Human Life Well-Lived... a paper for my management seminar

Human Life Well-Lived

The importance of living in a community.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,

and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin

1 John 1:7

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ

Galatians 6:2

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet

together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the

Day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:24-25

               As I began to think about the task of this paper, a thought first popped into my head about a recent conversation I had with a friend. We were discussing relationships and noted how seemingly “happier” one gets when one enters a relationship, especially at the beginning. I then, went off on a rant about how it frustrated me that our happiness should depend on another person. She then countered back, that maybe our thought process is wrong. We have grown up in such an individualistic society that, especially for women, we have been hardened to presume that we can make it on our own, become the best that we can be and to portray this strong, and independent persona. Personally, I have always had a can-do, will-do attitude, knowing that I can achieve whatever set my sights on. My friend challenged this, asking if it is correct to think that we can do anything on our own. From a Christian perspective especially, we have some things wrong. It is not about us, who we are or what we do, rather it is about God, who he is and what he does. Williams states “IF you live in a world where everything encourages you to struggle for your own individual interest and success, you are being encouraged to ignore the reality of other points of view—ultimately, to ignore the coast or the pain of others.” Beyond living for God, we are called to live for each other, laying down our own lives so that others should live. At the heart of this is servant leadership, as I will discuss later but also is the importance of building up a strong community and economy around one another. In Wendell Berry’s “Feminism, the Body and the Machine” and Rowan Williams “Human Well-Being and Economic Decision Making” they explore the issues while challenging the status quo that is current reality.

A note from Einstein

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/essay.htm


"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."


"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

Human Life Well-Lived

Very cool article I had to read for my Mgmt Sem class.... its a must read!!


http://www.stwr.org/economic-sharing-alternatives/human-well-being-and-economic-decision-making.html

"IF you live in a world where everything encourages you to struggle for your own individual interest and success, you are being encouraged to ignore the reality of other points of view—ultimately, to ignore the coast or the pain of others.”

"It is the extra things that make us human; simply meeting what we think are our material needs, making a living, is not uniquely human, just a more complicated version of ants in the anthill." 

"As for the essential character of human mutuality, this connects for me specifically with the Christian belief that we are all dependent on one another's gifts, to the extent that if someone else is damaged or frustrated, offended or oppressed, everyone suffers, everyone's humanity is diminished."

"Which is why the visible presence of religious people of diverse faiths in the arena of public debate is not a menacing move towards religious tyranny, the imposition of belief systems on an unwilling public, but the opening up of that arena to the best possible range of perspectives to help us push back against barbarism, injustice and the erosion of the human spirit." 

"And a stable economy depends on our willingness to question the imperatives of unchecked growth – which in turn is a moral and cultural matter. The energy for resistance has to come from the sort of stubborn moral and cultural commitment to humane virtue that I have been speaking about." 

"I would urge you, then, to pick up what is still alive in that legacy, to revive the passion for humane social existence; to reflect on what human character is needed for stability and justice to prevail; and to resist the barbarising and dehumanising of economic life which jeopardises natural and human capital alike. Sermons are meant to have three points: there are mine. Revive, reflect, resist. Your history suggests it can be done; so do it."

What kind of human character do we want to see??