The Centre for Ethics
Newsletter Volume 70 - Term 3, 2013
The good life
“What makes a life worth living?” In The Good Life, Hugh Mackay’s book has stepped out of the frame of social research and asked a deeper and more challenging question: “What makes a life worth living?” According to Mackay, we are in a phase where we seem to have become preoccupied with happiness and selfesteem whereas we know that some of the most important lessons we learn about ourselves and what it means to be human come out of the experience of tragedy, sadness, disappointment or failure. Not that he is suggesting we chase such times of hardship. They will find us sooner or later. Rather, he is saying in this book that in order to experience the richness of what it means to be fully human we need to understand that life is not about happiness. It is about wholeness. We need to experience the full range of human emotions as they come to us and we need to learn how to deal with all of them. At a time when there are so many books, articles and conferences about happiness, it is a controversial and rather countercultural stance to take.
Hugh Mackay has spent his life as a social researcher, documenting what Australians do and why we do it. His fourteen books include nine in the field of social analysis, social psychology and ethics. He was the inaugural chairman of the ACT government’s Community Inclusion Board, a deputy chairman of the Australia Council and one of the founders of the St James Ethics Centre. He frequently contributes to
discussions on ABC Radio National and appears on ABC television. He was highly visible during April this year when his latest book The Good Life was released. There was a particularly good discussion between Jane Hutcheon and Hugh Mackay on Channel 24’s One Plus One.
The common good
Others
By the ‘good life’, Hugh Mackay means a life that is “characterised by goodness, a morally praiseworthy life, a life valuable in its impact on others, a life devoted to the common good.” In others words, the focus is away from the self and towards other people. It reminds me of the words in a much loved Anglican grace before meals which refers to being “ever mindful of the needs of others.” It is interesting that the idea of mindfulness has made something of a come back in our day, particularly in contemporary discussions about Buddhism and meditation.
In the preface to The Good Life, Hugh Mackay dwells on this perspective away from obsession with the self to an awareness of others. A good life, he writes, is “marked by a courteous respect for others’ rights, a responsiveness to others’ needs (including, most particularly, their need to be taken seriously) and a concern for others’ wellbeing. A person living this life will be motivated by kindness and compassion.”
www.abc.net.au/health/features/ stories/2012/10/25/3618470.htm#. UY2-1s2BLCQ Mackay is certainly asking people to practise mindfulness.
www.abc.net.au/news/abcnews24/ programs/one-plus-one/archive/
A spacious and tolerant view The author has always been interested in religious questions and he devotes quite a bit of space in this book to an examination of the place of religion in a good life. He grew up in a fundamentalist household and has made his way out of that into a more spacious and tolerant view of the world.