6.10.2006
One passage in the well-known 'Sunscreen address'[1] says:
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your
life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what
they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40-year-olds
I know still don’t.
Does one need to 'know what one wants to do with his life'? Is this
important? In the quoted lines above it is implied that you might still be
an 'interesting' person if you don't - so what, if anything, is it good for
to know that? Or is it perhaps rather meant that there might be an
obligation to find out what one is supposed to do with one's life
(the 'Sunscreen speech' of course says there isn't, and I'm much in agreement
with it).
1) One way to know what one wants to do with one's life is to have
an overall project in one's life. One person may want to make a success of a
business inherited from his parents, for instance; someone else decides to
dedicate herself to a scientific or environmental enterprise; another one may
just be interested in traveling around the world as much as possible; or
(keeping in mind that there are parts of the world in which people have to
fight much more basic battles) some might work relentlessly to spare their
children the pain and hunger that they themselves had to endure in earlier
periods of their life.
Having such a project often is what gives meaning to a life. This does not
imply that such projects may not change (perhaps repeatedly) over a life's
time; neither does it require that they have to be unique - there is no
contradiction between a project's being essential to one person and its
being the same as the project of hundreds of other persons. (For these and
related considerations see Bernard Williams' essay "Persons, character and
morality"[2].) Let us call a project of that sort a life-defining
project. In addition to the points mentioned above, it is also obvious
that not everybody actually does have a life-defining project, and those who
have may only have one for a certain period of their life.
This notion of a life-defining project is perhaps a bit too broad to be
really useful, and needs to be to refined. (I only introduced it by way of a
number of examples, and there should be a more concrete specification of
what it means to engage in such a project). But it brings some improvement
over the formulation 'to know what one wants to do with one's life'. (I'm
not sure whether there are plausible other candidates apart from having a
life-defining project for giving content to that formulation. Perhaps there
are, but I can't really think of one.) Projects have a reflective aspect:
they require the person who commits to them to think about possible actions
in the given circumstances and about possible future circumstances which she
intends to bring about or wants to avoid. There are also more basic
assumptions involved in project-making, for instance about personal identity
(which must be assumed at least if the goal of the project is supposed to
affect the undertaker herself).
2) What sort of authority would qualify as acceptable for
making a requirement to the effect that 'One should know what one
wants to do with one's life'? To demand this of someone would be indeed to
put a substantial requirement on him. I don't think that this can be
justified in general.
Tellingly, those who make such a demand usually would have a not entirely
altruistic motive for doing so: Imagine, for instance, a kind of
society that cajoles or forces its members into thinking their life is
meant to be a service to that society, and their own desires and interests
would always have to come second to that vocation. Naturally one imagines
this backed by some ideology (it would be difficult indeed to find it
plausible that such a society could be stable for any decent period if
there wasn't an element of that sort included) - and in this form we
know it from countless works of literature and film. (There are similar
tendencies in actually existing societies too, of course; but as so often
with reality, as compared to fiction, the case is much less clear-cut
there.) In this sort of case, it is not difficult to see how little
respect for an individual someone must have when demanding, not only that
this individual should 'decide what he wants to do with his life', but also
already prescribing exactly what this has to be.
But even in the case where it is demanded that someone must take that
decision and where it is not a foregone conclusion I think to make that
requirement can't be justified (not in general, anyway, though one might
imagine special situations that pose some constraints).
3) On the face of it, this liberal attitude seems not to be
consistent with the Stoic view that I outlined in an earlier post. Can it be consistently
maintained that, on the one hand, everybody is fully free to choose what,
if anything at all, he 'wants to do with his life', and, on the other hand,
that he should lead a self-examined life where (ideally) all actions that
are taken would be in accord with reason? Well, this depends on how we
are to understand the 'should' here.
There is a use of 'should' which indicates an obligation (more directly
this would be expressed by the overtly moral 'ought'). However, a different
use would render what one 'should' do rather as something that is
recommended. A recommendation should not express some arbitrary
opinion as to what the addressee should do, of course; there might well
be a host of reasons that can be put in front of him which (hopefully) will
make him see the point in the recommendation. However, the decision is still
his; that is part of the practice of recommendation, and is understood to
be accepted by both sides.
In making this distinction, I think it is possible to reconcile the
liberal attitude described above (allowing that one has complete freedom
in choosing life-defining projects, or in choosing not to have any) with
a Stoic-type suggestion (or, indeed, not just a Stoic-type but perhaps
also other philosophically motivated suggestions on similar lines) that one
should live a life of rational self-examination. That suggestion is meant
as a recommendation rather than a formulation of an obligation. It is
motivated by philosophical considerations, but it is not thought to
have the force of an obligation that follows, in a strict logical sense, from
some principles discovered (or invented) there. If it derives from correct
thinking, it will stand a good chance to convince the addressee, but at the
same time, since it is brought forward as a recommendation, it is accepted
that in the end it is up to him alone either to follow or to ignore it.
4) Let us fantasize, for a moment, about a world in which nothing
happens by chance, or by the action of other people. Imagine yourself as
situated in that world, and as being able to act so that you can
control everything. (It is actually not easy to imagine this thoroughly; the
very impoverished world of some video games comes somewhat near that
configuration of a possible world.) What happens to you is up to you
and nobody and nothing else; it is under your sole control; just everything
that happens to you, or in a wider sense can possibly affect you,
is a consequence of your own actions. Under such circumstances you would not
run into a risk of getting yourself into painful or other undesirable states.
(Let us ignore the possibility of making mistakes that might maneuver you
into such states - suppose you will always, in that world, have enough time
and resources to recognize and avoid those dangers.)
In the real world, of course, life is not nearly as simple (and, one
might add, not nearly as boring, too). For one thing, there are events that
not only surprise us, but also are completely uncontrollable by us. That
fact alone would suffice to make it impossible that the outcome of our
actions can be controlled by ourselves here. In addition, the presence of
other beings in the world (especially other humans) which follow their own
interests makes the situation even more complex. The more facts of that sort
we include in our picture, the more likely it gets that you will run into
situations that are unpleasant, painful, or undesirable in other ways. You
won't get everything you want anymore. Therefore you have to devise
strategies to avoid the worst and pursue the best (one aspect of those
strategies will be to decide what you want and what to avoid in the first
place; after that, it comes to looking for ways to achieve it). Of course,
since people are different, and circumstances are even more so, general
recipe for success is not readily to be had; and if it would, it could
not guarantee success, but make it at best somewhat probable (because
something unexpected might happen all the time).
Given these considerations (but still oversimplifying) it seems to be
a good idea to optimize your behaviour, with respect to certain desired
goals. There are, after all, some strategies that have higher chances
of reaching a given goal. In general, trying to find such an optimized
strategy is advisable. (Note that this involves both reflection and
planning.) Furthermore, the goals themselves can be optimized. Some are
attractive, but nearly impossible to achieve, so that they should perhaps
best be given up; some are best targeted in combination with others, and
certain others should be only considered at all if you are prepared to give
up ambitions that are excluded by them.
Although this line of thought did start from your particular point of
view, with its especially aligned interests, it seems plausible that this
egoistic flavour would be neutralized once the optimization of both
goals and the strategies to achieve them kicks in. In fact, there should
be a good deal of reflection about others' goals involved in such an
optimization, if it is to be successful in the real world. The clever thing
to do is to take into account, and respect, others' interests and their
respective pursuit.
I hope it starts to emerge from this an idea in which sense the suggestion
of a rationally structured life might make sense in the actual world: the
real world that we have, with all its contingencies and unforeseeable
developments, and full of agents that follow their own interests and
strategies, attempting to reach their diverse goals. I'd like to emphasize
again how extremely oversimplified this picture still is: nothing has been
said so far about the emotional shapes of people, of relationships between
them, of supra-individual forces (such as political constellations) which
also have an impact on the circumstances of our lives, and many other
aspects of the actual world around us. Perhaps it wouldn't be possible to
allow all these aspects into a general account of a rationally structured
life and still retain something that has a discernible direction in it.
But imagine you'd try to find a way to do so. Would that be something that
sounds a reasonable thing to do with your life?
__
[1] Although sometimes attributed to film director Baz Luhrmann
(who set it to music), it was actually written by the columnist Mary
Schmich. For details, this is the
wikipedia entry.
[2] Bernard Williams, "Persons, character and morality", in:
Moral Luck. Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 1981, 1-19.
