This is all so brilliant and insightful! I especially love this: ..If we want health and well-being for the planet, we must also want it for ourselves... In Gaia Psychology, self-regulation is seen as an expression of Gaian homeostasis. It’s a portal for deepening that relationship, making us better advocates, opening ourselves to her higher intelligence. Similarly, in Buddhism, exchanging self for other is a key to cultivating compassionate wisdom, which realizes “self” is nothing but others, or non-self. Thank you for the skillful way you share philosophy - so helpful!
Thank you for writing this and for weaving me in! I resonate with so much of this. Happiness, a good life, indeed a life worth living, is what happens when we're loving others, creating, connecting, and practicing real presence. I appreciate all the threads you wove into this, and am grateful for these reminders today.
Hi Jessica…your piece beautifully reframes the pursuit of the good life, shifting it from an individual project to a relational practice. It echoes the paradox that direct pursuit of happiness often leads to dissatisfaction—perhaps the same is true for “the good life.” Maybe goodness isn’t a state to achieve but an ongoing responsiveness to the world around us. The more we focus on being good rather than becoming good, the more the question dissolves into lived experience. What if the good life isn’t something we construct, but something we participate in?
This strikes me as not just good, Jes, but really good. Your eagerness for us to read this feels wholly justified.
I love the way in which you introduce the shift from living a good life to being a good person. It makes good sense to me. Asking what is a good life may hide the assumption that it is a question for me as an individual, which makes less sense when it is exposed.
Your thinking aligns well with what I was writing about "Collective Ikigai" a bit over 3 years ago, at https://www.simongrant.org/d/2021-11-30d.html and https://www.simongrant.org/d/2021-12-10d.html though from a different angle. Collective ikigai needs quality relationships. (This is in line with many people coming to recognise and express in their own various ways that existence is fundamentally relational. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is endowed with its significance through relationship. And the essence is indeed qualitative, not quantitative.) Many superficial relationships do little more than help you conform to relatively static (or even reactionary) group norms. We need that quality of relationship that helps us be more fully ourselves (to find ikigai); to be that good person; and the good person who engages in that same process, helping others to be more fully themselves.
To me, this also relates to the Peckham Experiment's definition of health (which I quote so often): "mutual synthesis of organism and environment". [see e.g. https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/20/98/146.full.pdf (1970) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peckham_Experiment ] Thus we can see health as a quality of relationship between organism (individual human being) and their environment, which certainly includes other humans, and other life forms, and increasing we realise, the whole planet.
Wow, thank you Simon - I love the alignment with your collective Ikigai. And also, thanks sir much for that definition of health. I have't heard that before 🙏
A seriously worthy read, Jes. Thank you for sharing this with the world.
On the What is a Good Life? podcast, I suggested that, for me, living a good life was something to do with healthily balancing modes of being, doing and becoming (recognising the inherently relationality, or agent-area reality of such a process).
Rather different, but I feel highly complementary frame.
This is all so brilliant and insightful! I especially love this: ..If we want health and well-being for the planet, we must also want it for ourselves... In Gaia Psychology, self-regulation is seen as an expression of Gaian homeostasis. It’s a portal for deepening that relationship, making us better advocates, opening ourselves to her higher intelligence. Similarly, in Buddhism, exchanging self for other is a key to cultivating compassionate wisdom, which realizes “self” is nothing but others, or non-self. Thank you for the skillful way you share philosophy - so helpful!
Thank you for your words, Tham! That makes my day.
Thank you for writing this and for weaving me in! I resonate with so much of this. Happiness, a good life, indeed a life worth living, is what happens when we're loving others, creating, connecting, and practicing real presence. I appreciate all the threads you wove into this, and am grateful for these reminders today.
Thank you, Ganga. And thank you for your absolutely wonderful writings.
Hi Jessica…your piece beautifully reframes the pursuit of the good life, shifting it from an individual project to a relational practice. It echoes the paradox that direct pursuit of happiness often leads to dissatisfaction—perhaps the same is true for “the good life.” Maybe goodness isn’t a state to achieve but an ongoing responsiveness to the world around us. The more we focus on being good rather than becoming good, the more the question dissolves into lived experience. What if the good life isn’t something we construct, but something we participate in?
This strikes me as not just good, Jes, but really good. Your eagerness for us to read this feels wholly justified.
I love the way in which you introduce the shift from living a good life to being a good person. It makes good sense to me. Asking what is a good life may hide the assumption that it is a question for me as an individual, which makes less sense when it is exposed.
Your thinking aligns well with what I was writing about "Collective Ikigai" a bit over 3 years ago, at https://www.simongrant.org/d/2021-11-30d.html and https://www.simongrant.org/d/2021-12-10d.html though from a different angle. Collective ikigai needs quality relationships. (This is in line with many people coming to recognise and express in their own various ways that existence is fundamentally relational. Nothing exists in isolation; everything is endowed with its significance through relationship. And the essence is indeed qualitative, not quantitative.) Many superficial relationships do little more than help you conform to relatively static (or even reactionary) group norms. We need that quality of relationship that helps us be more fully ourselves (to find ikigai); to be that good person; and the good person who engages in that same process, helping others to be more fully themselves.
To me, this also relates to the Peckham Experiment's definition of health (which I quote so often): "mutual synthesis of organism and environment". [see e.g. https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/20/98/146.full.pdf (1970) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peckham_Experiment ] Thus we can see health as a quality of relationship between organism (individual human being) and their environment, which certainly includes other humans, and other life forms, and increasing we realise, the whole planet.
Maybe more another day!
Wow, thank you Simon - I love the alignment with your collective Ikigai. And also, thanks sir much for that definition of health. I have't heard that before 🙏
A seriously worthy read, Jes. Thank you for sharing this with the world.
On the What is a Good Life? podcast, I suggested that, for me, living a good life was something to do with healthily balancing modes of being, doing and becoming (recognising the inherently relationality, or agent-area reality of such a process).
Rather different, but I feel highly complementary frame.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMup0oB0GKU