Cada vez me está costando más engancharme a algún libro porque me estoy volviendo muy exigente, he tenido que desechar tres o cuatro libros antes de éste a los que llamo "intentos fallidos". El problema con los libros que tengo en la actualidad es que los voy acumulando y sabiendo que no podré leerlos todos en lo que me queda de existencia, tengo que ser más selectivo.
Otra de "las cosas" curiosas que me está pasando es que si están en español e inglés, prefiero leerlo en este último idioma, aunque tarde más en acabarlo o incluso no pueda entender todas las palabras. Quizás ese desafío o por necesitar más tiempo para comprenderlo me hacen detenerme más en las ideas, en cambio si empiezo a leerlo en español, voy tan rápido, que paradójicamente, casi no retengo nada. No sé porqué me ocurre esto.
Si tengo que resumir el libro "El arte de la buena vida: Un camino hacia la alegría estoica" de William B. Irvine sería como un intento de probar que tener una filosofía de vida es mejor que no tenerla, que no perdemos nada en intentarlo y que no tiene que ser precisamente el estoicismo como deberíamos de comportarnos, cuyo principal objetivo no es otro que la tranquilidad, sino que debemos probar seguir algún sistema filosófico acorde a nuestra personalidad. El autor dice que lo mismo intentó el Epicureísmo o el Zen Budista, pero que éste último no le gustó porque exigía una mente libre de pensamientos y él es demasiado analítico, le da demasiadas vueltas (como yo) a las cosas, así que el Estoicismo que procura una vida de examen, le pareció más adecuado.
¿Por donde empezar?
Empecemos por nuestras emociones negativas, como podemos controlar la ansiedad, el miedo, la ira, el odio, la envidia... eso no es una buena vida. El control emocional y saber que podemos reducirlas nos ayudará a hacer frente a todos esos tropiezos y obstáculos que no pone la vida.
La tranquilidad también depende de nuestro modo de vida, perseguir la riqueza, la fama, el ego, tampoco es el camino. Si supiéramos disfrutar de lo que tenemos ahora seríamos más felices. Debemos reducir el deseo, o al menos desear lo que ya poseemos.
También hace referencia a que debemos asumir y entender qué cosas depende de nosotros o al menos en una parte de otras cosas que nos puede pasar y está fuera de nuestro control, y cuando ocurra asumirlo como algo natural.
No gastemos el tiempo en lo que otras personas hacen o dicen, ni siquiera los insultos nos debería de afectar, ya que si no nos importa su aprobación para lo que hacemos, ¿Qué nos va a importar si nos desprecian u ofenden con sus palabras?
La idea es que podamos disfrutar de las cosas, pero a la vez ser indiferentes a ellas.
Si en nuestra juventud vivíamos como si fuéramos inmortales, cuando seamos mayores, el poder levantarnos por la mañana y simplemente nos ponemos a caminar será un motivo de celebración diaria, hasta tal punto que los que han aprendido a vivir de esta manera, como Séneca afirmó en las últimas etapas de su vida estarán llenas de placer porque sabrán como usar esos días.
También recomiendo un boletín diario que puedes recibir en tu buzón con consejos estoicos u oirlos en podcast en The Daily Stoic
¡Que maravilla de escritor, psicólogo y filósofo! empecé leyendo Sand Firm, seguí con Standpoint y ahora lo ha vuelto a conseguir con The Join Of Missing Out, (JOMO).
Es una crítica de las siglas FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, es decir miedo a perderse oportunidades, un sentimiento en la actualidad que muchas personas tienen cuando viven atosigadas por demandas del ambiente, la publicidad o la cultura de querer más, más y más. Sin comprender que es como si estuviéramos en una cinta de correr donde por mucho que nos esforcemos no llegaremos más lejos. Es una crítica a esa obligación de querer todo lo que deseamos sin saber que no depende solo de nosotros y aunque dependiera ¿Que sentido tiene si luego vamos a seguir queriendo ser más y mejores?
Me he dado cuenta de que lo que he leído lo puedo aplicar a mi vida, y mi día a día. De joven vi una película que se llamaba “Tierras de penumbra”, El protagonista se pregunta para que seguir subiendo montañas si desde la colina donde está le gusta el paisaje. Y es eso, Conformarse con lo bueno, no con lo mejor.
El libro abarca muchos aspectos, el social, el ético, el filosófico y el psicológico, ahora mismo no sé muy bien diferenciarlo, pero dentro de lo social explica que no somos totalmente responsables de nuestro futuro, nuestro entorno puede que nos lleve por un camino o hayamos llegado a una situación por la que no debemos sentirnos completamente responsables.
Habla mucho del compartir y conformarse con algo menos de lo que nos corresponde porque a fin y al cabo vivimos en sociedad y éticamente también somos parte de la felicidad o bienestar de los que nos rodean o no han tenido la misma suerte que nosotros.
Este libro, como los dos anteriores de Brinkmann me ha recomendado muchos libros más y otros he recordado que me gustaron mucho, por ejemplo del de Barry Schwartz “Por qué más es menos” del que hace un buen resumen y que me gustaría copiar algunos puntos a mi decálogo.
Notas
THE JOY OF MISSING OUT
While Stand Firm criticised the self-development mania, Standpoints sought to identify the basic ethical values upon which it is worth standing firm. In The Joy of Missing Out, I discuss ways of living our lives that would make it possible for society as a whole to focus on these values.
...
we have created a society with a cultural landscape, an ecological niche, based on invitations, temptations, choices and special offers, but we rarely practise the art of self-restraint, of saying no and opting out – those are skills we lack both as individuals and as a society. This book recommends making a virtue of necessity and practising the art of missing out.
...
If we want life to be sustainable for the maximum possible number of people – ideally, for all of us – then we need to learn the art of self-restraint, especially here in the richest part of the world.
...
we should not want it all.
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SUSTAINAIBLE SOCIETY
The demands for skills enhancement and optimisation are constant and never-ending, which logically leads to a situation where nobody ever does anything well enough, because we all know that we will soon be instructed to do more and do it better.
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The elitist trap refers to a situation in which the wealthy and privileged use arguments about the (perceived) need for savings or cuts to keep others down.
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I study and recommend the value of accepting less than we are due.
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Many companies have advertising budgets that exceed the costs of manufacturing their products – the whole machinery of society is very much geared to engender dissatisfaction with what you have.
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what is the purpose of the economy? Segal and Aristotle both answer that the purpose of the economy is not to provide us with more and more, but to liberate us financially to live the good life.
...
A lot of people want to be as rich as possible, but Aristotle believed that money can quickly become too much of a good thing and distract people from what is truly important in life. (....) Segal believes that one way of progressing away from the consumer society is to make the inherent value of work the focal point of the economy. It is often said that if we are engaged in something meaningful, work is almost its own reward.
...
According to Segal, reflection on meaningfulness also depends on leisure time. He celebrates leisure as an art form that we can learn.
...
Freedom also implies a sense of solidarity – which is, in effect, precisely what this book is about: a willingness to miss out on something when it benefits someone else whose need is greater. If no one is willing to give up anything, then life becomes a struggle between individuals to rake in as much as they can for themselves, and that only affords freedom to the very strongest. The dilemma between freedom and coercion is, in a way, at the heart of all pedagogy – we have to be forced into education in order to be capable of being.
...
finiteness ‘that makes it all worthwhile’.
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To bestow form on your life is, literally, to practise the existential art of living, which is only possible if we are willing to miss out on other things.
...
In reality, our more or less legitimate desires and psychological impulses consist of a range of motives and justifications that we rarely fully comprehend.
...
For Frankfurt, it is crucial that caring for something is different from simply having a desire or lust. You may briefly have a craving for something and then forget it a moment later. But you cannot care for something for an isolated moment. It is only possible to care over time, once it becomes part of the way you live your life and your identity (...) things we care about are usually outside the influence of our will. We can do our best – we can water, prune and fertilise (...) caring for something always implies the risk of being disappointed or suffering real grief. This is the price of love, as is often (rightly) said. In turn, there is something liberating about running this risk, in accepting that aspects of the world are beyond our control.
...
Existentialists claim that individuals are defined by their actions. They are not completely wrong, but we must also take into account that we are defined just as much by what we do not do. We are formed by what we miss out on, not just by the things we do.
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Max Weber in his book on the Protestant ethic. According to Weber, the highest good in the Protestant work ethic is to acquire more and more money – a purely instrumental phenomenon that becomes a goal in itself at the expense of individual happiness.
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The ambition of realising as many of our own desires as possible is far from liberating. On the contrary, in doing so we run the risk of becoming slaves to our desires. To be liberated, we must be prepared to miss out – in other words, we must will one thing rather than will everything and succumb to an amorphous formlessness.
...
Experiments have shown that we have a strong proclivity to reject anything that we perceive as unfair – even when we lose out personally by doing so.
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Using the terminology employed in this book, it would appear that many of us are willing to miss out on something we would otherwise have had, even when we hold out no expectation of a reward at some point in the future.
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We know that we are actually nothing without others – and not just abstract others, but specific individuals with whom we have relationships and share a common history.
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We must learn the art of self-restraint right from the start. We cannot demand to have our own way all the time, just because we think our ideas are brilliant. We have to acquire a certain reserve, learn to listen to others and sometimes even hold ourselves back.
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Our suffering does not stem from our ability to talk –‘for that is a virtue’, he writes –‘but from our inability to keep silent’.
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Clor goes so far as to claim that moderation and character may be considered synonymous, in that to be of good character implies the ability to say no to your own impulses and resist temptation. He believes that, ultimately, we are our character.
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According to Ricoeur, to achieve self-constancy we must reflect on our life as a whole, and the best way to do this is to look at it as a narrative. In a sense, our lives consist of stories that we must interpret and tell in order to endow our existence with form. Many of us keep a journal or diary or fill photo albums, and so on, in order to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of life. In contemporary psychology, we refer to this as narrative identity.
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but illustrates the lack of ethical obligation in constantly wanting something more, something different and something new – in this case, in the context of love and sex. If this becomes a consistent attitude to life, we quickly descend into a kind of Kierkegaardian aesthetic despair, destined to remain forever dissatisfied because we feel that something better awaits us around the next corner. This not only leads us into a state of despair (see the existential discussion in the previous chapter); it also makes it difficult for us to live an ethical life based on obligations, which necessarily involves a certain degree of loyalty, trust, self-sacrifice and other similar virtues.
...
The researchers concluded that it is not only self-control – in abstract terms – that is essential to human life, but also our trust in the world and other people. Prueba de los caramelos.
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But what about situations in which we have to keep ourselves in check and delay gratification without any expectation of a greater reward later on?
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The thinking that underpins the marshmallow test might be said to imply the same opportunistic and instrumental logic. It is all about learning to wait for the sake of a greater reward later on. This is a purely quantitative perspective, and by adopting it we run the risk of neglecting the qualitative dimension, in which some actions are simply more correct than others.
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The industry necessarily involves downplaying the significance of the individual’s environment and situation, and instead claiming that ‘happiness is a choice!’.
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we get used to both the good and the bad, and they gradually cease to be considered particularly good or bad. We return to our former starting point in terms of the way in which we see the world. (...) The happiness treadmill can be never-ending, and we find ourselves running faster and faster all the time, like a drug addict constantly upping the dose just to get high. (...) Socrates compares human desire to a leaky bucket: no matter how much we fill it, the water leaks out again, leaving only a hole and a craving for more. At least, this is the case for the ‘ignorant’, as Socrates put it. For as long as philosophers have been aware of the treadmill or the leaky vessel, they have also sought to transform our relationship to our desires by means of rational thought.
...
The point of Stoicism is that there really are things we cannot change, which is why it is important to learn to live with them instead of engaging in a never-ending pursuit of ways to optimise the self. (...) From the Stoic perspective, it is not in itself invidious to have desires and dreams, but they would insist that we have a duty to consider the ethical value of those dreams. The point is not that we learn to miss out in order to prove that we have a particularly strong degree of self-control. No, the point is that we should miss out on that which poses a threat to our moral fortitude and psychological integrity, such as constantly hunting for new experiences, relationships and objects that provide a fleeting rush of happiness as we continue to plod away on the hedonic treadmill.
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Perhaps we (daneses) have engendered a form of cultural stoicism in which we like to imagine everything will go wrong so that it is easier to cope with adverse situations when they do arise. In psychological terminology, this strategy is called defensive pessimism.
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Positive thinking has taught Trump that the mind, through positivity, can create its own reality. If you repeat ‘alternative facts’ often enough, reality will bend to them, and to your advantage – or, at least, you will get people to believe you. This is the exact opposite of the value of low expectations, negative visualisation and defensive pessimism. Based on the analysis in this book, I would contend that Trump is the product of a culture that knows no bounds, which risks spawning people with no feel for the art of missing out. He is the symbol of a mentality that wants it all – and wants it now!
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Schwartz is correct when he says that this would be a pretty tragic state of affairs. The very idea of a multitude of opportunities can be a destructive influence.
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Schwartz’s basic point is that maximisation can ruin lives. He recommends that we learn to make do, to be satisfied with less than we might theoretically have had, but the ideal of almost limitless freedom of choice systematically contradicts this.
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Personally, I derive a great deal of pleasure and frustration from the computer game Civilization, the slogan of which is ‘Just one more turn’. I find it almost impossible to stop once I have started to play. (...) According to some studies, we spend more time gazing at screens than sleeping. Alter says that our digital econiche causes huge problems with addiction – addiction to the technology, the applications, the games and the series. In Irresistible, he emphasises the flipside of a culture that constantly invites the individual to experience and consume by clicking, scrolling, checking and watching.
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Learn to live with limitations: This, of course, is the focal point of this book. It is also the final point in Schwartz’s book.
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all societies need rituals so that people can spend time together in civilised ways. Rituals enable us to interact with each other in a fruitful manner.
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Many of our problems stem not only from a lack of roots, but from a lack of understanding of their importance.
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We must teach the citizens of the future to do what is right because it is right, and not because they stand to gain from it. We need to reward them for sharing their marshmallows rather than hoarding them. We must understand that this kind of upbringing is the opposite of opportunism; that it is based on respect for the virtues of moderation and self-restraint that are essential for our ability to cope with the crises.
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designing systems that are based to a greater extent on the idea that no individual is master of their own destiny, we can encourage greater solidarity. This might even increase the willingness of the most well-off to accept less, because one day they might fall victim to chance or illness and find themselves vulnerable and in need of help. We must learn to ‘miss out’ not as an empty exercise in asceticism, but to ensure that there is enough for everyone.
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In times gone by, we had more of an understanding that life is interwoven into larger contexts that involve ups and downs. We knew that ‘everything has its time’.
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the courage to do the same as usual, because it is the right thing to do.
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we opt out – including from potentially exciting new relationships. If we want to be friends with everyone, we cannot truly have a friend.
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In general, the landscape metaphor is quite apposite. It is not simply a matter of having the will-power to step off the treadmill, it is also about creating a culture in which the treadmill does not even exist.
La traducción al español literalmente es “Punto de vista” aunque creo que está más relacionado como punto fijo o punto de ancla. El autor Sven Birkman habla del libro como si fuera una continuidad de su anterior trabajo Stand Firm. “Manténte firme”. y apunta una serie de “Anclas” a las que aferrarnos para vivir. Abajo pondré las notas y ahora las iré comentando, alguna incluso la he añadido a mi decálogo:
-”La vida no tiene sentido más allá del que demos a cada cosa que hagamos durante el día. Aprovecha y dale sentido día a día”-.
La estructura del libro se divide en 10 capítulos que cubre 10 puntos de anclajes en los que aferrarnos para vivir.
The Good: If there is something we do for its own sake, it must be the overall good (Aristotle).
Dignity: Everything has either a price or dignity (Kant).
The Promise: Man is an animal with the right to make promises (Nietzsche).
The Self: The self is a relation that relates to itself (Kierkegaard).
Truth: Although there is no truth, man can be truthful (Arendt).
Responsibility: The individual never has anything to do with another person without holding something of this person’s life in his hand (Løgstrup).
Love: Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real (Murdoch).
Forgiveness: Forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable (Derrida).
Freedom: Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities (Camus).
Death: He who has learned to die has unlearned to serve (Montaigne).
Notas
William James thought that the depression he suffered in his youth had been triggered by studying science, which had taught him that the universe lacks meaning and humankind lacks free will. James’ pragmatic solution was to choose to believe in free will and thus that individuals are capable of infusing their own lives with meaning.
...
When our lives are busy – filled with family, friends, colleagues and all sorts of activity at work and in our spare time – the world seems loaded with significance and value. We rarely stop and ask ourselves whether it is ‘meaningful’, but when It breaks, we may find ourselves wondering about the meaning of it all. Why does whatever happens happen, and why do we do what we do? Is anything we do with our lives actually worthwhile?
...
In brief, the book’s thesis is that meaning is derived from phenomena that constitute an end in themselves, and from activities we indulge in for their own sake, rather than to achieve or obtain something.
comentarios. Podemos vivir una vida que parece llena de sentido, pero en algún momento podemos perderlo todo, entonces nos preguntamos ¿Qué sentido tiene seguir viviendo? La respuesta es que no la vida no tiene un sentido final, no podemos pensar en la vida como un medio, sino como un fin. El sentido de la vida es lo que hacemos aquí y ahora.
...
Hadot underlines time and time again that we need aphorisms, maxims and short summaries of the wisdom that is existentially significant for humankind.
Eso es, ojalá pueda ir anotando pequeños aforismos o frases en mi decálogo que pueda ser un punto de apoyo en mi existencia.
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The chapters are short and do not take long to read. Hopefully, you will spend more time thinking about the ideas in them than reading about them. After reading this book, you should hopefully be able to answer the question of what standpoints are worth standing firm on in your life.
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According to Aristotle, not everything can be measured quantitatively on scales of happiness and health. If we do something that has intrinsic value (e.g. being kind to others), it has a form of meaning and dignity in itself.
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Aristotle: the good is defined as that which has its own intrinsic value. In this sense, the good consists of the useless – which, paradoxically, can be seen as useful precisely because it is useless.
La bondad puede llegar a ser algo inútil (sin que nos reporte un fin) pero precisamente por su “inutilidad” su sin sentido, cobra sentido.
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Knowledge, ethics, friendship, trust, recognition and other phenomena are then there purely for the individual’s sake, and are endowed with value relative to the individual’s taste,
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In The Joy of Missing Out, I discuss ways of living our lives that would make it possible for society as a whole to focus on these values.
...
we have created a society with a cultural landscape, an ecological niche, based on invitations, temptations, choices and special offers, but we rarely practise the art of self-restraint, of saying no and opting out – those are skills we lack both as individuals and as a society. This book recommends making a virtue of necessity and practising the art of missing out.
...
My assertion is that we would, unfortunately, discover a lot of people who have difficulty defining the nature of meaning.
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Something that used to belong solely to our free time has become a management tool to generate profit.
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One of the basic premises of this book is a paradox: namely that many disciplines – including the humanities – are of use precisely by virtue of their uselessness. In other words, it is more important than ever to show that there is more to life than what is ‘useful’. (...) that is, when they do not serve any purpose, when they are ends in themselves. Following this line of argument, it is the supposedly useless phenomena that give life content and meaning.
Hay algo más allá de lo que hagamos sea “util” (medio). Si algo que hacemos es “inútil” es cuando cobra sentido porque lo hacemos por su único fin.
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As such, psychology – or at least some of it – has contributed not just to the instrumentalisation of society but also to a self-centred culture and, in certain cases, outright narcissism.
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If everything in the modern world has to be useful, then only the useless is actually useful in helping us (re)discover meaning.
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This book seeks to use philosophical ideas to formulate a philosophy of life capable of resisting instrumentalisation and utilitarian thinking.
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Conversely, one of the basic points in this book is that the meaningful is not subjective, or something ‘internal’, but is derived from phenomena – standpoints – in our lives as part of a society.
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These ten ideas are, therefore, intended as reminders of what is important and meaningful in life. My hope is that they will help you realise that there are some things that have value in and of themselves and are an intrinsic part of a meaningful human existence.
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1 BONDAD
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We should not feel guilty about spending time on such useless activities, because, in an instrumentalised era, these are precisely the activities that offer the prospect of a meaningful life. Uselessness is the highest good. We should practise saying this to ourselves – not as an unthinking mantra, but as a constant reminder that what constitutes the most important thing in life is not up to me as a subjective individual, nor is it up to the agencies in society that seek to promote instrumentalisation.
PARADOJA: la inutilidad es el mayor bien (Me ha hecho recordar cuando limpiaba de plásticos la playa. Aunque sabía que al día siguiente volverá a llenarse de basura, el hacerlo por el simple hecho de hacerlo, como bien, y lo bonita que quedaba era el fin que más satisfacción me daba. También la inutilidad de amar, sin que sea un medio, es algo bonito, bueno, hacer felíz y cómodos a los demas.
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2 DIGNIDAD
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it is interesting that we are able to understand the significance and value of dignity at all. Why not just hurl ourselves to the floor and bawl away, we might ask? After all, we are about to die anyway…
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In his three major – and difficult – works on pure reason (knowledge), practical reason (morals) and judgement (including aesthetics), he posed the fundamental philosophical questions: What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?
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But we can see the world in that light – as populated by people who are ends in themselves – and we can try, as much as possible, to live in a way that fulfils the ideal of the kingdom of ends. Indeed, according to Kant, we have a duty to try.
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the world is simply a complex machine, with no meaning other than that with which we endow It.
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the only things with true value are those upon which we cannot put a price. Promise to day nothing.
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According to Robbins, success does not consist in seeing beyond your own desires and thinking of others, but in doing exactly what you want, even ‘with whom you want’. (...) success cannot be defined in this way. Success must – in a moral sense – involve treating others as an end per se, and not just as a means to get what we want.
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3 PROMESA.
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Only humans have the reflexive self-consciousness and understanding of the link between today and tomorrow that are prerequisites for making promises.
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even argued that merely making an observation about the world is, in a functional sense, the same as making a promise.
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Guilt acts as a moral compass – without it, acting morally is difficult – so it is important that children learn to feel guilt when they are guilty (but not, of course, when they are innocent).
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Morality exists because people have power over themselves and each other (and vice versa).
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We promise each other things for the time being. After all, we might make a promise, only for something better to come along.
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If we do not strive to stand firm on our promises, we undermine the nature of humanity.
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4 El Ser
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Kierkegaard would have said that humankind is both a physical and mental being.
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Just like every other living thing, humans relate to the world – but what makes us unique is the ability to relate to how we relate to the world.
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The self that is determined by a community and is capable of becoming a relation that relates to itself is a totally different kind of self than the one promulgated in the vast majority of self-help literature, where the self is usually considered to be an inner, individual truth or core to be set free.
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6 RESPONSABILITY
We have a duty to do something good, because it is in our power to do so.
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8 LOVE
Being a good person does not, in the first instance, consist of choosing this or that, but of paying attention – to others, to the world, to the actions that various situations call for – and not primarily to the self.
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Good has a reality that exceeds our limited comprehension. And yet we are able to recognise the good when we become aware of it in specific situations.
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Love is only possible if we accept the reality of a world outside ourselves – and that, Murdoch believed, requires honesty and humility.
We do not love the sum of its properties.
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That sounds like an instrumentalised love: love the other in order to be loved yourself, and love yourself so others will love you. This makes love a something-for-something relationship, a kind of transaction, which is surely not the idea (at least not in the Bible).
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Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) relates the story of how, one day in 1901, he was out cycling when it suddenly struck him that he no longer loved his first wife (he married four times). So he rode home and informed her of this state of affairs, and that he wanted a divorce. Here, love is identified with a feeling – when it is gone, love is gone too. This is logical. But what if love is not a feeling?
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But what if the one we love is seriously ill? What if there is no guarantee that being with him or her will be ‘reinforcing’ and ‘growth-enhancing’? Murdoch reminds us that love is not a feeling, but a radical form of attention to something other than ourselves.
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FORGIVENESS
Simply put, he contends that only the unforgivable can be forgiven – or, in his words ‘forgiveness only forgives the unforgivable’.
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Actual forgiveness – i.e. of the unforgivable – is not given in order to receive something in return.
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we can only be hospitable to the unwelcome. If somebody is invited, welcome and wanted, there is no reason to be hospitable. Hospitality entails the person who opens up their home voluntarily relinquishing control over their own space when they say to their guest ‘make yourself at home!’
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Murdoch’s emphasis on the ethical significance of paying attention, in that forgiveness is possible via paying attention to the other as merely human.
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9 FREEDOM
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– but we can, in practice, think that we are free. This is sufficient, since it means that we can relate to each other as members of what he called the kingdom of ends, and thus we can live meaningful lives.
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For Camus, nothing has meaning, and yet people strive constantly to create it, an endeavour ultimately doomed to failure.
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‘Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities.
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freedom does not consist of doing whatever we want, but doing that which is required of us.
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the problem with our modern concept of freedom is that if we always do what we want (in the sense of what we most feel like), then we are not really free, but slaves to our desires.
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There can be no real freedom without the obligation to safeguard the conditions that make freedom possible.
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Freedom, Camus argues, must not be sacrificed for material wealth.
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10 DEATH
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without death, there is no existential meaningfulness.
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The very fact that we live within a finite horizon means that our experiences and actions in life can have meaning and value.
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If we were invulnerable, immortal beings, virtues like courage, perseverance, self-sacrifice or loyalty would be unthinkable. Standpoints like dignity, love and forgiveness would make little sense.
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If we do not learn to understand death and acknowledge its meaning, we may perhaps waste our lives on unimportant things without understanding the brevity of life.
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‘To Be Happier, Start Thinking More About Your Death’.14 To this, I would respond: No. That is not why we should think about our death. We should think about our death because it is the horizon for meaning in life. If this thought makes us happy, that is fine. But the idea itself has meaning on its own.
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EPILOGUE
The starting point for this book is that, nowadays, we lack an understanding of the content and purpose of our activities, but we have become experts in the means and the instruments.
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Like the later Holocaust analyst and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman,2 Adorno and Horkheimer asserted that totalitarianism’s horrors do not represent a reversion to a pre-modern barbarism, but are a consequence of modernity itself.
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In Adorno and Horkheimer’s words, reason becomes an ‘instrument of an all-encompassing economic machine’ in the modern demystified era.3 This makes it difficult to grasp the idea that something may have intrinsic value, and everything thus becomes a means to something else.
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A happy person is something completely different from a good person’. As per Beckett, also cited earlier, we are still waiting for Godot, even when we are happy. It is meaningful to want to be a good person – even if it conflicts with our subjective well-being.
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We can also choose to stick with the idea that happiness is the highest value, but reject the idea that it is defined by experiences.
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the conclusion is that the meaningful life cannot be understood on the basis of categories of experience. It must be understood on the basis of categories of action, where people engage in activities that have intrinsic value.
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We must live morally because it is good to do so, not because it makes us happy or is healthy.
