The Good Life

You hear that insistent message, echoing through the philosophical traditions of East and West: treat other people the way you'd like to be treated. The basic message never alters, whether your moral heritage is Socratic, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, humanistic or anything in between.

Social researcher and psychologist Hugh Mackay has spent 40 years asking Australians about their lives, loves, hopes, ambitions, fears and passions. In The Good Life, he asks and answers the ultimate question: What makes a life worth living? His conclusion, drawn from his research, is provocative and passionately argued. A good life is not measured by security, wealth, status, achievement or levels of happiness. A good life is determined by our capacity for selflessness and our willingness to connect with those around us in a meaningful and useful way.

Hugh looks at the numerous ways we get distracted from this central purpose. He examines the utopian complex, which describes our dangerous desire for perfection, and the false expectation that life will unfold according to our carefully laid plans. He highlights the things that lead us along paths to pain and confusion, notably our willingness to sacrifice others on the altar of our personal desires and ambitions. As with Hugh's previous works of non-fiction, The Good Life is a book that will start conversations, ignite arguments and possibly change the way we live our lives.

About the Author

Hugh Mackay is a prolific and well-known social researcher, writer and commentator in Australia. Hugh was a newspaper columnist for over 25 years, and is now an honorary professor of social science at the University of Wollongong. He is the author of nine books in the field of social psychology and philosophy, and five novels. Previous books include Why Don't People Listen? Reinventing Australia and What Makes Us Tick?.