In Search of the Good Life

Minds have a natural tendency to try to organize the world.
There is something intrinsic about thoughts that makes them rally
around easy answers or even grand schemes. To literally reverse
the process we could behave like nihilists, iconoclasts or relativists,
or maybe there is a better way.

My goal is to accept the process, but be conscious of it and keep it
in check. I don't want my ideas orbiting around one sun, if there are
billions of others worth exploring. There are many ways to
resolve loneliness. To avoid being trapped in a single ideology,
I remind myself that thoughts and ideas are tools, not ends in
themselves. To avoid being a relativist I recognize that some
tools are better than others are.

We use tools to leverage our minds and bodies. The act of building
is savored. The things that are built can be wonderful outposts;
nevertheless, they are just way stations. The pleasure is in the doing,
the verbs.

To avoid being a dangerous absolutist, I listen, share, trade and
communicate. I try to be open but I never forget my primary task:
survival. It is the instinctive desire to survive that snaps my thoughts
to attention and brings them to a focus. Survival! What a simple
rallying point and yet no two people agree on how to manage
their survival. How is mankind to survive? Isn't that all we have
been discussing? We are not to be content with a miserable
existence, we want the good life. Isn't that what philosophy
is all about? Can we seek it without "godizing" it?

Yes, if we are aware of what we are doing.

"Man is as conscious of what he does as he has need to be"*

Needs and wants are curious things. A poor student will say,
"I don't need this" and refuse knowledge. And yet he will have
many wants. The world around him enflames his desires but
the road to the good life is beyond his ken. He doesn't know
what he needs to live a full life. His survival mechanism is
full of wants, but it doesn't know what it needs to live well.
How can it become aware of his true needs?

Our modern society has been accused of creating wants where
there were no wants and of putting wants before needs. But who
knows what we really need to survive? Do we need art?
Do we need drugs and comforts that anesthetize us from
existence? How do we draw the moving line?
How do we tap the virtue in our wants?

The answer is in part in the verbs.
You keep pedaling right to the end,
or your bicycle tips over.
There can be some pleasant coasting
as a reward for climbing hills,
but if you don't personally keep at it,
you just run down hill.

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* man is as conscious of what he does as he has need to be and some of us
do see and understand what that really means and even a few care.
from Mike Conner

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© A Brief History of Consciousness is copyrighted 12/30/98.
Ask for permission to copy and watch for subtle updates.