What is success? Thinking about the meaning of life

1. What is success?Thinking about the meaning of life

2. What is the meaning of life? • What does it mean??? • Dictionary settles the issue? • NOT: What are people doing with their lives? • Making sense of the question • What kind of life is most worth living? • What is Success?

3. How should I live? Social conventions Natural desires Opinions of family & friends

4. Linds Redding’s story • Former Saatchi & Saatchi and BBDO art director • Died of cancer at age 52

5. 7 months before death… It turns out I didn’t actually like my old life nearly as much as I thought I did. I know this now because I occasionally catch up with my old colleagues and work-mates. They fall over each other to  enthusiastically show me the latest project they’re working on. Ask my opinion. Proudly show off their technical prowess (which is not inconsiderable.) I find myself glazing over but politely listen as they brag about who’s had the least sleep and the most takeaway food. “I haven’t seen my wife since January, I can’t feel my legs any more and I think I have scurvy but another three weeks and we’ll be done. It’s got to be done by then. The client’s going on holiday. What do I think?”

6. … What do I think? I think you’re all fucking mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a fucking TV commercial. Nobody give a shit.

7. The Bucket List • What is on your bucket list? • What would you consider a successful life?

8. Abstraction “What is your ideal life?” “X, Y, Z.” Principle of ideal life What’s common to X, Y, Z?

9. Who is more successful? YOU

10. Abstraction • Start by considering ‘obvious’ cases • Track patterns • Form initial theory • Consider a wide range of cases to test the theory • Revise theory if needed

11. Testing a theory Theory Your objective reflection Scenario Prediction Outcome of reflection

12. Internal & external struggles External Internal

13. A successful life is where I get maximum pleasure Pleasure = A pleasant psychological state

15. 1. Hedonism: Maximising pleasure Is being permanently attached to this machine a successful life? Activities Pleasure Pleasure machine Pleasure

16. 2. Living as you desire • Distinct from Hedonism • E.g. Freud’s desire to think in torment • Desire to really engage in activities • The best life is one where I have a maximum number of fulfilled desires • Bucket List • Priorities/Strength of desire

17. 2. Living as you desire • You can sleep for the rest of your life • Assume you are very talented & will find a cure for cancer if you try • & you will greatly enjoy doing so after cultivating the desire What if your greatest desire is to sleep the rest of your life away?

18. The best life is one where I have a maximum number of fulfilled desires • Suppose you have a list of everything you desire. • It includes the desire for the stranger to recover from his grave illness. • The stranger recovers. But you are unaware of it. • Has your life become better? Unknown fulfilment

19. What is a successful life: Internal views Maximal pleasure Living as you desire

20. Learning from Redding • How do we apply it to our lives? • Depends on what we take away from it • What’s a successful life? • Exactly details provided by Redding? • Principle behind what Redding says?

21. “So was it worth it? Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize… It was fun for quite a lot of the time. I was pretty good at it. I met a lot of funny, talented and clever people, got to become an overnight expert in everything from shower-heads to sheep-dip, got to scratch my creative itch on a daily basis, and earned enough money to raise the family which I love, and even see them occasionally.”

22. “But what I didn’t do, with the benefit of perspective, is anything of any lasting importance. At least creatively speaking. Economically I probably helped shift some merchandise. Enhanced a few companies bottom lines. Helped make one or two wealthy men a bit wealthier than they already were. As a life, it all seemed like such a good idea at the time. But I’m not really sure it passes The Overnight Test.”

23. Success = Having no regrets? • Redding regrets the way he lived • He desires to have lived differently • Success is living as you would desire to live on hindsight? I am living as I now desire 35 99 I have lived as I now desire Your life End Start

24. Is that success? I am living as I now desire 35 99 I have lived as I now desire • Why is the desires of the 99 year-old me more important than the desires of the 35 year-old me? • How can I presently tell what I would desire at the end of my life? Your life End Start

25. Redding’s view? • Those working their lives away in advertising are ‘mad’. • Advertising is fun & satisfied some of Redding’s desires • But it was ‘not worth it’ • “it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize.” • Comparative worth of goals?

26. Which makes more sense to you? Your life Doesn’t it make more sense to lower the standard? Success standard You try hard to meet that standard Successful? Is the success standard really up to us?

27. Internal & external struggles External Internal

28. Success, according to society • Rich • Famous • Popular • … Why should I accept society’s idea of success?