Recently we read Susan Wolf’s “The Meaning of Lives.” In this work, she discusses how the question of the meaning of life is too general to be completely answered by philosophers. She does however talk about what makes a life meaningless or meaningful. Those that are meaningless are either not active and not engaged (the blob), active and not engaged (useless) , or failures (bankrupt). But what if you, or someone you know, is leading a meaningless life? The answer of how to help their lives become meaningful is not explicitly answered. Trying to get people to care whether or not their life is meaningful may seem to be a big issue. Perhaps meaningless lives can turn into meaningful lives with the help of loved ones and friends encouraging and being meaningful to these meaningless individuals.
I believe you bring up an excellent point, regarding how we view loved ones’ lives and if they are meaningful or not. However, I believe that is not in our realm to judge. Personally, I do not enjoy being told to how to live my life, so I refrain from telling other’s how to live those. For example, what if ‘the blob’ is living an objectively happy life? Who are we to tell a happy ‘blob’ that their life is meaningless?
I thought that our discussion of meaningful vs. meaningless lives could be related to our previous discussion of cultural relativism. It makes me uncomfortable telling someone they are living their life incorrectly because “correct” is dependent on the person just as in cultural relativism what was “moral” was based on the society. So Jonah I agree with you that it “is not in our realm to judge”. I think that the issue with the blob is that they aren’t truly happy. I am yet to meet someone who has absolutely no goals in their life and feels content. If someone is actually happy by living their life as the blob then by all means continue, but I think an issue arises when, as Wolf mentions, that person reaches a moment of epiphany and wakes up to realize they haven’t really accomplished anything in their life.