Secular Elation

You have probably been posed with this question a thousand times already, but here goes.

Is life worth living? Does anything in life even matter if it will come to an end one day? No matter how great or how horrible a person's life is, eventually it will no longer be. Whether one is a homeless bum living in the gutters or a multimillionaire relishing in luxury, both individuals will inevitably meet the same fate of nothingness. Once they reach this nothingness, their past life will be entirely irrelevant. Since this is the case, why then, is life worth living? If everything that is in this life will ultimately be wiped away forever, why it is worth living through it's entirety?

Some time ago, when I was experiencing bouts of depression, this is precisely the question I was asking myself. Sure, there are both good and bad things in life, but why bother remaining alive and experiencing all of it? Why bother living until the natural end of your life, when it can end now and bypass all the nonsense and rubbish of life?

In response, I have heard that it does matter. Right now matters. In this moment, all the moments I am alive. The problem is that it won't matter then, once life is over. And when then arrives, it will be for all eternity. Therefore, then infinitely overpowers the importance of now, as far as I'm concerned.

So I ask you, why bother?

SergeyS

I do not think you can get a universal answer. Is life worth living? And if it is, why? I would answer with another question: whose life? I can explain why I don't want to end my life, and can give some reasons that might convince someone else that it is not a very good idea to kill yourself unless your life has become completely unbearable. But then they may not be convicing enough for you. Life of, say, Bill Gates is somewhat different from life of a bum in India, hence different reasons to not give in and continue living (I am not sure whether BG ever thought of a suicide, though ). Unless you just seek some general (read philosophical) answers, which would be a guardian against the adversities of life (much like religious beliefs), or to just stimulate yourself intellectually, you have to look at your own life, and find out why it is worth living (or, maybe, not).

SergeyS

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Hugo Holbling

A related and perhaps more interesting question is whether an absolute or significant answer would be unsatisfactory for just that reason, although i can assure you such concerns were of no solace to Kirilov and aren't to me.

Secular Elation

I do not think you can get a universal answer.

I wholeheartedly agree.

can give some reasons that might convince someone else that it is not a very good idea to kill yourself unless your life has become completely unbearable. But then they may not be convicing enough for you

That's always a good idea, but there is always one problem: you are not that person. Looking on someone else's life, there may not be any problems, it may seen good. But you can never peer into the thoughts of that person, their feelings and their perceptions. You may try to convince them, but it will be difficult if they have established their own feelings about their life, feelings you don't know about and can't understand.

A related and perhaps more interesting question is whether an absolute or significant answer would be unsatisfactory for just that reason

True, true.

Secular Elation

I forgot to say...I'm not considering the scenario of someone not being happy with their life and considering ending it. What I want to know is, under any condition of life, why is life worth living? Even for a person like Bill Gates, why does the life he lives matter if it will all be erased forever one day? Sure, all the superfluous excess of his life is great to enjoy in the moment, but it is only temporary.

soulofdarwin

Let's see, didn't the Bard answer that in this 4th soliloquy of Hamlet?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Actually, I think that it boils down to something rather simple, that is to say that the answer to your question probably lays in the answers to other questions like: Why bother to read a great novel? Why bother to attend a great musical performance? Why bother to enjoy a beautiful sunset? Why bother to spend time with a lover? After all, all of the experiences of human existence are temporal. If that makes having them pointless in your view, then I think you have your answer. Most of us want the pleasures of those experiences and we are willing "to suffer the slings and arrows" to have them. And some of us think that those pleasures are the point of our existence - the only possible point. A close friend of mine used to tell me that "life" is a joke and the joke is on us. After his untimely death, two weeks before completing his residency as a plastic surgeon, I wondered for a while what was the point. I think the point was that he spent every minute of every day of his existence enjoying it to the max.

Hugo Holbling

Understood. Are you familiar with Kirilov?

Have you read Camus? He wrestled with this question, too.

Following on from my previous remark, suppose that there was a formulaic response to your question; i.e. life is worth living because x. Would you not reject the reply immediately precisely because it reduced life to x? Perhaps the difficulty is that we are looking within life for a reason for it that must go beyond it? Another way of putting it could be that any ultimate reason you were offered would by virtue of the offering become expressible and not the ineffable mystery we feel it to be. Ask yourself: will you be satisfied by a contingent answer? If not, you may be trapped along with Kirilov. Nevertheless, if you find this discussion unsatisfactory then you are in good company.

Edit: soulofdarwin posted the wrong Shakespeare - the correct version may be found here.

Darth Dane

Ask youself this: Who Am I?

If you can't stand living without you knowing who you are, start asking.

Seek and you will find




DD - Love Spliff

Buddrow_Wilson

We are genetically compelled to live. For most entities, it is not a matter of worth. Does a dog ponder such values of existance? Yet it is compelled to self-preservation.

There must be a desire to continue existing. I think its more an emotional nature. Why? Just because.