Thursday, October 20, 2011

The First Reflection.


I find it difficult to talk about the Good Life, let alone discuss my arbitrary views on it. Similarly put forth by Aristotle[1], I’m feeling a reluctance to discuss such a worldly applicable matter due to a lack of worldly experience, and a lack of life experience. I’m not just saying that out of sheer respect for the philosopher, or for any other people who have lived twice the length that I have, but I feel it is the truth. Looking at it from a biological perspective, when one begins to conduct an experiment, there are many things that must be taken into consideration. There must be an acknowledgment of the variables, and there must be a sample size of a sufficient amount to yield results that make the original hypothesis plausible and agreeable. Likewise, having only lived sixteen years, about 8 of which are able to be recalled, I feel as if such a sample size lacks the sufficiency to allow for any credible reading material.

The Good Life, evidently, is an individual subject matter. One may be wealthy, healthy, but unhappy on the inside, masking it with different shades of joviality. Someone who is worse off would look at him and say, “now that is a good life!”. But an outsider doesn’t see all, an outsider doesn’t see everything, sometimes the individual doesn’t see everything, but that is what makes us only human, and nothing more. The unhappy man thinks to himself in the meantime, “what life is this, this is not a good life. I have money, I have my health, but I am alone in a loveless marriage, I own a company that profits off victims of society. I feel dirty.” Of course, this is purely hypothetical, but it brings out an important aspect that must be considered in the discussion of the “Good Life”; the good life is not a universal standard; the good life is purely arbitrary and subjective.





[1] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book I. Haileybury Philosophy Text pg 3 - 4.

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