The sensualist will say it's all about the physical: look good, feel good. Eat all you want, fuck all you want, indulge every appetite. It's unhealthy to repress or deny your natural desires. The ultimate good in life is pleasure.
The intellectual will say it's all about the mental: understand, be rational. Sorrow, pain and conflict all arise from a lack of understanding. Explore, study and learn so that you can control your destiny. The ultimate good in life is knowledge.
The spiritualist will say it's not about this life at all. The pleasures of the flesh corrupt the spirit. Knowledge undermines faith. Avoid the pleasures and knowledge of this world. The ultimate good is in the life to come, rather than this one.
Personally, I think they're all wrong. There is no ultimate good in life. To pursue one aspect of a good life at the expense of the others is fundamentally unhealthy. Those neglected will decay and the one pursued to excess will be rotten. The key is in the tension and the balance.
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6 comments:
I like this a great deal.
Often I come across in books and sermons statements of the form "X is the most important thing." Usually X=Loving God, although it can also be faith or service or good dental hygiene. The problem with these statements, even when they're well-intentioned and almost correct, is that any time you elevate one thing in isolation from the rest of your life you necessarily set it in opposition to the other, "less important" things. And this breaks up what ought to be whole. A life well lived is not like a well-drawn organizational schematic. A life well lived is like water flowing through water.
Or if you prefer Lao-tzu (via Stephen Mitchell):
He who stands on tiptoe
doesn't stand firm.
He who rushes ahead
doesn't go far.
He who tries to shine
dims his own light.
He who defines himself
can't know who he really is.
He who has power over others
can't empower himself.
He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.
If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.
'There is no ultimate good in life.'
ahem ahem ahem....
you mean OTHER than God/Jesus/love, correct?
and 5th Street.
On the surface, of course I would say that God is the ultimate good. I am however, tempted argue that God exists outside of or beyond this life -- transcends any possible meaning of this life.
Also, I don't think that the ultimate good of God is analogous to the good valued by the intellectual or the sensualist, perhaps not even that of the spiritualist.
That being said, I think that Christ expressed a similar sentiment to mine when He responded to the question, "What is the greatest commandment?" with two. They must exist in tension and in balance.
So the ultimate good is not found in this life, but the next...
As for Christ agreeing with you, isn't that understood, given your namesake, O one-who-is-like-God?
I think it's not so much a question of where it is, as though the ultimate good is a location (either spatial or chronological), or what it is, in the sense that it might be some kind of commodity that I recieve. Perhaps the ultimate good (if the phrase ultimately means anything--haha) is some thing or pattern that simply is, and in which we either participate or do not. The Kingdom of God is at hand, right?
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