How hard can it be, to be me (2); dissecting the authentic life

This is the second in a series of 6 sidenotes, the first one can be found here.

Heidegger believed that, when we accept the fact that our existence is finite, we have met the base-requirement for being able to lead an authentic life. Authentic life is lived exercising our personal freedom to create a meaningful existence and continually grow (becoming). Let’s dissect that sentence:

…exercising our personal freedom…

My first associations are: “free will” and “self-ownership”. In other words, it is up to me to decide, and I am accountable for my choices. Sounds fair enough.

…a meaningful existence…

Existence speaks for itself, but what is meaningful to me? Looking at the extensive article about meaning on Wikipedia, this is not an easy one, and requires investigation. The first thing that comes to mind is that it has to have meaning to me, but that would create a loop in reasoning: authenticity is meaningful, because meaning is authentic. That’s not helpful, now is it?

The second thing that comes to mind is that meaningful might be that it creates meaning or value in other people’s lives. But creating meaning or value in others people’s lives doesn’t necessarily mean that it creates value or meaning in my life.

While writing this, it dawns on me that I’ve arrived at a stalemate. Meaningful is about me and about others. I’ve come across that concept before, amongst others in the excellent book by Marshall Goldsmith, “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”, but he relates it to behavioral change (I’ll review his book soon). On a more generic level, a particular scene from the movie “A beautiful mind” comes to mind: the scene where John Nash experiences the birth of his Nobel-prize winning theory, the Nash equilibrium. The equilibrium is a solution concept in game theory for games involving multiple players making decisions in an attempt to maximize their returns. In short, the equilibrium states that the optimal strategy for each player is to do what’s best for him or her and what’s best for the group (remember the blond girl and her friends?)

This is good enough for me. Meaningful existence creates meaning or value to me and creates meaning or value to others.

…continually grow (becoming).

Authentic life is apparently not only about the now; it’s also about the future. It’s not only who you are, but also who you will be.

So the authentic life, in my own words is:
“living a life where free will is used to create meaning or value for the individual and create meaning and value for others, now and in the future”

Not bad, I feel I understand it. In the next sidenote in the series: how does one go about creating the authentic life?

Posted in spilling beans on Sat 2007.04.21