{"id":4413,"date":"2024-01-05T18:57:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T05:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=4413"},"modified":"2025-04-02T22:10:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T09:10:59","slug":"the-good-life-hugh-mackay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2024\/01\/05\/the-good-life-hugh-mackay\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good Life \u2013 Hugh Mackay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“No one can promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction, but it\u2019s certain that nothing else will.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This claim holds a lot of appeal for me, even if I don\u2019t think it\u2019s quite true. The good life is, Mackay says, to follow the Golden Rule: treat others the way they would want to be treated. In other words, heed the universal desire: \u201cPlease take me seriously as a person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a bit of Old Man Yells At Cloud<\/em> energy in the book: Mackay does complain a bit about some modern trends. And who can blame him? Still, I was surprised that he seems to misunderstand the concept of the Gratitude Journal. This is quite a widely-known idea, which I first remember from Martin Seligman\u2019s Flourish<\/em><\/a>: every day before bed, write down three things that went well that day. It\u2019s supposed to focus you on the good in your life. Mackay seems to think it\u2019s supposed to do something else \u2013 I can\u2019t remember what, but I guess he\u2019s never tried it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, this is a good book. I enjoyed reading it and maybe got a tiny bit closer to being able to live the good life.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“No one can promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction, but it\u2019s certain that nothing else will.\u201d This claim holds a lot of appeal for me, even if I don\u2019t think … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,53,245,26,28],"class_list":["post-4413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-books","tag-ethics","tag-hugh-mackay","tag-life","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4413"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4424,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions\/4424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}