alt Hacker NewsSome pertinent fragments of wisdom gleaned from other places:
Somewhere I encountered a quote like "the finest art is a life well-lived". This threw me, because, apparently, I had been thinking of art as something different in kind from life, and unrelated to the normal work or act of living. Seen in terms of this quote, art becomes once again of-a-kind with life, and may be seen as only a part of living well, instrumental to living well, or perhaps just as practice for living well.
Something similar seems to be happening with "thinking" and "intelligence". Somehow these things had become ends-in-themselves, separate from the regular act of living. We might wrap them in a similar quote to place them in relation to life, along the lines of "thinking well is for living well", or perhaps "the highest good of the intellect is to be well-fit to the problems of living well".
I am reminded also of a line which stuck with me from Augustine's Confessions, approximately: "The mind is not the supreme good"—as opposed to the body and perhaps the "spirit". Somehow the world I was born into had collectively come to think of the mind as the supreme good, and intelligence as the greatest virtue. But this is, in some way, in contradiction the basic fact of existence and mortality: no amount of cleverness can circumvent death, and all the glory attainable by feats of the intellect are only futile vanities compared to the privilege of being alive itself.
That kind of thing.
Replies
Semi-related; I had an acquaintance who would dreamily declare 'Art is the True Life'; I always disagreed, 'Life is the True Art'. A huge amount of art is basically documenting those among us who are really out there living. I'd rather be on the side of the experiencer than the documenter.
"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." Oscar Wilde.
> Something similar seems to be happening with "thinking" and "intelligence". Somehow these things had become ends-in-themselves
It's been that way for a long time. At least since Descartes "Cogito, ergo sum". But even the Greeks were heading that way almost a couple thousand years earlier.
> separate from the regular act of living.
How is thinking separate from the regular act of living for human beings? Our species is known as homo sapiens - the knowing or thinking human.
> I was born into had collectively come to think of the mind as the supreme good, and intelligence as the greatest virtue.
I guess it comes down to what you think the answer to the basic question posed in the catechism is: "What is the chief end of man?" This is going to be the crucial question for us as a species in the age of abundant AI. Or as Wendell Berry posed it: "What are humans for?"
> But this is, in some way, in contradiction the basic fact of existence and mortality: no amount of cleverness can circumvent death, and all the glory attainable by feats of the intellect are only futile vanities compared to the privilege of being alive itself.
But being alive for us humans entails a lot of thinking. Is the unexamined life worth living?
what will it mean to be human, homo sapiens, in a world where the thinking is done for us?