...coming to terms with life
by Jason Smith

magine a friend who is addicted to drugs, Wolf says. You might be concerned that he might someday realize he's been wasting his life. But your real fear is that he won't have this realization, even if he's perfectly happy with the life he's living. Why is that?

It can't be that a meaningful life is necessarily better for the person who lives it. It's not even necessarily better for the world that you live a meaningful life (meaningful lives are not necessarily morally good, remember), and neither is a meaningful life necessarily happy.

And it can't be that the rest of us are worse off if our friend doesn't have a meaningful life. The Blob isn't hurting anyone, Wolf says, and the idle rich aren't necessarily hurting anyone either.

We think that it's too bad our friend isn't living a meaningful life, but it's too bad for him, not us. Still, we think he should involve himself in something objectively good. Why?

.: Susan Wolf. Photo by Jo Gravely; click to enlarge. :.

Because we live in a vast universe, and each of us is just a tiny speck in it, Wolf says.

There are billions of other people and beings to whom your life is gratuitous, billions of points of view which may be indifferent to your happiness and fulfillment. "That realization comes as a shock to some people," Wolf says. "It can make you feel as if some kind of ground has opened up from under you."

Given that the whole human race is, in some sense, a speck across a larger time and space, to live in a self-centered way flies in the face of that fact, Wolf says. If your life is entirely egocentric, you're in effect saying that your happiness is all that matters. And how, Wolf asks, can one's happiness be the only thing that matters when there is so much more worth caring about?

y contrast, living a life engaged in projects with objective value "harmonizes with the fact that one is not the center of the universe," Wolf says. If we focus on activities that have objective value, we acknowledge our place and status in the world.

Granted, a person may not care whether his life harmonizes with the fact that he's a tiny speck in a vast universe. But Wolf says that failure to be concerned about living a meaningful life is a failure to acknowledge this fundamental truth about the world.

This cosmic insignificance brings us back to the meaning-of-life question.

Some philosophers — Wolf calls them pessimists — feel that if life as a whole lacks meaning, then each individual life must be meaningless, too. Even if everyone is doing good for everyone else, we're all equally small and meaningless, despite our desire to be significant. The whole thing becomes one big cosmic joke.

Wolf agrees that it's futile to try to make ourselves significant. "Some people do undoubtedly get very upset, even despondent, when they start to think about their cosmic insignificance," she says.

"They want to be important, to have an impact on the world, to make a mark that will last forever. When they realize that they can't achieve this, they're very disappointed. The only advice one can give to such people is: get over it."

e can come to terms with our insignificance, Wolf says. We can accept our smallness and live in a way that harmonizes with and acknowledges it. "Living lives that attain or realize some nonsubjective value may not make us meaningful, much less important, to anyone other than ourselves," she says. "But it will give us something to say — and to think — when we realize there are many other perspectives that are indifferent to our existence and to our well-being."

So even if the world is collectively meaningless, our lives can still be meaningful. And Wolf's suggestions for a meaningful life don't hinge upon the existence of God: we can say that some projects are objectively better than others, more worthwhile. "If one activity is worthwhile and another is a waste," Wolf says, "then one has reason to prefer the former, even if there is no God to look down on us and approve."

The difference between a meaningful life and a meaningless life, Wolf says, is a difference between a life that does good and a life that is essentially a waste. We can still live meaningful lives even if we're not convinced that there's a meaning to life.

How does Wolf make her life meaningful? She thinks for a minute. "Most meaning for me comes from live and close interaction, and feeling that I'm benefiting and enriching other people's lives in a one-on-one way. My family comes first, and then my friends come pretty close to that. Then students.

"We care about things that arouse a passion in us, and strike us as good or worthwhile. And it's those things, I think, that give meaning to people's lives."

Earlier this year the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation chose Wolf for an unsolicited $1.5 million award, calling her "one of the most original and distinguished philosophers of her generation."

Jason Smith is online designer and print production manager of Endeavors.
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