For Whom Do We Live

Brian YS Wong December 05, 2024 23:07

Why do we live?

This is a question that is often met with a fundamental introspection into the meaning and value of life. The more speculative answers will focus on the cosmological origins and roots of life, whilst the more pragmatic solutions to the conundrum would focus on the instrumental value of life, as a prerequisite for all other possible ends. Without life, there can be no pleasure, no joy, no devising and fulfillment of meaning preferences. As such, we live to continually create more meaning – and such is the value of life.

Yet I am not here to conduct an extensive philosophical detour and survey of the literature on the value of life. That, after all, is a rather fatigued and worn-out debate. Instead, I am here to ask the question that conventionalists and advocates of orthodoxy often expound in Confucian cultures: “for whom do we live?”

One view – that is commonplace throughout the folk wisdom of all “chopstick” cultures (e.g. Japan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam) – is that our bodies belong to our parents. The Chinese saying, “Our bodies, hair, and skin are all products of our parents.” The implicit claim is that given their role in procreation and biologically giving rise to our physical constitution, our parents are the most natural owners of us. We owe it to them to live our lives to the maximum – not so much in terms of personal utility, but when it comes to the fulfillment of ethical and relational responsibilities towards them.

In short, reciprocity, filial piety, and deferential compassion are very much virtues that we should espouse – as key components of living the “good life”, as “good sons and daughters”. Many a derived expectation exists – from the assertion that we must “continue our bloodlines” and “keep our ancestors proud” (especially for men, in relation to the former), to the emphasis upon almost unthinking, unyielding, and baked-in “respect” for one’s parents. Whilst I take no inherent issue whatsoever with the fetishisation of such traits so long as it is voluntary, I would nonetheless observe two crucial issues that must be resolved.

Firstly, that we should be grateful for our existence – conception, more precisely – induced by our parents, does not imply that we should live our lives for our parents. A pet is not raised to live for his pet owners; let alone a full-fledged, self-thinking, autonomous human agent who is not bound by any relation of subservience to their parents. If we grant that pets have the right to self-determination, so, too, should children of parents. As independent adults (above the somewhat arbitrarily stipulated threshold), we come to develop our career passions, professional pursuits, and social identities that are non-reducible into paternalistic projections.

Secondly, it is one thing to posit that parents play some role in contributing towards the careers and professional successes of their children (post-adulthood). It is another to insist that they are the sole causes for their children’s success (indeed, many an absentee parent could barely claim credit). If we are truly to be grateful for all who have helped us and act accordingly in orienting ourselves to “live for” them, we should live for a much longer list of prospective subjects – our teachers, our professors, our family, and even our friends.

The alternative answer is one oft invoked by individualists hailing from select post-Enlightenment, post-modernist circles: “We live for ourselves!” The Self is to be ontologically prized and placed atop a pedestal. We ostensibly live to do justice to ourselves, and no one else. It is only through acknowledging our own value as a source of genesis of value, as well as a progenitor of desires and aspirations, that we can come to live our lives to the fullest. “You only live once!”… “you should live for yourself!” The egocentric view preaches as such.

The trouble with this claim is that it unduly conflates the is with the ought, the descriptive with the prescriptive. We may be galvanised by and attracted towards a deeply cynical brand of self-serving egocentrism. This does not, however, imply that such preferences are appropriate and warranted. If we are to be more than morally debased, entitled, and narrow-mindedly driven zealots, then we must aim to be larger than life: larger than our own lives.

This is why my answer is as follows: we live for the better versions of ourselves. We live for our own better angels – versions of ourselves that embody quintessentially unmistakable elements of our personalities and characters, yet that also reflect the kind of person we aspire to be. By the kind of person, I am referring not just to objective achievements or substantive successes in one’s career, but also the ethical virtues and character traits that make for a critical foundation to one’s legacy and life-story – especially when viewed from a deathbed.

We should not live to be “ourselves”. We should live for better versions of “ourselves” towards which we must and should always aspire, without fear or trepidation.

Brian YS Wong

Assistant Professor, HKU