Arete Leading to Eudamonia

Those are concepts from the ancient Greeks. Arete means excellence and eudamonia means flourishing or well-being. Excellence leads to well-being. This has been noticed for thousands of years.

Or, as Charles Murray wrote in Human Accomplishment, "Exercising our realized capacities is, in the truest sense of the word, enjoyable.

I should also point out that the word "education" means "to draw out." That is, draw out what talents are already there. Our inborn capacities, which we then should develop to obtain our greatest flourishing and well-being.

To quote Murray again: "The things we enjoy most deeply are the things at which we are most expert."

Sometimes people show that talent at five years old. One of my old girlfriends told me when she was five years old she shinnied up a lamppost and straddled the top, waving to cars. When she grew up she innately had almost professional athletic talent. She used to beat the hell out of me at anything we did. I never won at miniature golf, for an example.

Let's try Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics: "Life is an activity, and each man exercises his favorite facilities upon the objects he loves most."

That leads us to the question of how the West became so rich. One of the main answers: Christianity. And a lot of that had to do with St. Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas wrote that human intelligence is a gift from God, and to apply human intelligence to understanding the world is pleasing to God. In other words, using all of your talents is a great thing - especially if you have a good time doing it.

This spirit of free inquiry is how the West developed science and technology and why we have such wealth that we are the envy of the world (and because of their envy is why so much of the Third World wants to bring us down).

Religions that have gone nowhere are the ones that prohibit inquiry and think the purpose of life is to avoid damnation, which generally involves sending money to frauds.

To quote Aristotle again: "Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim."

In other words - excellence. What used to be called "the good, the true and the beautiful."

I'll end again with a quote from Murray: "Human beings have been most magnificently productive and reached their highest cultural peaks in the times and places where humans have thought most deeply about their place in the universe and are convinced they have one."