A THEORY OF THE ART OF LIVING
In theory, we can learn the art of living and create beautiful lives by doing three things:
1. Seeking the ancient ideals: beauty, truth, and goodness.
2. Seeking those ideals in our daily lives as we engage in our most basic behavior.
3. Seeking those ideals through art, science, and religion.
Those three activities summarize a general theory of the art of living as a way of life. Here are details:
What are our most basic behavior? Like other animals, we create living space, obtain food, eat, court, have sex, parent, groom, play, build, form social groups, flee, fight, and sleep. Those activities determine much of what we experience in life.
What are our highest ideals? They include family, friendship, community, compassion, love, freedom, peace, and many more. Beauty, truth, and goodness are especially significant. Seeking them can increase our experiences of all our other ideals. Our ancestors began seeking and celebrating those three ancient ideals long, long ago.
What do beauty, truth, and goodness mean? We call highly valued experiences beautiful. We describe qualities we experience as beautiful, for example, harmony, radiance, and wholeness. Truth can mean knowledge of reality. Goodness can mean morality.
How can art, science, and religion lead to our highest ideals? Art can be a path toward beauty, science a path toward truth, and religion a path toward goodness. Each path can eventually lead toward all three. Art, science, and religion are primary sources of human civilization. We can become more civilized by cultivating our artistic, scientific, and religious inclinations.
How can everyone become artistic, scientific, and religious? We become artistic by refining a skill sufficiently. We become scientific by evaluating a theory rigorously and finding it adequately reliable or false. We become religious by devoting ourselves thoroughly to an activity, idea, group, or interest, and/or by joining an organized religion.
What are everyday and specialized forms of art, science, and religion? Everyday forms modify our basic behavior. Everyone can learn them. The specialized forms are fine art (painting, sculpture, writing, singing, music, dance, theater, and many more), social and natural science, and organized religion. Everyone can value those specialties and choose whether and how to participate in them.
What might happen if everyone sought our highest ideals through those everyday and specialized forms? Would we refine our behavior as well as possible? Would we heal conflicts that separate us as individuals and as nations? Would we create deep moral relationships with one another, with other species, and with nature? Would our skills in the art of living enable us to create beautiful lives? Would we create a science of the art of living? Let us seek answers to all those questions.
What can go wrong? Art, science, and religion can become paths toward goals contrary to our ideals. For example, some people develop creative tactics in the art of war, use scientific knowledge to develop weapons of war, or feel religious enthusiasm for war. At their worst, art, science, and religion release our lowest human potential.
What is at stake? The primary biological and social reality of human life is that everyone is a member of the animal species Homo sapiens. In theory, by creating beautiful lives we can live in peace and harmony. We can reconcile the realism of our animal nature with the idealism of our highest human potential. The human species can become one human family at home on the earth and in the universe.
The earth and the universe are beautiful places; we feel at home when we create beautiful lives. Let us fall in love with the world and return home. We would all rejoice at that homecoming.
In theory, as we learn the art of living, we experience passion, compassion, empathy, sympathy, and other deep feelings. We learn to love one another, other species, and nature. Love is the emotional essence of a beautiful life, and the art of living is the art of loving.