Making a Good Life: NDP 179

The unexamined life is not worth living — Socrates

It seems natural, even innate, to want to make the most of one’s life. To have a good life seems to require examination. Examining one’s life, growing, and continuing to be aware is part of our purpose.

The purpose of life has two branches. The first is the ecological purpose and the second is more metaphysical.

The ecological purpose of life is to reproduce to alleviate mortality. In other words, because all life dies, life reproduces itself. In this way, collective life persists despite the individual being terminal.

Evolution and natural selection, especially of the central nervous system, have facilitated communication, social interaction, and parental care. Humans still struggle with how to manage this complexity.

What is less derived is our metaphysical or non-scientific understanding of being human or of making a good life. Sure, we figured out how to keep the water (fairly) clean, eat, and build shelter, but how do we deal with our free time? What do we do with all the gains from understanding our physical needs?

Once our basic needs are met, what do we do? First, we evolve a complex neurology that facilitates taking in more information from our environment. To process all this new information we also evolve a central processing unit. Combined, we developed unprecedented ways to interact with our environment, each other, and ourselves. 

At the intersection of the metaphysical and physical elements of human purpose is socialization. Sophisticated communication and interactions led to cooperation, community, and enhanced parental care. Ultimately, love evolved to enhance our connections to each other and our ecosystem. 

Neural complexity also led to art, medicine, science, and other technological derivations. Along the way, of course, less desirable states or conditions arose including violence, competition, and selfishness. These elements, ideally, will be selected out of our population (see here for more).

The future of humankind depends on these metaphysical elements. Prioritizing values like love, connection, and kindness over money, power, and status is critical to our healthy future.

The privileged and fortunate among us are self-aware. Self-awareness facilitates an examined life. An examined life will grow toward an enhanced and necessary value system understood through our neural gifts.

Self-awareness permits the unlearning process. Don Miguel Ruiz, of “The Four Agreements” fame, and other Toltecs refer to domestication as the mechanism for our initial learnings. As children, we learn to walk, talk, sit, and stay according to the rules of our families, villages, and cultures. Few of us even realize this has happened. None of us consented.

Once aware our life examination begins, and the first step is to realize we don’t know why we believe what we believe. We must audit our thoughts, ideas, and values to determine whether they belong to us. This is the first step.

Self-awareness begets the undoing of domestication. Defining personal values and understanding one’s ecological and metaphysical needs defines a life. The next step is realizing we are interconnected to balance our individuality with our community. Finally, we figure out how to nudge our fellow humans in a similar direction.

Understanding and meeting our own needs helps us as much as each other. This is the pathway toward a good life. We make it by doing the work, being ourselves, and nurturing awareness. 

If you are enjoying this content, please tell your friends.