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What Prevents Life From Being Worthwhile?
| Article
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14644 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1988 |
8,876 Words |
| Author
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Christie Davies
Christie Davies is professor of sociology at the University of
Reading, Reading, England. This paper was initially presented
at the Sixteenth International Conference on the Unity of the
Sciences. |
In any consideration of the question "What makes life worthwhile?" it is essential to ask the converse question "What prevents life from being worthwhile?" It seems plausible to argue that people are more similar in their needs than in their wants, tastes, and choices. Hunger, thirst, illness, injury, pain, isolation, and loss afflict people in similar ways (though not necessarily to an equal extent). However, there is a marked divergence in the things individuals value most--family, relationships, religion, learning, creativity, and fulfillment through work, pleasure, or wealth.
I emphasize this distinction because it can help us to understand much of the day-to-day moral and political arguments that take place in modern Western societies, whose politicians offer the electorate varying packages of freedom and welfare. In the marketplace, ideally every man is free to be happy in his own way. Indeed, it might almost be said that the feature of totalitarian societies that sets them apart from even enlightened authoritarianism is that their leaders feel able to decree "in my state every man can only be happy my way." A centrally directed decree as to what makes life worthwhile is the surest guarantee that it won't be. The alternative, though, is not chaos, but a diverse and spontaneous order in which there is room and indeed respect for individuals who have a particular vision of what makes life worthwhile. We assume that our citizens are rational individuals who are free to pursue their own notions of what is worthwhile, provided they don't harm others. The only doubtful area concerns choices that are or appear irreversible--that either preclude contrary choice in the future autonomy. The one thing an individual in a free society cannot choose is to be unfree. Thus we forbid or vigorously discourage self-mutilation, drug addiction, or contracts of slavery. It is at times a fine line: A man may become a monk, but not a eunuch; a woman may pierce her ears, but not undergo female circumcision; either may occasionally get drunk in private, but there is no free market in opiates. The principle concerns not so much the disapproval of self-harm as the prevention of an act whose consequence is a state where the person subsequently wishes to return to the status quo ante, but is physically or legally unable to do so. So strong has this sentiment become that numerous legislative changes have been enacted in the Western world in recent decades that undermine previously irreversible decisions and even physical events. Relaxed divorce laws and freely available abortion mean that marriage and pregnancy are reversible conditions. It is worth noting also in passing that, for example, the abolition of capital punishment in Great Britain has removed the one totally irremediable penalty that the law can inflict. None of this
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