The Very Happy Gangster

Good but Unworthy

Is it possible to have a deeply meaningful, indeed good, life, that is unworthy? Below is my worthy life model (read my walk-through of it here).

When I was first conceptualizing this model, I wrestled with good vs. worthy. Typically in introductory philosophy classes, one is asked, “what is the good life?” There are a variety of explanations, one of which would likely be something like my worthy life model. Without exploring a variety of options, I would argue that the sense of having lived a good life largely comes from having experienced meaning. It is the result of reflective happiness, or what the Greeks called eudaimonia. When you stop and reflect on what you have done, do you feel like it was important? Did your life have some impact? Some meaning? If you can answer yes, then it is likely you will have a sense of fulfillment - that your life mattered, that there is some meaning in the universe. But I think it is possible to feel that sense of fulfillment and yet have lived an unworthy life.

The Case of the Very Happy Gangster

Let’s imagine a young man coming of age. Let’s assume he has the option to pursue a normie life, where he would go to school, then get a job, get married, have a couple of kids, coach little league, become a vice president of his organization, retire and play golf. He uses his skills and talents, but sometimes he’ll wonder if this is all life was meant to be. I want to be clear that this option is available to him in this thought experiment. He is not a victim of some form of systemic oppression, where a life of crime appears to be the only way forward.

Let’s now assume there is a second option - the aforementioned life of crime. He starts out selling weed part time to fund parties with his friends. He throws the best parties and has lots of friends. People are drawn to him. He has his first child with one of his girlfriends, and feels an obligation to make sure the child is taken care of, so he steps up his game. He gets into selling cocaine, heroine, meth, whatever. He starts building an organization. He hires young strivers. He mentors them in the way of drug dealing, and when they inevitably get caught and go to prison, he makes sure they are taken care of in prison through his contacts inside. If they have kids, he makes sure that the baby mamas have money to take care of the kids. Over time, he moves into protection and extortion. He ruthlessly enforces his territory. Other gangsters who try to move in on him find themselves at the bottom of the river. He is recognized as fair, consistent, and brilliant, and he is feared. He uses all of his talents every day to grow his organization. It’s almost like he’s just an ordinary businessman, except for the occasional killing, theft, and fraud - all perpetrated on people outside of his circle. He is beloved by the people within his circle. When he sits in his penthouse apartment overlooking the city after a party where politicians and judges who are all in his pocket have just been chatting him up all night, he spends little time wondering what might have been.

The gangster is very happy. He reflects on his accomplishments and sees that he has lived a full life and meaningful life. He is competent - he has built a powerful organization that has influence throughout his city and beyond. He has contributed by making not only himself, but many other people rich. Lastly, he feels a deep sense of connection to all of the gangsters he has brought up into the life, and that feeling is reciprocated. He checks all of the 3C’s of Meaning. Furthermore, he has made a continuous, dedicated effort to meet all of the 3C’s. He sees what he has created and he knows he has served his people well.

Othering Strangers

A movie about the normie life would be pretty boring. A movie about the gangster life would basically be The Godfather (less, perhaps, the social opportunity - though that is arguable). The very happy gangster could be seen as having lived a good life, in the sense that it was a life full of striving and meaning. However, he violates the basic tenet of commutative justice - respect for person, property, and promises - not just once or by accident, but as a way of life. He is beloved, as I noted, by those who are close to him, but strangers - those outside of his circle of caring, those beyond what he regards as his community - are treated as a means to an end.

I wrote about the circles and the idea of othering previously. In most pre-market economies, the stranger is an other who can be treated as an object. I quoted Cicero, “for ‘enemy’ (hostis) meant to our ancestors what we now call ‘stranger’”. If one equates being a stranger with being an enemy, then there is nothing wrong with harming the stranger. We turn the stranger into an other, and then anything goes. The problem is modern, market societies require trust among strangers - at least a baseline of trust that your rights to person, property, and promises will be respected. When that baseline of commutative justice is removed, the market society unwinds into petty fiefdoms run by gangsters, like our friend here.

So while the gangster might be living his best life, living up to his potential, fully self-actualized, we judge him unworthy for society. His journey of self-actualization harms others. In order for each of us to live our best lives, we need to band together to remove him from our company, which is what we do as a collective through organizations like law enforcement, the courts, and the rest of the justice system. This is, to me, the essential role of government: maintaining commutative justice - ensuring respect for person, property, and promises. Government done right ensures we have a platform upon which we can seek and strive to live meaningful lives.

Good vs. Worthy

Worthiness implies an external perspective. I generally avoid invoking God in my writing, but God as a construct is worth considering here. God sits in judgment of our actions and intentions. He determines if we are worthy of going to heaven. We wish to be worthy of his approval. Adam Smith created a construct he refers to as “the man in the breast” - a notional personage who sits in judgment of our actions, who knows our heart and our intention. As with God, we wish to have the approval of the man in the breast. Adam Smith scholar (and my former PhD adviser) Dan Klein updates Smith and invokes a character “Joy” who is omniscient and can judge us in a similar fashion. God/man in the breast/Joy sits in judgment of our actions and determines if we are worthy. Let’s go with Joy for a moment, but you can pick the other two if you would like.

Joy represents the ideals of the modern, market-driven world where we need to live in communities that trust strangers, and not assume that they will knock us over the head to take our stuff. Joy looks on our gangster with pity and disappointment because, despite his great talents and gifts, and although he has achieved a high degree of self-fulfillment and meaning, his life is unworthy. His life is warped and flawed from the outset because of his unworthy behavior, because of his othering of the human beings outside of his circle of caring.

Joy looks on the normie life and She smiles. He has done what he could within the constraints of living a worthy life. While the normie life may lack the glamour and excitement of the gangster’s, it has a beauty and elegance of its own. The normie first does no harm, then moves on to build what he can with what he has. He makes a becoming use of his own, and thus becomes far more lovely in the eyes of Joy. As in The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the Joy expects us to make a becoming use of our own:

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.’

One doesn’t have to live a boring life to gain Joy’s approval. It does not have to include getting married, having a couple of kids, coaching little league, working a dull job, and retiring to play golf. Worthy lives can take all sorts of different shapes, and they should, because they should reflect our unique gifts, abilities, and constraints. What they all share in common are two things: 1) respect for person, property, and promises, and 2) striving to discover and make a becoming use of one’s talents, gifts, and abilities, subject to whatever constraints one has.