Active Engagement

A meaningful life can be attributed to a few different things: subjectivity, objectivity, narrative values, and active engagement just to name a few discussed in this course. Different philosophers attack this question from different angles. Now you’re probably wondering what a meaningful life has to do with the Spongebob clip posted above? Well in the clip, Spongebob and Squidward are delivering their very first Krusty Krab pizza. As you can see, Spongebob is happily pushing forward ready to deliver this pizza. He is demonstrating characteristics such as; steadfastness and determination. From the clip, Spongebob is actively engaged in delivering the pizza. Todd May would suggest Spongebob’s life is meaningful because he is actively engaged in his activities and his life shows attributes from the list of narrative values. Taylor also would deem Spongebob’s life meaningful because he is enjoying what he’s doing. On the other hand Squiward does not demonstrate active engagement, narrative values or even enjoyment. Squidward looks completely miserable and has the most agitated look on his face. He is not actively engaged and his life is not demonstrating any narrative values, so according to the belief of a meaningful life from Taylor and May his life deemed not meaningful. As for Wolf though, being actively engaged is not enough. She says that along with being actively engaged, you need to be involved in a somewhat successful project with positive value. You could argue, being that this is the first Krusty Krab pizza, he’s trying to deliver to a customer to make them happy the activity would have some positive value. Though its not a huge positive impact it is still a successful project with positive value.