A new study claims that churchgoers live longer. But do they live better? Might the party-people release a study purporting that, although the church-people outlast them, they outlive the church-people? So far as I know, Rick James, John Belushi, and Wilt Chamberlain weren't avid churchgoers. They died relatively young, but boy did they live--just not that long. We could ask them: if you had to do it over again would you choose quantity or quality? But it would be a big waste of time. They're dead, and can't answer.
This is a wise observation. It reminds me of instances where people die with millions in the bank, that they themselves could've enjoyed with their family and friends, or that they could use to help chariities and observe the benefits while they were around. In matters of pleasure, it's best to be moderate.
In order to ask the question as "quantity vs. quality" in the manner you do one would have to accept the framework of a utilitarian who defines happiness hedonistically, as pleasure.
The "better" life is the Good life and James/Belushi/Chamberlain seem to have not lived good lives (as observed from afar based on what you are pointing out).
Two of the three were drug addicts and one of those did time for torturing a woman? If those are examples of "out-living", give me boring any day.
Depends on how you define 'living,' don't it?
"I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly."
Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR SEX AND DRUGS!
I would have to concur with Brian and Opus. I have no particular desire to live the wasted life of Rick James.
quantity over quality only applies to food.These surveys are dumb this is as bad as the " men are attracted to feminine looking women" study.
Of course this presumes no afterlife, no resurrection of the dead, no eternal reward/punishment paradigm. If religious folk live simpler but longer lives, and are rewarded in eternity for it, then that changes the calculus a bit.
If one's being ceases to be at death, then it's only a matter of vanity to want to live a life that matters for history or the ages since there's no grand purpose in living beyond oneself.
