There is an idea that knowledge and/or wisdom can be simplified into particular cognitive ‘building blocks’ put together to form (or re-form) a machine-like organ (the brain/mind or the human being itself); through this machine-like thing comes output and that the quality (or quantity) of this output is what determines the value (success/effectiveness/goodness/etc.) of the person. Hence, when we view elements such as education, work, or even habits, they are likely to be considered as cognitive building blocks or a means of putting those blocks together. The image then of a ‘good person’ or a ‘good life’ is a kind of amalgamation that can be simplified—demystified in way.
Maybe it is truly a simple matter: be good, do good, live well. Follow some list, some moral code, study well and go through the systems properly so as to have a good life and be a good person. However, let us try to view this phenomenologically from another perspective: obey and you will live. From an outsider perspective of someone trying to understand how life works, this kind of function-outcome structure may seem enlightening. However, I think it may be just as easy to perceive, if one tries to, how this kind of structure becomes a questionable experience: you are born into this world and immediately you are held against these various systems, the point of which is simply for you to follow it by all means possible. Further, if we try to make that a little more horrifying: the state in which you are born in this world makes you susceptible to having all sorts of difficulties in becoming obedient. Maybe you have a ‘rebellious’ nature that is always seeking novelty, and yet you must do as old adages say. Maybe you have particular incapacities but have been told that it is essential for you to exercise those very capacities you lack (and maybe hide those that you do have but are not considered ‘of quality’). Maybe such structures do not hold as much influence on your psyche and so you struggle to ‘feel’ the need to follow them. There are many other possibilities, but the point is to ask: however the case may be, what should one do if the way to a good life seems next-to-impossible?
I will jump right into another topic, purposefully leaving a gap between that previous thought and the next one for two reasons. One is to establish the point of the next thought. Two is let the thought/s be, for later (I would like to continue to think about them later and not anymore now). In any case, the gap may be illusory and this is more of a makeshift ‘bridge’.
One might wonder too how such novel things can come up—those things of innovation, creativity, inspiration—and exercise an unprecedented kind of influence unto human beings/existence. They do not seem to be mere sums of our aforementioned building blocks. They are not simply outputs but something else. Oftentimes, those human beings from whose practise they come from may not even ‘understand’ them. Somehow they just happen. Somehow even a whole society falls in love with an art inexplicably.
Paul Ricœur in Lectures on Imagination talks about the concept of ‘framework of references’. Knowledge, information, those cognitive/existential building blocks are good, but one does not get to ‘create’ by simply making more of those building blocks. Hence, if a good novel cannot be made by simply copying/re-creating a previously considered ‘good’ one, then how can an existence be ‘good’ through mere ‘reproduction’ of a good life?