This is a recycled post from a mailing list. Apologies to salon-chaos!

http://bigthink.com/ideas/42337

Freedom is an extremely relative concept. Relatedly, purpose is also extremely context-driven. The search for purpose, for realizing what you are, is termed eudaimonism. In this article, Wilkinson judges the concept to lack integrity.

Excerpts:

The eudaimonist says that eudamonia is the aim of life and the ultimate end of practical reason. Eudaimonia is often translated as "happiness," but it's better understood as flourishing or functioning excellently as the kind of thing one is. Acting in accordance with certain virtues is thought to be both instrumental to and constitutive of flourishing or excellent functioning. Both Long and Vallier accept a version of the unity of the virtues thesis, according to which the content the virtues can be fixed only by reference to the content of the others.

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Relatedly, there is no non-stupid natural fact of the matter about what it would mean for you to realize or fulfill your potential, or to function most excellently as the kind of thing you are. Our potentialities are relative not only to individual biological make-up, but to culture and technology as well. Potential for mathematical or hockey greatness is meaningless in a world without mathematical notation or hockey. It may be that the world in which you have the greatest chance for really meaningful achievement and fulfillment, given your particular endowments, is one that does not yet exist. Bummer. What is means to function excellently in the here and now depends on the possibilities for functioning given the current cultural, economic, and technological dispensation.

Freedom is important to happiness and well-being. However, freedom is not that straightforward to pin down. When do we perceive an influence as coercion, and when do we accept it as natural law? I'm sure the inability to violate the constraints of physics does not cause anyone grief. That's because we are pretty certain that other people cannot violate those laws either.

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Freedom is the possession of the relevant capabilities needed to pursue your goals, as measured against a specific reference. Even though being able to teleport to work is something that does aid me in the pursuit of my goals, my inability to do so does not cause me grief because it is a capability that is far beyond my reference point.

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People feel more free when rules are clear, because in those situations choices are made by examining the different consequences in your head and then picking the choice with the consequences that you most prefer. This thought pattern pretty much defines what free will is. This is the reason why games are enjoyable. This is why computer programming is fun -- the product is difficult to produce but easy to judge.

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Freedom can bring unhappiness. A tough choice is a choice for which you know that the consequences vary widely but you don't know in which direction. It's uncertainty in outcomes resulting from ignorance, a situation where you know that it's important to make the right decision but you don't know which decision is correct. Feeling vexed in this situation is important because it motivates the improvement of knowledge - by necessity, the failure to improve knowledge has to feel frustrating.

I've started using connectedhq.com. It's a website that integrates your Gmail, Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, and allows you to write down notes and also set intervals at which to remind yourself to keep in touch. This addresses one of my shortcomings, which is the inability to keep track of more than five people in my head for any decent period of time.

I've given some thought to the idea of networking recently, and so far the most sincere interpretation is that it's a form of marketing - you basically advertise what you have to offer, and hope that a chance to fruitfully trade comes up in the future. To network effectively, you must have something to offer (in my case I think of that as a technical orientation towards the world, and the desire to give advice / nag at people) that people will remember. Trade is a truly rewarding activity, but in lieu of that I'm pretty much willing to blabber on and analyze random situations as long as it entertains everyone.