Do Only What You Feel Like Doing as a Today's Philosophy of Life - Research Paper Example

“Do whatever you want” or “do only what you feel like doing”, these are two sentences that describe quite accurately today’s philosophy of life. There’s nothing wrong with them, but only as long as you don’t understand them as referring to a total disregard or depreciation of moral values. Morality should underlie man’s actions and its importance and the place it should play in people’s lives have been studied in a great number of writings, starting from antiquity to the present times. Our world seems to be driven by the desire of getting rich, of accumulating and by a speed cult. People seem to be so eager to have more, that they even forget about their own lives and concentrate primarily on satisfying their material needs. It’s not only about ensuring a comfortable life anymore, it’s about luxury we are talking now, and about making things so easy, by introducing technology everywhere, that we even forget that this means “easy” and we get to think it has always been the same. Men have always had this tendency towards exaggerating, mostly when it comes to getting rich or powerful and there have always been philosophers who noticed it. Plato was one of them. He insisted on the idea that man should be moderate, should balance his desires. Moderation doesn’t mean repression, but it means that you shouldn’t satisfy only one need, one desire, in the detriment of other needs. The philosopher convinced that virtue is all that is relevant for happiness, is also convinced that soul is immortal and that it comes from a world different from the material world where we live with our bodies. And in the Greek philosopher’s view, we should cultivate virtue and reason rather than desires that belong to the material world. According to Plato, there are two possible ideals for man’s life: one which means that the ultimate purpose of life is pleasure and the other one according to which the purpose of life is that of Good. And for him, Good is the virtuous person, the soul where measure and order rule. Looking at our world, we cannot say that measure is really our forte. We see people who forget what to be human means. We work and work, we do not take the time to cultivate our spirit, and we have other priorities. But maybe we have these other priorities exactly because we don’t meditate upon our own lives and the purpose of our actions. Everyone knows that our life here is not eternal, that at a certain point, sooner or later, at a younger or older age we are going to die. So our life here ends. And then comes the question: what happens after that? When it comes to a question like that, people’s opinions differ. Some think this is all, others consider that the end of this life means the beginning of a new life, of a life beyond our senses and beyond materiality. But no matter the opinion, this continuous run after money and pleasure don’t seem to have a reasonable purpose. Because people want to get more than they have even when they have a lot but if asked why, they won’t know what to answer. Leading a life of excess won’t make anyone happy, on the contrary it will alienate people, it’ll get them sick both physically and mentally. Such a life means stress: if you don’t stop to rest, you’ll soon get tired, if you don’t stop and meditate, you’ll soon find you don’t know who you are, what you are doing and why you are doing that, you won’t know what your values are anymore and whereto your life is heading. So, we come to Plato’s idea: a happy life is a virtuous one. A happy life is a life based on measure and on reason and order. This doesn’t mean that we have to become a sort of robotic beings, with no desire, but we should definitely learn how to make use of our will and how to stop from time to time, how to take breaks. We need to find the time to think upon ourselves and life and upon our freedom of doing whatever we feel like doing. We are free indeed, freedom is one of our rights, but we also have to think what we do with our freedom, how we are going to use it. Our society seems to be one of exaggeration: we exaggerate in our need for money and material goods, we exaggerate in using the planet’s resources. And we don’t even see the danger in it. On the contrary, we encourage it and we are encouraged in it: “eat more” or “drink more”- that is what beautifully presented food images in many commercials tell us, “work more and concentrate on the growth of the business”- that is what the successful businessman image in other commercials tell us. This attitude and this philosophy of life are not beneficial to us. It means a life lacked of harmony, which, according to Plato, is essential to life. Robert S Brumbaugh, analyzing Plato’s work, comments upon the philosopher’s ideas referring to temperance- which is defined as “harmony among the parts of the soul”. We need to say, first of all, that the soul is, in Plato’s opinion, tripartite, being composed of a rational part, an emotional one and the appetite area. “Reason, with its ideal due of measure, must limit appetite which left to itself is just a blind desire to have more. If appetite rules, this creates a psychological imbalance, not consistent with wisdom or courage. ” (216) Starting from Plato’s idea of temperance, Brumbaugh also analyses the relationship technology-temperance. Thus, technology becomes worse than it was ever achieved, if it undermines temperance. “If a society allows prosperity to make everyone want more comfort and commodities and if advertising profession has found a way to create new wants, temperance is in jeopardy.”(216) Well, it seems that this is what we have done, we have endangered temperance, we’ve done more, we haven’t thought about it anymore. Because the guiding idea today is: do not be satisfied, ask for more, get more. To want more is a condition of progress, indeed. And progress is desirable, but it depends on the direction of progress, on the different ways of advancing. We must ask ourselves what is it that we should want more, what is beneficial to us as human beings, to our society and to our world and where we should stop in order not to destroy what we’ve created. Man has this tendency of exaggerating. It sometimes grows into something that is more than a tendency, it becomes a disorder. There are eating, drinking, sexual, and different behavior disorders. Our world is full of such problems. People get abnormally fat, are alcoholic, or dependant on various drugs. All these problems are the result of man’s inability to balance his needs anymore. This causes a lack of control over one’s life. The result is that our society looks alienated and suffering. And there are many cases of people who, although apparently happy, as they have everything they need and everything the others strive for, are in fact very unhappy – be that they cannot see what they have in their rush to get more – which has now become a habit – or because now they realize their efforts didn’t bring happiness. The problem constituted by man’s tendency to exaggerate is amplified by the tendency to transform repeated actions into habit. And this is what happens, exaggeration becomes a habit, it becomes our feature. That’s the explanation for the fact that people don’t even notice that their life is no longer moderate. They’re dissatisfied but they don’t know what the reason for their unhappiness is. We must observe some rules in order to live a balanced life. And we must learn which our priorities are and why we have these priorities. It is, indeed, impossible to lead a perfect life, but it is possible to live a moderate and balanced one. Bibliography 1. Brumbaugh, Robert. Plato for the modern age. New York: Collier Books, 1964 Read More