- Written for my Philosophy class’s final exam: To what extent do you think that doing good works, or living a morally good life, like George Bailey in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”, can plausibly be seen as a convincing answer to the problem or issue of the meaning of life? Justify your answer by argument.
A life of meaning or pleasure?
Many of us leave our hometown and thus our family, to pursue higher education and expand our horizons with the aim of living a better life. Often this process involves a few tears from loved ones, but we weigh out the pros and cons and decide that choosing our happiness over our family by leaving for a few years is worth it. Well, Aaron Smuts’ might disagree. Smuts’ is a philosopher who believes that a good life is about self-sacrifice and doing good, irrespective of whether it feels good or not. I believe that is a very limited approach to a good life. I’ll use the example of George Bailey, from the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” to critique this idea.
Bailey is a man who sacrifices his personal dreams of leaving town and becoming an architect in order to take care of his family and community. Eventually, his uncle misplaces some money which earns him jail time, but Bailey the hero steps in and does his jail time for him. This lands him in a great depression, and he decides to kill himself. But then, an angel shows up and shows him how much worse off the town would have been without him. With this realization, he positively reframes his assessment of his life thus far and lives happily ever after… in jail for a few years. Smuts’ takes an objectivist approach and argues that Bailey did live a good life because it promoted “good” even if he did not feel good. I believe George is quite extreme and did not need to go to jail because what good is he to others in jail? Even if the purpose of life was to live in self denial and do good, being irrationally selfless impairs the extent to which you can contribute to others.
This is where Existentialism comes in. Existentialists would take a completely subjectivist approach whereby just by feeling that your life has meaning, then it does. Again, we’re treading in the realm of extremes here. If a serial killer feels it is personally meaningful and pleasurable to kill women because he was hurt by women growing up, does that make for a good life? From a neurobiological perspective, it absolutely does not. Anxiety from guilt is an inevitable and automatic response to immoral actions. Our subconscious knows when what we are doing is wrong. The universe has some objective truth and then there are varied unique personal truths we uncover through self discovery.
In this case, objective truth would be Victor Frankl and Smuts’ ideas that a good life entails deriving meaning through virtuous and selfless pursuits. Then, subjective truth can be derived from what is joyous to us that is not joyous to all. Discovering this subjective truth is imperative towards living the most meaningful and humanitarian life because the more we enjoy what we do, the more we can pour into it without running out of water. Smut says that fulfillment (joy) is one thing and meaning is another. I concur with this but take a holistic stance, highlighting the importance of both in order to maximize one another. Meaning, the more joy you feel in giving, the more you will give, so find a way to give that you enjoy!
Finally, to drive this point down in different wording, Smut says, “We do not merely want to live happy lives, but meaningful lives as well.” The key word here is “as well”. We need meaning to feed our soul (happiness). However, we also need to satisfy our ego (pleasure) to fuel our body with more energy towards our soul purpose. If it was just meaning that we needed then we wouldn’t be born with animalistic needs, and pleasure wouldn’t feel good. It’s here for a reason and it feels good for a reason, so we should use it as our compass by mastering the dance between the soul and the ego.
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