Is there a good life?

Is there a good life? Looking back at philosophy there's a strand of changes that take place over time. Starting with Greek philosophy there was a focus on virtue and a right way to live. If we could all just live the most virtuous life we'd have a good political system too. Is there a good political system? We'll always be convoluted by our present tense situation on this issue and see the world from our time and place in history. In order to see politics philosophically we would have to return back to the Greeks who first start with the question of what is a good life? If we can come to an understanding of how to live a good life then we can build a political concept around this instead of the other way around.

Modern philosophy starting with Machiavelli altered the way we look at political philosophy. The aim was no longer about how to live a good life with an aim towards virtue. Instead it was what will allow us the most freedom. With the belief in mind that everyone is self interested and doesn't care about what is good; the aim became instead to focus on what will let people have the most freedom and what is the least pain we need to put them through in order to let them achieve this? Another way of saying this is what can we do to attain the virtue of a stable political system through will and force?

This modern line of thought hasn't really changed ever since. Machiavelli turned political philosophy into a science/philosophy and from here on things have gone this direction. In time science and philosophy branched off in their different directions and now we have political science. Hobbes took a similar position to Machiavelli that people are selfish, but this time the focus wasn't on virtue as much as power and the main goal being survival in a world without civil society. Locke changed the focus from survival in a world of all against all to food coming from property. Rousseau comes about with the idea that civil society has reached a stage similar to the Greeks and starts the Romantic Movement, but the difference is it's still a focus on freedom and allowing the most stability instead of what is good and a good life. Nietzsche starts what is now post modernism to an extent and now we have a belief that everything is relative to a time and place. There is no right or wrong anymore. Even morals are relative and subjective to where we are in history.

This is quite a transition that has taken place from a world where there must be a good and right way to live to one where everything is relative and there are no objective truths. We are the product of this line of thought. When we in democracy look at other governments we believe they should be democracies. Is democracy really the best form of government? If things are really relative I'd argue that it isn't because it depends on where we are in the world and at what time. People in the middle ages desired monarchy and thought it was the best form of government at the time. As long as the monarch treated citizens as they felt was up to standard they wouldn't revolt. Some countries have stable systems as they now exist under monarchies. A big difference between Christianity and Muslims is Christians see their religion as a part of their life and Muslims their religion as a way of life, so even their economy and political system has to coincide with the religion. Perhaps these people are better off under monarchies. There are also a number of structural transitions that must take place in order for democracy to happen in most systems. First of all industrialization seems to create the backbone for allowing democracy to exist as a luxury good. When a economic system gets to a certain complexity it makes it so everyone must become more educated in order to run the bureaucracy of an industrial society. More education leads to a questioning over the rights one has over their lives and so on. This doesn't always coincide however when your religion is your complex economic system all the time, and many Muslim countries are very advanced.

Another thing is not all religions are the same…even if they claim to be the same religion. If we go to Southeast Asia we find Indonesia to be the most populated Muslim country in the world, but their practices are slightly different. Before Muslims came to these countries there were mostly Buddhists and animists that became mixed with Muslim ideas over time, so it's a much more mystical form of Islam that can lean more democratic. What is good is therefore best described by experience. All the things we experience beyond the senses are really just reflections of other people's explanations of their experiences through our own senses. We see the world not only through the lens of what we live, but our interpretation of history, right and wrong, and a good system, are based on our experiences with the history and explanation of the experiences others had before us. Is there a good life or is it just based on what we think must be the best way to live?

I'd like to say I think we lost something with the Greeks. We can all have political thought, but aren't all politically philosophical, but those who are philosophical can have philosophical political thought. It's not till we figure out how to live well that we can figure out how to have a good system to live in. Our character is shaped by our ability to adapt to experience. The form of a government adapts to the actions of the people. Just because we can adapt to a way of surviving with those around us doesn't mean we're actually living a good life, because the people around us might not actually be living good lives and we adapt to be like them in order to survive, but why do we want to just survive? Plato would say what most people see is only a reflection of the good. I suppose an example in modern day is social networking and TV. What we see on TV is what looks appealing, but if actually lived out may not be good. If you look at something like MySpace you'll notice nobody ever puts depressing pictures of their lives up. Everyone is showing a reflection and projecting what make their life look appealing, fun, and good. In many cases we can be led astray from a good life by going after a life that looks appealing and then finding we're trapped trying to survive rather than flourish. I suppose my next point would then be how do we find what allows us to have a good life?

Most of my philosophies come down to three elements. They are physical experience, language, and emotions. Physical experience and emotions are given to us by nature. We naturally interact without environments toward what feels good. Language as a later development helps shape our character, where the former two are the essence given to us. If there is an essence given to us by nature then this would be the good. Words are only used to describe what is good in the form of lexicons. All language beyond lexicons is artificial language. These are words made up to describe things that we didn't naturally experience in nature such as abstract ideas or physical human inventions. The artificial language is what can deceive us, because it causes us to try rationalizing what is a good way to live instead of knowing through physical experience and following our emotions. Artificial language creates a world of abstract intentions we think we'd like, but may find ourselves not acting on when in actual situations. I suppose you could say my philosophy is for slightly older to people to an extent. The reason is because young people are supposed to do "stupid" things. They supposed to try and experience what feels good in life and learn from what they see as mistakes. So, what I'm writing may be more applicable to people moving out of their 20's and beyond. First because we've been able to get most of those other foolish experiences out of the way in order to move towards a good life, and second because we're in a position to prime the next generation of youth toward a good life.

The reason priming is so important is because even though young people will still try all the things they will anyway, we need to plant seeds in their heads by setting examples. When they see you are stable and doing well they'll desire to be more like you someday. It's almost a boomerang effect where we prime young people to think a certain way while they're young. When they become teenagers we let them do as they please with less restrictions, and never force young people to be like us, but give them incentive by acting the way we think is right and making the choice to do the right thing easier to grasp in their environment. For example we can tell them its ok to eat junk food, but the house will only have non-junk food. We aren't limiting desire through force, but we are making it easier to choose healthy options. The boomerang tends to come back as they get older and next thing they know they start to take on many of the characteristics of the parents. The problem then becomes are the parents living a good life?

I think most important thing to define a good life is what will bring the most long term rewards compared to what will be the most fleeting and short term rewards. Ben Franklin even said it's more important to live well than to live long. To live well in many cases allows most people to live long. All structures exist within larger structures, or all institutions exist within larger institutions. The institution of the family is in the community. The community exists in civil society. Most institutions exist within civil society including culture. The only institution standing next to civil society these days is the state. The state and civil society exist relative to other societies within a world structure, and this is exists in a universal structure. There must be something that transcends universally over time to all cultures that allows a good life. My belief is this thing is nature, which first started with the ability to survive by cooperating with each other by finding what we had in common as a struggle. When we started creating artificial structures away from nature our essence remained the same, but our character had to adapt. Our essence was for things of survival like food, shelter, and sexual reproduction. In civil society these basic needs are met, so a good life is no longer about just being able to survive. That means the essence of a good life isn't food, shelter, and sex. These are just for survival. I also add in drugs because there are some drugs given to us by nature that were used for religious ceremonies in order to celebrate the community of life. These things transcend and seem to be cornerstones for moving out of survival, but the thing that transcends from nature to civil society is stability and a feeling of control. The purpose of building a civil society is then to have a greater feeling of these things than nature could provide us with.

A good life moves beyond our survival desires to desires of ritual, but even ritual can exits to either pass time or give a feeling of accomplishment. The things given to us by nature only exist to make us pass time now, because our new characters had to adapt civil society, and a good character in a civil society is one that can replace the character of a person in nature excluding the redundant and keeping the stable aspects. The ritual in nature was the ritual of survival through the things nature gave us. When these things are met the ritual must become the next step up. A natural ritual is one that allows a person to exist as long and as well as possible in nature. A ritual in civil society is one that can help us live well and possibly long too. The things of nature instead become a burden, because since the character of society and government changed, the abundance of these things does more harm than good from nature if we chase them the same as we did in nature. Now we have to moderate our nature to make more room for the rituals that make us live well. Since most of us are victims of the structure we live in, the question then becomes, is the government and society we're living in one that allows us to live well when we physically interact with our environment, priorities through cultural language, and emotional interactions? If we want emotional stability that nature intended through those we care about, we also need a physical environment as nature wanted to live in that is stable. If we can mimic the right things from nature in the physical structure of our artificial environments, we can have the most stable society where we exist in time and history. The only way to get this is through experience in our time, and not just based on our view of other or prior societies, but through the eyes of our own in our own experience in our own life. I have a ways to go in addressing this, because only those who can live well that should set the standard for all others, but they only get here through experience. Therefore, how can we give people the incentive to have the best experiences more often to eventually allow them to act in a way that makes the best life and government for them as a culture?