Pursuit of Happiness: Right to Life

Dear society,

Life is an interesting right. Without it, the others are worthless. However, it also can be confusing as to what it's purpose is. Now I pretty much covered this in the right to be good, so here I will focus on addressing it's immediate purpose and why it's important.

The general purpose of life is ultimately to be good, which includes true love. The specific purpose of your life is something you find that corresponds to the general prepare. Now the immediate purpose that aids in both of those is to grow.

Unless you are alive, you cannot change. At least that is the philosophy I've interpreted from Thomas Awuinas, Aristotle, and Buddhism. So the purpose of life is to change. Now if we are idealistic in thinking everything has a positive purpose, then life is so that we can change positively, that is to grow. And this purpose covers both physical and spiritual growth, though some philosophies will argue that the spiritual growth is the primary reason.

You might wonder if this means those who cannot grow therefore do not have a right to live. This is not the case as they still maintain the right to be loved and their life brings about many opportunities to love. The moral growth of people who take care of the infirmed and handicap is far superior to those who do not have the opportunities to show this love. Remember that no action is to oppose our purpose of loving, and that means every single person. Otherwise we venture into the realm of selfishness in which we are bound to choose evil.

In the original Spider-Man movie, the Green Goblin gives Spider-Man a choice between saving his love and an elevator full of children. His choice? Save all of them, even though it leaves himself vulnerable to the attacks from his enemy. His choice is instantaneous and he pulls it off thanks to the people of New York. It's not a question of numbers or even status. Every life is worth saving because our nature of love has declared it as so. And if we die in the process of saving others, then we have fulfilled our general purpose of love.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but perhaps the people who need to live the most are the ones who are the most evil. While we certainly need the ones that are good heroes, it's really the wicked that could use the inspiration and opportunity to change. If you believe in a heaven and hell, this is especially true, which helps explain why some religions advocate for abolishing the death penalty.

Life is extremely precious, but in order to understand why, we must the various purposes it has. It's ultimate goal is to be good, the individual goal is the specific purpose that you as a person can fulfill to aid being good, and the most immediate goal is to grow. This purpose of growth stems from that we need to live in order to change. We will change until we die and whatever our state is then will be how we will be for eternity.

With Love,

N. D. Moharo

Pursuit of Happiness: To be Good

To society,

In order to be happy, we must be good, but what does that mean? I'm sure that most people consider themselves to be good in general. However, others may disagree with our personal evaluation. What does it mean in general for something to be good?

When we say something is good, we tend to mean that it fulfills a purpose we have in mind. A good screwdriver should be able to screw in screws. If the handle breaks as soon as I try, then the tool is not good. A good textbook likewise is supposed help me learn about a subject. A bad textbook would make the subject even more confusing. We can therefore infer that for us to be good means that we fulfill our own purposes as well.

Like all things, mankind has a general purpose and can have many specific purposes. The general purpose is to love, as I mention in many of my letters. The specific "purpose" is something we generally search for ourselves or feel called to. These can be our careers or a passion we do outside of work. For some people, it's simply partaking in the general purpose of love and applying it to their everyday life, such as parenting.

In addition to purposes, we also judge things based off requirements that help aid in fulfilling those purposes. For example if the binding of a book easily breaks, I would consider the book to be bad no matter the contents inside. How important each of these requirements is varies, but they exist nonetheless. When it comes to being a good person, we can find hints in the form of fundamental human rights.

Rights help us understand the various needs of people. They help us move toward fulfillment and therefore perfection and happiness. Understand that I do not consider power and rights to be the same thing. Even if you can do something, it does not mean you should. Just as different books don't share all the same pieces, so too different people don't necessarily need all of the same non-fundamental rights, we just try to make sure they have access to them in case they need them, unless said right contradicts their purposes.

Does a cookbook need a prologue? No, but a novel could benefit from it. Likewise, one man may need to marry, but it might be best for another to refrain from all romance. There are books that instruct how other books should be formed so as to aid in their purpose. Similarly, when we claim someone does not have a right to something, the best arguments are those that show how the right ultimately contradicts their need to need to be good.

An example of this would be when someone is in need of medical treatment. It's good to want to help, but if there are professionals there already treating, then the good thing is to let them work and simply be available when they need your help.

We should note that our specific purpose and rights should never interfere with our general purpose of love. If there is ever opposition, then love should win. Otherwise we are sure to commit some evil, which is the opposite of good. Can we truly say we are good if we willingly choose to oppose good?

Being good is intrinsically linked to our perfection and therefore happiness. When we fulfill our purposes and prerequisites, then there's nothing more we can do to obtain happiness on our end. So let's choose good and work towards becoming happy.

With love,

N. D. Moharo