This working title raises two questions. First, What is the good life? It is the life we are all trying to live. Consciously or not, all our efforts are aimed at some idea of the good, in the mostly tacit hope that their results will come together in a life that is full, meaningful, and happy.
For more than three millennia, philosophers, theologians, and now psychologists have considered the question. The consensus in their answers will be summarized and a fuller definition worked out in the book, but suffice it to say here that the good life is not a life of wealth, although some material well-being is necessary to live it. It is not a life of ease and comfort, but some leisure and even amusement are needed to recover from and prepare for the effort it requires. It is not a life lived unto oneself, but a life of relationships with others. Above all, it is a life of engagement with and service to something bigger and more lasting than oneself, something that gives life meaning and purpose, something to which all the other goods of the good life are ordered and enlisted.
The second question has two parts: What is technology and what is its role in the pursuit of the good life? Based on the word's etymology plus its common use today, technology can be defined as rational means of expanding and amplifying the abilities of human beings to manipulate the material world in the pursuit of the good life. Technology is often genuinely helpful in that pursuit. But the world is complicated and unpredictable, and, despite good intentions, we are physically, mentally, and morally fallible, by nature tending to ignorance, bias, laziness, and self-interest. We frequently miss the good ends at which we aim, and we often aim at unworthy – sometimes evil – ends. Technology being an amplifier of our aimed efforts, its role in the pursuit of the good life is dual: both means and impediment.
Technology has permeated our lives and our world, and its ability to amplify our powers for error and evil as well as for reason and good is growing faster and faster. The pursuit of the good life, enabled by technology, is more and more often frustrated, side-tracked, and even prematurely ended by technology in disruption, distraction, and disaster.
This poses a quandary: how we fallible humans are to live the good life in a complex world with the help of – yet despite – technology. A quandary is a state of perplexity whose resolution requires wisdom. But although at present knowledge is abundant, wisdom is rare. We might do well, then, to turn to the proven wisdom of the past, like that of Socrates, the Buddha, and Jesus, to face the quandary of technology and the good life we face now and in the future.
The purpose of the book is to examine this quandary in detail and seek its resolution in some of the wisdom of the ancients, including the following.
There is nothing new under the sun.
~ Qoheleth, Ecclesiastes 1:9b, NASB
Everything now is just as it was in the time of those whom we have buried.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.14
To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads: -- such is the behavior of the multitude.
~ Mencius VII.I.V
I hate those who mistake cunning for wisdom ….
~ Confucius, Analects XVII.24
All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, … . Yet I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind ….
~ Qoheleth, Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, NASB/NIV
We must not think that the man who is to be happy will need many things or great things …
~ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X.8
He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits logs may be endangered by them.
~ Qoheleth, Ecclesiastes 10:9, NASB
The reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail, for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthy tent burdens … the mind.
~ Wisdom of Solomon 9:14-15, RSV
There is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.
~ Qoheleth, Ecclesiastes 7:20, NASB
Every endeavor is covered by some sort of fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. Therefore, one should not give up the work that is born of his nature … even if such work is covered by fault.
~ Baghavad-Gita 18.48
Be mindful of your ignorance.
~ Sirach 4:25, RSV
Skill in speaking and efficiency in affairs, therefore, and ingenuity, were not the qualities that [Socrates] was eager to foster in his companions. He held that they needed first to acquire prudence. For he believed that those faculties, unless accompanied by prudence, increased in their possessors injustice and power for mischief.
~ Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.3.1
Do not winnow with every wind, nor follow every path ….
~ Sirach 5:9, RSV
As a lesser evil is a kind of good, even so a lesser good is a kind of evil if it stands in the way of a greater good.
~ Leibniz, Theodicy 1.8
For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?
~ Jesus, Mark 8:36, NASB
