The phrase “the important thing is not to live, but to live well,” attributed to Socrates and transmitted by Plato in the Crito, condenses one of the fundamental ideas of ethics: human life should not be measured solely by its duration, but by its ethical quality. For Plato, “living well” is not just about keeping biological functions active. It is about living under the light of an inner compass that guides our decisions and actions; a filter through which we decide what is right and what is wrong. Without ethics, our actions would be guided only by impulses, desires, or personal interests. We would be like ships adrift, without a fixed course.
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The new knowledge from neurobiology and genetics is very encouraging, as it confirms that our brain enjoys great plasticity that helps us overcome any challenge. But the most novel thing is that, when we act ethically, tending towards the good, leading a prosocial life full of meaning, our genes react by producing neural patterns that favor our health.
Just as the human being is naturally social, which implies that we can only be happy by being supportive and contributing with our life to the common good, we must also understand that we are oriented, given our nature, our biology, and our spirit, towards a good and, ultimately, humanitarian life.
Although it is true that genes do not tell us what it means to lead a good life, by living with that attitude and tending towards good, it has been confirmed that the extensions of the neurons in our brain secrete substances that we can consider “fertilizer for the brain” and that we call “neuroplastic messenger substances,” which enable us to live with enthusiasm and excitement. One of the most fascinating derivatives of this process is that, by understanding how joy can be lost, we can also understand how to recover it.
But for our brain to achieve good functioning, it is necessary to meet five indispensable requirements.
The first is safety, which derives from the brain’s main role: protecting us from dangers. When we do not feel safe, our brain is in alarm or survival mode, which can lead to anxiety or panic attacks.
The second is bonding. We are social beings and our brain needs to live in a mode of belonging. I belong, just like you. We are not alone. This does not mean we must have a thousand friends on Facebook. It is about maintaining good analog relationships with a certain number of people.
The third is physical exercise. Everything that happens to the body affects the brain, as they are connected by millions of nerve fibers. In this way, physical exercise helps the brain leave the survival or alarm state and harmonizes the body. It is not about doing high-performance sports, but rather practicing it moderately: walking, running, dancing, swimming, cycling. The important thing is that the blood flows to secrete endorphins that produce the sensation of happiness, pleasure, and joy. Also, through exercise, the so-called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is achieved, which is key for neuroplasticity, as well as memory and neuronal survival.
The fourth is the search for meaning. The brain is an organ that seeks meaning. It needs to know what is important to each of us. Things have the importance we want to give them. Viktor Frankl said that it is not life, but we who must find a “deep meaning” to our existence. But it is about knowing what the goal above goals is; about knowing the true title of the book of your life.
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The fifth consists of avoiding chronic stress, as it shrinks the hippocampus, which is a central brain structure for memory and emotion regulation.
But there is a sixth requirement that has more to do with the social sphere than with our brain. The human being needs to live in a healthy environment. And we return to the Greeks. What Plato stated, that to “live well” we must not only keep biological functions active but also do so under the light of an inner compass that guides our decisions and actions, we cannot carry out without a healthy, true environment. Understanding true in the sense given by Plato himself and his teacher, Socrates, for whom truth, goodness, and beauty constituted an inseparable and indispensable triad for a full life, the eudaimonia. For this very reason, we cannot live in a healthy environment without leaders who always try to tell the truth, with knowledge and awareness.
In his book Enthusiasm and Divine Madness (Begeisterung und göttlicher Wahnsinn), Josef Pieper criticizes those speakers or leaders for whom content is not the most important thing, because they only seek to fascinate, impress, gain the favor of the public. To please, ultimately.
For this, they focus on form, misunderstood rhetoric. They look for phrases or concepts that sound like truth, advertising slogans. They become “effective persuaders,” but lacking true meaning. Pieper describes this very well by quoting another dialogue of Socrates with Gorgias: “Rhetoric behaves in this way: it neither needs to know the thing itself nor how it behaves; it only has to master the technique of persuasion.”
What Pieper indicates to us at the end of this work is of great importance and should lead us to deep reflection: this type of discourse, without really intending to, leads society to destruction, to disintegration, because a doctrine that is not such, but pretends to be, corrupts.
The audience, society, often still mostly has an “intuition of truth,” which resonates very deeply in their being. When truth is replaced by persuasion, society ends up becoming skeptical and distrustful, without values and without faith in what those who should be the greatest defenders of truth (of authentic common good) tell them. Or, worse, it becomes a resentful society that reacts with some aggression, and ends up radicalizing and polarizing.
In all human matters, to “live well” personal effort (avoiding stress, exercising, getting excited…) is not enough, but collective effort is also necessary and perhaps to a greater extent. That is, we need social leaders who love, above all, Socratic truth, who always seek the common good. To persuade, with the sole objective of pleasing to stay in power, is not characteristic of a responsible leader. By acting this way, little by little, without haste but without pause, they corrupt society and the democratic system at its most intimate root: the love of truth.