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PHIL 1 final essay - Coggle Diagram

- - - - She has a very general definition of what a project is. Here, a project is not necessarily something with a clear start and end, something that one completes. It doesn't even have to be something with a clear goal in mind. It merely need be some ongoing commitment or activity that culminates in a string of tasks that one dedicates oneself to do. Often (but not always), these are things that one could view as accomplishments. Examples include anything from developing a mathematical proof or starting and maintaining strong relationships to forming a high school band or coaching a school soccer team.
        
        By positive objective and subjective value, she means anything that has both a good amount of subjective value--you must desire and value it--and objective value--it must be inherently valuable, even if nobody finds it so.
- - - - The first example is that of the Blob. All the Blob does is watch sitcoms on TV and drink beer. The Blob might enjoy this very much, so pleasure doesn't necessarily make a life good. However, the Blob is very passive and never engages in any activity; thus, we devise that a good life must be active.
        
        The second example is the busy housewife who does not embrace her role and sees it as nothing more than a never-ending list of chores. Here, we see that one not only has to be active (which the housewife is) to live a good life, but also actively engaged in it (which the housewife is not).
        
        The third example is the pedant whose sole enjoyment is counting the blades of grass on the UCSB campus every day. We conclude that you not only must be actively engaged in projects (which the pedant is), but also that these projects are objectively valuable (counting of the blades of grass on UCSB every day clearly is not).
        
        The fourth example is the man who leaves his comfortable life as a highly-paid doctor in a first-world country to a third-world country to help those who otherwise could never afford to get professional medical treatment. Say that the man is engaged in his work, because he identifies with and embraces what he does, but in the end, reflects on his life as wasted, having achieved nothing of value. We can see that, to live a good life, not only do you have to be actively engaged in projects of objective value (which the doctor achieves), but you also must find such projects to be subjectively valuable (which the doctor does not).
        
        The fifth example is a businessman who works his entire life building his business to pass down to his kids. Say he is actively engaged and values his work. However, just as he's about to retire, some other company develops some technology that renders his business obsolete, and it goes bankrupt. Here, we see that, to live a good life, one must not only be actively engaged in projects of positive objective and subjective value (which the businessman does), but that such projects need to be relatively successful (which is not the case here).
        
        Thus, we arrive at Wolf's conclusion: a good life is one where you actively engage in projects of positive objective and subjective value.