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Three Fitting Examples To Illustrate The Potential Incompatibility Of Happiness And Meaningfulness

462 Words2 Pages

Allison uses three fitting examples to illustrate the potential incompatibility of happiness and meaningfulness. In my response, I would like to discuss further the meaningfulness of Hobo Greg’s life and the relative desirability of happiness and meaningfulness. Although Hobo Greg’s dirtbag rock-climbing life does not seem to possess values from an external source, his life can be seen as objectively attractive. While Hobo Greg does not directly “empower others through teaching to climb”, he does interact with other climbers in a “benign and social” way (Wang, 4). Moreover, his lifestyle can provide inspirations for people like Nancy whose life seems to be lacking happiness despite the meaningfulness ascribed to it by others. Though both …show more content…

Happiness has a heavier emphasis on individual experience and subjective attractiveness, while meaningfulness demands the presence of objective attractiveness. When we are forced to make some trade-off, is one quality more important or desirable than the other? The comparison between Hobo Greg’s and Nancy’s life may provide us with some insight. Hobo Greg has a happy but meaningless life, while Nancy leads an unhappy but meaningful life. Now that we have to address both happiness and meaningfulness, I would like to introduce another term to characterize life, “desirability”. A desirable life necessitates objective attractiveness but does not require values from an external source. I would like to make the assertion that most people would prefer Hobo Greg’s life over Nancy’s because it is more desirable. While we hope to life a happy and meaningful life, if we have to choose, we would choose happiness over meaningfulness. The desirability of Hobo Greg’s life lies in the fact that Hobo Greg derives more personal enjoyment and that he feels motivated to maintain his lifestyle. Nancy, on the other hand, is undesirable because even the subject’s desires are not fulfilled by the life that she leads. While Wolf argues that the unification of subjective and objective attractiveness gives rise to meaningfulness, subjective attractiveness has a higher priority because it is a necessary, if not sufficient condition, for a desirable

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