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London Dialogues: Good life and Help

October 2024, we held 2 dialogues in London, Lancaster Hall Hotel, 35 Craven Terrace, London.

‘What makes a good life?’ facilitated by Julie-Marie Ffrench Devitt

‘In what circumstances is it right to stop helping?’ facilitated by Jayne Crow

Photographs and summaries below:


In what circumstances is it right to stop helping?

We talked about the type of help offered in the example (pastoral and material), conditional and unconditional. These were a few circumstances found in the example when it is right to stop helping:

When the help is no longer helpful.

When the help impacted the well being of the helper.

When the help may tip the balance of the friendship.

Briefly we discussed the rightness of the help, right at what time, in retrospect or at the time, right for who?

What makes a good life?

Our example came from M who was talking about a time in 2004 where he was in charge of a project to create an engineering industry safety standard. The industry standards they created are still used today by more than 6 million engineers and the standards have been updated and iterated ever since.

We listed some thoughts about what makes a good life: Important work / Intellectually stimulating work / Peers / Challenge / Balance / Power / Doing the right thing
The group considered what the difference was between power and being empowered, with the brief conclusion being that power is positional and empowerment is given An area we didn’t explore to much was around dependency, M said he felt comfortable being dependent which signalled to me an openness and a trust in his example  It seems a good quality of life resulting in a good self identity was responsible for his feeling this was a good life

Some conclusions:

In M’s example, a good life is about learning, both socially and intellectually, while having the power to take directive action and having the energy to explore interests. A good life is about feeling good about ones abilities by having both internal and external validation. A good life is about feeling alive and invigorated. It is not a life without pain or suffering. It is a life with just enough challenge. 

A good life is one where our basic needs are taken care of. One where we spend our time on pursuits that are meaningful to us. A life where we experience meaningful connection to others. It’s a life where we don’t get so caught up with the day to day drama but can lift ourselves out of the monotony to higher thinking, about compassion and ethics, for examples. A good life is not life without pain or suffering but certainly one without unnecessary pain and suffering. 

(Report from Anna Bromley)