The Examined Life

This essay, "The Examined Life", was “highly commended” and published in Campus Review’s 2002 'Co-op Bookshop Dialogica Awards – Excellence in written communication', a contest whose purpose was to show that “clear, concise, and persuasive communication” could come from academics.

Philosophy

I am a philosopher. I don’t have a beard, uncontrollably wiry grey hair, a pipe, an armchair or an ivory tower and I know how to tie my shoes. I am not Greek and I am not dead. I have a bicycle, perfect vision, and I like to play soccer. As a philosopher, I am interested in abstract questions, such as whether morality is subjective or objective, whether morality is a matter of taste or a matter of fact. But I am also interested in more practical matters, which is what I want to discuss here. In this essay, I offer some observations about where we are as a society and make some suggestions on how we as a society might improve our lives. I want to say where I think some things went wrong and how they might now go right. Perhaps I should start with philosophy.

Ancient philosophers used to say things like “Know thyself,” and “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Later, philosophers started saying things like “I think, therefore I am,” which were considered important because they proved that we existed. Even if we were dreaming and everything we saw were an illusion, it would still be true that we, the dreamers, would exist. This, somehow, was an important and monumental discovery in philosophy. This is also, I think, something that everyone else already knew. I do not mean to belittle philosophy. It is a grand subject and a very useful, rewarding way of thinking which I have studied for several years. But somewhere, I think it took a wrong turn. Instead of searching for truth, goodness and beauty, philosophers became obsessed with only truth. And truth became severed from action. And action suffered. And life is not much more than action. (How do you tell if something’s dead? It doesn’t move.) So life suffered. It suffered and continues to suffer the more we become specialized and compartmentalized. Instead of all searching for truth, goodness and beauty, we have philosophers, social workers and artists who search separately for either truth or goodness or beauty. Not many philosophers paint and not many social workers are found in philosophy classes. Now, of course, there are benefits worth the cost of specialization; that’s why we do it. I just think we’ve gone a little bit too far. Henry David Thoreau encouraged us to “Live the life [we] have imagined.” How many of us imagined a life of doing only one thing? Specialization is good but too much specialization is bad. A balanced life is a happy life.

Work

The current prevalent mentality towards work seems to be something like this: Work, work, work, rest. And the rest is only taken either because you’ll burn out if you don’t rest or because you’ve somehow ‘earned’ it. The idea that we somehow ‘earn’ the right to rest is very odd to me. It seems like not too long ago that no one worked and all our food grew on trees. Or, at least, no one worked if she already had food in her stomach and some sort of shelter. I think the mentality towards work needs to change to something more like this: Relax. Take your time getting to know the world. You will find your place in it by following your heart. Your heart’s desires are your life’s ‘work’. This may sound unrealistically idealistic to some and I admit that you might have to wait some tables in order to buy yourself the time to find your true calling. But you might also find, while waiting tables, that you really enjoy working in restaurants. The year I spent bartending and waiting on tables was one of the most enjoyable of my life.

Another thing worth mentioning is that work doesn’t have to be work. Relaxing is not the opposite of working. Resting is the opposite of working but one can be relaxed all the time. You can be relaxed while you work. You don’t have to huff and puff. You can even whistle and smile if you want to.

Education

Education is another aspect of life which seems to have taken a bit of a wrong turn. The most important things to know in life are not being taught in most schools. The most important things to know in life are not dates or facts or formulas, they are things like how to be happy, how to be excited about life, how to be at peace with yourself and others, how to improvise, how to make the life you want, and how to accomplish your dreams. The primary goal of education should be to pass on life skills, skills that will make the rest of one’s life easier and more enjoyable. Information is important, but not as important as skills such as how to gather information, how to interpret it and knowing what to do with it. In general, we give students too much information and not enough problem solving skills. The Zen master Basho said, “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” Too often we show students the footsteps of the wise rather than their hearts and minds.

A lot of what is not taught falls into the categories of emotional intelligence and common sense. We should teach things like how to motivate oneself and others, how to view the world optimistically, how to give someone the benefit of the doubt, how to be happy and how to be angry. Aristotle said, “Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power—that is not easy.” That is what needs to be taught.

We could even teach poker. Think about how much you would know if you knew ‘when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, when to walk away and when to run’. Are those skills as valuable as the ones you would learn in a science class? You bet. But are they being taught anywhere in the world as a standard subject? Nope. I believe that ‘every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser’ and what makes the difference is how well the player has mastered the set of skills that I’ve been calling ‘life skills’.

It seems ridiculous to me that we have recruited experts to teach our children maths, science, English, history, and athletics but no expert is teaching them how to be happy, how to relax, how to get along with others, how to listen, how to make friends, how to set and achieve their goals, how to be assertive without being aggressive, how to read people, how to express themselves, how to compromise, how to socialize, how to make the best of what they’ve got, how to manage their time, or how to make decisions. Inevitably, children learn these things from their parents. That is okay, that is what parents are for, but it is not ideal for the same reason that it is not ideal to have each person’s mother teach them maths—not all mothers are experts in maths. Nor are they likely to be experts in all of the life skills mentioned above. It is time, I think, for us to start recruiting experts in these life skills to pass on their knowledge to our children.

Misplaced Values

I have mentioned various life skills that seem to me to be undervalued. But there are also several things in today’s society which are overvalued.

For example, I think we generally overvalue a thing’s usefulness. ‘Useless’ has become synonymous with ‘valueless’ but they are not the same thing. Lots of useless things are extremely valuable. Sunsets are useless. Stars seem pretty useless. Almost all of art seems essentially useless. Yet we need it, appreciate it, and want it to stay.

Speed is also overvalued nowadays. There is an underlying assumption that ‘as fast as you can’ is always the most desirable speed. But there are many activities for which ‘as fast as you can’ is not the most desirable speed. When you stop to smell a rose, it doesn’t smell better the faster you inhale. When you’re at a fine restaurant, the food doesn’t taste better the faster you eat it. Just spending time somewhere is enjoyable. Time doesn’t become more enjoyable the more you fill it with things. In fact, it usually becomes less enjoyable.

Perhaps due to our overemphasis on speed, we also have an infatuation with the quick fix. If spicy food gives me indigestion, then the obvious thing to do is take antacid pills after the meal. But the more obvious thing to do would be to stop eating spicy food. Too often we rush to treat the symptoms but ignore the disease. We plug the leaks but don’t look to see where the water is coming from. If we have pain, we try to stop the pain by taking aspirin when we would be better off trying to find out what caused our pain so that we could prevent it.

I think we also tend to overvalue the end result and discount the process. We have forgotten that most ends are empty without the process that brought them about. People who want to climb Mount Everest want to get to the top but it’s not just being at the top that they want. If that were what they wanted, then they would just fly up there on a helicopter. They want to climb Mount Everest. And climbing, although an end, is a process. And I think most goals and processes are like this. The process is just as important, if not more important, than the goal. The goal is just another marker of progress. It just happens to be the final one.

Something that is completely overvalued is our ego. Aristotle said, “Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.” And Syrus said, “Many receive advice, few profit by it.” I think most of us believe that what Aristotle said is true. But most of us are also very concerned that others have an accurate or inflated idea of how good we are. Why is this? I think it’s because before we as a species were conscious of ourselves, we only had to defend our bodies. If we didn’t, we perished, end of story. Sometime after we developed a consciousness of ourselves, I think we were fooled into thinking that this extra thing, our consciousness of ourselves, our ego, also had to be defended at all costs. But it doesn’t. One can be insulted all day long until the sun goes down and still remain in perfect physical health, as fit to survive as the next person.

You might think that egos need to be defended in order to preserve a healthy level of self-esteem. But even if this is true, egos certainly don’t need to be defended the way a beating heart does. And in fact I think it is not true. Self-esteem comes from oneself and one’s opinion of oneself does not necessarily change in light of others’ opinions of oneself. Think of the person with the big ego. His ego usually doesn’t get any smaller when other people try to trim it down to a reasonable size. Conversely, there are people whose work may be excellent but no matter how many times you tell them that, they refuse to believe you and remain with a deflated sense of self-worth.

But these observations about how the ego is not necessarily affected by the opinions of others are really beside the point. My main point is not that egos are valued more than they should be, it is that they are valued when they should not be valued at all. Apart from providing a healthy sense of self-worth, I can’t see why anyone would need to try to protect or inflate his or her ego. We exist. We need to protect ourselves if we want to continue to exist. But we don’t need to protect our consciousness of ourselves in order to continue to exist.

Final Thoughts 

I conclude by repeating a quote from Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’m not sure if I agree with him but I do think that the examined life is very likely to be richer. Stopping to see where you are, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there is always time well spent.

I have pointed to various areas of life where I see imbalances and suggested remedies of rebalancing. Society will continue to function even if it doesn’t rebalance itself, just as the man who holds his head too far forward will still be able to stand and walk. But, eventually, just as the man’s back will become permanently hunched, the spine of society will become less stable, less strong, and less flexible, and we will not stand as tall as we could. I think we need, as the poet Rilke suggested, to “keep the balance true.”

I have shared with you some of my thoughts on where we are as a society and where I think we would benefit by going. I thank you for considering them and encourage you to discover your own.