How to Live the Good Life

A User's Guide for Modern Humans

Non-Fiction - Religion/Philosophy
510 Pages
Reviewed on 09/07/2017
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    Book Review

Reviewed by Christian Sia for Readers' Favorite

How to Live the Good Life: A User's Guide for Modern Humans by Arthur M Jackson is a book that explores a topic that will immediately arrest the attention of theologians and philosophers, and anyone interested in the idea of a good and ordered life. In this book, the author makes a daring move to introduce readers to a new form of thought, a new way of seeking meaning and creating a purpose for their lives, one that goes beyond the bounds of traditional religion to offer answers to the crucial questions that haunt the human mind in a new-found approach that embraces natural and practical wisdom. This is one of those rare books that brilliantly unveil the principles that human beings need to make choices that help them to grow, to connect with a purpose and with each other. The book answers the not-so-often asked question: What is the good life and how can one attain it?

Arthur M Jackson is a writer and a philosopher whose work challenges some of the concepts readers find in traditional religious institutions, building a philosophy and a form of religion that explores man’s freedom of choice and his gift of community. The author makes wonderful arguments for his points, offering strong and relevant philosophical and religious references. This could be a lengthy book, but it contains eye-opening passages and inspiring messages that will challenge the way most of us approach religion. Instead of being something that enslaves and that limits us, How to Live the Good Life: A User's Guide for Modern Humans offers a form of religion that allows readers to gain the emotional and spiritual strength they need, while reaching deeper levels of freedom. A very interesting read!

Karen Pirnot

"How to Live the Good Life" by Arthur Jackson is an erudite look into how it is possible to teach us to target our thoughts and behaviors in order to attain a good life through wisdom in today's world. Jackson advocates a mind free from traditional folk religion in order to seek a science of religion and ethics which uses wisdom to achieve meaning for the individual as well as for the society as a whole. With the advent of the Internet, Jackson believes that human understanding and human communities can be improved to the point that wisdom is a way of life as well as a means to a life of meaning and goodness. Living a life of wisdom leads to moral character and a society which is enlightened via its "enlightened" individuals and groups.

This book will be a difficult read for those wanting or expecting a "how to" book on personal happiness. It is a well-researched and scholarly book which seeks to bypass or eliminate traditional thinking and behaviors which have led to stagnated societies and mass human unrest and disappointment. The book's intentions are honorable. The author concludes that whatever produces happiness should be a personal or societal goal; the sociopaths will undermine the "common man" at every fork in the road. Jackson advocates that wisdom can be taught and utilized to produce better human beings and better societies. The problem which is not addressed is how to get people to listen in order to implement the plan. This would be a great book for intermediate philosophy classes as it uses many of the theories of the great philosophical leaders of the past.