Meaning, Pleasure, Power

There are three pri­mary philoso­phies of life still float­ing around. You can trace them back to three thinkers of the early days of the last cen­tury. In truth, they just made the less obvi­ous more obvi­ous. The three prin­ci­ple pur­suits have been around since the begin­ning. Peo­ple pick power, plea­sure, or mean­ing as the cen­tral orga­niz­ing dynam­ics of their lives. One of the three is pri­mary. All three are usu­ally included, but in only one of sev­eral pos­si­ble configurations.

In what order would you put the three? Per­son­ally, I pri­or­i­tize them this way: Mean­ing, Plea­sure, Power. For me, the life­time pur­suits of the­ol­ogy, psy­chol­ogy, and phi­los­o­phy have taken my aca­d­e­mic atten­tion and ener­gies. I have no regrets with that choice. I have found that as I find mean­ing, there is a plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence that comes with the insights and clar­i­fi­ca­tion of pur­poses. There is also an amaz­ing power that comes with per­spec­tive — espe­cially in an era that has traded its soul for a pseudo-good-time or brute force power.

Solomon jug­gled these same three prin­ci­ples of life around in Eccle­si­astes. Despite his great power and abil­ity to afford any plea­sure he so desired, he aban­doned power and plea­sure for mean­ing. That was a good choice on his part and the inevitable out­come of clear think­ing. To arrange them in any other order will lead to some fool­ish pitfalls.

The power peo­ple of pol­i­tics are eas­ily seen as fools. Power alone blinds. In the end, power ends with age or the loss of things or posi­tions acquired. The same is true for plea­sure. Addic­tion issues even­tu­ally turn the fun into mis­ery. Mak­ing power or plea­sure pri­mary is the philo­sophic life mis­take made by most peo­ple. Jesus addressed this clearly and lived it. “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.”

I have no doubt that Jesus enjoyed life. In fact, with the for­mula he used, he expe­ri­enced a qual­ity of life char­ac­ter­ized as “eter­nal.” As far as power is con­cerned, he had it all. He used it wisely. It had to have divine mean­ing to be expressed prop­erly. The most mis­er­able peo­ple I know are peo­ple try­ing to have a good time or involved in power plays (wast­ing their lives try­ing to con­trol peo­ple so they can feel bet­ter or sense power).

I rec­om­mend mean­ing, plea­sure, and power or mean­ing, power, and plea­sure. Hap­pi­ness is all in how you start.