Arnold Siegel: Living the examined life

Arnold Siegel: Living the examined life

Until it is the artificial intelligence of robots that tells us what “it’s all about,” human beings provide our information about the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.

Without such information, we are, in large part, reflexive entities, driven forward and set back by forces we can’t see and don’t understand. Without such information, we live much of our lives at the behest of our biological immediacy and social and political mindsets, neither of which we thoughtfully authored or govern. It could be said that without such information, much of life just happens to us.

But the unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates. It’s not worth living because it leaves us without access to the elevated joys of wonder, creativity, gratitude, fulfillment and satisfaction.