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Author and social researcher Hugh Mackay returned to Albany on July 8 to discuss his new book ‘The Good Life: what makes a life worth living'?

A sell-out audience enjoyed listening to his thoughts, findings and anecdotes on this interesting topic.

So what comes to mind when someone says ‘the good life'? Comfort and prosperity? A chance to cash in your chips, retire to the coast and put your feet up? A life enriched by the love of your family and friends? A life where dreams come true? How about a life lived for others, a life devoted to serving the neediest members of society, or a life of self-sacrifice? Those are equally valid ways of interpreting ‘good' - giving it a moral spin rather than an economic or emotional one.

Given our society's current obsession with feel-good definitions of happiness, and the damage we're inflicting on our kids by teaching them that self-esteem is their most precious possession, Hugh Mackay believes it's not surprising that our minds tend to leap to self-serving interpretations of ‘good'. This, after all, is the Age of Me - where competition usually gets more marks than co-operation, and self-interest is rated more highly than self-sacrifice.

But Mr Mackay that's not the whole story. In a civil society, where most people are quite interested in upping the goodness quotient in their lives, we can learn to tame the savage beast of self-interest. Yes, we humans can be ruthlessly competitive, aggressive and violent, but we have nobler impulses as well: we're also the kind of people who fight off a shark to save a mate; jump off a river bank to rescue a stranger; defend the victims of prejudice; volunteer to take refugees into our homes.

Deep within us, we know the survival of our communities depends on paying more attention to that insistent message that comes to us from every religious and moral tradition of East and West: treat other people the way you'd like to be treated .

If we fall for the idea that the good life is only about having a good time, or ‘doing well', or even being ‘happy' (in the superficial emotional sense), our moral compass is bound to wobble. As he says at the end of the book: ‘No one can promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction, but it's certain that nothing else will.'

Media references

Michael Sinclair-Jones Ph +61 8 6488 3229 / 0400 700 783

Paula Phillips Ph +61 8 9842 0810