Meaningfulness and happiness

When we are thinking about meaningfulness, we may be inclined to see it as the most important thing we care about, or should care about, in our lives. I certainly think that meaningfulness is an important issue, and that the meaningfulness of my life is very important to me, but I am not sure I would say that meaningfulness should be considered the most important thing in our lives. Many people do not give any thought to meaningfulness. And even for those who do seek meaningfulness, there is at least another thing they seek, and should seek, equally mightily, namely, happiness. It takes reflection to see the need we have for meaningfulness, while happiness is something we naturally, or even blindly, pursue. Is there any relation between meaningfulness and happiness? Of course the answer depends on how we understand happiness, but it is common for people to think that a meaningful life must be in some sense a happy life. In some sense, yes, but there are also other senses of happiness in which a meaningful life is not necessarily a happy one.

As Susan Wolf observes, meaningful lives may “frequently involve stress, danger, exertion, or sorrow” (“Happiness and meaning: two aspects of the good life”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 14, p.209), all of which are incompatible with pleasure. Wolf understands meaningful lives as “lives of active engagement in projects of worth” (ibid.); it is not difficult to see why such engagement does not always give us pleasure --- is not necessarily happy in the hedonistic sense.

As long as happiness is understood phenomenologically, that is, in terms of some of the subject’s positive feelings, states of mind, or experiences, it seems that we can always imagine that a person whose life is meaningful does not have any such feelings, states of mind, or experiences. It is, I think, true that a meaningful life is usually accompanied by a sense of fulfillment. Although fulfillment is not the same as happiness, it, as Wolf rightly maintains, “deserves an important place in an adequate theory of happiness” and should be considered “a major component of happiness” (ibid., p.220). Nevertheless, there is still no guarantee that living a meaningful life will give one a sense of fulfillment. Even for Wolf, who thinks that “the links between meaningfulness and fulfillment are tight” (ibid.), there is no such guarantee, for she can only say that “[n]ine times out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a meaningful life will be happier [through having a sense of fulfillment] than a meaningless one” (ibid., p.222). Ninety or ninety-nine percent is still not one-hundred percent, though it may well be good enough.

It is even clearer that a meaningful life does not imply happiness when happiness is understood as objective well-being rather than in terms of subjective positive experiences. A meaning life is not necessarily a life that prospers or goes well, or a life in which most of one’s important desires are satisfied, or a life in which one enjoys a high quality of life (materialistically construed), or a life full of great achievements. I cannot agree more with the following remarks by Harry Frankfurt:

A life may be full of meaning, then, and yet so gravely deficient in other ways that no reasonable person would choose to live it. It cannot even be assumed that a meaningful life must always be preferable to one that lacks meaning. What fills a certain life with meaning may be some intricate and demanding conflict, or a terribly frustrating but compelling struggle, which involves a great deal of anxiety or pain and which is extremely destructive. Thus the very circumstances that make the life meaningful may be deeply objectionable. It might be better to live an empty life than to generate or to endure so much suffering and disorder. (Necessity, Volition, and Love, CUP, p.85)

Viktor Frankl may be right when he says that “[t]here is nothing in the world […] that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life” (Man's Search for Meaning, Simon & Schuster, p.109), but for a more balanced understanding of the importance of meaningfulness we have to keep in mind that there could be conditions so bad that nothing could help one survive them, not even the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. To think otherwise is to romanticize human nature.

Some may insist that a meaningful life is necessarily better than a meaningless life. Although we do not have to object to this, we should notice that meaningfulness is only one dimension of the evaluation of life. As far as this dimension of evaluation is concerned, it is true that a meaningful life is always better than a meaningless life. Indeed, it is true trivially, for this dimension of evaluation is understood by us in such a way that ‘meaningful’ is on the positive side of it and ‘meaningless’ on the negative side (and a gray area in between). In any case, there are other dimensions of the evaluation of life, such as happiness, with ‘happy’ on the positive side and ‘unhappy’ on the negative side (and a gray area in between). It is possible for the very same life to be placed on the positive side of one dimension of evaluation while being placed on the negative side of another dimension. This is what happens when a life is meaningful but unhappy. It is not always clear which dimension of evaluation should trump which: in some cases it might be better to live a happy life that is not meaningful than live a meaningful life that is unhappy, but vice versa in other cases.

Bookmash

Promises, promises,

Diary of a bad year.

Faking it, self to self,

The seas of language,

The mysterious flame.

Walking the tightrope of reason

Climbing Mount Improbable,

I am a strange loop.

Easier said than done?

In the following passage from his well-known essay on English style, "Politics and the English Language", Geroge Orwell points out some features of a pretentious style:

The keynote [of a pretentious style] is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un-formation.

The message seems clear: use verbs and the active voice wherever possible. However, in this very passage Orwell himself does not practice what he preaches. He uses phrases like "the elimination of", "in preference to", and "an appearance of" (instead of "eliminate", "prefer", and "appear"); he also uses the passive voice several times in this short passage, and once in the very sentence in which he mentions the passive voice as a feature of a pretentious style.

This has been noticed (the passive!) by Joseph M. Williams, and he rewrites the Orwell passage, avoiding noun constructions as well as the passive voice:

Those who write pretentiously eliminate simple verbs. Instead of using one word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, they turn a verb into a noun or adjective and then tack it on to a general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. Wherever possible, they use the passive voice instead of the active and noun constructions instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). They cut down the range of verbs further with -ize and de-, and try to make banal statements seem profound by the not un-formation. (Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace, fourth edition, p.6)

Orwell is a terrific writer, and presumably a very self-aware one. It is reasonable to think that he uses the passive voice and noun constructions here on purpose. More importantly, the Orwell passage does not sound pretentious, nor is the Williams rewrite an improvement on it. The reason is, I think, that the subject matter of the Orwell passage is a certain writing style, but the Williams rewrite makes it sound like it is about the people who write in such a style. If the subject is the style rather than the people, then it is difficult to avoid the passive voice and noun constructions.

What we learn from this example is that good writing is not simply a matter of following some rules or principles. There may be rules or principles that you should follow, but what makes you a good writer is your knowing when to break them.

A note on omnipotence

There are people who think the following argument proves that an omnipotent being is logically impossible:

Argument A:

(A1)  For any x, if x is capable of creating a stone that x cannot lift, then x is not omnipotent (because it is incapable of lifting such a stone).

(A2)  For any x, if x is incapable of creating a stone that x cannot lift, then x is not omnipotent (because there is something that it is incapable of doing).

(A3)   For any x, either x is capable of creating a stone that x cannot lift, or x is incapable of doing so.

(A4)   Therefore, an omnipotent being is logically impossible.

This is an appealing argument, but (A2) is problematic. Consider the following argument:

Argument B:

(B1)  In any possible world in which x is omnipotent, there is no stone that x cannot lift.

(B2)  Therefore, there is no possible world in which x is omnipotent and in which there is a stone that x cannot lift.

(B3)  Therefore, “x is omnipotent and there is a stone that x cannot lift” (S) is impossible.

(B4)  For any x, if x is omnipotent, then what it is for x to create a stone that x cannot lift is for x to actualize (S).

(B5)  Therefore, for any x, if x is omnipotent, then what it is for x to create a stone that x cannot lift is for x to actualize something impossible.

(B6)  Even if a being is omnipotent, it is incapable of actualizing the impossible.

(B7)  Therefore, for any x, if x is omnipotent, then it is incapable of creating a stone that x cannot lift.

Let us symbolize (B7) as “("x)(Ox ® Ix)”. Premise (A2) can then be symbolized as “("x)(Ix ® ~Ox)”, which is equivalent to “("x)(Ox ® ~Ix)”.

If argument B is sound, which I think it is, then “("x)(Ox ® Ix)” is proven true. Will argument B then prove that (A2) (i.e. “("x)(Ox ® ~Ix)”) is false? Not quite, for if there are no omnipotent beings, then both “("x)(Ox ® Ix)” and “("x)(Ox ® ~Ix)” are true.

But that doesn’t mean (A2) is not problematic as a premise of argument A. Here is how I see the dialectic: “("x)(Ox ® Ix)” is true whether there is an omnipotent being, while “("x)(Ox ® ~Ix)” is true only if there are no omnipotent beings. For this reason, (A2) should not be taken as obviously true and needs to be defended.

A defense of (A2) may begin with arguing that there are no omnipotent beings. Such an argument has to be independent of argument A, for otherwise it would be question-begging. It is, however, not clear how this can be done.

Another way is to argue for (A2) without first arguing that there are no omnipotent beings. If there are independent grounds for arguing for (A2), then those can be used, and the argument for (A2) will also be an argument for the non-existence of omnipotent beings. Argument A will then be used to argue for a stronger conclusion, namely, that an omnipotent being is logically impossible.

In any case, (A2) can’t just be assumed without argument.

More on self-alienation

Self-alienation is incompatible with a sense of having a biographical life of one’s own; such a sense is necessary for seeing one’s own life as meaningful. This is perhaps why sometimes a person who sees his life as meaningless would express his dim view by saying “I don’t even have a life”. Obviously he has a life, a biographical life; it is just that he has no identities at all that he identifies himself with. This is why a person might not see his life as meaningful even if he is, as Susan Wolf puts it, “actively and at least somewhat successfully engaged in a project (or projects) of positive value” (“The Meanings of Lives”, p.65), for he may still alienate himself from the project (or, from his identity as the person who has that project) even if he pursues it actively in some way.

It is not unimaginable that a person would alienate himself from a project of his which he is being actively and successfully engaged in and which has positive value in the eyes of others. Let us consider the case of Tolstoy. For most people, his identity as a great novelist, or more specifically, as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, certainly had positive value, but the following is how Tolstoy himself thought about this identity in A Confession:

During this time I began to write out of vanity, self-interest and pride. In my writings I did the same as I did in life. In order to achieve the fame and money for which I wrote I had to conceal what was good in myself and display what was bad. And this is what I did. Time and again I would contrive in my writing to conceal under the guise of indifference, or even of light-heartedness, those strivings for goodness which lent meaning to my life. And I succeeded and was praised.

Or thinking about the fame my own writing brought me, I would say to myself, “Well fine, so you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Molière, more famous than all the writers in the world, and so what?”

It is clear that Tolstoy himself, at least when he was writing A Confession, did not think his life was meaningful by virtue of his identity as a respected and famous novelist. It did not matter to him what others thought; even if everyone else thought his life was meaningful by virtue of his identity as a greater writer, he did not think so because he did not identify himself with that identity ¾ he did not think this is what he really was or what he wanted himself to be.

If it is not clear enough from the above quoted passages that Tolstoy alienated himself from his identity as a novelist, a writer, or an artist, the following passage should make it clear:

‘Art, poetry …’ For a long time, under the influence of success and praise from others, I had persuaded myself that this was a thing that could be done, […] But I quickly realized that this too was a delusion. It was clear to me that art is an adornment and embellishment of life. But it had lost its charm for me, so how could I charm others? While I was not living my own life but was being carried along on the crest of another life, as long as I believed that life had meaning even if I could not express it, the reflection of life in poetry and in art of all kinds gave me joy and I enjoyed watching life through the mirror of art. But when I began to search for the meaning of life, when I began to feel the necessity of living, I found this mirror either unnecessary, superfluous and ridiculous, or tormenting.

It is also clear from what Tolstoy said about his identity as a writer that he did not value this identity even though it was (and would be) valued by others. This suggests that a person cannot value an identity of hers without identifying herself with that identity. Some may think that since a person can identify herself with an identity that she does not value (such as in the case of a Dalit), she can also value an identity which she in fact has but which she does not identify herself with. Let me explain why the latter is not true. To identify oneself with one’s identity as x is to see x as part of what one really is, while to value one’s identity as x is to see x as what one wants to be or what one should be. It is possible for a person to believe that she really is x without wanting to be x or believing that she should be x ¾ it is possible for her to identify herself with x without valuing x. Now if a person wants to be x or believes that she should be x, and if she indeed is x and is aware that x is one of her identities, then it does not make sense for her to deny that she really is x. Indeed, given that she wants to be x, she cannot consistently refuse to embrace her identity as x ¾ she cannot consistently value x without identifying herself with x.

Self-alienation

Consider a woman who has a phenomenal talent for music, who always wants to be a cellist, but who decided to pursue a medical career because that was what her parents very much wanted her, and pressured her, to do. She has finally become a top brain surgeon after years of study and hard work, but this has never been what she really wants herself to be. Suppose someone congratulates her on her achievement; if she responds by saying "Thank you, but that's my parents' achievement, not mine", she will be saying something that is in a clear sense true. Since being a brain surgeon is not what she wants herself to be ¾ since she alienates herself from her identity as a brain surgeon, she cannot address positively her concern about who she is by answering "I am a brain surgeon" even if she can annex something positive to it such as "who helps people in a big way". The problem is that, for her, the "I am" is misplaced in such an answer.

We all have some identities that we do not identify ourselves with; this is just normal, for a person can have a strong and stable sense of who he is only if there are not too many things that he thinks he is, that he thinks define who he is. It would not be a problem if a person alienates himself from some, or even many, of his identities, but it would be a serious problem if he alienates himself from all of his identities. When a person has no identities that he identifies himself with, he is alienating himself from his whole biographical life. In that case, he is indeed alienating himself from himself, for some of his identities must define who he is in order for him to be the person who is living the biographical life that he is living, to be the I who would own the first-person version of his biography, i.e., his autobiography. As Camus so vividly and penetratingly portrays it in L’Étranger,* the life of a person who alienates himself not only from the world around him, but also from himself, is a meaningless life to the person himself.

* “Étranger” in French means either "foreigner", "outsider", or "stranger". Some English translations use the title The Stranger, some the title The Outsider. The protagonist Meursault is a stranger, a foreigner, or an outsider not only to people around him, but also to himself.

Harmless sexual immorality?

Are there harmless sexual activities that are immoral? If all harmless activities are morally permissible, the answer is obviously "no" --- as long as an activity is harmless, it is not immoral, whether sexual or not (people may understand "harmless" differently, but that does not affect the point).

But suppose a harmless activity may still be immoral, and suppose some sexual activities are harmless. On these suppositions, the question whether there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral does not have a clear answer. However, for those who are interested in the question and think it is important to have an answer to it, there are two views they need to distinguish:

(S)  If there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral, they are immoral by virtue of their sexual aspects.
(N)  If there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral, they are immoral by virtue of some non-sexual aspects of the activities; it just happens to be the case that these are sexual activities.

People who believe that sexual activities in themselves are amoral (i.e. neither moral nor immoral) cannot consistently accept (S). That is, they should accept (N). But accepting (N) implies seeing the sexual aspects of the activities as irrelevant to their being immoral or not. For them, if there are harmless activities that are immoral, it should not make any moral difference whether the activities are sexual or not, just as it should not make any moral difference whether the activities involved people who wear glasses or not.

Thus, to see the question whether there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral as a morally significant question, one has to accept (S). And to consistently accept (S), one has to believe that at least some sexual activities are not amoral --- they are in themselves either moral or immoral. Now unless people who believe that at least some sexual activities are not amoral also believe that all those sexual activities are moral, they already have an answer to the question whether there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral, namely, "yes".

It seems to be the case that people who are interested in the question whether there are harmless sexual activities that are immoral usually think it is a morally significant question, and it also seems to be the case that these people usually answer (or are inclined to answer) "yes" to the question. Given the above analysis, this should not be surprising at all.

Kierkegaard on Socrates

In his diary, Kierkegaard asks, "Why did Socrates compare himself to a gadfly?" A popular and amusing answer is that it is because Socrates knew that he was a pain in the ass to those whose cherished beliefs and claims of knowledge he kept questioning. Kierkegaard's answer is not as amusing, but much more insightful :

Because he only wished his influence to be ethical. He did not want to be an admired genius, standing apart from the rest, whereby he actually would have made life easier for them, as they would say: "Yes, it's all very fine for him, he is a genius." No, he merely did what every human being can do; he comprehend what every human being can comprehend. There in lies the epigrammatic. He grabbed hold of the individual and worried him, ceaselessly compelling and teasing him with this ordinary, universally human stuff. That made him a gadfly stirring up a person's passion, and he did not permit that person indolently and effeminately to admire and go on admiring, but claimed his very soul. When a human being possesses ethical strength, people like to elevate him into a genius, just to be rid of him; for his life constitutes a claim, a demand, on them. (The Diary of Soren Kierkegaard, edited by Peter Rohde, Carol Publishing Group, 1993, p.123)

The ethical, like the aesthetic and the religious, is for Kierkegaard not just a matter of thinking and understanding, but essentially a matter of living. Living, not just thinking how to live. What Kierkegaard means by "ethical strength" here is thus the strength to live the way one understands to be the right way to live. One's influence would be ethical in this sense if one could affect others in such a way that they not only think about how to live but also live accordingly. And the influence would be doubly ethical if it is by means of exemplifying a way of life that one affects how others live their lives.

Kierkegaard says Socrates "wished his influence to be ethical"; the word "wished" is telling. Not "wanted", not "hoped", but "wished", which suggests that Socrates realized that his influence failed to be ethical (in the above sense). Although he had shown his ethical strength, stirred up people's passion, compelled them to think and examine their own lives, most of them did not change for the better --- did not change their way of life --- as a result. Change is hard; change for the better is even harder.

A person's way of life won't be changed by what he considers to be another person's wisdom, no matter how much he appreciates the wisdom and admires the person who has it. In order for the wisdom to change  his way of life, it has to become his wisdom. That is, he has to change first --- the wisdom has to become part of his most natural way of seeing things, part of his worldview, and part of what he identifies himself with. Until then, the wisdom is mere words.

This might be why Socrates denied that he was wise. He didn't want people to see him as wise because he didn't want them to disregard the demands his life made on them as something that only a "genius" like Socrates himself would be able to meet. Examining one's own life and living accordingly is "ordinary, universally human stuff". You can admire Socrates as much as you can, but not even Socrates could examine your life for you. You have to do it yourself, and this is "what every human being can do". But it is hard. Most people would choose to remain no more than an admirer of Socrates rather than do what Socrates did.

A social function of literature

In The Educated Imagination, Northrop Frye argues for a social function of literature:

So, you may ask, what is the use of studying the world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance. In the imagination our own beliefs are also only possibilities, but we can also see the possibilities in the beliefs of others. Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them as possibilities. (pp.77-78)

Note that Frye does not say, or suggest, that literature has the power of changing people who are already intolerant. Literature's encouragement of tolerance will have, in most if not all cases, no effect on bigots and fanatics, the most intolerant among the intolerant. Although bigots and fanatics do see others' beliefs as possibilities, they see those beliefs as mere possibilities, while seeing their own beliefs as the truths. If they do read literature, they will see more possibilities as a result. However, the more possibilities they see, the more they may think what they see are mere possibilities, and the more they may assure themselves that their own beliefs are the truths. Not only does literature fail to encourage bigots and fanatics to be tolerant, it may even  encourage them to be more intolerant!

But isn't it part of the concept of belief that to believe that p is to believe that p is true? Whether a person is a bigot (or fanatic) or not, he has to take what he believes to be true --- no one can consistently believe that p without taking p to be true. So, how are we different from bigots and fanatics in this respect? In this respect there is indeed no difference; the difference lies in somewhere else: bigots and fanatics are so committed to their beliefs that they are not capable of taking seriously the possibility that their beliefs are false. They cannot, as it were, detach themselves from their beliefs, while we can ours if we try.

According to Frye, literature encourages tolerance by means of encouraging detachment of this kind:

What produces the tolerance is the power of detachment in the imagination, where things are removed just out of reach of belief and action. Experience is nearly always commonplace; the present is not romantic in the way that the past is, and ideals and great visions have a way of becoming shoddy and squalid in  practical life. Literature reverses this process. (p.78)

Through the imaginative lens of literature, we can see even our own beliefs from a certain psychological distance, which may be sufficient for making us more tolerant, even if in the end we do not give up any of our beliefs.