Even though I am going to continue to try to reflect and summarize my thinking on this broad theme of what it is to live a worthy life, I am going to call this essay 3 of 3.
Today I want to focus on our obligation to ourselves. In light of the assumption that we will die and be forgotten, and assuming Pascal’s Wager is wrong, what obligations do we have other than to others, but to ourselves?
As I was thinking about this essay, I kept coming back to the famous Marlon Brando movie quote, “I coulda been a contender!” It has a meme-like presence in my life, usually used as a jokey punchline, even though I had never actually seen the movie it was from, On the Waterfront. I found a YouTube clip of the scene and it became clear to me that there was depth there. Here’s the clip of the scene:
When Brando says,
I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.
It’s heartbreaking. I actually went back and watched the whole movie, and having the whole context of the story makes the scene even more poignant. Movies in the 1950’s still had more of a theater (as in play) feel to them, so the acting is less subtle, but I finished watching the movie and wished we had more art like this today. More celebrations of moral and physical courage, and more of a focus on taking personal responsibility for one’s life.
Brando’s character, Terry Malloy (Brando is supposed to be Irish), has lived a dissipated life. He had some potential to be a prize-fighter, but his brother Charley has him throw the fight that would have been his big chance for glory so that Charley and his mob cronies can win illicit bets against him. From there, it’s clear Terry has been just bumping along, not taking responsibility for his life, not pursuing anything, but simply existing. Terry is also representative of the whole community. Everyone has submitted to the mob boss who runs the longshoreman’s union. Instead of fighting back, they simply go along. It’s shortly after the scene above that Terry has to make a choice about continuing to submit and live a life he will be ashamed of, or take a stand. It’s the movies, so you know how that choice goes, but if you haven’t seen the movie, you really should. The way it plays out is well done.
This is the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (MacArthur SSS Scale):
The ladder represents where people stand in society. At the top of the ladder are the people who are the best off, those who have the most money, most education, and best jobs. At the bottom are the people who are the worst off, those who have the least money, least education, worst jobs, or no job.
If I were administering this scale to you, I would now say, “Please place an ‘X’ on the rung that best represents where you think you stand on the ladder.”
Terry and Charley Malloy live in a low socioeconomic status (SES) community. The longshoremen and their families are poor, with highly contingent work. The work is hard on their bodies and they dream of having their children escape to better lives. Terry and Charley, we learn, were orphaned at an early age, placing them even lower in status in a low-status community. So if we were taking the MacArthur SSS Scale for them, we would put them on one of the lowest rungs on the ladder. At the beginning of On the Waterfront, Charley has moved up the ladder by joining the mob. Terry can’t bring himself to do that, yet can’t bring himself to take a stand against it. He could have made some progress by his prize fighting, but he doesn’t fully embrace his potential, and gets pulled down again. He’s stuck where he started, making no movement.
The ancient Greeks had two words that we loosely translate as meaning happiness: hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia refers to happiness as pleasure (and freedom from pain). This is the happiness we have from a good meal, going to a party, spending time with friends, sex, and other joys of the moment. Eudaimonia is a sort of reflective happiness. It comes from looking back on your life and seeing it as full of purpose and meaning. This is the happiness Thomas Jefferson is evoking when he wrote,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Jefferson didn’t mean we have a right to go clubbing. He meant we have a right to pursue a meaningful life. The “I coulda been a contender” scene is the moment when Terry confronts his life and recognizes that he has done nothing of consequence with the gifts he has been given, as meager as they might have been. He has failed in his obligation to himself.
Growing up in the Catholic Church, I heard the Parable of the Talents read many times. I sometimes think of this as Mean Jesus. But it’s really a story about holding ourselves to account. (FYI, a “talent” is a measure of weight of silver. Sometimes talent is translated as a bag. Even one talent is a lot of money.):
For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.
Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
We are all born somewhere on this ladder and we have no control over that. Each of us is also born with different potential, which you could merge into the idea of where you are on the ladder. And on top of that, fate has a vote in our life outcomes, too. Our obligation to ourselves is to do something with what we have been given, even if what we have is meager (i.e., one talent).
Of course, the more we are born with, the more of an obligation we have.
A person born to a wealthy family with at least ordinary ability can live a dissipated life, just like Terry did. Given her/his position, s/he can pursue hedonia easily. One can have some sympathy for someone like Terry, who is born down and out, without a role model or a hand to help him up. But someone who is born higher up the ladder, I find less sympathy for. We each have different potential, and it is impossible to know from the outside what that is. Each of us has an obligation to do something meaningful with our lives. Terry buried his talent in the ground, and his statement, I coulda been a contender, is his realization that he has failed himself. He is experiencing the pain of reflection, and the absence of eudaimonia. He is in the place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”.
In essay 1 I talked about my desire to find a secular set of directional values that one can use to point toward a worthy life. Pascal’s Wager is an excellent statistical point - even the tiniest probability of an infinite payoff is still greater than anything - but yet it leaves room for doubt that can only be answered with faith.
In essay 2 I focused on the effects of our actions not only on people who are immediately in our lives, but generationally. In this sense, I am trying to argue we have an obligation to live justly and fully for other people. The first principle of a worthy life is to first try to do no harm. Even if we die and are forgotten, the effects of our actions carry on.
Here in essay 3 I am arguing that to live a worthy life, we have an obligation to use our gifts to pursue a meaningful life. The gifts may be meager, and we may be near the bottom of the ladder, but our obligation to ourselves is to deploy our gifts and experience our potential being in the world.
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OK - that’s it for this weekend. As usual, willing good for all of you! See you Wednesday with links.