The Living best

What is the essence of moderation? A life of moderation creates a life where we may totally integrate our identities to a point that we are truly being ourselves at no expense of our relationship with others… and when we can truly 'live' to be our 'best'.

The Moderation Doctrine, an Introduction- Response

A meaningful life, must involve worthwhile activities or projects that enable us to flourish as human beings. Such flourishing requires the development of our human capacities for feeling and reason: it involves cultivating the faculties that allow sympathetic emotional interaction and open rational dialogue with our fellow humans.

The Meaning of Life, on the living best.


The living best, so as to speak, is an objective idealistic goal that many have attempted to seek out. As the title suggests, this concept if primarily aimed for the ‘best’ method to ‘live’ our lives; or in other words, that method of ‘perfecting’ our lifestyles. While we understand that there is indeed no definite answer to fully address the objectively appropriate method owing to the fact that we can never achieve idealistic perfection, we have to understand that that definite answer exists and is waiting to be uncovered. We know that there are certain lifestyles that have more value than others- we know for a fact that a simple lifestyle of love and pursuit of knowledge is ‘better’ than one of drugs and alcohol consumption. If we were to extrapolate these lifestyles and compare every available lifestyle back to back, it is true that although we cannot live that objective lifestyle of perfection, we can definitely see a trend of the ‘better’ towards the objective perfect.

But why tend to the living best? We have to realize that amongst the relativism and subjectivity of this world there is always an objective truth to issues. Of course the objective truth to complex issues such as moral decisions and particular choices is obscured; and reliance of our ethics, meaning of life, individuality, and personal doctrines are required. But even these ethics, meanings, and personal beliefs that we advocate to stem from our basic identities (be it nature or nurture of our biologics and psychologies). Over the past series of posts we have demonstrated that there is indeed an objective make up of our true identity, so if there is indeed an objective idealistic make up of ourselves, there ought to be objectivity beyond the threshold of the united self, or our true identities.

Atheists and Theists alike have been seeking that objectivity beyond the united self to find the objective truth to the purpose of our existence. Otherwise known as the grand quest for ‘the meaning of life’, this faculty in our theory of knowledge is still very subjective in nature and is open for debate. The atheist believes that humans are free to expand on their domain as long as it’s within the laws of nature and human ethics; the theist, on the other hand, corresponds that objectivity to that of the objectivity of God, or the divine plan. As quoted:

For the theist, the journey that meets these conditions will be the journey of the individual soul towards God; others may construe the journey in less metaphysical terms- as a journey towards enlightenment, or as a quest to realize what is best and noblest in our nature. These ways of characterizing the journey all converge on the premise that there are objective values.

As for now, we can safely assume that most of the debate prior the united self are more or less rendered objective as far as the theory of human knowledge is concerned, and issues beyond the united self still open to subjectivity and much debate. This project acknowledges and touches on what is objective in life, and it is because of this reason why this project ends with the united self.

While the ‘living best’ does not denote our outlooks to life or confer a divine plan that we should adhere to truly be, it is true that the ‘living best’ demonstrate that our lives are built on a simple set of ideals, and it is from the correct manipulation of these ideals (of logic, intuition, material, ideals, the individual and the community) that we get the objective answer to the workings of our lives. The ‘living best’ has to be coupled with the ‘Meaning of Life’ for us to truly be in sacrosanct. I would leave the personal interpretation of the ‘Meaning of Life’ to our subjective viewpoints, but the least we can do in the time being is to acknowledge on what is objectively good, and strive to that perfection that we have objectively pointed out. That is why we want to tend to the ‘living best’, and that is why this project exists.

Recapping, we have identified various fundamental ideals that form the basis of our existence. We, being true, embody the concepts of objectivity, subjectivity, epistemology and ontology. And it is from these abstract concepts that form the four fundamental factors of our being- Logic, Intuition, Material and Ideal. If we were to look at ourselves once more, we find out that everything we know of has its corresponding placing and values with these factors. It is the integration of logic and intuition that makes our psyche, and the integration of Material and Ideal that makes our personal identity.

Since these four fundamentals stem from the parent concept of Truth, equal emphasis has to be placed on them should we wish to live our true selves. From this premise, the moderation doctrine is hence formed- to balance and moderate personal emphasis on logical thought and intuitive feelings, and from what is material from ideal. We get to understand what it means to be rational, and since we are rational we ought to live our lives rationally by integrating logical thought with intuitive experiences. We get to see that the integration of the four would lead to a personality that balances itself in the MBTI test, this balanced personality is objective, and from there we transit on to identity.

With the knowledge of what is objectively appropriate for our personalities we then dwell into the dynamics of our personal identity. The moderation doctrine creates a conscious personality that is all rounded in both logic and intuition, material and ideal. And it is from this conscious effort that is subconsciously repressed to form our full personalities that others get to see. Coupled with our biological makeup, this forms the objective individual identity. But we know even the best personal identity we have yet to live the best way of life, we know that life is not all about the individual, but individuals that make up the community. We then seek out a final integration from our personal selves and our social selves, to find out that this integration can only be made true with love.

As we place together the final pieces of that jigsaw puzzle that makes up our life, we see that the living best that we seek can only be realized only when we be what we were originally meant to be. Be it objective in our attitude in everything that we do, balanced in our outlooks to life, and social without compromise of retaining our individuality. This has always been the moral of the story many a layman has taught us even before this project is even conceived, and this project has served no more as a re-affirmation to the aphorisms and existing teachings that our mentors have offered through life experience and wisdom.

And henceforth the name Project Re-affirmation.

As I have stated earlier, the objective ideals of the ‘living best’ have allowed to see the objective method of living our lives- but it still does not serve fully to ensure the perfect life that we truly seek and that religion claims to have already sought out. The least we can do today is to know that every thought, every feeling, every action, decision that we do to ourselves and our neighbors are accounted for and objectively moderated as how it was meant to be. Till the day we find the objective answer to the ‘Meaning of Life’ and integrate this higher knowledge with what we know today, then can we truly find that complete user’s manual that comes with life to teach us how to truly live our lives and be ourselves through and through.