Bibliograph

Life is short, an appropriately brief guide to making it more meaningful, Dean Rickles

Type

Label

Life is short, an appropriately brief guide to making it more meaningful, Dean Rickles

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Life is short

Nature of contents

bibliography

Responsibility statement

Dean Rickles

Sub title

an appropriately brief guide to making it more meaningful

Summary

This brief book attempts to provide a 21st-century version of Seneca's classic essay, On the Shortness of Life. Like Seneca, Rickles seeks to motivate readers to meditate on how they use their time and offer some reasons why they mismanage this precious resource. Drawing on new developments in the understanding of time, the self, and human agency, in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and physics, Rickles's basic aim is to highlight the essential nature of the limit provided by death and the ways in which this fact gives life its meaning. The book will also point to a number of solutions (and potential pitfalls in these) aimed at using time more wisely. Throughout the book the focus is on a pair of competing personality styles that are found to be at the root of many of the problems Seneca unearthed, and can be associated with philosophical stances on personal identity and theories of time. These styles, commonly referred to in psychology as "Puer" and "Senex" are, respectively, the childish, present-focused type and the rational, future-focused, type. These styles relate in a fundamental way to how an individual reacts to being limited, whether by death or decision. The book will also deal with themes such as the concept of immortality; "diseases of time," such as the hyperbolic discounting leading us to devalue our futures; and strategies for using the short life well. The book concludes by showing that it is not life that has ultimate meaning but death, and this ultimate limit is where life derives whatever meaning it will have

Table Of Contents

The shortness of life, redux -- Who wants to live forever? -- People and purpose -- Diseases of time -- Project me -- The provisional life -- Bulletproofing -- The meaning of death

Classification