A Theory of General Well-Being
How Human Flourishing is Generated Through the Pursuit of Meaning
In times of crisis, the inevitable suffering of life makes a mockery of the notion that the purpose of life is to chase happiness.
The maximization of positive emotions as the means to the end goal of achieving well-being is deeply flawed because it sees suffering as an anomaly that must be resolved rather than the natural condition of life; as a result, mainstream positive psychology attempts to improve the human condition by focusing on the removal of suffering instead of transforming it.
If the condition of life is to suffer, the meaning of life is to do what is meaningful to us despite this condition: it is not the maximization of positive emotions that produces well-being, but undergoing purposeful hardship and making worthy sacrifices.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” — Viktor Frankl
An Optimal Amount of Suffering is Necessary
The gap in between something being inevitable versus necessary sits the clause of purpose: Holocaust survivor and humanistic psychologist Viktor Frankl once said, “it does not really matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life.” When we reframe the human condition as life being done for us as opposed to being done unto us, we quickly see how the call to purpose is the missing link between feeling like all suffering is harmful and requires extermination versus seeing suffering as a necessary ‘evil’.
A good example of this is the flow phenomenon by Csikszentmihalyi: people report feeling more purposeful when they are faced with an optimal degree of challenge that matches their skill level. That is to say, humans naturally have an inclination to seek tasks that are mentally and/or physically taxing (which may seem evolutionarily counterproductive). This paradigm shows that meaning and the sense of being purposeful is not found in apathy, indifference, or boredom, rather, it is produced through doing. In conclusion, those who seek to challenge themselves create more value out of their being. The more challenges you can reasonably shoulder, the more meaningful your life becomes.
The Sacrifice of Instant Gratification
It is not an unknown fact that life only moves in one direction. In fact, the consciousness of one’s own mortality is a unique trait that distinguishes man from beast. With that in mind, it becomes apparent that everything bears an opportunity cost: because life ends, you can not do everything.
“The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future...always place your becoming above your current being.” — Jordan Peterson
You are not just who you are in the present, you are also holding the potential of who you can become. You are a being who is constantly becoming, the greatest gift you have in the present is the ability to choose who you want to be next. Sacrifices are, therefore, inevitable if you want to achieve competency in something. The Latin aphorism, ars longa, vita brevis, describes exactly this: skilfulness takes time and life is short. In order to become anything, you must eliminate everything else — life is about choosing your sacrifices, you don’t get to not make any, but you get to choose which ones.
“Skilfulness takes time and life is short.” — Latin Aphorism
The Stanford marshmallow experiment conducted a series of studies to measure children’s willpower to delay gratification by presenting them with a marshmallow and the choice of either consuming it instantly or resisting the temptation for the later reward of an extra marshmallow. In a longitudinal follow-up study, children who chose the latter showed higher SAT scores; this experiment showed that the delay of gratification is correlated with greater social success. When faced with decisions, the future reward is almost always worth the immediate pleasures of instant gratification.
Taking Responsibilities as a Sovereign Individual
The world is an arena in which decisions and actions have value, it is a place where freewill can lead to something of meaning; this meaning is shaped as a consequence of choices and social interactions. At the highest level of analysis, the individual holds both freedom and responsibility over what they choose to do and, hence, become.
Ultimately, freedom is both exciting and terrifying, because it warrants absolute control over oneself and the simultaneous anxiety of having that power. The human potential, constrained by time and ended by an inevitable death, is a constantly depreciating sum of what could always be value-creation.
“Man is free to choose to not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction.” — Ayn Rand
The genesis of meaning lies in the seizing of every passing unit of time and the potential it offers; the universe may be indifferent to the human condition but the sovereign individual is fully responsible for carefully deciding how that potential turns into meaning. Who you are may not be your fault, but who you are becoming is your responsibility.
Although an individual, every person is a node in their network and everyone’s action impacts those around them. Human flourishing often lies in the active seeking of service and altruism as opposed to motivations of self-interest.
In conclusion, the cultivation of meaning is an active pursuit that is generated through purposeful and wilful responsibility, whether that be choosing the best sacrifices, obliging oneself to make life manageable in the face of chaos, or acting selflessly and cooperatively to contribute towards the creation of lasting social impacts.
Ending quote:
“He who has a why can bear any how.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Have meant to contact you for sometime. Can we have a zoom session first to discuss the prospect of getting involved in our Meaning Conference 2025?