Stephen:”…eat, drink and be merry…”
John W. Gardner: “The conventional notions of happiness cannot possibly be taken seriously by anyone whose intellectual or moral development has progressed beyond that of a three-week old puppy.”
Anyone who has been so fortunate as to have had a gracious plenty of all the good things knows that’s not it! It’s no life at all. To become all we can be in order to do all we can whenever and wherever is better.
I write this knowing I’m probably not even on the same page with all of you but I’ve learned something I want to share. Opportunities come our way and to be able to meet them and make a difference is the ultimate, I think.
Up on the hill
lumberjacks
axing everything in sight.
Down along the stream crimson flowers burn.
-Chin do ba
His disciples said to him: On what day will the kingdom come?
<Jesus said:> It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say:
Look, here it is, or: Look, there it is;
but the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it.
– Gospel of Thomas Saying 113
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
– William Blake
Death be damned. Life!
– Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart
Stephen said
Up on the hilllumberjacks
axing everything in sight.
Down along the stream crimson flowers burn.
-Chin do ba
His disciples said to him: On what day will the kingdom come?
It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say:
Look, here it is, or: Look, there it is;
but the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and men do not see it.
– Gospel of Thomas Saying 113
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
– William Blake
Death be damned. Life!
– Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart
Hmm… surely, I’m over my head here now. 🙂
One byproduct of a modern liberal arts education is a reservoir of quotes for all occasions. If you’re truly curious consider the import of the quotes in the context of our discussion. JAS has hinted at madness and Judith suggests a degree of childishness. If you’re not curious then perhaps best not to judge a position you might not understand. But I do not intend to be willfully obscure.
Stephen said
One byproduct of a modern liberal arts education is a reservoir of quotes for all occasions. If you’re truly curious consider the import of the quotes in the context of our discussion. JAS has hinted at madness and Judith suggests a degree of childishness. If you’re not curious then perhaps best not to judge a position you might not understand. But I do not intend to be willfully obscure.
Got it! 🙂
Re: ** you do not have permission to see this link ** Hey, *IS* There a Point? The Book of Ecclesiastes June 30, 2022
JAS wrote
I think the problem with the idea that “we only have this life so enjoy yourself” is precisely the lack of motivation to restrain our pursuit of personal enjoyment when it inflicts harm on others (or, indeed, on ourselves — that is, short term joy and long-term harm).
Legitimate concerns. But contrast that view with the world in which we actually find ourselves, full of people convinced they’re chosen by God to do his will no matter the carnage. Who is really doing the most harm?
It is fine to say that we should seek to enjoy this life while also trying to do as little harm as we can, but the question is why avoid the harm as long as there is no overt consequence to ourselves? After all, if this life is all there is, and all we (or anyone else) will ever have, why not maximize our joy no matter the cost, especially to others?
The insight that the only really dependable way to maximize my own joy is to maximize the joy of others? The folks who voice the “eat drink and be merry” philosophy are seldom advocates of a “dog eat dog” morality. If we taught our children what is apparently the truth, that this world is all there is and what joys we find will have to be found or made here and now, and that we’re all in the same boat, all with the same fate, then I believe we would have a healthier and saner world.
And I think the trick is that there is no completely reliable and systematic way for people to be good to one another. I was raised in a context that was at least vaguely informed by religious traditions, specifically Christianity. Would I have the same sense of conscience without that, or something similar? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. Many observations about our current world are little more than assertions, and most of the alternatives are untestable in any practical sense, and are unlikely to be implemented, so fantasize away. Your experience with “folks who voice the eat, drink and be merry” philosophy is apparently very different than my own. They may not use the phrase, but many of the worst people are exactly living their version of that idea
Robert said
I think of it only as ‘shorthand’ for an outlook, but as such it does not contain one’s whole philosophy of life. How one contextualizes this saying in one’s life can be profoundly moral or immoral, it seems to me.
It may be a shorthand, but too often it is thrown out there as if it is a complete answer, when, as I think we both acknowledge, it is far from complete. Stephen did that in this thread (where it might have been a shorthand except that he neither acknowledged it as such nor took the opportunity in the thread to expand upon it, in spite of several opportunities to do so) and Dr. Ehrman did it in his blog post (from which Stephen lifted my response and brought it to this thread). More importantly, even if it is presented as part of the answer, which is valid enough, it is the easy part and hardly anyone offering it ever seems to go very far into that harder portion. I know many atheists, for example, representing a fairly wide spectrum of attitudes and degrees of tolerance and intolerance for anything even vaguely spiritual, and not one of them ever seems to stray very far beyond that same message that Dr. Ehrman shared as being key to his philosophy. To be fair, in their actual lives, many of them do have some sense of trying not to do harm, and, just as important, going beyond that to try to actively do good and to help others — they are just reluctant to engage in that part of the discussion because it tends to be where they find a problematic aspect in why anyone should be good, especially in ways that do not lead to direct reward or credit. And I usually do not press very hard on that part in such discussions precisely because I do not have a good answer to hand them that they are likely to accept, and I do not want anyone else (beyond those who have already done so) to decide that the answer is that they should not bother to be good at all. (Aynd Rand, the dreadful pseudo-philosopher, looked at the problem and decided that she could not solve it, and thus settled on the radical, and I think as we have seen in practice unworkable, solution that she should just elevate selfishness as not just a virtue but the ultimate virtue. Redefine the terms, and problem solved!) That answer leads only further into a dystopian world that I do not wish to come into being —- and which we may be entering anyway.
Stephen said
The most fascinating and revealing aspect of all this to me is how a certain mindset automatically translates “eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die” into a call for a shallow and dissolute lifestyle and then demands a defense of a shallow and dissolute lifestyle!
How else is any mindset to interpret it? What else more to it is there? (There is, of course, a lot more that isn’t there.)
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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