The perfect life

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runaway
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The perfect life

Post by runaway »

What would you all define as the ‘perfect’ or ‘optimum’ life? Would you say that out of all the possible lives that you could have had, is the optimum life the one in which you realised your dreams and ambitions, the one in which you had the biggest impact in society, the one in which you had the deepest relationships, the one where you lived the longest or something else? I would be interested in what people’s thoughts were as to what the ‘perfect’ life is and how would you make a start to work towards it in the here and now.
Alias
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Alias »

Off-hand, I would say, one without regrets. I'm close enough to the end now to know how many of my mistakes, miscalculations and misdeeds are irreparable, and I regret them.
Other people's mistakes and misdeeds can also blight one's life, especially in the early part, when parents, teachers, coaches, peers, siblings, community, culture and religion are formative life structures, yet beyond one's control.
Another thing that's hard, if not impossible, for the individual to change are the demands and constraints of his time and society - its conflicts and injustices can strike anyone at random.
Of course, from the very start to the very end, the individual is always prey to nature: birth defects, illness and injury can ruin life.

So, considering the 10% or so of factors that we can actually do something about, I would go with Epicurus:
To experience tranquility, Epicurus suggested that we could seek knowledge of how the world works and limit our desires. For him, the pleasure was to be obtained through things such as: Knowledge, Friendship, Community, Living a virtuous life, Living a temperate life, Moderation in all things, Abstaining from bodily desires. The term temperate, as in living a temperate life, means a mild or modest style.
https://www.verywellmind.com/epicurean- ... ss-4177914

I could sum it up as : healthy body, supportive community, meaningful work, sufficient leisure, autonomy
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LuckyR
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Re: The perfect life

Post by LuckyR »

runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pm What would you all define as the ‘perfect’ or ‘optimum’ life? Would you say that out of all the possible lives that you could have had, is the optimum life the one in which you realised your dreams and ambitions, the one in which you had the biggest impact in society, the one in which you had the deepest relationships, the one where you lived the longest or something else? I would be interested in what people’s thoughts were as to what the ‘perfect’ life is and how would you make a start to work towards it in the here and now.
Basically the first question is: do you value accumulation of good things or avoidance of bad things, or both. I would go with both. Next: is it better to achieve the highest highs with some serious tradeoffs, or more modest highs consistently. I favor the latter. So my actual life is pretty darn close to the optimal life by that measure.

So among your options I am saying: all of them.
"As usual... it depends."
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absurdistestelle
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Re: The perfect life

Post by absurdistestelle »

(I am not a native English speaker nor am I a philosophy student. I am just humbly writing down what I think. I still have a lot to learn so please take a pinch of salt when you read this and please point out my mistakes if I have any logical flaws)

I guess "optimum life" and "perfect life" are two different concepts. Optimum life is how far you can achieve within your limited time; while "perfect life" is the kind of life that you wish to live, and you might not be able to achieve it. Let's say there is a blind person who can never regain vision regardless of medical efforts. To him, his optimum life might be marrying his lover, be a good person, earn a whole lot of money, or become an inspirational speaker and change others' lives. However, he might want to have a normal eyesight in his "perfect life", which is not achievable.

To me, optimum life means maximizing the amount of happiness that you can create. I am looking at the problem from an idealist perspective. The happiness you created must be socially and chronically sustainable (not sure if my choice of words is appropriate). Socially sustainable means your happiness can help generate more happiness in society. For example, if you do charity work, you make other people happy, hence the happiness you created is socially sustainable. Or if a person murders his enemy, the happiness he gains is not socially sustainable as he spreads hatred and grief in society. Chronically sustainable means it can generate more happiness in the future. For example, you work extremely hard at work. Although you might not be happy now, but you will taste the fruits of your hard work someday, so it is chronically sustainable. An anti-example is that a person smokes. He might gain happiness now, yet he might suffer from cancer in the future, leading to unhappiness. Therefore, I guess optimum life is how much happiness can you create within your transient lifetime.

Perhaps "perfect life" is the ideal self that you wish to achieve. For instance, Superman's life might seem perfect to lots of kids. I would say superhero movies are projections of the "perfect lives" that we wish to live. Achieving "perfect life" can be a quest that never ends as your ideal self constantly changes. The image of a perfect life gives us hope and motivation to move forward. I guess perfect life might be a more subjective and personal concept as different people uphold different values. To a merciful, virtuous person, his ideal life might be becoming sbd like Mother Teressa. However, to an evil person, his ideal life might be killing 10 people each day without getting caught. Perfect life decides what you do and what choices you make.

I would try to achieve my optimum life by making sure the decisions that I make are socially and chronically sustainable. For example, I have a public exam next month but I am here responding to an online forum. So I guess the happiness that I am generating is not chronically sustainable. Gotta go but I hope it generates socially sustainable happiness if you think that my answer makes sense XD
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Alias »

For "chronically sustainable", I would substitute "sustainable over time" or "long term" or perhaps "perpetually sustainable".
Other than that, I found your grammar, syntax and vocabulary admirable.
The content is pretty good, too.
evolution
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Re: The perfect life

Post by evolution »

A life where I was happy and content always, while still noticing and allowing all of the 450 or so human emotions to rise and fall when they do, without them affecting 'me', negatively.

A life where I was able to, from birth, have Trust, Respect, Understanding, Empathy whilst being Loyal (honest) Open with Voluntary Enthusiasm for and with absolutely EVERY one, always. And,

A life where I was making 'life, itself, better' for EVERY one, especially children/the following generations to come, and not just making 'a better life', for some only.

This is what I would define as being living somewhat 'closer to a perfect or optimum life'.

And how I make a start to working towards this, in the here and now, is by just becoming Honest and Open, while seriously Wanting to change, for the better. Then, by just remaining Truly OPEN, always, I will then have what it takes and is necessary to be able to learn how to achieve this life, for my self, and more importantly for my children.

I, however, will obviously not be able to have this life. But I can do what it takes so that future children could have this life, and hopefully they all will be born into this way of life, sooner than later.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Pattern-chaser »

runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pm What would you all define as the ‘perfect’ or ‘optimum’ life?

For me, it would be to have left the world a better place than it was when I arrived. Sadly, there is no chance of that.
Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"
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EsmagaSapos
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Re: The perfect life

Post by EsmagaSapos »

runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmWould you say that out of all the possible lives that you could have had, is the optimum life the one
I recommend you the film Mr. Nobody by Jaco Van Dormael.
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmthe one in which you realised your dreams and ambitions
Any projection onto the future is death, in other words, not living. That's my view.
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmthe one in which you had the biggest impact in society
That's recognition, wanting others approval, that's also not living. That's my view.
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmthe one in which you had the deepest relationships
Love is your projection of someone else, it's not that person that you love.
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmthe one where you lived the longest or something else?
People that live long years realize that, the reason they lived all those years was to finally accept death and see why it has to happen.
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pmpeople’s thoughts were as to what the ‘perfect’ life is and how would you make a start to work towards it in the here and now.
(...) there is no practicing and no action of realizing. That there is nothing which can be attained is not idle talk; it is the truth. If you would spend all your time – walking, standing, sitting, or lying down– learning to halt the concept-forming activities of your mind, you could be sure of ultimately attaining the goal. — Huang Po, Ch'an Master (The Transmission of Mind)
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Diascarus
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Diascarus »

I wonder how many times over the course of human history this question Has been asked. The thing about the answer, however, is it's very subjective. Everyone's idea of prefect is different. Though we could agree on having enough of the necessities where one would never have to worry again, is the foundation for this "perfect life".
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LuckyR
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Re: The perfect life

Post by LuckyR »

Pattern-chaser wrote: March 14th, 2021, 6:48 am
runaway wrote: March 12th, 2021, 5:15 pm What would you all define as the ‘perfect’ or ‘optimum’ life?

For me, it would be to have left the world a better place than it was when I arrived. Sadly, there is no chance of that.
Though your influence is only within a particular sphere, so the evaluation of your influence should only be within that sphere.
"As usual... it depends."
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chewybrian
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Re: The perfect life

Post by chewybrian »

Diascarus wrote: March 14th, 2021, 9:29 am I wonder how many times over the course of human history this question Has been asked. The thing about the answer, however, is it's very subjective. Everyone's idea of prefect is different. Though we could agree on having enough of the necessities where one would never have to worry again, is the foundation for this "perfect life".
LOL when anyone on a philosophy forum says "I think we can all agree that..."

I guess that depends on where you draw the line of necessity, and what justice there is in who gets what, but I think a lot of philosophers would disagree that possessions lead to happiness in any way. I thought of a bunch of examples off the top of my head, but I'll just give the two most striking that came to mind:

Diogenes:

‘Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods’... When he saw a boy drinking water out of his hand, he threw away his cup, grumbling at how he had lived so long only to learn wisdom from a child.

https://philosophyforchange.wordpress.c ... o-think-2/

Rousseau:

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.""

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subj ... y/ch02.htm
"If determinism holds, then past events have conspired to cause me to hold this view--it is out of my control. Either I am right about free will, or it is not my fault that I am wrong."
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Count Lucanor
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Count Lucanor »

runaway wrote:What would you all define as the ‘perfect’ or ‘optimum’ life? Would you say that out of all the possible lives that you could have had, is the optimum life the one in which you realised your dreams and ambitions, the one in which you had the biggest impact in society, the one in which you had the deepest relationships, the one where you lived the longest or something else? I would be interested in what people’s thoughts were as to what the ‘perfect’ life is and how would you make a start to work towards it in the here and now.
A tricky question, because one tends immediately to think of the flaws in one's actual life and come up with an answer that compensates and fixes them. The problem with that is that you're never defining what is the perfect life from scratch, but one that is looking backwards to the roads one has traveled. Its value of perfection or imperfection is determined by the needs that those life travels brought along the way and how they were fulfilled or not. An objectively-defined perfect life then will be impossible, it is always a subjective perspective with its insights too intimate to be of much value for anyone else. In any case, taking that risk, I would say: at the practical level: a life with enough material resources to fulfill one's physical, intellectual and emotional needs. Opulence and lavishness, accumulation of things for their own sake, doesn't achieve it. No major insight there, we wouldn't have "rosebud" in the script of Citizen Kane if we didn't already have fair knowledge of this. About physical needs, a perfect life would be one where one remains healthy most of it and gets to enjoy a rich and varied amount of sensual, hedonistic pleasures (food and sex, for example) without excesses. The optimum level of moderation for this: that you control these things, not that they control you. At the intellectual level: to gain as much wisdom as to always require the expansion of our curiosity and never stop learning. The more you know, the more you realize there's much more to know. To always keep the sense of awe and wonder. At the emotional and interpersonal level, having as much people to love and give as possible, and to get the same in reciprocity. Adding a soulmate to the equation makes it truly perfect.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Steve3007
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Steve3007 »

I'll take achieving deepest ambitions and deepest relationships thanks. Can I get that to go?
Fellowmater
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Re: The perfect life

Post by Fellowmater »

For me it would be a life where I am continuing to develop and better myself as a person. I want to try as many different things as possible, improve my general knowledge, travel the world, read loads of books, learn to cook, learn to speak another language, try different hobbies, make friends from all walks of life and introduce more creativity into my life through art, theatre and literature. I want to experience the finer things in life and just anything meaningful like falling in love, spending the weekend in the countryside, looking after and growing close to a pet, camping under the stars, going to a food festival, having a magical Christmas.
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Re: The perfect life

Post by LuckyR »

Fellowmater wrote: March 19th, 2021, 3:46 am For me it would be a life where I am continuing to develop and better myself as a person. I want to try as many different things as possible, improve my general knowledge, travel the world, read loads of books, learn to cook, learn to speak another language, try different hobbies, make friends from all walks of life and introduce more creativity into my life through art, theatre and literature. I want to experience the finer things in life and just anything meaningful like falling in love, spending the weekend in the countryside, looking after and growing close to a pet, camping under the stars, going to a food festival, having a magical Christmas.
In my experience this would be the most common opinion.
"As usual... it depends."
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