein lies the great hope for those with sick souls reaching for healthier minds.