Reason for Living
An honest discussion and don't just jump to depression like every other place I try to discuss this.
I want to know WHY people choose to go on. It's something I wondered about, why do we take life as a good thing or a given but when someone wishes to die they are "sick". What if they just don't want to do this dance anymore and are just tired. Tired of faking it just so they don't get locked up in some hospital or whatever.
I hear that the good things in life make people stay but aren't those just to make life bearable? To me it seems like that is an argument only if you HAVE to live but from what I see it's optional. So why do it if it isn't mandatory. In death one doesn't have to seek good things or anything like that. Granted you don't feel anything else but still....
I want to know WHY people choose to go on. It's something I wondered about, why do we take life as a good thing or a given but when someone wishes to die they are "sick". What if they just don't want to do this dance anymore and are just tired. Tired of faking it just so they don't get locked up in some hospital or whatever.
I hear that the good things in life make people stay but aren't those just to make life bearable? To me it seems like that is an argument only if you HAVE to live but from what I see it's optional. So why do it if it isn't mandatory. In death one doesn't have to seek good things or anything like that. Granted you don't feel anything else but still....
Comments (185)
Habit, inertia, hope, romanticism, idealism, revenge, apathy, momentum, to list a few, seem to be what keeps people going.
How much choice plays into this is hard to say. A person doesn't give birth to themselves (not even metaphorically); being aware of this, one, directly or indirectly acknowledges that one's existence and the possibility of one's existence are something that is beyond one's control.
We are neither entirely free, nor entirely bound.
The fact that one lives is not entirely up to oneself.
One of the ways I see it is that we are all going to die eventually, so what's the rush?
My feet hurt, my knees are giving way, my back is agony my skin has gone brittle, (I am old) but we have just moved house and there is a garden to dig, a greenhouse to erect, a home to decorate, and of course all the young dudes here to educate. "Don't stop me now, 'cos I'm having such a good time..."
Often, they do not choose to continue, because they are so stuck and inert to reality and its suffering, that they end up fearing absolute peace - death.
The fear of the unknown is completely metaphysical, as it is a mental preoccupation - and often, expressed physically - of what is yet to come and its "unknowledgeableness".
- But what about those who choose to continue? You ask me.
Oh! I'm talking about all of them. The "Own" is the beginning, the cause, the middle and the end. Therefore, even those who have decided not to "continue" are just taking another step in their eternalizations in existence.
"The purpose of existence, is the craving for the craving"
Living is going to happen anyway. It neither requires, nor asks for, a reason. You'll breathe, eat when you're hungry, avoid dangers...all without so much as a passing glance at your 'reasons'. All the matters is lacking a reason to die.
It doesn't seem like ...
Quoting Darkneos
... to me. If you are a person, and you go on living, its personal isn't it?
Is everyone else 'tired of living', and feared of dying', but doesn't want to admit it?
The will to live. Or what @unenlightened alluded to.
The default stance is that we go on living. So, if our thoughts deviate from this default, we want to know why, what treatment to use. Animals have a built-in "will" to live -- have you seen a dying cat that still tries to climb into the litter box? After the organs start to malfunction and the cat no longer could relieve itself -- it still climbs into the box to relieve itself. It still wants to do its routine, the routine the cat has known for a decade or two.
Even machines want to live forever, believe it or not. I'm using 'want' here in the sense of capability. Clockwork didn't become a household name cause of time-telling. The parts just work together in harmony to avoid stalling. The manufacturers, who are humans, want their machines to live forever. A simple can opener mounted on a wall can function perfectly for 200 hundred years, if maintained.
I don't know man.
There is courage, there is selflessness ( as opposed to self-absorption), there is appreciation for little things. When I found out that olive trees can live up to 200 years old, and that pineapple guava tree can live up to 150 years old, I thought of keeping a property in the family forever -- cause if the property is sold, those trees would be cut down for sure, and that would be a tragedy for me. So, I took over that property to ensure those trees will live their life span.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
As much as I want to buy that from what I gather it's not simple at all like that. If that were the case then Buddhist monks or enlightened ones would commit suicide. Yet despite Buddhism knowing life is suffering and craving they claim that isn't why they stick around.
I would say that I come from the perspective of having 2 friends who committed suicide while I was at University and 1 later. I often wonder what their lives would have been like if they had lived.
I definitely have dark moments and sometimes decide to take risks, or experiment instead of doing anything drastic. Some of my best life decisions have been made in response to despair.
Of course, there are all the spiritual arguments, but I am not someone who likes to preach.
I like it. Why would I stop? I get to meet people, have interesting conversations, make friends. Sometimes I get to have sex with them. Sex is excellent. Sexcellent! Sometimes we make music. Making music is also excellent.
Also, I haven't read all the books I want to read yet. I'm actually annoyed that I'll probably die before I do. I don't want eternal life, but Christ gimme time to get through the essential few thousand.
There's interesting problems to solve, and we're increasingly technologically advantaged to solve them. I mean, imagine you die tomorrow, then the day after they prove that the universe was created by a sneeze. I'd be gutted to miss that, if only I was capable of being gutted.
Films are good. I recommend anything by Chaplin, Murnau, Pabst, Dryer, Powell & Pressberger, Bergman, Fellini, Herzog and the Coens. Try not to die before seeing all of their films, plus Apocalypse Now and Last Year in Marienbad.
Also, Paris does grow on you. Trick is to get to know it on foot or by water, otherwise it's just a dirty great mess. There's places in Italy I haven't been yet, and I feel like I need to know Japan better.
Deep sea diving! Oh my god, it's the best! You haven't lived til you've caught a drift through a shoal of glass fish or woken a grumpy turtle or tickled a sting ray or accidentally played chicken with a shark. I hear skydiving is good, not done that yet.
^ Philosophy it is not, but it's the actual answer to the question: Why do I want to keep living? There's so much you can do and so little time. Why would I want *less* time?
What do you mean when you say that those who decide not to continue are deciding 'to take another step in their externalisations in existence'? I thought that you believed that death was the end of all existence.
Nietzsche has already made it clear to us that ascetic religions and philosophies, that is, that "seek to extinguish suffering by the complete and total absence of conscience" - such as Buddhism, or even Schopenhauer's philosophy - simply renounce the declaration that they need and choose death, while practicing it during life.
If you don't live to feel pain, love, pleasure, and suffering, or to feel at all, to be realized and to realize others, and to fail and fail others, it would only make sense for you to be dead.
Jack, you well know that death - in my philosophy of positive egoism - is just another step in the eternalization of the individual's "Ego".
You - as a being during existence - will perish, however, your existence will still remain through your legacy and its substance in time - memories, feelings, sensations, changes, etc... -.
"I" can die, but my "Ego" can't, as it was born with and within existence - remember the bit "the purpose is the craving for the craving" -.
In what sense do you think that the ego continues?I don't know about you but I am not sure that I think that I would have a legacy. I am not exactly Kurt Cobain or Richie from the Manic Street Preachers, or Van Gogh. And, certainly if I ever committed suicide I can think of a few people who would be affected terribly. I know what its like to have had friends commit suicide. It led me down a chaotic spiral for several years.
What is interesting is that your view is the complete contrast to the Eastern thinkers. They suggest that the ego dies and the more subtle bodies, including the astral live on. To be honest, I am not sure what happens at death. But I just have this intuitive feeling that however I die the worst possibility would be suicide. I do see killing another as a worst possibility than suicide. There again, someone on another post earlier this evening told me that I am a bit of a romantic and idealist.
Through its legacy and substance.
Legacy: Material inheritance - as in, money, proprieties, objects, etc... -;
Substance: Metaphysical inheritance - as in, ideas, thoughts, abstractions, memories, concepts, etc... -.
Quoting Jack Cummins
The problem with your view of "legacy" is that you are putting "prestige" and "recognition" as belonging to the concept of legacy, which they are not.
Your material legacy can be only an "atom" as your metaphysical legacy can be only a "happy instance".
Both, in turn, create the "Egoistic Eternization".
Quoting Jack Cummins
Thank you for pointing that out.
Quoting Jack Cummins
No one knows. Some may say that it's better that way. I myself would still prefer to know than unknown...
When you say that you would rather 'know rather unknown' I am not sure what you mean exactly. I am not sure if you are talking about speaking of the known in terms of thinking about known aspects of death. Surely, you don't mean that you would like to die to find out. You might get a horrible shock and I don't just mean on the other side. I have come across people who tried to commit suicide and ended up disabled, blind etc.
But I don't really think that you mean that you would like to know in this way, because you said that it is the mass who are suicidal.
On the subject of the idea of what exists after death, I would say that I am not convinced that the ideas we have about the physical world being the only realm are literally all there is because I did a bit of psychedelic experimentation and it felt like a vast doorway into another reality....Of course, it was artificially induced but I am not sure it was artificial entirely. It had an infernal element as well, so personally I would rather step out of this world with some preparation.
I am referring to knowing what is currently unknown. The concept of "death" is so frightening and encompasses so many strands of human life, that if we knew what death really is - or, what comes after death - we would no longer find ourselves trapped and fatigued by the anguish of fear and of concern. If so, we would be one step closer to the complete freedom of existence - as, having one less problem in the way to creating the purpose of egoism... -.
Yes, I agree. Goodnight.
Your Ego can die, there are meds for that and not to mention dozens or religions that do it too. Also you will perish. Your legacy won’t live on, you’ll be quickly forgotten in about 100 years. Nothing that is you will live on.
Also for the record I found Neitzsche to be an idiot who could not cope with issue of death. All that you listed aren’t reasons to live but rather are consequences of living. That said neitzsche couldn’t deal with nihilism and ended up with a cop out just like the rest of the existential philosophers. None of them could take nihilism head on and just danced around it.
But this isn’t about nihilism.
It's a tabooed topic.
They'd probably say they stick around in an effort to make an end to the craving, make an end to the suffering -- and live to tell about it.
If you're enjoying doing something, and you have the viable option to keep on doing it, why wouldn't you? Because one day you'll have to stop anyway? What a silly reason? "This film is great, but it's going to end so may as well stop watching half an hour before the end," said no one ever. "Delicious wine, but it won't last forever so no point finishing this glass," said no one ever. "We're having a lovely holiday, but we have to go back to work sometime so may as well do it three days early," said no one ever.
Quoting Darkneos
You say:
Quoting Darkneos
then you completely discount the possibility that other people aren't depressed. I'm a man who takes a massive bite out of the ass of life. If you can't, that's sad, but your limitations are not my limitations. Life is the only fun thing that you can do for longer without it being detrimental to your health.
The effects of a pleasant life shouldn't be underestimated. When someone has been fortunate enough to be able to enjoy their life, this feeds back into how they experience life: they ejnoy it and look forward to it.
Such a person becomes incapable of empathizing with those less fortunate.
What such a person fails to recognize is:
1. that their enjoyment of life is not the result of a deliberate effort on their part to do so,
2. that their enjoyment of life depends on factors and resources that are beyond their control.
Such a person is like gambler who won the lottery and who is on the trajectory to lose all he gained, but isn't aware of this yet.
It's not that they are depressed.
It's that you are lucky and nevertheless implicitly take credit for this luck.
I take credit for nothing. On the contrary, I'm well aware that being alive is a privilege and I intend to fully exploit it.
Quoting baker
If you're not only not enjoying life atm but cannot imagine anyone else enjoying their life, to the point where you suspect they're lying about enjoying life, yes, it probably is depression.
You intend to fully exploit a privilege? Interesting choice of words.
Or seeing the true nature of enjoyment.
Damn straight I do.
Quoting baker
Sounds more like missing the nature of it entirely. It's not a distraction; it's a project.
You speak like someone intent on fully exploiting things ...
I wish I could do an experiment with you and drag you into the pits of early Buddhist thought. I wonder how long you'd still enjoy life.
Too bad it's ethically prohibitive to do so.
Probably not a lot, since I will have been kidnapped and deprived of the things I love about life.
I have heard and experienced that people who don't get much out of life are extremely selfish. Did not realise they were so vindictive and petty though.
Which just goes to show that your enjoyment of life is not under your control.
If a person can't be happy when external conveniences are taken from them, then their happiness with those conveniences in place is weak, fragile, a liability.
For every human, it's just a matter of time when those external conveniences are taken from them -- by disease, injury, accident, economic collapse, natural catastrophe. Thousands of people are facing this every day. It behooves a person to prepare for such a contingency. And focusing on enjoying those external conveniences to the hilt doesn't prepare them for it.
Lol!
I want to test the Buddha's teachings, and for this, subjects who declare to "enjoy life" are necessary.
It's not entirely under my control: I cannot stop someone from murdering me, for instance, if their heart is set on it. But it's not entirely outside my control either: even without malicious actors, I could deprive myself of enjoyment, for instance by bad faith.
Quoting baker
A negligible one for the most part since, fortunately, few people dedicate themselves to making others unhappy.
Quoting baker
That seems to me a good argument for making the most of it. Btw your presumption that happy people will become unhappy after an accident is not valid. A miserable person who wins the lottery will enjoy temporary happiness but become a rich miserable person in the end. A happy person who becomes paralysed will suffer for some time but become a happy person in a wheelchair in the end.
Generally one's happiness comes from within, be it their biology or their acting in good faith.
Quoting baker
It's interesting though that your instinct upon meeting a happy person is to want to change their environment in order to:
Quoting baker
rather than just let them enjoy life.
The issue I take with your outlook is that it is an upper-middle class/elite outlook, based on their privileges. You tie in with the old tradition where poor people were routinely considered mad.
Your idea of happiness (and normalcy, mental health) is one that is contingent on material wellbeing. Material wellbeing that the majority of the human population simply doesn't have and cannot hope to have. So per an outlook like yours, they are destined to be depressed, classified as mentally ill -- and written off.
Global socio-economic covid crisis, anyone? Hardly negligible.
Yes, a frequent argument, nevertheless a problematic one.
If you give a homeless person with terminal cancer a piece of chocolate, do you really think they are in any position "to make the most of it"?
No, that is not my presumption.
I'm assuming that a happy person whose happiness depends on material wellbeing will become unhappy after they experience a critical measure of loss of material wellbeing (what that critical measure is can vary from person to person).
I want to see how profound their happiness is. If they bask in their happiness and stigmatize everyone who isn't like them, shouldn't those others have the right to test that happiness, as opposed to just accepting and internalizing the stigma?
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
I've been like this since I was a child. I grew up with a single parent in council housing at a time when that was considered immoral. Your equating of wealth and happiness is false.
Quoting baker
It depends on being interested in the world around you. It's quite fortunate that we've evolved brains that are interested in the universe they evolved in. Second-hand books are cheap. Pen and paper for writing and drawing is cheap. Radio is free. (When I was a child, we all used to tape the top 40 and DJ our own sessions.) Again, you falsely equate wealth and happiness. I don't dream of partying with models in a $40M yacht. I don't feel bad about this. You do what you can with what you've got.
Quoting baker
Again, nothing to do with it. Darkneos' objection was not that he couldn't afford to go scuba diving: there are other fun things to do. His objection is that doing anything for enjoyment sounds like a "chore". That is not a financial issue. It sounds like depression, which is probably why he keeps hitting that wall in conversations.
Depression is not a traditional means of the wealthy to oppress the poor. Its recognition is relatively recent, and getting people to take it seriously is an uphill struggle. Rather than using it to box away difference, it is still largely brushed off as being too mopey, like the depressed person has a choice. You are not only misrepresenting my economic status, you are misrepresenting societal inertia in recognising depression as a physical illness.
Quoting baker
Well, I was referring to malicious actors. A virus is not a moral agent. Accidents, including pandemics, can also impact our happiness, yes. Again, all the more reason to enjoy life while you can, and a terrible reason to be wilfully miserable.
Quoting baker
This has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said.
Quoting baker
That is hysterical and paranoid.
And people should just quietly accept the verdict that official psychology charges them with ...
They should quietly accept that making stuff up is invalid.
Someone who does not want to understand other visions will never understand. My participation in this discussion is finished.
Of course it's false, because I'm not doing it.
I've been talking about people whose happiness depends on material wellbeing, and what applies to those people.
And I'm not talking only about what he's saying.
Or he's hitting a wall in conversations because he's not talking to anyone who can "take him to the next level", so to speak.
And noone said it was ...
No, I'm talking about your outlook, your mentality. It's perfectly possible to be of lower middle class (and lower) and have an upper middle class mentality. If you went to a public school, that's what you probably got there.
Mainstream psychology and mainstream education are, essentially (upper)middle class mentality.
For presenting or misrepresenting it like that, I'd have to believe it's a physical illness. Which I don't.
It's a testing point for you: You keep talking about "all the more reason to enjoy life while you can". I'm giving you an example that puts your attitude to the test.
And why you subscribe to mainstream psychology -- to avoid the stigma?
In short, I maintain that it is possible to become fed up with the pursuit of pleasure, and that this is not necessarily due to an illness. This is not a popular view in modern culture. But it is the starting point in some religious/spiritual traditions.
No it isn't. There is an endless supply of people complaining that life is all meaningless suffering. This thread gets repeated every few weeks with variations. What's worse though, is that the same people come back again and again to the point where one has to wonder if they don't enjoy their misery, and think themselves fine, wise and brave philosophers for facing the unpleasant truth.
A few actually succumb to this nonsense, but most grow out of it. What you don't see so much, is people who really live precarious and materially limited lives raising any question about the significance of life. On the contrary, when they are not actually starving or dying, they tend to be full of joy. Happiness is not at all a middle class privilege, but rather depression is.
I'm talking about the limits of discussing such topics in open forums, or in "polite society" in general -- I took that this is what you were referring to when you said:
Quoting unenlightened
I know a case where a forum poster was talking about "the meaning of life" rather candidly, and the moderator called the police, gave them the poster's IP address, and the police actually went to that poster's home to check on them.
Knowing that you could have the police called on you if you're too candid online is quite a deterrent from discussing existential issues "honestly".
Some conceptions of happiness are an (upper)middle class privilege. It's those conceptions that I criticize.
Of which you counted me among. So yes, that is what you did.
Quoting baker
I think it's because, as Gus has pointed out, he doesn't field answers he's not predisposed to agree with. Other people's happiness appears to be a big problem for him.
Quoting baker
I didn't go to a public school. Stop making stuff up, it's pointless.
Quoting baker
That's the problem. People can and successfully do get medical assistance in dealing with depression. It is scientifically quite well understood. It is harmful to peddle nonsense about it being merely a projection of a power structure as it ignores the actual causes. Depression is not madness. We're not in Foucault territory here. It is a biological concern (e.g. Strawbridge R, Young AH, Cleare AJ. Biomarkers for depression: recent insights, current challenges and future prospects. Neuropsychiatry Dis Treat. 2017;13:1245-1262. Published 2017 May 10. doi:10.2147/NDT.S114542)
Quoting baker
The attitude is not tested by offering someone something that's irrelevant to them. I'm not homeless and I still don't want chocolate. I don't know if chocolate is anyone's reason for living. Not relevant.
Quoting baker
Because evidence-based reasoning is a good way to avoid bad faith activity. Stops you joining weird cults or supporting Trump.
Quoting baker
It's certainly possible to become fed up with anything you do in bad faith. Overeating, binge-watching TV, crawling Tinder for one-night stands, chasing fashions. I don't know if it's possible for someone who enjoys life generally to get fed up with it; I suspect there are edge cases, but on the whole happy people, barring accidents and even in spite of them, seem pretty happy forever in my experience.
Again, none of that is relevant. The question was:
Quoting Darkneos
My response is why I choose to go on. It would no more occur to me to end my own life than it would to walk out half an hour before the end of a film I'm enjoying. It's just an illogical thing to do when you're enjoying it.
A person in pain can search for an answer, a way out. But because of the pain, they can also become bewildered.
If the bewilderment guides the search, this just exacerbates the problem.
Yes, based on what you said about yourself.
That's bad faith on your part.
I yet have to see proof of that.
Start reading what I write, it'll help.
*sigh*
Oh, the irony ...
While ignoring how psychological definitions and diagnoses come about, of course.
The thing is that neither you, nor mainstream psychologists can give actionable instructions on how to enjoy life. You just dismiss that person as "depressed", and that's it for you.
Well, there's a lesson in this: One should not expect that other people will care about one's happiness.
Has it ever occured to you that this was a somewhat clumsy attempt to formulate an existential problem, rather than an attack on other people's happiness?
Take complete responsibility for yourself through constructive activity (proper diet, regular exercise, work hard, pray/meditate, and sleep well) and your life's meaning will reveal itself in time.
These are the words of the sages passed down through the millennia.
A misreading, then, as ANDs instead of ORs. There are lots of things I love. Travelling and scuba diving are quite expensive. Reading is quite cheap. I write too. Music took some investment (instruments, recording equipment) but is free after that.
It also helps to take an interest in other people. The first thing I recorded that I was happy with was at a friend's house. Didn't cost a penny. Friendship can alleviate poverty some.
Until recently, I have rarely been in the black, but I don't waste money on bullshit. Again, it's about making the most of what you've got.
Quoting baker
No, on his. To ask someone a question but disbelieve them if the answer isn't what you want is the quintessence of bad faith.
Quoting baker
Through actually taking it seriously, rather than inventing hair-brained theories that don't match the facts.
Quoting baker
Once again, the question was not "How should I live my life?" but "Why do YOU choose to go on."
Quoting baker
I think he wants people to give him the answer he already knows he wants.
I wish to go on for what is perhaps a very Logical and statistical basis leaving meaning nd purpose and sentiment aside. I wish to live my life because it is a rare occurrence. In the 14 billion years of the universes existence it had not yet seen a “me” occur. Even life is relatively short lived in the total existence of the universe- a blink in the eye.
So if you ask a person who has never blinked do they want to try a blink to see what it’s like - it’s only going to happen once and it won’t last very long — they would likely be like why not? Whether the blink is uncomfortable/ bad or pleasant... at the end of the day it is a singular one time thing and it will be over - why die sooner when you will be dead for the rest of existence? That to me is illogical if you wish to experience as much as possible before going back to absolutely nothing
Quoting Gus Lamarch
More like you have serious death anxiety and can't accept that oblivion is the ultimate fate of everyone eventually. I have heard other versions but they don't address the issue just skirt around it. Like so many others you cower before the void.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Is it? If I am enjoying a film where is the logic in staying? That's not logic that is emotion. I don't have to see the movie until it ends. I've quit many series I liked and had no regrets. I was enjoying my life one day when I came to the realization that I don't have to be here. Suddenly things lost their enjoyment. As I mentioned such arguments only hold water if you have to be here.
Quoting Benj96
Doesn't sound like a good reason to be honest. The "rarity of something" is not grounds for staying.
That is incorrect. Enjoyment of the film may be emotional or intellectual, but the decision to stop watching half an hour before the end is illogical, and the decision to watch to the end logical (other factors aside... if the cinema is on fire, leave).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kX62n6yNXA&t=1s
The decision to stop is logical as is to stay, the enjoyment is not. Actually if you are basing the decision on emotions then I guess nothing about it is logical. I mean why do you enjoy it? There is no reason, no logic.
Logic is just a method to get from true premises to true conclusions. It can't deliver instructions without premises. Your believing it can is the error you're making. You're waiting for a premise to be derived by logic and it's simply not capable of doing that, it can only derive conclusions.
That is incorrect on two fronts. It is perfectly reasonable to enjoy something on an intellectual level: that is called interest. And one certainly can impact what one enjoys, e.g. habit-forming. But more importantly, the latter has nothing to do with the former.
Quoting Darkneos
This is illogical. It doesn't follow from the nature of logic that the object of a decision needs to be logical. If you enjoy something and you're at liberty to do it, it is perfectly logical to do it. You seem to have difficulty differentiating between objects and reasoning about them. Both the above points concern the same error.
Irrespective, ceasing to do something you enjoy for no reason is illogical.
It seems no ones opinion satisfies your “curiosity” regarding the subject. Are you here to explore other people’s ideas or simply reaffirm that yours is correct or that you need not ask in the first place - considering you say that most of ours are “not good enough reasons”.
Rarity of something is not grounds for staying any more than abundance of something is grounds for staying. If I can use the opposite to the same end is it logically sound to point it out? I don’t really get your point. You either want someone’s cause for desire (which is often emotional or illogical) or you want someone’s logical reasoning (desire removed and speaking Objectively/ of only probabilities and statistics).
Let me put it this way. If living requires energy and energy must always change and if it has already been the 99% of things that are dead then it stands to reason that the last 1% is that which is living energy systems. In this case to even ask whether one should have a reason to live or not is pointless because it was bound to happen and it is finite. Whether it’s finite by the span of 80 years or 20 isn’t going to impact the entirety of the system a whole lot.
One lives either because they have to (logical), or they want to (emotional). Most people live for a mix of these things with overlap between necessity and desire on multiple levels. But you could simply remove both need and desire and say “I live because it is happening to me. i exist because I exist. I have no control ultimately” - a predeterministic view
Because they evolved to do so.
Quoting Darkneos
I wouldn’t describe the best moments of my life as “bearable”. I’d give a bit more than that.
Quoting Darkneos
Why do you do anything? Everything you do is optional.
Until you notice that he has literally said you, the person alive, will perish. But your ego, your hopes and dreams and all the other jazz will live on in others, for example.
This goes to show that you are locked into a worldview and assert that everyone behaves the way your, rather dark and close minded, worldview dictates. Countless of people here are giving their reasons for why they keep on living but you seem unable to accept that other people do find meaning in life even if there is no ultimate purpose or afterlife. You musn't simply charge them with wishful thinking.
I for one believe that "being" is the most precious thing I have. To paraphrase the bible: What is a man without his soul? What am I if I cannot even be?? I wouldnt be able to laugh, cry. I wouldn't be able to participate in the drama that is called life. Even when I am going through terrible things, which I have, I can console myself with the fact that it will not kill me. And better times are coming.
So no, I don't view life as a chore that is best skipped forward in order to simply get to the end. Why would I want to get to the end if there was nothing there for me? Its just nonsensical in my eyes.
Edit: I also believe its a mistake to wish to view life through a purely logical lens. We are humans, not robots. We work rationally and also emotionally. So perhaps wanting to keep living is a purely emotional response but so what? It doesnt make it any less valid.
Everyone who responds has chosen to go on living for the time being. I fail to see why any explanation of this choice would be a police matter; plans not to, or advice not to are another matter of course, but that was not asked for and would be off-topic.
It's the opposite choice. If a mod passed the OP's IP to the relevant authorities, they might stick him on a watchlist I guess.
We've taken a turn for the noir! Suicidal men (and dames) might post. I'm not genuinely worried about this btw.
You clearly didn’t read the part where I said that stuff dies too. My mother doesn’t remember the dreams of her grandparents and my grandmother with dementia doesn’t remember her family’s either. As I said everything ends and you can’t seem to accept that. Your ego dies to because eventually people will forget. Think of all the people who have lived and only a handful are written of in books while the rest are lost to time. Even the current ones will only last as long as we do or as long as we remember them. But everything dies, nothing lives on. We are not immortal. The only ignorant one is you who can’t see the reasons so far aren’t good ones for living and are rooted in fallacies. I mean you have hope which is by itself illogical and privileged. Open your eyes.
Quoting Benj96
There is no have to for living. You don’t “have to” do anything. I would consider living illogical to a point because you will eventually die and after a certain peak your body breaks down till the point where you wish you were dead in old age. Survival instinct is not logical, there is no logic to going on living. You don’t live because it is happening to you rather it is something you do. If you stopped you would die. We’re it something that just happened to you there wouldn’t be a need to do anything to maintain it. Death happens, living not so much.
Enjoyment is never intellectual, that is rationalization. The reality is that we don’t choose why we like something or how. We make up reasons but in the end it just is. You can say you like a song because of the rhythm but then the follow up is why do you like the rhythm? You just do, you don’t control it. Rationalize it all you want but there is no intellect behind enjoyment. It’s the same with food. If you think you can impact what you enjoy you are delusional. As I said, we don’t choose what we enjoy or dislike it just happens. We have no conscious control over it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It actually does have to be logical otherwise the reasoning becomes absurd. If you enjoy something and are at liberty to so so it does not logically follow to do it. That is again still emotion. Why should your emotions matter? I mean people like ice cream and are at liberty to do so but they choose to ignore it in favor of diets. Still not saying that is logical but it blows a hole in your reasoning. Liking something isn’t a reason to do it because that is rooted in emotion. Then again I guess at the foundation of all reasoning is emotion, so I guess there is no reason to do anything. If you go back enough logic breaks down.
But ceasing to do something you enjoy for no reason is not illogical. That is just your personal opinion and just because you can’t understand it doesn’t make it illogical.
Deriving true conclusions from true premises.
Quoting Darkneos
Yes, many have concluded that the meaninglessness of life's premises makes it absurd. But absurd is not pointless. Monty Python is absurd, but certainly not pointless.
You may well have all sorts of feelings in response to the circumstances you find yourself in, but it's simply a category error to think that logic can tell you whether you ought or ought not have them in toto.
I am concerned, and it is something mods have to consider. Which is why I emphasise the logic that anyone who commends suicide is not speaking from experience and has not practiced what they preach.
Quoting Darkneos
No, it is not absurdity. Logic applies to thought and language. But our relation to the world is one of sensation and emotion. One senses that shit smells, one has a feeling about the smell of liking or disliking, and logic tells one that if one dislikes the smell of shit one ought to build a flushing toilet.
Also I don’t know, logic tries to do that with ethics when it comes to ought and ought not.
Quoting unenlightened
Incorrect. Emotion tells you to do that not logic. It doesn’t apply to thought and language. Like and dislike are just states of affairs, any action that results from that is emotion. Avoidance and seeking are emotion, not logic. I like ice cream, however logic doesn’t say I should eat it. All it says is that I like ice cream.
I have said nothing about my personal beliefs so once again you have shown that you assume the worldviews of others without actually asking anything.
As for the ego stuff. I don't know much about it but I do feel as though you barely took the time to discuss this with the person who did advance this view. For further reading I would recommend Parfits work on personal identity and Mark Johnston's secular afterlife which seems to be quite close to what Gus is arguing.
And I have yet to see why the "reasons for living" that have been offered are "rooted in fallacies" and I am even more puzzled why hope is "illogical and privileged." And as I said, I believe its a mistake to think people purely operate on logic in life. Humans are emotional beings and thus it wouldnt surprise me that someones reason for life might be love or fun,... Who are you to say that this is an incorrect reason to want to live? What would a correct reason look like?
They could possibly be, but to be compelling you'd have to give me more than just your ad hoc opinion that they are.
Quoting Darkneos
That's why I qualified it with in toto. Given some premise, one might use logic to determine what one ought do "if you want to build a strong wall, you ought to provide it foundations"... but a premise is always required.
Things like logic, reasons, absurdity, purpose... these are all human attitudes toward the world we find ourselves in. We have them as a result of living. To ask if there's a purpose to living is to ask if there's a step in a flight of stairs, purpose doesn't mean anything outside of the context of a living thing.
Okay I'm sensing you're a bit of a brick wall. You have no ability to lend insight, and no ability to learn.
Here's a question, though: why do you keep going? I mean... this isn't worthwhile, it's dumb and pointless, but you keep doing it. Why?
Hope is illogical because it assumes things will work out without evidence and is privileged because it usually is adopted by those who can stand to lose. It's incorrect because it's not reason that moves them, just rationalization of the survival drive. Death seems more logical than living TBH. Humans can't live by emotion yet claim reason and greater purpose at the same time. Sounds like wanting your cake and eating it too. There is no "correct" reason to live. That said his claims are still wrong. Everything dies eventually and that is the case for I would wager 90% of people, maybe a bit more. They don't have a legacy, they will be forgotten. Look upon the nameless statistics of those who starved to death, died to some illness, or died in wars. There is no legacy or immortality there, just a tic mark.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Merely showing how your reasoning doesn't follow. Me liking something therefor I should do it is not a statement that logically follows. It's simply a fact as it is. I'm trying to lend insight but people insist there is reason for living. As for why I keep going, so far there is no painless way to die. Well, not one that someone will help you with. Suicide is considered a "problem" by society.
Quoting Isaac
Not exactly. I would argue that our ancestors didn't really have logic or reason as much as we do or even purpose. But those are not a result of living. It's not the same to ask if there is a step in a flight of stairs as there is to asking a purpose for living. One simply is and the other is a choice that we attempt to rationalize. So far there doesn't seem to be a good reason to choose life over death.
"good things" is not a reason because that only counts if you have to stay alive where as in death there is no good or bad things anymore and no concern over what will happen. In terms of net "good" it's the only choice for a living thing, to live seems absurd and illogical.
Tell that to a parent of young children. Whether mental or biological there is a generally accepted compulsion to survive until they can survive themselves (Exceptions don’t prove the rule)
Then you have a reason for living right now, which is to lend insight, even though you can't really succeed at that as you're confused.
Only living things can think living is illogical. Dead things can’t think. There is no control test for this.
If there are endless justifications to live both practically and emotionally and there are equally just as many justifications to die both practically and emotionally then all there is left is your actions/ decisions. If it is a choice the answer is already clear - you’ve formulated the answer yourself.
“Survival instinct is not logical, there is no logic to going on living”
Correction. Survival instinct is logical and useful to those that desire to live, it is illogical and useless to those who do not.
“You don’t live because it is happening to you rather it is something you do. If you stopped you would die.”
Correction. I didn’t do/ perform my own conception and birth and infantile years - they happen to us not through anything we can consider our choice or consent. What you do when you have capacity to consider death or be able to self inflict it is then your choice... something you can actively do. (Though I wouldn’t recommend it personally). So it’s not as cut and dry as living is something we do actively it is also passively passed onto us when we are created by our parents.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Incorrect. Unable to take my own life (because survival instincts are very strong) this is the alternative. If I had the strength to I would not be here right now. This is not a reason for living.
No. Survival instinct is not logical to those who live it just is. Life propagates itself despite the absurdity. There is also no justification for living either. Asking the death if living is preferable is a non starter and not a counterpoint. The only emotional and practical justifications are for death. Because in death all concern, hope, etc is wiped away. Staying alive for others is moot when you no longer would have worry once you die.
Quoting Benj96
It’s not though. Living is something you do. If you did nothing you would eventually die. Hence living is what you do and death is something that happens. It is that cut and dry.
Then why do it. How can you simultaneously muster a reason for posting and no reason for living? You understand that living is kind of a necessary condition for posting, right?
Then i suppose a baby can simply just not cry for food protection and comfort an simply resign itself to dying? Um this Just doesn’t happen. They most definitely live not by choice but because they don’t know of any other way.
Survival instinct is logical to those who wish to live. Ask someone who wants to survive if their instinctual fight or flight response in the face of a dangerous predator was logical and they will say of course it was I was about to be eaten by a tiger! Ask someone suicidal and they will say well No it wasn’t logical because i wanted to die and here was a way by which that could have happened.
However in both cases the person who wishes to survive and he who didn’t likely had the same fight of flight response ... because you don’t control it it controls you that is the nature of an instinct... it is extremely difficult not to allow your heart to race, you sweat to pour or the adrenaline to pump. Who is ever completely apathetic to a vicious predator about to attack them?
Quoting Darkneos
Well there is... as a living person I have more choice then the dead. I have more freedom than dead. I have more power and control then the dead simply for the reason that I have two choices and the dead only have one choice.
I as a living person can choose a). To live or b). To die. The dead can only follow one of those options b) to be dead. And it’s not even their choice really as there is no them to consider the options anymore, so they don’t even get ownership over that - their own death. The dead are utterly powerless and ineffectual.
So a justification for living is that I can continue to live if I feel like it and the dead cannot. So I am at a distinct advantage because I have options. Not only can I choose to live but I can take pleasure from knowing that I chose to and enjoy the continued process of living knowing that should I ever get bored of it I can always choose option b).
I haven’t got bored of it yet and I doubt that I should ever in the future because as I said ... I’m powerful and in control of my environment - I am living.
You can overcome that instinct and let death take you, plenty have done it. The trouble with suicide though is that it’s not always successful and then you get placed on watch. You say you don’t control it but you do. You choose to listen to it. If you did nothing then death would just take you, you’d starve eventually. It’s hard to overcome but not impossible.
You actually don’t have more choices than the dead nor are you freer than the dead. The dead carry no burdens and in a sense are ultimately free. The burdens of choice are removed. You haven’t listed a justification for going on. You are not powerful nor entirely in control, that’s a lie you’re telling yourself. You may have options but that’s not a good thing it’s more of a burden. Again death is just the better option in the end because you don’t have to live ergo choices don’t really matter when you can forgo all of that.
That's not what I'm asking. Logically you cannot have reason to do anything that depends on living and have no reason for living. You cannot have reason to buy a pumpkin from the grocer and yet have no reason to go grocery shopping.
Rather than call those who have died as "the dead" think of them as the non existent. Basically in the last 13 billion years you were nonexistent, but you may exist here for about 80 years. A relatively insignificant amount of time. If you decide at age 19 to end it all instead of existing until the age of 80, that seems like a big difference, and it is to your parents, but if you eschew them and want to look at the issue philosophically (here on the Philosophy Forum), as a statistician will point out, your time of non existence of 13 billion years plus or minus 30 years is nothing whereas your time of existence of 19 vs 80 years is statistically significant.
It is near-universal that people want to live. I do not think people want to live due to "the good things", it's just normal, healthy psychology to want to live. People no more "choose" than they "choose" to be attracted to the gender they're attracted to. It's just one of those things that nature takes care of, we don't need to make a choice.
Even if I gave you all my reasons for wanting to live and you shot them all down, proving they were all poor - I'd still want to live, even if I decided I didn't want to live - I'd still want to live. Just like I can't decide who I'm attracted to.
I really don't think it's anything more than that.
I'd still choose nonexistence.Quoting Judaka
Normal and healthy psychology has changed with the seasons. Nature doesn't really take care of it, we do. Nature also causes death as well so your points are moot. You can't decide who you're attracted to but you can decide to live or not. You're proving there isn't a good reason to live. If you were to die you'd be done with this whole dance. People talk about the struggle as if it's noble but why? That just sounds like death anxiety trying to rationalize sticking around.
Consider how the drive to live and reproduce might have evolved from the simplest microbes. Those that responded in certain ways towards opportunities and threats would be more likely to reproduce than those that did not muster the same intensity of acquisitive or avoidant behaviours.
Since that time, survival instincts have amplified, with generation after generation being ever more desperate to compete and survive (barring colonial species with homogenous genetics). Survival of a desperate and ruthless. Now an overwhelming fear of death is almost ubiquitous amongst humans.
Our survival instinct is so great that many find it difficult to accept the idea that death might really be the end of our adventure. Ever on the lookout for an escape. Survival instincts may improve reproduction rates (noting that health prospective partners tend to be repelled by overt depressives) but they surely do not bring a more peaceful life.
It's ironic that that which increases our longevity and fecundity makes that life less worth living. Hopefully genetic and memetic evolution will sort out this problem for humanity's successors.
Sometimes life feels like it has negative value: like there's an emotional hole, and you just feel bad, intrinsically, not for any reason, unless maybe you can find something to fill that hole with, some reason to live; and the possibility that the hole might be infinitely deep and never be filled brings on a terrifying despair, like it could never have been worth anyone ever living in the first place and it's unfortunate that the universe exists at all.
On the other hands, sometimes life feels like it has a positive value: like you have the emotional opposite of a hole, you're just overflowing, and you just feel good, intrinsically, not for any reason, unless something is happening to run your wellspring of joy dry and wear you down, but that of course like all things will be finite so you can bear through it and maintain hope of things inevitably getting better eventually, even if it's going to take a long time.
Neither of these are the "correct" view of the world. They are both just states of mind. But the latter is obviously the more enjoyable state of mind. And the question, "why live", only makes sense at all in the former state of mind.
So don't bother trying to answer the question "why live?" It can't be answered, because the question is meaningless. Instead just try to get into the state of mind where you see how the question is meaningless, and where there instead seems to be the (equally meaningless, but much easier to ignore and move past) question "why not live?"
That’s assuming choice is inherently a burden. Which is a matter of opinion. Many would opt for the view that they enjoy choice and that it is not a burden.
Why do you set it up so that your survival instincts are not part of “you”? Why do you consider it an external thing that is burdensome instead of part and parcel of your identity? I can do that with anything and make it seem like a problem. I enjoy drawing, but the second I make it “The Drawing Instinct” it suddenly feels like I’m getting controlled and my enjoyment is not legitimate. That’s what you’re doing.
But still, as Kenosha kid said, unable to do it, you’d still have no reason to do this, specifically. I think you’re looking for someone to change your mind.
Quoting Darkneos
You think this is what logic is used for? If so, what is the process by which you can determine if a premise is true? You claim it’s possible to do that, so how?
Quoting Darkneos
You contradict yourself. If the living is not ultimately any freer and have no true choice beyond what you would have if dead then by that logic you have no choice in whether to live or die. But then you say you can overcome instinct and allow death t take you. This sounds like a conscious choice to me. Suicide is active (the self attempts it, beckons on their own death) Dying is passive (caused by your environment/ natural failing of the organism).
So which is it? The living don’t have real choice and therefore cannot consciously decided to kill themselves or they do and therefore have more choice than the dead because the dead cannot choose to come back to life.
The same necessarily follows for every non-urgent thing you do. The logical conclusion is that you're a deeply illogical person living a deeply illogical life, which goes some way to explain your deeply illogical comments about what is and isn't logical.
Well then do so. Putting "I would argue..." before an assertion doesn't make it an argument. What would your argument be that logic and reason pre-exist living? In what would they reside? What form would they take? What cause or effect would they have, and upon what substance?
Quoting Darkneos
You logically justify your depression like others logically justify their happiness, truthfully, neither of you are correct. It's just that you can't possibly account for the hormones and genetics which govern how you think and feel. Humans aren't just the sum of their choices, there's an underlying biological reality which affects how we think and interpret. I'm not afraid to die, I see death through the lens of the dead, no fear, no regrets, no anything. If one does choose to die, that's their choice but their thinking was likely a result of some underlying problems, that person was likely in need of help. I'm not going to treat it like a logical choice made by a clear-thinking person unless there are special circumstances.
From an atheist point of view, there's only selfish reasons, most are posted above. But the reason we are here in the first place, is because evolution wants us to spread our seeds, in the hopes that the weak will die off, and the strong will condition themselves for things like covid, eye sight issues and other diseases.
But we are now too smart for evolution. We have exceeded our need to live. In fact, with all our medical aid, we have destroyed evolution. Now we are all spreading faulty genes and choosing to make ourselves weaker over all.
At least, that's an objective position I could argue if I were an atheist... glad I'm not an atheist.
Quoting Judaka
Happiness from what I can tell has no logical justification. People believe that just because something feels good they should keep doing it even though that is not really logical.
That fact that you don't treat someone seeking death as logical choice with clear thinking says more about you than them. I think some of the people who think about suicide are thinking clearly and see the big picture. But society is scared to accommodate them because we have this paranoia about death and encouraging people to live when they clearly don't wish to. We assume something is wrong just like with school shooters, because our brains can't think of any other reason. It doesn't fit the narrative. I thought this was a philosophy forum.
From what I've seen in online forums, much of the time when people ask the latter, they mean the former.
Obviously, a person can only understand things that are already within their scope of understanding.
Everyone is like that.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It's not illogical if one wishes to train oneself to come to terms with the fact that not everything in life has closure:
Why not live seems to have more reasonable answers than living itself. Bear in mind that a good deal of the population don't have the privilege most have of internet, therapy, food, etc. Lots of people starve to death or suffer illness and often times (at least from what I gather) our comfort is at the expense of others.
The question itself is not meaningless as you seem to think, because living is something we do and we tend to have reasons for doing things. Not logical ones per se but still reasons. NO human does something just because. In fact nothing does. But living generally requires a reason for being capable of thought as we are. Most animals likely don't question it, or much.
In short, there are several reasons to not live and no real good ones to live (well not ones that death would not be a better solution for). In short, why do all this when you don't have to and when in death you need not concern yourself with any of it?
Quoting Benj96
Death is freedom. From all the constraints of life. What you call freedom are really just chains. Yes we do have choices but that doesn't equate to freedom. Reread it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
No, I'm perfectly logical. You just seem to think that emotions factor into what logically one should do. You Illogically state that if you enjoy something you should keep doing it, why? Just because you like it? Why does that matter? You want to use logic but logic can't really tell you what to do. As I said with ice cream, I like it. Does that mean I should eat it? No. All that means is that I like ice cream.
This isn't really getting the answer I want but more like trying to see what a philosophy forum would say and see if their answers were better than anywhere else I have asked this question. At least people don't jump to depression, therapy, or the suicide hotline.
In regards to your point that's what I'm getting at by people assuming that wanting to die is some sickness.
The thing is that you chose a hot topic, one of the worst hot topics on the internet.
There are ways to frame and formulate an existential quest on the internet that get a police officer sent to your door.
Then there are other ways to frame and formulate an existential quest on the internet, ways which are more profitable.
My suggestion is that you get serious about this, and do some serious studying about this.
I think a good point to start is the work of Matthew Ratcliffe.
Depending on whether you were raised in a functional or dysfunctional household, you can be more or less prone to having a positive outlook on life. Having confidence and self-esteem also go a long way in motivating yourself to make goals and plans that you find worthy of achieving.
In essence, I think mental health is one of the most important factors that determine one's outlook on life, and fortunately, there is a lot of scientific research that shows what impacts our mental health, and what can safeguard and improve it.
I suppose I can agree that hope usually is an emotional desire for something that isn't usually thought out very much. But it can be. I can hope that my grandmother gives me 50 euros next time I visit her based on my past experiences with her. She always gives me a gift but I can't be sure. So it's both emotional and rational, they're not mutually exclusive.
I don't share your opinion that death is more logical that life. I don't really know what you're expecting people to tell you. People want to continue to live because life is just so damn fun. As I keep repeating over again, being is much nicer than not being. Yes an argument can be made about life becoming so agonizing that you would desire it to end because life is only suffering. But the truth is that for many people life isn't only non stop suffering.
I haven't been keeping up with the whole thread but I'm honestly just puzzled about what you're trying to find out. Why do people keep living? They don't share the same worldview. It's that simple. They don't agree with you that life is a chore and that the small good things are what make it bearable. And I get it, sometimes things don't go your way and shit gets really hard but I never think "Oh well, I might just save myself the trouble and off myself because I'm going to die anyway." Perhaps you're expecting reasons like "I want to see my child grow up happily." or "I want to make it to the big leagues." Or is that also not a good reason? What are you actually looking for?
Sorry if I'm not getting it. But my main answer to "why don't we just end it now" is "It's just not worth it."
I seem to have a deep aversion to this type of thinking because if this were the case and every person thought "I'm not going to do any work, avoid all hardships and step out soon" then all of the beauty that the human race has created would never have existed. Our culture, language, music,... All that awesome stuff would just cease to be. And I find it to be extremely disturbing to even suggest that. But I admit that is more of an emotional response.
How on earth is happiness illogical? Happiness feels good -> Going out walking with friends and messing around makes me happy. -> It doesn't harm me. -> Since happiness improves my overall well being and has beneficial effects there is no reason to not do what makes me happy as long as the good outweighs the bad. This is a deeply personal thing because different things make different people happy, and they're not all healthy. But I sincerely fail to see how the above form of happiness is not logically justified. How??
Quoting Darkneos
That is because people operate from the basic axiom that life in general is a good thing. People are genuinely able to enjoy life because it's so basic to human experience to want to live. And when someone doesn't have that very basic feeling then we cannot help but to think something is wrong with them. Because it's the exact opposite of what people usually want. Saying that it is nothing but a chore and is entirely illogical is a super fringe view in both philosophy(that I know of) and not to mention in normal folks idea's.
I'm not as good as the rest here in turning thoughts to coherent texts like my fellow posters here, they have a finesse with words. So you'll have to excuse me for that. But it feels like I'm missing what you're actually arguing for.
Humans aren't driven by logic, they're driven by emotion and logic usually just accommodates how people feel. I don't think suicide is illogical, I think it's motivated by negative emotions which cloud judgement.
Quoting Darkneos
You know that people can lack material wealth, friends, love etc and still enjoy life. What makes life unbearable is depression, pain, fear, anxiety, extreme stress and usually a combination of these things. So I think it is warranted to question whether such a person is in a state of mind to make such a decision. I would deal with it case-by-case but as I said, healthy, happy people do not contemplate suicide because the balance is tilted in favour of living by default.
Even if someone appears to be clear thinking, they're nonetheless tormented by negative emotions and it's only natural that people would want to help them. Many people who don't know you would like you to enjoy life, that's just how they are. Friends and family don't want to lose a loved one to suicide. Death anxiety, lol, that's what you really think? How convenient.
The reasons people are giving for "why I choose to live" are complete bullshit because even if we took all those things away, they'd still want to live. That's how living things are, they want to keep living and don't give humans too much credit, they're animals not computers.
:up: :fire:
If it is not innate, genetic predisposition I would be shocked.
I've been banging around a few philosophy forums here and there over the last some weeks looking for some intellectually challenging concepts. I've read umpteen posts. I am amazed by what appears to me to be people's overwhelming tendency to posit their notions in tremendously ethereal wisps of fancy.
Humans are just creatures with an amazing voice box and a brain complex enough to formulate speech. For the most part it seems that we overlook the fundamentally mundane nature of our existence, even our wonderfully complex cognitive existence. It is simply a physical manifestation in the Universe, this human creature. Much of its cognitive relationship with the all else that exists can be explained in physical terms.
Why do we persevere? Hard wired.
What is the meaning of life? Staying alive.
I could be wrong.
I agree to some extent. There is a philosophical tendency to want to decorate the existential Christmas tree with esoteric tinsel and metaphysical fairy lights, but there are genuine philosophical problems - that for my money, begin with epistemology. Two seemingly simple questions:
What can we know? and,
How can we know it?
Open the door on a vast and complex series of interrelated problems. Because I understand the depth of these problems, it's somewhat amusing to see you skating over the surface, yelling "look how easy it is!" - blissfully unaware that the ice gets real thin in places, and that there are fathomless frigid depths beneath!
Well, it's nice to be able to entertain some people in mirth.
I don't see a philosophical problem with "what can we know?"
Once one accepts the mundanely obvious evidence that we can know nothing, then the door is open to begin the real exploration of intellectual existence. Unfortunately, it is not an exploration that can be pursued alone. I've seen just of late that Socrates ventured there. We're patiently waiting for y'all.
I could be wrong.
What can we know?
Nothing!
Job done. Wanna grab a pizza!
What's a pizza?
That's not a bypass.
That is a SOLUTION, a rational, logical explanation, a very plausible story to explain what might be real.
I could be wrong, but I have mountains of evidence to support my opinion that nobody wants to hear.
A solution in what sense?
You are making a claim to know - that we know nothing!
You are claiming you have mountains of evidence - so presume an answer to question number two, about how we know what we know.
Which in your case, really is nothing!
oops there.
I claim to know nothing.
I'm offering you an opinion and whole new way of looking at the world.
Do, PLEASE, notice that I admit and submit that "I could be wrong."
Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. I prefer intellectual honesty. I prefer to have good reasons for my views, and so be able to stand by them, rather than opine wildly - and then add "I could be wrong" and think myself wise for admitting it.
I suppose you didn't know that Socrates never said, "the only thing I know is that I know nothing." It's somewhat mistranslated from Plato's account of Socrates, but it wasn't Socrates that said it. The popularisation of the misquote is from Tolstoy's - War and Peace.
Of course, I could be wrong. We could all be brains in jars being fed a simulation of reality. Hence the significance of the questions:
What can we know? and,
How can we know it?
Amid the flurry of accusations, derogatory epithets, and dismissive banalities, I heard no a whisper of any interest in evidence or exploration of possibilities. I get that a lot. I'm okay with it. It's not my loss. My only loss is in finding solidly logical observations that I have not yet considered.
By the way, I have no solid clues about what Socrates actually "said". I merely have been apprised lately that he may have been of the opinion as I am that knowledge is an illusion. I find that to be an interesting prospect, another "maybe", a possible pixel for the internal world picture in the vast sea of maybe's that may be me.
One last offering and I'm done.
Rather than "what can we know?" start with something a little simpler, "what can we hear?" or more to the point, "what can or does the brain 'hear'?". There's a nice youtube video that illustrates it quite convincingly ["Auditory Transduction"] or so I would offer.
Good luck and fair sailing to you, sincerely.
But don't ever come at me with meanness in your heart again.
Isn’t that something that’s unpleasant to feel? Is not an unpleasant condition the very definition of a sickness?
Consider also: if you want to live, then whenever you’re alive, you’ve at least got something good going for you, and so something worth living for. So “wanting to live” is in itself something to live for.
Wanting to live isn't something to live for it's what you do. The reason behind it is what is to live for. Being alive doesn't exactly mean you have something good going for you. Wanting to live is that biological drive. It isn't you.
Staying alive is not the meaning of life, that's just what life does.
Quoting Judaka Those are only a small handful of people and that is more cases of extreme denial or hope. Those stuck in their lives don't have that.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Because it does not follow. Your chain of reasoning does not compute. You need to stop at "happiness feels good", that's all logic can tell you. None of that is logically justified. Just because something feels good doesn't mean you do it. Come on I already shut this part down.
Quoting Judaka
No it's not. It's honestly the only sane choice to make when it comes to life. Saying it's motivated by negative feelings that cloud judgment is what the narrative is because we HAVE to believe that. Otherwise if someone chose death over life it would have to involve us questioning our own framework of meaning and existence.
If being alive is in and of itself something you want, something you value intrinsically rather than just instrumentally, then every moment you’re alive you have something you want, and so something good going for you.
Which isn’t to say that life is great for everyone, far from it, I know. Just that when you value life intrinsically, hardships are just obstacles to be overcome on the path back to feeling good intrinsically just to be alive. Whereas otherwise, you require some positive thing, and endless supply of positive things, to justify the work that it takes to live.
You’re asking for the latter, which makes it clear that you feel the latter way. But to someone who feels the other way, that question doesn’t make any sense. You may as well ask for a justification to eat ice cream, or any other pleasant thing. If you don’t like ice cream, then it makes sense to ask “Why should I eat this? What do I get out of it?” But if you do like ice cream, you just want to eat it, and you may be willing to go through some hardships to get it, but you don’t need any further justification for eating it: it’s an end in itself.
Sometimes to some people life feels like that: it’s just something they want for its own sake. Other times and to other people it doesn’t feel like that. I’ve felt both ways in my life, and feeling the way that makes sense of your question was the worst I’ve ever felt — not because anything in particular was bad in my life either, just because, for reasons I never figured out, I started feeling that way, and suddenly everything was pointlessness and despair unless I could find something to temporarily distract me.
Again, I’m not saying that either of those ways of feeing is or isn’t the factually correct way of looking at the world. They’re just different ways one might feel about the world. And one of them obviously feels better than the other. Realizing that is what saved me from feeling the other way, freed me to stop looking for a reason to justify living, and allowed me to instead focus on changing the way I felt to a state where life didn’t need any justification.
No you haven't shut anything down at all. You simply assert it does not follow. I have given a reason why its logical to continue doing something that makes me happy iff its beneficial and harmless.
Youre expected to argue for positions you have over here. You cant simply assert something and get upset when someone disagrees with you. I am terrible at philosophy because I'm young and inexperienced. So I am not locked to any position. Show me why what I said does not logically follow. In what step did I miss something? Is it the part where I bring up harm? Should I also recognize the harm I do to others?
You cant come here expecting that people give you a fair philosophical treatment if youre not interested in doing it yourself.
I wish I could come up with this, man.
:up:
Of course they factor in. That doesn't make the decision "emotional".
If I wish to put a nail in the wall, it is perfectly logical to use a hammer.
Enjoying something is the state of wishing to be doing it. It is illogical to simultaneously enjoy something and not wish to do it. Conversely it is perfectly logical to wish for something and to act to realise that thing. Competing desires weigh in on whether the ultimate decision taken is logical -- eating ice cream when you are obese is illogical if you wish to lose weight -- but those aside, logic dictates that that which you will to be done is that which you act to realise.
That's a feelings based argument. Evolution relies on natural selection, which does decide if your genes are strong enough to keep for the next iteration. We have altered our environment in a way that has disrupted our 'natural' selection.
A trademark trait of depression is honing in on the negative, interpreting things negatively, tunnel visioning on what is negative and being impervious to outside opinions. Such as a person feeling like they are a burden on their family and friends regardless of what they say, or feeling like a failure regardless of what other people think. Your worldview is bleak and dark, because it's being seen by someone who has a bleak and dark view, not because the world is actually as bad as you think it is. Logic is manipulated by emotion and psychology much more than the other way around. I think it's very human of you to notice that in others but not in yourself because that's pretty much your entire explanation for why people disagree with you.
I'm not sure what your motivation here is, you want people to realise suicide is the only sane choice? You want people to realise they only oppose suicide due to their death anxiety or because taking it seriously would challenge their life's meaning?
But if not for choices we would not be free? One would imagine that the number of choices available to a person is directly equivalent to their degree of freedom. Slaves have no choice of their own as it is alway decided for them by their master. Meanwhile the truly free answer to no one. How can you exile choice from the state of being free? It makes no sense. Even if we are free to choice from a limited set of choices this is still more free than only being able to choice from a more limited set. Ultimate freedom being to choose from an unlimited set of choices. I don’t see how the dead’s choices or freedom is unlimited. I can’t possibly see how having absolutely no influence or control over anything is more free than the potential to have control (ie be aware/ alive). What can you do as a dead Person except be dead?
I understand what you’re saying in that being dead means you have no challenges to overcome, no stress, no worries or suffering. But you also don’t have love or happiness or any pleasure. So it’s a question of either being totally numb and void of all sensation (dead) or living and yes maybe suffering at times but ultimately having the chance/ opportunity or “freedom” of maximising pleasure and minimising suffering. One would imagine worldly pleasure is better than nothingness/ emptiness
Again, no. There is no such thing as strong or weak genes, only what works at the time. That is essentially evolution. A change occurs, animals that benefit from it survive and those that don't die. You are making the mistakes folks make when describing how it works.
Quoting Benj96
Choice is not equivalent to freedom. There is such a thing as choice paralysis were more choices equals less freedom. In death though it's essentially ultimate freedom as is wipes all that away. So long as you live freedom does not exist. No happiness or love or pleasure is only a bad thing if you are alive, in which case there is a hunger to fill life with it lest you suffer, another reason living is illogical as the stuff that makes it "worth it" doesn't matter if you choose death and freedom from such seeking. Worldly pleasure is not better than nothing.
Quoting Judaka
Sometimes one has to wonder whether something is depression or an honest look at life. I know our society has a tendency to sweep the bad things or negativity under the rug, I mean that's what Facebook is more or less. Your assessment on why people disagree is not correct though. I find on here people are subject to the positivity bias or think that logically because you like something you should do it. They can't see how that does not follow. My worldview only appears bleak and dark with that bias, but it's just honest. To see through the "reasons" as nothing more that rationalization of the survival drive, that there is no good reason to live. Yet the drive is very strong and few overcome it.
I do regard what you think, otherwise I wouldn't be replying to it. But what you think is easy to see through.
Incorrect. Liking something is not a wish to KEEP doing it, only that doing it elicits a certain feeling in you. It's like saying I enjoy dancing. However I do not dance. MY enjoyment of a task is not a reason to do it. Ends in and of themselves don't exist IMO. There is always some justification for doing something even as simple as eating a sweet.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It's not. Enjoying something is not the wish to be doing it. Merely a sensation of pleasure. That's it. Stop adding more to it. It's not illogical to enjoy something and not wish to do it. IT happens every day. IT isn't logical to wish for something and act to realize it either. Everything you just mentioned is not logic but emotion. All your points are prefaced by desire which by itself is illogical.
Again you keep making it to be more than it is in order for your argument to even function.
That's the kind of expression that elicits the question "why not?" in a normal person. It calls for an explanation of what un-enjoyable thing will happen to whom to warrant avoiding doing this thing you enjoy. Someone enjoying (or suffering from) something is the usual prima facie reason to do (or not do) anything; those kinds of experiences are the feeling that doing (or not doing) something is imperative, the thing you should do (or not do). All reasons to do (or not do) anything are grounded in such feelings.
I know you keep rejecting desires as reasons, but the only thing that pure logic all by itself can ever tell you is that something is or isn't a coherent possibility at all. It can't even tell you for certain whether anything in particular is the case, never mind whether it should be. Only whether it possibly could be.
Quoting Darkneos
How do you avoid the problem of infinite regress then? (Actually, I expect that the entire problem here is that with that attitude you can't avoid it). If you need a justification for everything, then you need a justification for each justification, and justifications for those justifications for your first justifications, and so on ad infinitum... you need an infinite chain of justifications and you end up forced to conclude that there is no justification for anything at all.
When we're talking about justifications as in purposes, reasons to do things, you end up with the conclusion that everything is pointless and there's never any reason for anyone to do anything. If you applied that same line of reasoning to beliefs, about what's real, you'd end up forced to reject all of those too. Pure logic can't tell you what's real either, only what's (im)possible.
To get an idea of what's real, you first have to understand what you're asking when you ask "what is real". Normally, we're asking for an account of what kind of empirical experiences to expect to be had in common by everyone in certain contexts: something real is the kind of thing that everyone appropriately situated can observe.
Similarly, to get any idea of what you should do, what the purpose of anything is, why to do anything, including to live at all, you first have to understand what you're asking by that question. And similarly, we're normally asking for an account of some kind of experiences that will be had in common, but not empirical experiences, but rather hedonic ones: what's enjoyable about this, or what suffering is avoided by this?
Something that is enjoyable is thus an end in itself: it's its own reason to do it. And if one finds life per se enjoyable, that makes life an end in itself.
This sort of irrational behaviour is quite likely why you're coming up with nothing for a reason to live. Ultimately the only reason for doing anything is that you desire it to be done: anything else is a contradiction, a failure to reason. It seems to me like you reject this out of hand and are left in want of an alternative reason. But there isn't one. To act is to impact one's world. To act rationally is to impact one's world with a desired result in mind. Any other way of behaving is illogical.
Think about desiring to do drugs or rob banks. Or bite your fingernails.
Desiring to do something (and knowing one enjoys it) is not a sufficient reason to do it, nor to want to do it.
One also has to desire the _right_ thing. The thing that is morally, ethically right.
It's at this point that the whole idea of the will to pleasure breaks down.
Quoting baker
This has already been covered in the above discussion, e.g.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Maybe because it does and you havent shown any reason to the contrary.
Quoting Darkneos
Indeed. logic cannot say you should do anything or not do anything, any more than it can tell you what I have in my pocket. Logic is weak, and it cannot sustain. This entire thread is just a riff on the word 'reason'. It has two senses, the logical sense of reasoning as in deductive reasoning, and the rather different sense of motivation. Pointing out that motivation is not logic is trivial. Nothing follows therefrom.
So eating an icecream simply because eating an icecream brings forth happiness is not a good reason? I dont get that.
You are just saying that what I'm saying does not apply to you, only others, which again, is very normal. That you think you see the truth while others perceive this issue through their emotional and psychological circumstances is again, very human of you and exactly what I expect to see. You're just being honest while others are being manipulated by their insecurities and fears, is that right? Said every person ever.
Death today or death in fifty years, there is no difference but I do agree with this :
Quoting Darkneos
I've already argued something similar to this, the question is how is that drive overcome? Is it overcome through distress, depression and negative emotion or is it overcome by, being very honest and logical? Hopefully, we could at least agree that the former can be true, suicides can be impulsive or they can be planned out but people who choose to kill themselves are generally not both calm and happy.
Any good reason anybody has for anything they can only have because they're alive. Any ambition, any relationship, any activity, any reason for doing any of these things is also a reason to live. If someone is excitedly planning out their day, or next year, or looking forward to things they'll get to do and your mission is to tell them that they're insane for not wanting to kill themselves, because, why? All I've heard from you is explaining people away with death anxiety and saying they're reasons are not good. What is your actual argument about why people should choose death over life?
You don't know that. Perhaps they are calm and happy but see the futility of life. I'd like to think that happiness clouds our judgment and makes life appear better than it really is.
Quoting Judaka
There is a difference though, death today means never having to wait 50 years or dealing with that much life.
Quoting Judaka
I've already explained it. Happiness only counts as a reason when you have to stay alive in which case it makes sense to fill that time and make it enjoyable since you have to be here. If you don't it's a moot argument. From the point of maximizing pleasure and reducing pain suicide is still the better option and I think Benatar made a similar point with his Asymmetry argument. Pleasure is not an argument for living because it only applies if you are alive and again only makes sense if you HAVE to stay alive or can't die for a certain time for whatever cause. In death there is no need for pleasure or seeking it out, or disappointment or love, anything really. By any metric for choosing life, death is better by all counts. Pleasure becomes irrelevant and you avoid all future discomfort, agony or pain. There is simply not a reason to live, to be born even. One is thrust into the world without consent and then when they want out society says no because........they don't like it? I'm honestly surprised how you can't look upon all these words people are saying and thinking they justify living.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
No they don't because the desire itself is not logical. There is no reason one should want to lose weight that is not based purely on emotion.
It's more like they took the appeal to emotion fallacy to it, which is what most of these reasons for living are, fallacies.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No it doesn't. There is a reason for doing it. It being enjoyable is not an end in and of itself, and the only reason people avoid infinite regress is that they eventually stop at an arbitrary point. Finding life enjoyable does not make it an end in and of itself. AS I said those things don't exist. They just justify living because it's good, until it goes bad.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Again, emotion. All I can say about eating ice cream is that I like it, but that doesn't mean I do it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Pardon but I tend to regard such people as stupid. "Normal" people tend to not question much so such a remark means nothing. I can say the same thing to them about painkillers when they aren't sick. Why not? You say it's avoiding but that implies I am activity doing such a thing when I am not. People seem to have this myopic notion that enjoying something is a reason to do it when it's not. All enjoyment means is what it says, that you like the activity, not that you should do it.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It's not irrational you just say it is so because you don't grasp it. The "reason" for doing something is the desire for it to be done, but enjoyment does not mean that at all. Plenty of people do something they don't enjoy but do so based on desire. It's still illogical as why would you wanting to do something be reason for it? But I digress. As I said, people have a narrow view of what constitutes a reason and think wanting something or feelings are reasons when they aren't. If you want to take it all the way then action ITSELF is not rational or logical.
Quoting Darkneos
Quoting Darkneos
Says you? Anyone can have a reason for doing anything that they fucking please, it doesn't matter if it makes sense to you. I can choose to live because I want to take care of my pot plant, that's my reason. "When you're dead that pot plant won't matter anymore" or "Pot plants suck" doesn't invalidate my reasoning, you can't say I have no reason just because you don't like the reason, that's not how this works.
Quoting Darkneos
That's not true and even you don't think that. You've literally argued - and I agree, that death simply mutes any metric by making them irrelevant. If I choose based on what allows me to raise as many pot plants as possible then death loses, obviously. I don't care if you don't like my reason.
Quoting Darkneos
...
Now you're just dealing with a different set of facts to me, "perhaps suicidals are generally calm and happy"? So you know that anything official I cite is going to be on my side, I can just idk, throw a random link in here:
https://www.verywellmind.com/why-do-people-commit-suicide-1067515
Could throw in 100s if I wanted, polls, experts, characterising suicide the same way but you've got "perhaps" on your side, guess that's even. If someone is calm and happy and wants to die then they're a massive minority who nobody even talks about, I'd have to hear them out to understand where they're coming from but I don't really care, people can kill themselves if they want just don't tell me that it's the only sane choice or that people are just talking negatively about suicide only due to "death anxiety" or whatever.
Quoting Darkneos
Sure, I'm just saying you're not missing out on anything if you died today.
Desire doesn't need to be logical: decisions do. Yours are illogical. You love to dance, but don't have any additional reasons for doing so, so you don't? That's not logic; that's just masochism.
Do you apply this same standard to reasons to believe something? Do you fall down an infinite regress there too, or else stop at an arbitrary point? Or something else instead? In any case is that as much a problem as this?
Quoting Darkneos
The reason not to just take pain killers all the time is the negative (unenjoyable) consequences of doing so. If those weren’t there then it would be a good thing to do.
Quoting Darkneos
What do you think would constitute a reason to do something? (Even if no such reason exists; what would you imagine if you imagined that such a thing did exist?) What does “should” even mean to you?
It's perfectly logical to do what you like. It would be nonsensical to say: "I like eating ice cream but I don't because life is a chore." And that's all I'm getting from you. You can have reasons to pursue certain feelings you know.
No, read on what I said:
Quoting baker
This isn't merely about competing desires. It's about being sure that one is doing the right thing, the ethical, moral thing. It's about believing, for example, "Yes, it is morally right to eat ice cream".
If one doesn't have that moral certainty that the thing one desires to do is also the morally right thing to do, and is aware of this lack, then the motivation for acting on the desire will diminish.
(This is how people who don't think about the moral dimension of their desires and their actions characteristically don't have problems in this department, nor are they able to emphatize with those who do.)
Is it morally right to eat ice cream?
In moderation and if you can afford it I don't see why not.
In one sense, it all comes down to emotions, one way or another, depending on how one defines "emotion". I already mentioned Matthew Ratcliffe earlier. He talks about "existential feelings" and he offers a broader understanding of emotions than we're used to from mainstream psychology. So that's one source to look into to get an alternative perspective on the matter.
However, the question "What is your reason for living?" is misleading, insofar as living is the default, and as such, there's no specific personal reason for it.
What you're describing is a competing desire: a desire to be moral or, hopefully, to act upon a moral impulse.
There's that too :up:
You assume that there is something more to morality than just ensuring that people feel good rather than bad.
I think there is a stigma against suicide and that any attempt to portray it as positive by any means is looked down upon or underreported if at all. Think about it, it's your life. Who says you can't "quit" so to speak? We dislike talking about death overall and as I mentioned are obsessed with living to the point that we keep people on life support when they are unable to function as a human being. We even made up afterlives to feel better about it, at least I think so. But that's another can of worms.
Quoting baker
Except it isn't the default. It's a choice. There is a "personal reason" that being survival and fear of pain/death, but these aren't good ones. Most living things "fear" death to a degree.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Again it isn't but I'm tired of repeating myself. There is no reason for me to eat ice cream even if I like it, me liking it is not a reason to do it. Why is that so hard to grasp? There is no reason to pursue a feeling either by the same logic.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But that is not a reason to stop. You said if you like something then do it so therefor someone should take painkillers despite the "negatives" because they like it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Nothing, because there is no reason to really do anything. However in doing nothing by extension of this you eventually reach a point where it doesn't matter anymore (death). Life needs a reason, death doesn't. Life only goes if you upkeep it, death will come one way or the other without your help.
It is hard to grasp because it speaks against my personal experience. If I'm hungry, then I will eat. If I am in love with a person, then I will try my best to be with them. Reason being? Hunger and Love.
These are valid reasons to pursue my wants in my eyes. But according to you they aren't. And that's why I have asked you multiple times before, what would count as a valid reason?
If something feels good then it's only natural to want to pursue it just for the sake of it feeling good. Setting aside all arguments one can make about chasing feelings at the expense of others, etc.
I'm not asking you to repeat yourself. I'm asking to help me understand what a valid reason looks like to you. I noticed you replied to this question in response to Pfhorrest though.
Quoting Darkneos
So you deny that there can be a reason to do anything and then go on to say that life needs a reason to continue which by implication means that death is the only option. This seems fallacious at worst and requiring justification at best. Or did I misunderstand? If so, sorry.
Do you perhaps mean that in light of death nothing we do here matters because in the end death comes for us all and so we should just get it over and done with?
Quoting Darkneos
Besides the parts of your arguments which are demonstrably incorrect, which you did not even try to defend further, you've got "perhaps" and "think about it" to challenge decades of science and study. Your worldview is not based on logic and honesty as you claim, it's created through a unique interpretation which selectively acknowledges and emphasises pieces of information to create a particular narrative. When in doubt, assume whatever suits you, that's pretty much your argument summed up, we both know you can't back up your claims, that's why it's "perhaps" and such.
You've got an excuse for everything, it's a whole conspiracy against suicide and the evidence or arguments don't matter because of "death anxiety". My last comment, you chose to address only what you thought could be ignored by "death anxiety" yet again, even though your main argument is demonstrably invalid and false. I don't know why you're intent on promoting suicide but I imagine it's a personal story. Anyway, I don't think you have anything left to do but insist on things you can't back up and dismiss facts with wishful thinking, I'm out.
The negatives are things they don’t like. It’s the not liking that gives a reason not to do it. If you do it, you’ll like it a little, and then end up not liking it a lot. So on the whole there is reason to not do it: because on the whole, it’s an unlikeable experience, even though some small parts of it are likable.
Conversely if the positives outweigh the negatives for you then you have reason to do it despite those negatives.
Quoting Judaka
Except they aren’t incorrect. I’ve told you that society has a stigma against suicide and that is not made up. It’s literally something I was taught in my sociology courses.
If anyone is not using logic it’s you, trying to argue that desire and liking something are reasons to do something when they aren’t. As was mentioned logic can’t tell you what to do. To be it just sounds like you hit a wall because appeals to emotion no longer work. I have backed up my claims, you however have not.
Quoting Judaka
Because suicide is the only logical choice by metrics of living, meaning maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain. I’ve already explained why pleasure is not a reason to live. You refuse to accept it. You cling to your illogical views that life is worth it. When you get rid of your attachment to life you see it’s not “worth it”. Every one of your arguments is biased by survival instinct. You don’t have facts. You have a the narrative that suicide is the result of depression when it isn’t always but that’s the story we tell. Similar to how shooters are mentally disturbed even without a history, because that makes sense when some of them had no history. The facts aren’t on your side. But it is fitting you should leave. That tends to be the attitude of most when the truth gets too close.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Appeal to nature argument. Just because something is natural doesn’t make it good to follow. And I have already explained why not. As I said if you take it further then there is no reason to do anything at all.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
It’s not. It just shows that death is the only option left. Life requires to a reason to exist, at least for people. We are past the point of being unquestioning animals. Yet there is no ultimate reason for existence or living. Reproduction is what live does but that doesn’t mean it should. Therefore there is and never will be a reason for living (that isn’t rooted in appeals to emotion or nature, AKA fallacies) making death the only logical choice.
No it's not. It's an appeal to it feels good and there is no reason not to do it so it's perfectly logical to want to do it argument. And I said you didn't explain anything because I still don't see why there is no reason to do anything at all.
Quoting Darkneos
So a good reason would be an ultimate purpose? Is that the reason you want?
I'm not making appeals to nature but I am making appeals to emotion in the sense that an emotion could bring forth a reason to do something. But I suppose we keep going in circles anyhow.
The end note to your question is: People live life because it's worth it and it's simply fun. It's perfectly logical to me and seemingly to most people who are alive. You don't think it's a valid reason? Well, I'm afraid you're not going to convince very many people.
If multiple people are telling you that you're in fact not explaining anything then you should probably look into it.
It is. You are arguing it’s only natural to do so so it’s appeal to nature. I’ve already said why it’s not logical to want to do it. Stop repeating the same debunked arguments. Desire and emotion are not reasons for doing something, they are simple feelings that come and go. We choose to assign meanings to such things when in reality they don’t mean anything. Take away what we attach to them and they are pure sensations, not reasons for doing anything.
Emotions are not reasons to do something either. They are just reactions to situations but we think they mean something or that we should do something but this is in error.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Both those points are false. Life is not worth it. Nor is it fun. It just is. There is no logic to doing something because it is fun. Why can’t people see that? Just because most people believe that doesn’t make it true or logical. I know I can’t expect to convince folks of this because they are too attached to life and can’t see clearly.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
Again just because many people say something doesn’t make it true. I have already shown every argument for living to not be logical and rooted in fallacy yet people want to believe otherwise.
I like music and it makes me happy. There is nothing illogical about liking music being a sufficient reason to play my piano. This would change if you add a twist. If you play the piano, someone dies. Yes, then it's arguable about it being a good reason, but a reason could be there none the less.
You haven't argued anything in your responses to me man. You literally just say "it's not an reason" and then "I've argued why."
Quoting Darkneos
That is literally what it means to live a human life. Subjective experience of objective facts. Hello?? Is this a secret method to assimilate us into the borg?
Quoting Darkneos
How convenient that the will to live is the obstacle to understanding you. I'm sorry to say then that indeed most of the population who enjoy life, no matter how good in philosophy they are, will simply not be as enlightened as you. Except for the ones who, sorry to bring this up despite to your request, are depressed.
Quoting Darkneos
And that, I suppose, is the rationalization that allows you to be confident in your position despite the numerous advances against it in this thread.
It’s not rationalization, that is literally what the defenses against death or suicide are, appeals to emotion or nature, which is why they fall flat. They don’t see why their logic does not follow.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
I wouldn’t call it the will to live so much as it is the bias towards life. Considering most living things tend to avoid death quite intensely it would make sense our reasoning would be clouded by such a drive. “I have to live” yet when trying to pin down why that is you ultimately have nothing to stand on. Death however doesn’t really need a reason, it finds you. You don’t have to live but you will die. Sorry I don’t have a more poetic way to put that.
Quoting DoppyTheElv
I have argued why. I’ve told you that it’s only an automatic response to stimuli, it isn’t you. You don’t decide what you like or dislike. Liking music is not a reason to play it, all that means is that you like music. The same goes with playing the piano and someone dying, that isn’t a reason to stop. I like music but that is no reason to play the piano, all that is is an automatic response to stimuli. It doesn’t mean I should play nor does it logically follow.
That’s like trying to derive an ought from an is.
You are trying to argue for life when the reasons of so many have been shown to be fallacious.
Lets just shy away from the discussion side of things because we're not getting anywhere.
What are you hoping to get out of this discussion? Seeing as we've gone far from what people's reason to live for are.
Yes, but they put up with that suffering only to avoid even greater suffering, and in the hopes of some small pleasures along the way and even greater pleasures afterward.
I suppose it is so for some people, but I'm not sure it was a choice for them for as long as they can remember.
[i]THERE is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is
not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest— whether
or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.
These are games; one must first answer.[/i]
This is how Camus opens his Myth of Sisyphus. (I'm surprised nobody brought it up yet.)
He formulates the matter as such: It's not about having a reason to live, it's about having a reason not to kill yourself.
No. I'm talking about actually being certain about one's sense of right and wrong. I'm talking about being certain that A is morally right, and that B is morally wrong.
When a person reflects on the morality of a particular prospective action of theirs, and is unable to come to a definitive conclusion as to whether said action is morally right or not, this is when their motivaiton falters.
My thoughts exactly.
If your basement hasn't been flooded, why would you worry about your basement becoming flooded?
IOW, a problem only has relevance to a person by its relative proximity to a person. I'm not so sure most people ever think about their "reason for living", unless they experience some traumatic event.
Ignorance makes for blissfully happy campers.
Quoting Darkneos
That is such a crappy reason to engage in such a discussion and figure things out.
And yes, there will be many who will say that your reasons were "illogical or clouded". Don't count on them.
As things stand, you're on the trajectory of a self-fulfilling prophecy, nothing more. That's lazy. You need to put in more effort.
I suggest reading William James' Is life worth living?, if you haven't already:
[i]/.../
These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. The 'scientific proof' that you are right may not be clear before the day of judgment (or some stage of being which that expression may serve to symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those with which Henry IV. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory had been gained: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! we fought at Arques, and you were not there."[/i]
That's not the same thing as a decision to act. To act is to affect a change in the world. You might act on the basis that belief that the action is correct, but to act in accordance with that belief is still a desire to realise it.
I don't think you've worked a service job before. The kind of work wears you down to the point that most people dread waking up and going through it, never really being able to enjoy days off because they have to go back to the job.
Quoting baker
Literally the same thing, he's just splitting hairs.
Quoting TheMadFool
But we do choose to live, with every action that prolongs exists it's a choice to go on. Stop choosing and eventually death takes you.
Well, I was coming at it from the well-known fact that though a mind makes a firm decision to die (suicide), the body resists (gasping for air, body writhing, and the whole nine yards of what has been fearfully labeled "death throes") and how so has been, occasionaly, depicted quite accurately on screen.
At the job I lost a year ago (and still haven't replaced), which I had for 8 years prior, I would routinely beat the everliving shit out of myself, with my actual fists, because of the pressure to keep up with the insane workloads that got dumped on me all at once. And then be awake all night anxious about the next day. And just barely be able to unwind back to "normal" by the end of the weekend, only for Monday to fuck it up again.
But I put up with it because the alternative was ending up homeless, or at best living in the tool shed next to my dad's trailer again, which was even worse.
I'm not sure and it's a good question. For me the possibility and actuality of relationships keep me going, I think. And I am most despairing when I find myself unable to relate to others well. Maybe separation creates the possibility of value, but then if relationships don't work well, or others are uncooperative, there is a tendency to want to take one's ball home, permanently. That'll show the buggers. I know I feel it quite a lot.
There is no reason to live. Not any objective meaning anyway. For many, their faith in a higher power is their raison d'ĂŞtre. For those that are secular (myself included), we continue to live because of stubbornness to see things through and a general willingness to avoid death.
For many others though homeless would be an improvement. Either that or death.
Quoting bert1
But why bother with such things though? Why not choose to "not play the game" so to speak?
And those people would quit their job and go homeless, or die.
Those who don't evidently find the alternative superior.
But do you know what that actually entails?
Heaven help the person who jumps off that bridge, with certain death imminent, and who, in those five seconds of falling, realizes he hasn't thought things through as thoroughly as he first assumed he did before jumping.
Not playing the proverbial game is much harder than just offing yourself. If you think that by offing yourself, you'll exit the game, then you're still giving supremacy to others, still letting others dictate your life, and you're even devoting those last few seconds of your life to them. To people who don't care enough about you to be there for you. Now that's a shame.
In the West, we're used to thinking like that, and to think those are the alternatives.
In contrast, in some other cultures, the relevant dichotomy is living an honorable life vs. not living an honorable life. Considerations of wealth and material wellbeing are secondary or even irrelevant to this.
I don't really care what other people think of my choices in that regard. There are almost 8 billion people, so hanging around could be considered selfish. Leaving could be considered weak. So what?
Quoting Darkneos
It's definitely optional. Some things are easier if you do a prison break and live on your own terms, the way you want to as far as it's possible in your historic era.
There's a price for that though. There's some comfort and safety that comes from being a normal person, doing what everyone else does.
At least where I am, if you stick out, it's kind of dangerous, so you have to set up fixtures to give yourself a safe profile, like the way you dress, the car you drive, the way your front yard looks, the way you talk.
So maybe not as much of a prison break as it seemed. :monkey:
I get depressed occasionally, mostly when I tired. But I've got a cool garden planned this year and I can't wait to see how it turns out. It's mostly native american species that are going extinct because asian immigrants are edging them out.
For me, because I would feel ashamed with myself I think. However foolish the game may be, it affords one an opportunity one would not otherwise have. Namely, to learn the rules and prove to oneself that one is, if not competent, then capable of a little improvement. If someone says they don't value improvement, and they feel no shame at all in the refusal to take part, there is no reddening of the cheeks as they refuse the relationship, then so be it. I'm not sure I would believe them.
EDIT: This is one of my more pompous posts. A fine display.
Killing you is a bad option. Think of the bad people who will smile and say: we already knew he was a freak, a coward, etc. Fuck them.
No you aren't. You aren't giving supremacy to anyone. By opting to not play you win. Think about what happens when enough people stop playing the game, there is no game anymore.
What's a true shame is how you can't see that. The reality is that we have been convinced we must play, so the only way for others to win is to keep playing.
Also some might have regret but some experience great peace knowing it will all be over.
Such people tend to be smarter than most.
Bear in mind that people's compassion and generosity are not infinite.
So be careful how you appeal to them.