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The Good Life

It begins by seeing, or imagining “the good life”. We see it in others. We see it on TV. We naturally want it for ourselves and we try to figure out how to get it, and after we’re a bit older and have children, how to secure it for them.

The elements aren’t a secret

• Strength, beauty, health, intelligence by good parents or good genes
• A safe, secure, environment with good food and good people
• A good education, good morals, good friends, a good start

We quickly begin to realize that this can’t be done alone. It takes a village. It takes a city. It takes an economy.  It takes a civilization. So we get into politics to try to secure these things not just for ourselves but also for our neighbors because we’ll need neighbors to enjoy these things if we can enjoy them and offer them to our children.

We even might begin to imagine that it takes a god or gods. After we have exhausted all human efforts we look to the “spiritual” to make life work. This is the deep source of human religion and spirituality.

Rome and Augustine

The ancient Romans knew this. Augustine engaged in these questions in possibly the second most important book in the history of the world after the Bible “The City of God”. This from Charles Mathewes Great Courses on the book.

Now, everyone wants happiness, Augustine argues. For pagan thinkers, happiness—true human flourishing—is found in our lives as citizens of some human city, such as Rome. This is effectively a morality of patriotism. You exercise your virtuousness— your kind of manly power; this is really addressed to men here—to gain imperium—rule, or domination—which gives you and your city gloria—glory, or splendor.

Again, this remains a view which many if not most people today share, that human happiness is the product of this-worldly striving, and that to advance such striving, governments are established as one central vehicle for empowering it. Happiness is realized by worldly achievement.

(Page 123).

What separated the Romans from us in many ways was their religiosity. They were very interested, involved and committed to religious ways. In fact Augustine’s book was written because when Rome was sacked, and the empire increasingly eaten away by “barbarian” forces traditional Romans turned to blame the Christians for this. Christians were “atheists” in that they didn’t support the temples and the traditional gods and this must be the reason for the decline of the old world.

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