At the end of last post, we broadly agreed with:
ActualisationAnswer: the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.
We also discussed further the concept of creating a society in which we enable other people to achieve actualisation, as well as the value in working towards such a society. Aristotle accepted that eudaimonia was not something that could be achieved by everyone - one had to be in the right circumstances. I agree with this view - but I see it as deeply unfair. If we take ActualisationAnswer as valid, then it seems unjust that only certain people could ever achieve the meaning of life. Why should one's circumstances - which are to some degree luck based - affect whether one can truly flourish in life?
Now, it is intuitive to assume that the circumstances that we're discussing relate to financial circumstances. It is clear that those less well off in society will have to use more of their resources to finance basic existence - for example food and rent. This is compounded in cases of dependants and larger families - it seems harder to justify spending money to enrich oneself when one might have a child that needs feeding. I think it is likely however, that there are also other barriers aside from money - the primary one being culture.
Flourishing probably requires money, but I suspect a bigger blocker is time. Certainly if one lacks money, they may have to invest their time into earning it, and certainly one can use money to save time (for example hiring a cleaner). However there are people who have enough money in society who still struggle to find time to flourish. In some sense we'd expect this - we assume that a CEO of a company will live a busy life. It feels like the money motivation is linked with the hedonistic view of happiness - where one is motivated to achieve these goals but without it genuinely providing flourishing. It is not surprising that money tends to have diminishing returns with regards to life satisfaction.
I think this analysis indicates two primary concerns;
1) The resource gap - people need a certain amount of resources in order to be able to live. If they lack these resources natively then they need to invest their time (or otherwise) to obtain them.
2) The time gap - people need to have the time to flourish. Flourishing requires dealing with adversery and developing oneself in accordance to one's goals. It is worth noting of course that working may indeed act as a source of flourishing - and that for some people the focus on career can be their way of development. I think that this is unlikely to be the case for everyone however.
Effective actualisation
Let us assume that the two gaps mentioned above are to some degree valid. The intuitive next step is to ask how we can address both of these resource gaps. For each gap it's worth considering three things.
i) What is the current state?
ii) What would block me from filling the gap, or what would make it worse?
iii) What would enable me to address this gap, and what circumstances would make it better?
Blockers
I think it is here that it may be worth drawing upon some relevant concepts in Effective Altruism. Broadly speaking, effective altruism is about making a larger difference with one's resources. It initially started by looking at donations and charities. It is clear that certain charities are more impactful than others - for example it costs around 11,000 dollars to 'make a wish' as part of the 'make a wish foundation'. In comparison, it costs around 6000 dollars for some of the malaria charities to save a life. Given this difference, there is clearly an opportunity cost in terms of how one uses their money.
What I find quite interesting is that the effective altruism movement tends to be relatively risk focused. They are worried (and I think rightly) by people dying from (relatively) treatable diseases. They are concerned about existential risk - nuclear war, physical events and AI takeover. These are all useful things to consider and are certainly relevant for our second question.
For example - if we look at the resource gap. If we want people to have enough resources to flourish we would ideally be looking at a world where those resources might come even if the person does not 'directly contribute'. That is, we might be looking towards a world where the person is provided resources (food, money, living) without working. This would likely be from the state, but not necessarily. To have such an infrastructure would likely require some degree of a functional and sustainable economy.
Concerns around existential risk are quite relevant here. A nuclear fall out for example would certainly distabilise our lives and likely make it harder to achieve the necessary resources for survival.
Looking at the time gap - it is clear that 'needless' death is a big problem. If people are dying they clearly are losing time to achieve certain goals or to flourish. If we can provide treatments that increase people's time on earth then we are helping them address a flourishing gap.
Addressing the gap
From the more positive side, let us consider our third question, which lacks at how we can try and address these gaps. Here we are are talking about how we can increase and improve resource distribution and provide people with more 'valuable' time that they can use to flourish. I think the important thing here is for us to take active steps towards the achievement of flourishing.
For example, let's look at the resource gap. If we want to ensure all people have sufficient resources to flourish we likely need to make certain decisions around our economy and how we distribute resources. I mentioned for example that this could be achieved by the state - with one approach being a universal basic income. This could ensure that everyone has a minimal amount of resources to survive. We would however still need to consider problems of how the state could generate enough money to do this.
One area to look might be around automation and technological advancement. If we could leverage technology more effectively, we may be able to create sufficient growth that meant the government could fuel most people a universal basic income.
On to the time gap - it's clear that income and time are connected here. If someone has the income to surive without working, it makes it much more likely that would actually invest their time into flourishing. I think it's worth noting that for various cultural reasons, this might not actually happen. For example, some people struggle to identify what makes them flourish, and many people tend to procrastinate in doing things. In this sense, simply providing time and resources may not be enough to really enable people to achieve flourishing.
It's possible to take a more heavy handed approach - where the state or some other entity actively engages with people to help them find worthwhile flourishing opportunities. This could be the equivalent of a career advisor, except a flourishing advisor! We'd need to seriously consider how this would work though - and who would do it.
Other areas where we could focus more research into would be eudaimonia and flourishing. We still need to understand these concepts more deeply in order to help positively establish actions for the future. I suspect right government policy (as well effective altruism) is more focused on eliminating risks and blockers, as opposed to actively improving our lives.
I think I'm going to end this post here. In the next post I think I'll try and go a bit deeper into what I view the more 'positive side' and try and better articulate a world that we should live in. From there I hope to move towards a discussion on how I (we) can get there, and some of the logical steps I should take.
