The Good Life

Normally when Americans talk about “the good life,” we’re talking about the life of an individual or an individual family. In this good life, a person makes good money at a good job. That person finds a partner to share this goodness, and they often start a family together. They live in a nice house in a good neighborhood, and they fill the house with goods they buy together. These days, it seems, the good life requires cars and boats and televisions and computers and cellphones and iPods. The good life also comes with “good times”—parties and holidays at home, leisure and entertainment at the sports stadium or the movies, and vacations to the lake or more exotic places.

Usually, we think about the good life without thinking about a good society. In a society of individualism, we learn to think first about ourselves and our families, and then about other people. We learn to value the individual good more than the common good. As the bumpersticker says, “After me, you come first.”

We also learn to think about the good life without thinking much about the good earth. In Genesis, America’s most popular creation story, God creates the earth and says that it is very good. But that goodness doesn’t usually figure very much in our plans for the good life. Americans love nature, but we don’t live out that love as we do with our families and friends. At some level, we know that nature supports us, but we don’t pay much attention to the details.