The 2011 manifesto of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) promised “A Good Life for All Guyanese”: now that it is in a position to help to provide one, we shall see! That aside, it is Christmas time, a new year is about to dawn and we are in an unusual political context that offers much promise, so it is a good time to ask ourselves what constitutes “a good life”. I have used the term on numerous occasions without seriously contemplating it and since I am one of those who tend to make New Year resolutions (only to see them dissipate not long after), this year I may task myself with striving for “a good life” in 2012 and beyond.
APNU’s manifesto states that it will seek good governance, purposeful growth and sustainable developments in education, health, culture, information technology, and the arts; hinterland development; the proper utilisation and protection of our natural resources and environment; enhanced public security and a more purposeful foreign policy. In this general sense, it is no different from the manifestoes of the other political parties and in this season of good cheer and charity, we can conclude that all of the parties wish us “a good life”. But please note that the results of the above elements were not presented as preconditions for living the “good life” but as, more or less, constituting the “good life”, and unthinkingly, for many of us the attainment of a high material standard of living appears to constitutes a “good life.”
However, while not denying some relationship between material well-being and “a good life”, my Christian and other religious friends object. They reject the position that most of us in Guyana and in the world at large cannot live good lives because of our poor conditions. For these friends living “a good life” means believing in a god and attempting to live one’s life closest to what one understands his/her teachings to be. For them, Jesus’ proclamation that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God is most pertinent.
Although this kind of approach may suffice for those who believe in the various scriptures, we must accept that there is a growing number of people who have no religious belief and we cannot be saying that non-religious people are excluded from living “a good life”. A better formulation would be to say that there are many ways to live “a good life”, although I believe that it is possible to define “a good life” in a manner that, while it may not be sufficient for my religious friends, is contained within their formulations.
In “What Is a Good Life” (The New York Review of Books 10/02/11), Ronald Dworkin, if I understood him correctly, appeared to be making some suggestions that come close to my understanding of “a good life”. He claimed that to understand the value of living well we must understand the relation between the value of what is created and the value of the acts of creating it. We value great art not because the art as a “product” enhances our lives but because it embodies a “performance,” a rising to artistic challenge. We value human lives well lived not for the completed narrative, but because they too embody a performance, a rising to the challenge of having a life to lead. The final value of our lives is the value of the “performance”, not anything that is left when the performance is subtracted. Performance value may exist independently of any object with which that performance value has been fused. There is no product value left when a great painting has been destroyed, but the fact of its creation remains and retains its full performance value.
“A good life” then need not have any impact. It is the performance rather than the product value of living that counts. Why cannot a life also be an achievement complete in itself, with its own value in the art of living it displays? Of course, living well sometimes means choosing what is likely to be a worse life, for living well is not the same as maximizing the chance of producing the best possible life.
For me, and somewhat simpler, living “a good life” is more like playing and completing “a good game.” The common saying is “it’s not whether you win or lose that counts; it’s how you play the game.” The development of the game is the point of playing it and one cannot cheat or the game would not really have been played; the performance will be flawed! The completion of a game in which the players stick to the rules, play at their best and thus take the game to new heights is surely a thing of wonder: a performance that will outlive the result.
When after all the training, Usain Bolt passes the finishing line in record time, we all applaud and pay the requisite respect, for our world has arrived at a new level in sprinting. In our times, rooted as we are in materiality, owning the winning has become more important than the development of the game. Indeed, the latter as become so secondary that when Bolt passes the finishing line at such an extraordinary pace and in such style, our next thought is whether he has doped himself and that possibility never leaves our consciousness.
Living “a good life” then is not about a life with great material results, although a reasonable level of material comfort will do no harm.
It is not necessarily living as “a role model”, which itself is steeped in social conventions. It appears to me that, within the general strictures of society, living “a good life” is about setting parameters for oneself and to the best of one’s ability extending one’s freedom and fulfilling one’s natural potentials without preventing. and indeed aiding, others to do likewise. It is living a life that is complete in itself and could well be an example in the art of living.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a Good Life in 2012 and beyond!
