Is the unexamined life really NOT worth living?
Plato says that it is not, but should we really listen to him? How irreverent of me!? But really, I can imagine a life frolicking in meadows and spent in careless abandon. And why not squander life's natural intellectual gifts for the more entertaining beauties of her superficial appearances?
Here are some possible reasons why we may tend to think it might NOT be worthwhile to live the unexamined life:
1. We get old and feeble of body, at which point the bacchanalian engagements become pointless (note the "pointless" rather than "outgrown", for perhaps it is only weariness or ugliness that prevents us from being enthusiastic about our once youthful passions). Given this, we must either examine our life so that we don't fall into regrets and depression as we age (our "wisdom" will save us!), or else we must exhaust and expire ourselves prematurely in our chosen orgiastic exercises of choice.
2. We are fooled into thinking that ink on page is more important than it otherwise is in fact, for we pay overly much heed to borderline autistic literary personas whose esteem was overwrought by our equally dull predecessors of the lower cultural spheres. We should instead enlist a psychiatrist of the high culture to investigate all his "own", for it is no other problem than his and his own.
3. We have equipped ourselves with mass delusions about the importance of our species and its survival. In all practical fact, we should squander on various pleasures what life we have been given without paying any serious regard for distant future generations, for there is no reason to think more of our purposes here than the "here" which gives those purposes at all and in the first place.
4. Plato says so, and, in comparison to him, we are like the bacilli in turkey poo.
5. We refuse to acknowledge libertarianism as the correct political and moral philosophy and, in making such error, actually spend time seriously considering the ideas of fellow men.
Personally, I like #1 because our bodies go before our minds, and such as to necessitate all reverence for the latter over the former on account of its comparative permanence. Then again, this relative argument, being almost no argument at all in relation to the infinite clarity of which we like to imagine belongs the rational justifications for our dearly held opinions, must be considered as tentatively and delicately as the life for which it accounts (ah, but would this not be another thoughtful pretense!).
It would also be informative to know what proportion of our time should be spent in examination, and also how much time should be spent examining this temporal proportion (in which case we need a proportion of proportions for time spent!).