A Meaningful Life: A Manifesto

The statement sounds from the radio. “We work to help all people lead healthy, productive lives.” It's the common message of any modern developmental organization such as The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, or the Clinton Foundation. Think about that statement. Does any word stand out?

 

Productive. 

 

Let's say there are two types of goals in life, intermediate and final. Intermediate goals are there to help reach a final goal. Or to reach another intermediate goal on the way to a final goal. The only value in an intermediate goal is how close it brings a person to a final goal. A final goal is valuable in itself. For instance, graduating high school is not a final goal, but an intermediate goal that brings one closer to going to college (or knowledge). Which of those two are final goals? Not college, that's another intermediate goal. Knowledge could be a final goal, depending on the person or it might be a stepping stone along the way. People may disagree whether something is one or the other. 

Is being productive a final goal? Plenty of people think so. The three groups listed above do. They think that being healthy leads to being productive. On the Clinton Foundation site an article says, “I began to understand that being healthy and staying healthy has to start at a young age in order to live a long productive life. (emphasis mine)” That sentence clearly frames health as an intermediate goal to reach the final goal of being productive. Being productive is in itself, a good. Productivity is not valuable for what it produces, but what it says something about the character of the person.

Yet, others might think this odd. A number of preferable adjectives could be used to replace productive in the opening statement. We work to help all people lead healthy, (creative, happy, free) lives. Of course, there are a nearly unlimited number of adjectives, but these three seem most relevant to the topic, if one had to choose three final goals for individuals. While the definition of productive (producing or able to produce large amounts of goods, crops, or other commodities), lends itself to a commercial existence, as in producing for the economy, creativity is different. Creativity is uniquely human, and allows the creator to imagine and to grow. When creating the individual is able to develop, but with production repetition and stagnation follow.

While creativity relates to and contrasts with production, happiness does not. Yet, of all the lifelong goals, happiness is one of the most hoped for. That's not to say that happiness can't be shallow, and for most it will ebb and flow as life passes. Yet it is a final goal with strong significance for most. If happiness is shallow, freedom is the most inspiring. People aspire for liberty to make something of their life, or to be who they want to be.

While it's interesting to look at a statement, one might assume it's not relevant to politics, but it is. The United States is largely based on the idea that a productive life is a good life, a final goal. The idea didn't begin with the United States though. It can be seen all the way back at the birth of philosophy. Socrates and Plato spoke about a productive life. Though most of the facts about Socrates' life come from the writings of Plato it seemed likely that they held opposing views on whether production was a final goal of life. Socrates, a man who abandoned his trade of stone-working to question others about their understanding of virtue, seems a strange person to endorse production. Yet he does twice in Books III and VIII of The Republic. In Book III Socrates, as written by Plato, says,

"I mean this: When a carpenter is ill he asks the physician for a rough and ready cure; an emetic or a purge or a cautery or the knife, --these are his remedies. And if some one prescribes for him a course of dietetics, and tells him that he must swathe and swaddle his head, and all that sort of thing, he replies at once that he has no time to be ill, and that he sees no good in a life which is spent in nursing his disease to the neglect of his customary employment; and therefore bidding good-bye to this sort of physician, he resumes his ordinary habits, and either gets well and lives and does his business, or, if his constitution falls, he dies and has no more trouble.

Yes, he said, and a man in his condition of life ought to use the art of medicine thus far only.

Has he not, I said, an occupation; and what profit would there be in his life if he were deprived of his occupation? (Emphasis mine)."

The paragraph describes how a sick man asks for a quick cure, but if not given, returns to work until he recovers or dies. It implies that a man has no time to waste in returning to production, and in fact there is no point in living if one can not work. In Chapter VIII, as Plato compares necessary and unnecessary pleasures, he declares necessary pleasures (such as simple eating) as productive. He then explains how democracies encourage unnecessary pleasures, setting productive persons as superior.

Productivity, as the heir to all goodness, continued its uninterrupted eminence through the the Catholic Church as 'works', was idealized in John Calvin's reformation as 'Protestant Work Ethic', commercialized in John Locke's concept of the production of property, brought into being in the construction of the United States by political philosophers that loved British enlightenment thinkers, reinforced by the publication of The Wealth of Nations, and ultimately cemented by the industrial revolution. Many other channels contributed as well, but there isn't time for all that.

In the United States, the Supreme Court used to value liberty of contract as one of the highest goods. Liberty of Contract was the concept that the government could place no restrictions on the right of two persons (or corporations) to make a contract. It did this, supposedly because it granted everyone the freedom to make contracts. This rational was used to strike down all the labor laws that we have today. In reality it granted those well off the freedom to abuse those who could not resist. It was a form of protecting the ability of the powerful to compel the productivity of the poor.

 

Though the concept has been largely relegated to the recycling bin of legal precedent, the neoliberalism of the 1970s has taken its place and now continues its forty year dominance. Neoliberalism, of course, has continued the support of production, over all, from Reagan and Clinton to Bush and Obama, through free-trade, deregulation, privatization, and reduction of social services.

Why does this all matter? The United States is in the beginning of a primary system for both parties. The candidates have the ability to express what goals policy should embody. Think: would you rather have policy creators that value you for your production or happiness? Efficiency or creativity? Ability to generate value for the economy or personal freedom? When the presidential candidates line up, think about which share your values. There are some standing on the stage that won't agree with you about what is of value. There are some that will. There are even others that are not even concerned with any value for you at all. I hope you consider this when you vote.

And I hope you live an enjoyable, meaningful life.

Whatever that may mean to you.