A Significant Life (book)

✒️ Note-Making

🔗Connect

🔼Topic:: Existentialism (MOC)

💡Clarify

🔈 Summary of main ideas

1. journey over destination - meaning in life is not something we achieve, it is not a measure of success or a title we acquire. It is not a point to reach, it is a way of life. Meaningful life is a life filled with meaningfulness, the way we act, the choices we make, the values we embody. It is the journey, the story of our lives, and not where it ends.
2. meaning is subjective and objective - Meaning has both a subjective value - something we have a sense of flow in, that we engage with and are completely dedicated to it. Additionally, it most have an objective value, something that is perceived as worthwhile, as meaning is not just internal but also dependent on it's effect on the world, on others, so it must be acknowledge as meaningful.
3. Aspects of life - There are 4 aspects of life, with some overlap but not identical:
   1. Meaning - The purpose of our lives, a worthwhile task that we are completely immersed in. A way of life.
   2. Value - One's worth, somewhat independent on what one does, but rather who one is. A person has value independent from the meaning in their lives.
   3. Happiness - Life can be meaningful yet hard in such a way that they are not enjoyable, and vice versa.
   4. Morality - One can have meaningful life without being moral (to a certain degree). Morality is a measure of behavior, while meaning is a measure of value.

🗒️Relate

⛓ by following this method, what will happen? What is the goal of this book? We might not have the answer to the meaning of life, but we will be able to have clearer boundaries as to how we can enrich our lives with meaningfulness

🔍Critique

✅ relevant research, metaphors or examples that helps to convey the argument

❌ the logical jumps, holes or simply cases where it is wrong...

🧱 Implementations and limitations of it are... The name of "narrative values" doesn't represent correctly the concept he is trying to convey. These narrative values are not part of the narrative we tell ourselves, but it is a theme of our behavior.

🗨️Review

💭 my opinions on the book, the writers style... This is a very nice and short overview about meaning in life, which answers we might be able to find, and how to start answering the question of a life worth living.

🖼️Outline

📒 Notes

Introduction

As death approaches, we are often faced with the question of what is the meaning of our lives. Unfortunately we quickly see the absurdity of existence, we search for meaning in a cold, random, universe that won't offer such an answer.

According to Albert Camus, to search for meaning is a necessary part of human nature. To give up on that is to give up on being human. This sort of escape is either physical (to physically commit suicide), or philosophical - when we are contempt with believing that there is a meaning out there, but we stop searching for it. We are lost in the finite, we believe in a dogma that offers truth, without questioning it or searching for an answer ourselves.

The only answer for Camus is to embrace the ambiguity, to continue on with our search despite knowing it is without an end.

Introduction

• The absurd itself is something very precise. It is the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the universe to yield it to us. (Location 68)
• The human condition demands meaning; to eliminate the demand requires the elimination of our human condition. (Location 77)
• Philosophical suicide is when we pretend that there is meaning to be found, and that it is enough to satisfy our longing. (Location 81)
• The only integrity, for Camus, lies in facing it directly, in continuing to seek for meaning in a universe we already know will not offer it to us. (Location 85)

A Meaningful Life?

Is meaning something we generate meaning is crafted, or something that exists outside of us, an absolute fact of the universe unrelated to humans?

We will discuss (or have discussed) three options:

1. Camus and life as embracing absurdity
2. Aristotle and life as developing and expressing virtues
3. Following God's teaching

Aristotle believed that happiness and meaning are intertwined. That meaning comes from living a good life, of flourishing. happiness is to be virtuous.

This is not something we achieve, but rather something we are. It is a matter of process, not destination trust the process. By developing and expressing our virtues, we are living a good life. Virtues therefore are the expression and the tool for meaning simultaneously, and are usually involve balance extremes, using the powers of reason to balance virtues and their extremes based on the situation.

If we develop our virtues in the right way, being moral becomes not only our default, but even something enjoyable Love what is good. We would have no friction while being moral, it will be easy to act morally.

Being moral also connects us to others. Having true friendships will be a connects of mutual giving, which we strengthen each other, rather than trying to get from the other as much as we can human is a social being.

And what about religious belief? On the one hand, it seems tempting to accept the rulings of a wise, good, omnipotent being. However, even if we assume the existence of god, we still have many unresolved questions. First of all, which god and which teachings? Whether between religions or even within religions, knowing which teachings to follow is a choice, and we can get lost in the infinite. We would never know which one is correct, which turns it into the same problem as trying to pry the meaning of life from a silent universe. however what about - leap into faith, some decisions are beyond rational debate

But even if we did know which god, there is something problematic about god's teaching and it's relations to the good. Does god simply points at the good - in that way god is more of a map than an all powerful being, and we could get to the good without him. However, if good decides what is good, it can sometimes clash with our Moral Taste Buds, like saying rape and murder is okay, which proves that there is a sense of good inside us, and we can't just override it with god's teachings.

A Meaningful Life?

• For Aristotle, the good life is not merely a state. One doesn’t arrive at a good life. The telos of a human life is not an end result, where one becomes something and then spends the rest of one’s life in that condition that one becomes. It is not like nirvana, an exiting of the trials of human existence into a state where they no longer disturb one’s inner calm. It is, instead, active and engaged with the world. It is an ongoing expression of who one is. (Location 151)
• Aristotle insists that a good life is not one where our mental capacities are taken to be means to whatever ends are sought by our desires. It is instead a life in which our mental capacities are exercised as an end in itself. (Location 194)
• for Aristotle the person who does not think of acting poorly, for whom it is not even a possibility, is leading a better life than someone who is tempted to evil but struggles, even successfully, with herself to overcome it. (Location 221)
• True friendship and the companionship that comes with it are not the offspring of need; they are the progeny of strength. They arise when the question between friends is not what each can receive from the other but what each can offer. (Location 228)
• Faith turns out to be not so much the discovery of meaning as an announcement of it. And that announcement relies on us, not upon the universe. (Location 338)

Is Happiness Enough

We tend to combine happiness with meaning, or at least treat it as a necessary condition, meaning that a meaningful life has to be a happy life, but perhaps not the way around. However, the more we dive into it, the more we see the gap between the two. Happiness seems subjective, because we determine what makes us happy, and it can also be silly things like playing football, while meaning is something at least partially objective, stems from the outside. Aristotle solved this question by tying happiness and meaning together as both something objective that comes from the cosmos. If we follow the virtues, we would have both meaning and happiness.

If meaning is something so elusive, so secretive and perhaps we will never find the answer, it is tempting to treat happiness as it's proxy, and work towards it instead. But aside from asking what happiness is exactly, we should ask ourselves if it is really a good proxy and a worthwhile pursuit instead of meaning.

What is happiness? a basic definition can be of maximizing utility, to pursue pleasure and minimize pain. However the more we dive into it, Hedonism seems not enough. What about pleasures that require pain to achieve? Like climbing a mountain, they seem radically different from watching tv although they are weighted the same. A bigger problem is the experience machine, what if we could have a level that instantly makes us happy, but we will be trapped in a room with nothing but a bed, water and food. We technically can be happy until the day we die, but this option doesn't seem enticing. It seems to be missing what makes people happy - relationships, overcoming challenges, rich experiences.

According to John Stuart Mill, pleasures are not all equal. There are higher and lowers ones. A lower could be watching TV, while a high one is doing philosophy. That's why we shy away from the pleasure machine. But even if it was a full experience machine, a matrix like world where we could have any experience we want, even to philosophize until we're 120, most of us would still won't want that. Why? Because it seems that happiness is not just a matter of how we feel, but how our lives connects to others, the implication of our life projects, the progress of our lives. That's why offering a virtual environment feels empty, because we know we would be the only ones experiencing it.

Haybron suggests a different take on happiness, that reminds Maslows pyramid. Happiness is built on three layers:

1. Attunement - to feel safe in the world, that we have few to no sources of worries, insecurities and fear Stress
2. Engagement - a feeling of flow, to be one with what we are doing
3. Endorsement - to feel satisfied with what we do in life, with what we choose to invest in Happiness is contentment

To the author, meaning is more than being happy about your life, there has to be a more to it. He agrees with Suzan wolf, that supports the idea that meaning is a combination of subject and an object. It is to be fully immersed in a project that matters. We have to feel connection to these project, that they are part of us Alienation, of our identity, yet they have to go beyond our own identity, to go out into the world and affect others. It can't be just caring for a goldfish as an example.

It must have objective attractiveness, something that many can agree that has importance. But we need to be careful not to fall into elitism, where only philosophers determine what is meaningful. Also worth noting that meaning is unrelated to value. A life without meaning still has the same moral worth as a meaningful life.

Is Happiness Enough?

• what makes a life worthwhile: relationships with others, challenges to overcome, goals to be achieved, activities to be immersed in. (Location 608)
• if happiness is to fulfill the aspiration toward a life worth living, is a take on happiness that focuses not only upon the feeling of happiness but also upon the engagement that gives rise to that feeling. (Location 683)
• Happiness, rather than being an experience or a passing feeling, is an emotional relation to how one’s life is going. It is deeper than experiences or feelings, (Location 689)
• Endorsement is the felt contentment with things as they are. It often involves a sense of success, if not in the outcome, at least in the process. While engagement is being in the grip of an activity, endorsement is the sense that that activity is going well. It is not merely evolving; it is blossoming. (Location 712)
• For a human life to be meaningful, it must be one in which I am not a spectator but a real participant, and a participant in something that matters to me. (Location 774)
• People who feel alienated from their lives, however good they might be, lack something important, something that lends a richness above and beyond whatever decency their goodness displays. (Location 786)
• There is no reason to conclude from a lack of meaning that there is a lack of any kind of value. (Location 820)

Narrative Values

Humans have Intertemporal Identity, we are our past, present and future all at the same time, while we also evolve and change over time. We are unified by the narratives of our lives. These narratives not only depict who we are, they are shaping who we are.

Since meaning is not a one-time achievement, but rather a meaningful life is one filled with meaningfulness, than narratives could be highly relevant to that meaning. By expressing narrative values, i.e to live a life of virtue, we can combine meaning with narratives. Such forms of life don't happen usually by chance, they are the result of deep introspection, where we examine how we live our lives, and how it differs from our aspirations. To live courageously, honorably, with kindness, compassion and creativity takes effort and a conscious decision. Having such values doesn't necessarily means that they are inherently meaningful, but they do shape the boundaries of a meaningful life, i.e they are a necessary yet not sufficient condition.

Interestingly, expressing such values can be detached from the narratives themselves. Whether we are seeing life as Episodic (a series of identities and ways of life without a strong connection between them) or Diachronic (a single continuum of identity, although changing, connected through a unifying narrative)

The difficulty with using narrative values as a metric for meaningfulness is that on the one hand, we can't be our own judges because then it would be too subjective. Caring for a goldfish with all my heart can't be called an honorable life. The metric therefore has to through objective eyes. Yet others might find it difficult to switch from the abstract value to the particularity of one's life. Two people can live honorable in very different ways, yet the objective metric must see them both as fulfilling that value.

As with previous cases, it is worth reminding that the meaningfulness of life is not the same as it's value, and not even it's morality.

Narrative Values

• The past is not just causally related to who we are; it is who we are. We are who we were, and who we will be. (Location 893)
• To ask whether a life is meaningful is not to ask whether it is meaningful at this or that moment. It is to ask whether the whole (or at least the whole up to that point) is meaningful. Is that trajectory which is my life a meaningful one, or does it lack all significance? (Location 898)
• our narratives about ourselves don’t merely reflect who we are: they help produce who we are. (Location 951)
• Steadfastness, intensity, subtlety, adventurousness, intellectual curiosity, gracefulness, personal integrity, spontaneity, artistic or aesthetic creativity: all of these are themes that can characterize lives, expressions of the different yet meaningful ways that people can live. (Location 1090)

Meaningful Lives, Good Lives, Beautiful Lives

When we evaluate other's lives, it is if we have several scales by which we measure it, and our intuitions and often conflicted emotions are a proof that life can't be that simple, that there is no complete overlap with meaningfulness, morality and happiness, even though we wished it to be so.

For example, imagine a great athlete that has broken some world records. Their dedication and excellence surly can count towards a meaningful life, but what if on the personal level they are jerks? Acting in a disrespecting and even cruel way to their surroundings, does it diminish from the meaning of their lives? We don't think so, yet we do say that they act immorally.

Similarly, imagine a case of a truly altruistic person that has given everything to the poor. Meaningful? yes, happy? perhaps not. Or, what if someone has dedicated their lives to stop evil from happening, and failed? Are their lives devoid of meaning? Not necessarily, but perhaps they are not happy ones.

While they are not identical, they do somewhat overlap. For example, a person wholly dedicated to doing evil, can't be said that has a meaningful life, because it's immorality subtracts from it's meaning.

Meaningful Lives, Good Lives, Beautiful Lives

• Morality and meaning, while distinct realms of value, intersect and affect each other in the expression of a life. (Location 1782)

Justifying Ourselves to Ourselves

We talked about narrative values having objective attraction, but where does this objectivity comes from? After all, values are not based on science, nor can science tell us which values we should follow. Additionally, claiming that while an individual can't decide what is objective, but a larger group can is just having the same problem on a different scale.

The solution he offers includes the combination of pragmatism and coherentism.

Why pragmatism? Values, as with any practice of human behavior such as a game, politics, economics, it all revolves around whether a rule we should follow makes things better. For example, does a rule make a game more fun, more exciting, more challenging, does it serve the purpose of the game? If so, than this is a good rule. Values are judged in a similar manner, things like honesty, integrity, courage, kindness and compassion are not values that seem random or that a group of people just decided these are values that are worthy of pursuing, but because it is easy to imagine why a society that follows these values have better life for it's people. Values make our life better, this is what makes them objectively good over other values.

Why Coherentism? Because we can always criticize a specific value whether it really is beneficial to the group or not, but as a whole values serves a purpose. So there is no single "master value" that is unquestionable, but the framework of values as guides of human behavior is. Values can be replaced, and even conflict with other values, as long as the network of values is maintained within a community.

The web itself can only be justified as a whole, based on the (pragmatic) value of it's existence. There is no foundation, or a single justification for it.

Justifying Ourselves to Ourselves

• Our lives gain meaningfulness when we are engaged in a life trajectory that expresses one or more narrative values. When we are absorbed by the unfolding of our life, when it makes sense to us to continue to do what we do, when we endorse our projects: (Location 1904)
• Whether something is a value can be subject to discussion based on the values and practices of the group or community in which it arises. (Location 2153)
• in order for a proposed value actually to be one, it must find its place in the web of values and practices that constitute a community’s life. (Location 2156)
• It is within the entire web of beliefs that reasons take place and that people can be justified or not. It is the web that grounds our scrutiny of our lives, our practices, and indeed our values. (Location 2202)
• By whose lights would we make this judgment of meaningfulness? By our lights, of course. What other lights would there be by which we could make it? We judge that this person’s life was meaningful in much the same way as we judge the earth to be spherical: by means of the web of reasons that is our inheritance. This does not mean that these reasons are infallible. (Location 2270)

Conclusion

While the universe is silent, even if there is a god somewhere that has the answer, we are left with empty hands. Narrative values, while they don't tell us what lives we should live, it at least gives us a direction to how we should live them. It is not a complete solution to the question of life's meaning, but it is also not nothing, it is a something, perhaps the best partial answer we can get.

Conclusion: Not Everything, But Something

• meaningfulness lies not in what is achieved or recognized, but in how a life is lived. Narrative values show us that the way we go about crafting our lives, whether consciously so or not, can determine their meaningfulness. (Location 2445)
• Narrative values don’t tell us how to live our lives. They do not comprise a how-to manual. Instead they offer a framework for asking what the trajectory of our lives has amounted to, what meaning it has or has not expressed. (Location 2486)