Purpose of life! But why do we choose to continue it?
In order to survive, we need the bare minimum of oxygen, water, food and shelter. When our body is lacking one or more of these four things, our mind creates uncomfortable feelings such as suffocation, thirst, hunger and being hot or cold. It does this as a way to ensure the body maintains a healthy continuation of its life. If our actions and behaviors are an indicator that suggest what the purpose of our lives is, then it becomes quite obvious to identify it. Some mistakenly suggest that the purpose of life is to experience happiness. Most think it is at the root of what drives a lot of our choices and behaviors. Where instead, happiness basically describes a sensation that can be derived right down to our four necessities of life being met.
A basic example could be trying to get a promotion at work. Being promoted insinuates an increase in pay ($). Having money ensures access to food, water and shelter (these are three out of the four necessities being met). Having more money means you can sustain these necessities for a longer period of time. In affect this creates a sustainable means of continuing your life and your mind pumps chemicals into your brain that make it feel happy. Your brain rewards you with this addictive feeling of happiness as tactic to encourage you to continue engaging in behaviors that aid in sustaining the life of your body and therefore your mind.
When you focus right down to it, every single behavior and action conducted by not only humans but all living things can be sourced right down to a mechanism just to sustain the continuation of life.
If this logic is true, then our purpose as living things is purely to sustain our life and future life. With that I leave you not asking what the purpose of life is, but instead, ‘what is the purpose of continuing the life of all living things?’
A basic example could be trying to get a promotion at work. Being promoted insinuates an increase in pay ($). Having money ensures access to food, water and shelter (these are three out of the four necessities being met). Having more money means you can sustain these necessities for a longer period of time. In affect this creates a sustainable means of continuing your life and your mind pumps chemicals into your brain that make it feel happy. Your brain rewards you with this addictive feeling of happiness as tactic to encourage you to continue engaging in behaviors that aid in sustaining the life of your body and therefore your mind.
When you focus right down to it, every single behavior and action conducted by not only humans but all living things can be sourced right down to a mechanism just to sustain the continuation of life.
If this logic is true, then our purpose as living things is purely to sustain our life and future life. With that I leave you not asking what the purpose of life is, but instead, ‘what is the purpose of continuing the life of all living things?’
Comments (91)
Bingo, you hit on Schopenhauer's point. You do to do to do to do.. instrumentality.. to do just to do because survival and boredom mediated through goal-oriented action keep you going.
You can choose to be a painter.
You can choose to be a desk-job worker.
You can choose to be a scientist.
You can choose to be a philosopher.
But all of this gravitates around the choice to continue to be. You exist, but why do you continue to exist? Presumably because it gives you satisfaction, or at least because you fear death and/or have not really considered life to be a form of momentum. And that's about it really.
Ii wasn't going to say anything, but this subject comes up so often here that it seems worthwhile to give a general answer:
To all of you Materialists, Physicalists, "Naturalists", Science-Worshippers, Atheists, etc., who are ridden with existential angst and despair about your belief in life's meaninglessness and purposelessness:
Of course your angst and despair are an artifact of your above-listed beliefs.
I'm not saying that everyone with those beliefs expresses angst and despair about them, but significantly-many do.
Of course you have a right to cling to those beliefs.
Of course that means that you're clinging to your angst and despair.
But (can we be honest?) you enjoy it.
And it's your pass-word to admission in a philosophical or Scientificist elite.
Michael Ossipoff
No, your brain pumps chemicals into your body. Minds pumping any kind of physical matter is incoherent.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
This is demonstrably false. There are probably an infinite number of human actions that are not conducive to living. Just stop and think about it for a moment. Human beings are a rather risky species of animal.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
I don't think you've proven this. You've merely pointed out a fact about our nature and then declared that fact our purpose. I think you're missing several steps to reach that conclusion.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
A nonsensical question. No one person can continue the life of all living things.
Or perhaps for reasons other than these. Why do you insist on being a mind reader here? And surely you're open to a tu quoque reply: "If you're trying to suggest that my reasons to continue to living are bad reasons, but they're the only reasons there can be for living, according to you, then why do you continue to live? It must be for those same bad reasons, so why are you asking me something to which you already know the answer? Are you wanting me to commit suicide? But if you don't yourself commit suicide, then why should I believe that you're right about the reasons there are for living, since they clearly aren't convincing enough for you?"
Generally speaking, we get caught up in any number of goals. To get caught up is what we do. To hit the limit of existential thinking is to hit an error of sorts. Cultural contingencies give us the content to get caught up in.
...if you view life through the prism of evolutionary biology.
None of which means anything like 'rejecting evolution'. One of my favourite books from a few years back was 'Your Inner Fish' which shows the trajectory of evolution from ancient fossil fish to, well, yours truly. I think one of the awe-inspiring things about evolution is ones' kinship with other creatures.
But the philosophical horizon of Darwinism is so narrow. Some of that is from Darwin himself, who was not in the least philosophically-inclined, but rather more of it is from the combination of that with Enlightenment scientific rationalism and the construction of evolution as being 'science as opposed to religion'. But that is blatantly reductionist, in that it reduces what is unique to the human condition (as distinct from species) to a function of biology or neurology or some combination of the two. And to question that, is then to be automatically characterised as ID - whether you are or not.
People do not even stop to empathize with or listen to the religious fundamentalists they mock or to ask what are the historical and sociological antecedents of such fundamentalists' anti-Darwinism.
This is just one example--and there are probably plenty more to be found--of what people would find if they stopped, empathized, listened and/or did a little research: in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism Richard H. Robbins shows how Protestant fundamentalism in the U.S. was an early-20th-century response to the expansion of capitalism. If capitalists need cheap labor and are therefore undermining your families and communities by recruiting women to work outside of the home, then people using things like literal interpretations of the Bible to resist that encroachment should not be seen as anything unusual.
But rather than seeing it as an understandable response to an unwelcome encroachment by overpowering forces, the bashers of anti-Darwinists see it as backwards, irrational, bigoted, uneducated rednecks impeding "progress".
It may be a secular "creation myth", like you say.
But there is also evidence that it is, ironically, its own form of bigotry that blinds its adherents to the plights of certain groups of people and undermines solidarity against forces that are harming all groups.
(Y)
Not mind reading but by studying human psychology which is close enough. Most people live out of habit or because they fear death. There's really no "decision" to live usually.
The conditions you describe are necessary for life. However, as is obvious from the fact that you're in a philosophy forum, these conditions by themselves aren't sufficient for life. There's something extra that is required - the thirst for knowledge, the hunger for meaning/purpose, the shelter of a holistic worldview, etc.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Read above.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Read above.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
It's not false but it is incomplete.
But can there be?
Trying to find a real reason to live is an exercise in excuse-making. We all do it cause we're weak willed. Pretending otherwise is obnoxious tbh.
There's something twisted yet satisfying in showing people's reasons to live to be empty and shallow. It's twisted because you make them suffer but it's satisfying to see a false idol crumble. It's as if a reason to live is to show that there is no reason to live. mhm
So every death is a suicide?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Weak-willed as opposed to what?
Quoting darthbarracuda
How is the word "satisfied" predicated in that sentence?
@Thorongil
Your response
Quoting Thorongil
What I meant buy this is the fact that we keep alive long enough to reproduce and create the next generation - hence 'continuing the life of all living things'.
My question is, what is the purpose of continuing this cycle?
Quoting Thorongil
@Thorongil
What's an example?
Quoting TheMadFool
The thirst for knowledge isn't a need to sustain life - learning is a mechanism to better understand our environment as a way to improve our chances of to meet the four necessities I mentioned above
See my response to Thorongil above where I have clarified my overal question.
Does knowledge of philosophy help to survive? Did Socrates survive on philosophy? I don't think so. In fact Socrates had to give up the four necessities to quench his thirst for knowledge.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes. Philosophy is an attempt to better understand the world around us. Doing so is advantageous as better understanding the world around you allows you to evaluate more effective or efficient means to essentially survive.
So, why isn't everybody doing philosophy?
As understanding the world around you isn't the only or maybe the best tactic for continuing the cycle of life.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
What do you mean?
@TheMadFool
Despite the fact that I believe this statement is true, it would be ignorant or obnoxious to say its the best means of doing so. (There is no data to suggest otherwise) it's just the best tactic i have
Are you able to rephrase this statement? Or elaborate?
Quoting Thorongil
I agree with Thorongil.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Play. Prayer. Art. Music. Beauty. God. Nobility.
Man The Player is, as Thorongil says, a rather risky species of animal, who quite often gambles with his future. In addition, man is also a "useless" animal if looked at strictly from the materialistic perspective. We're certainly not very efficient at reproducing.
I mean we're capable to reproduce from when we're ~14, but most of us don't have children until mid 20s or sometimes in our 30s-40s. That certainly means we're quite busy doing other things during this time. We're by all means not focused on spreading our genes - if we were, we would have organised society differently, with marriages as early as 14. I think early marriages would be better - but for many of us, society forces us to live unmarried till well into our 30s.
>:O >:O
Play - is a mechanism (1) to learn (2) to reinforce and build social relationships - both are advantageous in terms of creating properous survival/ life.
Prayer - purpose of praying (1) to ensure a good relationship with god out of a fear that death will be painful. Having a good relationship with god is based on the premis that he has control over whether you live or die. Having a good relationship with god hypothetically insinuates he will choose to either keep you alive (survival) or bring no pain with your death which is what we fear (perhaps ideas with endless pain in hell as well).
... I can keep going @Agustino
I most often play by myself. And I certainly don't "learn to reproduce" by playing the piano for example. Nor does it make me prosperous. Really, if being propserous was my goal, I should never touch the piano again, since it's wasting my time and keeping me away from activities that earn money. But to the contrary - I want to be propserous so that I can play the piano in freedom, without being disturbed by the need to work. Most of us separate our passions from our work.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Absolutely not true.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
He has control anyway, whether I pray or not.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Wrong. Job was a righteous man, highly virtuous, and God still allowed him to lose everything and suffer greatly. He was not spared, but quite the contrary.
No, I'd rather prefer if you put an end to the BS actually... ;)
Fair statement - it essentially substitutes the contention that the purpose of life is continuing the cycle of life (reproduction). Though still leaves us questioning the purpose of why we need the continuation of life (reproduction) to happen. Or in your context, what the purpose of continuing motion is.
Okay here's what will happen. Regardless of what purpose we tell you that life has (call it X), you'll ask "Why do we need to do X? What are we doing it for?". If it's the purpose of life, then there is no further purpose to account for it - that's precisely what makes it the purpose of life.
So you're playing a silly game with us, that we cannot win. So stop it! QUIT IT!! >:O Quit trolling us!
Logic can neither be proved nor disproved. It suffices that I point to the fact that you have no reason for questioning a final purpose based on asking what its own purpose is, for there cannot be an infinite regress of purposes in the first place. So your expectations that there will be a purpose to a final purpose is silly.
Okay for the sake of the discussion let's say the purpose of life is the continuation of motion. Why does the continuation of motion need to occur?
Is it though? Or is it a logical sequence of steps to find the origin or absolute beginning? Logically everything must start from one point. Unless you believe in closed loop paradoxes. Where the begging of syestem is started by the ending of the same system which makes it circular.
Agree. The Big Bang, Natural Laws, Natural Selection are just words and phrases that are used to create a concept that replaces God. It is its own form of religion. Such concepts transfer the human ability to choose to an outside supernatural force that guides them.
The French philosophers (e.g. Bergson, Foucault) understand the process. This transfer of power creates social control. In this particular case, control is a tug-of-war between the Church, which interprets the Laws of God, and Science which interprets and uses the Laws of Nature. It is subtle but quite pervasive and real with very real consequences.
The most fundamental consequence is loss so meaning in life. If one is just a puppet of outside forces, then why should one continue to exist? What is the motivation? If one takes back choice and admits to one's ability to create via intuition, then new meaning enters into one's life. Camus created great stories and great ideas. Sisyphus was half-way there. The meaning is in life but he should be thinking of new ways to roll that boulder up that mountain. Repetition (habit) is boring. Practice creative intuition.
Motion is creation of something new.
How are you going to recognise that the origin is the origin if you'll keep asking what's the purpose what's the purpose to everything that is said to you? What's your criteria for recognising that origin?
In terms of physics motion of energy (which is essentially what we are talking about), continues as a means to evenly distribut energy amungst all matter situated within the universe until is reaches a state of equalibrium, when no matter is able to transfer energy between each other. Where the universe will be therefore stagnant.
If this is the case you left with another question being 'why does the universe need to be stagnant or in equalibrium?'
Maybe in some sense. Let's say that statement is true - motion means for something to go in a specified direction or to change position. Though as I've said:
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Fair statement - essentially when you can not derive any further. Which as you stated is difficult or impossible to identify. So perhaps that's reason to suggest a situation that we are in a closed looped paradox.
If you cannot provide a means to identify it, then we'll have to treat it as impossible, in which case it's time to dismiss your concerns as children's play. You were merely trolling us afterall.
I'll have to read the article before commenting on what they suggest.
Though based on your quote above, if the continuation of motion is the entire purpose of existence then logically it still has to have a starting and ending point or it exists as a close loop paradox where it's begging is derived by its end.
Here one must become spiritual. The Daoist simply say the beginning is the Dao that spirals (not circles) into a wave of creative energy. This would be the equivalent of Bergson's Elan vital.
You're right that if it has a separate beginning and end it is impossible to identify which make my argument mute. Though if you agree it's circular (as in its begging ist started by its own end) then it is theoretically possiable to prove. Eg in the same way that they proved the earth is round
perhaps - though I'm not familiar with Bergson's Vital force but at least you've given me something to go onto ahaha thanks for the discussion non the less @Rich
I don't believe that that's where we've ended up
Proving that the Earth is "round" (ie spherical) is an empirical matter. Proving that an argument is circular is a logical matter. The two aren't proved in the same manner.
Furthermore, there's nothing to be circular in the first place. What is circular? Your question asking what's the purpose of the purpose? Your approach isn't circular, but it's unfruitful because you're starting from the wrong assumptions and therefore asking the wrong questions. You should first determine what kind of questions you should ask from a final purpose. If you're looking for a final purpose, you cannot go around asking what is it's purpose, because you'll end up in an infinite regress (and not only that but if you ask what is its purpose that logically presupposes that it's not a final purpose). Rather you have to change the criteria based on which you're searching for the final purpose of life, because clearly inquiring what's the purpose to each purpose you're presented only leads you to an infinite regress, and is therefore not going to be conducive to your investigation. If you really want to find out what this final purpose is, then you need to adopt a better criteria of truth.
I disagree - A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's expedition's circumnavigation (1519?1522). They physically traveled in the same direction until they inevitably arrived to the same point to which they originatly started.
If you were to conduct the same experiment in terms of the universe you would have to travel in the same linear direction in time (like we are) until you reach the end of existence of the universe or time and space and see if ends completely or in Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián case you arrive back where you started. Whether humans can come up with a way of surviving this experiment is another question.
:s I don't remember we were discussing whether the universe has a spatial or temporal end or not...
We were discussing whether existance was circular or whether it had a beginning and end. Proving this from our our perspective being fourth dimensional (meaning we perceive space and time as changing and moving) relies on this understanding.
The universe is actually stagnant and only made up of space. Time and movement is only a stubborn allusion we hold on to from a 4D perspective.
No we weren't. We were talking about the purpose of life, not whether existence is circular. What the hell does existence being circular even mean?
We agreed earlier that the purpose of life (for arguments sake) was for matter to continually move. If this was true then at some point the universe would be in equilibrium (meaning no energy could move from one place to another) Jensen the end of the universe. Though we decided that the purpose of the universe was that it had to continually be moving and for this to be true then the universe could not have a beginning and an end but would have to be 'circular'. Which means the end the universe is what inevitably cause it to start - meaning it never actually end and just exists in a never ending paradox.
This is speculation. Scientific theories don't cease to be speculation just because they're undertaken by scientists. The truth of the matter is that the so called "end" of the Universe is so distant, that we actually have no clue what it even means physically. Physical laws are useful at predicting things assuming that thing stay the same, but in limit circumstances the laws may be different. There's no way to take this into account in our speculations. We have "models" about what the end of the Universe will be. We won't ever know.
I 100% agree. Though it's fair to say we can only predict anything and everything based on the information and references we currently have. There's no logic in doing it any other way. So is your point that if we can never be certain, then there's no point even trying at all? If so I baffled to why you'd be on this forum.
Or a failure, yes.
Quoting Noble Dust
As opposed to not weak-willed? Strong-willed? Idk what you would call it. We lack the guts.
Quoting Noble Dust
?
Just a brief follow-up to my other post to this topic:
For you, life is without meaning or purpose.
(...except for the things that you like.) :)
It's a statement without any validity or sincerity (or yes, meaning).
But what it does have is fashion.
Homo Sapiens, a social species, is a strongly fashion-driven animal.
Michael Ossipoff
The wave of life, traveling along for the last 3 billion years or so, is its own motivation. In the case of humans, who have the power of despondent nattering about stuff like this, we can decide we have had enough and resign. "The life of all living things" -- life in toto -- however, isn't ours to discontinue.
Ah, so "you" really means "most people." I find complaining about what cannot be changed to be rather tiresome. Condemning the masses for their ignorance, myopia, and credulity on a philosophy forum is merely preaching to the choir and makes you sound smug.
What is the purpose of reproducing? From a biological perspective, it's to create more human beings. Obviously. But let's cut to the chase: What you really want to ask is whether there are any good reasons to reproduce, do you not?
Quoting ThinkingMatt
Jumping off a building.
Sure, but you do realise there's a huge difference between predicting something in a few days, months or years, and an entirely different story in predicting something many billions of years from today right?!
We suck even at predicting the next economic crisis, you think we'll predict the end of the Universe? Give me a break >:O
What works at our tiny timescale (100s of years) may not work at billions of years. The laws of physics could actually change over such timescales.
As for why I'm on this forum, well mostly I'm not here to discuss science, but rather philosophy. I sometimes discuss science, but that's less frequent.
Most people, if questioned closely, probably would agree with Woody Allen: "I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens." Dying is generally a pretty disagreeable experience. Death, once dying is accomplished, is beyond our knowledge. You know this, of course.
Most people live out of habit because that is the easiest way to live. Each of us have a long string of habits -- behaviors, thought routines, that we keep repeating over and over. Without habits, we would have to reinvent the wheel every time we did something. Thank heaven for helpful habits.
Quoting darthbarracuda
No, there isn't -- and that's the way it should be. The verb "live" is the default setting. Deciding to pull the plug is a momentous decision that we dwell on for quite some time (in this forum it is interminable) and with great angst before we reach out, grab the cord, and give it a good hard jerk, and then sic transit gloria whoever.
To be weak-willed is to suggest that the opposite exists. Weak-willed exists in relation to something else. If it's the state of everyone, then it's not specifically weak. So, if the will of humanity is weak, it suggests the idea of a strong will; the strong will that we could achieve; the strong will of a higher being, etc.
So serial killers are sustaining the continuation of life?
Rapists?
Polluters?
Genocidal regimes?
All of those are sustaining the continuation of life?
Firstly what do you mean by "life in toto"?
This statement has no logic - if we as humans have the power to create and take life away then for what reason makes you think we can not discontinue it as a whole?
Correct - If the purpose of reproducing is just a means to continue motion of matter in the universe - why does this require consciousness to do so? It would and could still do this without us.
Quoting Thorongil
Ending life is important component in the continuation of it. E.g say you die. The engergy from your body is pulled apart and broken down by much small organisms as fuel. The energy transferred into these organism eventually becomes the next fuel source for the next living thing. Hence this is how death in life is still a mechanism to continue it.
I agree - all our predictions are very likely to be completely wrong. Though we are essentially a mind, and the purpose of the mind is to understand. If we weren't trying to understand the universe we wouldn't be a mind.
Quoting Agustino
The definition of philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence,
The definition of science is the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world (existence) through observation and experiment.
I don't see a distinction between the two? As I see it science is just a means to test philosophy.
Yes.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
All of life -- the biosphere.
Quoting ThinkingMatt
I think it is logical; you may disagree, but that doesn't make it illogical.
Humans are late arrivals in the biosphere. We were not there at the beginning. We are not in charge of all life now, either. We can not be in charge -- such a responsibility is far beyond our operational capability. We are hardly capable of managing our own wretched affairs. We are capable of creating life like unto ourselves, which is no great credit to us. Rats and flies are also able to create life like unto themselves. Individuals aren't even responsible for their own existence -- their parents are responsible for that. Humans can't take responsibility for their existence until quite a few years after they are born, if then.
We can, one by one, end our own lives. We could, I suppose, try and end ALL life, from the atmosphere into the uppermost layers of the lithosphere, and down to the bottom of the oceans. We could try, but we should really not even think about it. It isn't our responsibility to end all life. That is something we should - just - not - do.
By most people I mean to say the vast majority. Not including those incapable of higher-level abstract thought, young children or the occasional and genuine genius. Psychology doesn't just apply to the "masses" that you seem to have a distaste for. But I don't know maybe you have a good reason for living, but I don't have high expectations if I am to be honest. I don't think you or anyone else has a good reason for living because I do not think there are good reasons for living that aren't dishonest, contrived or just plain dumb.
If you haven't read Tolstoy I highly suggest you do. In A Confession, he explains how he thinks there are four general types of people:
1.) Those who fail to understand the human condition (the ignorant).
2.) Those who understand but focus on maximizing their pleasure (the hedonists).
3.) Those who understand and are able to commit suicide (the strong).
4.) Those who understand and who are unable to commit suicide (the weak).
The minority is definitely in 3.) And personally I would say most people are a combination of 1, 2 and 4.); most people have a vague inkling of their condition but wash their fears away with cheap pleasures. There's a few people who get a little beyond this and try to embrace life or come up with some dumb reason for living but they're usually obnoxious and twat-like.
Also I would like to point out that failing to have any good reason to live does not necessarily mean you have a reason to die. Maybe you don't have a good reason to live or die, but life comes before death so you end up living for a while longer. Or maybe you have a good reason not to die - but that is not an affirmation of life. It is simply what I said earlier, a reason not to die is a reason to kick the can down the road, to procrastinate on suicide.
That is, of course, until you inevitably submerge back under the cultural barrier and forget all about this for a while.
I haven't read anything about him that made me want to read him, to be honest.
Quoting darthbarracuda
These binary distinctions aren't accurate. An uneducated person might understand the human condition better than a philosopher or pastor; a hedonist is more often than not completely unaware of the reality of the human condition; a person who commits suicide has definitely not grasped the entirety of the human condition, and those who have the urge to commit suicide but do not, or attempt to but fail, often have the strongest characters of all. I have no idea where Tolstoy got the idea to create this fallacious set of inaccurate stereotypes.
Quoting darthbarracuda
That can often be true, yes.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Do I strike you that way, then?
Quoting darthbarracuda
It sounds like you place no value on life. I've been there. I'm finding that when I'm in that state, I'm avoiding the steps I could take to rediscover the value that inherently exists for those willing to take the life-long journey. Beauty, for instance, exists whether or not you're willing or able to perceive it. The value of life seems to be related.
People are just doing what they think they are supposed to do, without knowing why.
I read through many posts and read so much advice what to do.
I was suicidal and really didn't know what to do.
I started seeing a psychiatrist and now I'm on medication, because I felt I needed some help. Also I visit a psychologist every week and deal with these issues in talk therapy. Maybe since March I started feeling better even back to my normal self.
But past two weeks, again I started feeling even worse. It started I guess when Chester Bennington committed suicide. I was questiong myself Why would he do it? He had wife, kids, money career etc., and still he did. Then I was like why should then I go on?
Last week close member of my family got diagnosed with cancer. In my head I was confused, I guess depressed and started feeling suicidal again.
That's when I came back here to read through some of the advice I got. I see that there are many threads here that deal with somewhat the same things that I go trough now. People dealing wiht similiar ideas and reasons why to go on. Of course I had to go through those threads and found myself confused even more.
I feel like I'm in a dream and can't wake up.
Deep down I don't want to hurt myself, because I don't want hurt anyone around me, but don't know how to battle these thoughts.
As for my regular day, I still go out, meet friends, play sports, have a great job and people around me. It feels like it just isn't enough. I guess some of you are getting really tired of posts like this, maybe giving the same advice over and over again.
If you think maybe there's some more advice you can give, I'll be glad. I guess that's why I post here. Maybe to talk to someone who went through something similiar or to read what to do.
My long term goal is to achieve mindstate that goes something like - Well I was born, I am alive, so I should live and wait for the death to come by itself.
To really see suicide as something irrational and out of the question. To maybe have some motivation to do something while I'm here, because right know in my head I believe the opposite. This internal conflict of what to do is just bothering my while I do any activity through the day.
Anyways any more advice is greatly appreciated.
Hey rossii,
I know a lot of those feelings, if not all of them. Another musical icon that I respected recently committed suicide, and it shook me up more than I could have anticipated. It elicits a different emotion in you than you've ever felt before. It's the feeling of a theoretical "mentor" who has..."checked out". It leaves you with a feeling of betrayal or disillusionment.
Quoting rossii
It's an endless maze of ideas. It's wise to learn how to pace yourself when you read these things, particularly with regards to the topic of suicide.
Quoting rossii
That's also one of the main reasons that keeps me from committing suicide too.
Quoting rossii
The best advice I can give you is that you're not alone in your feelings, and that there's always a different state of mind available to you, and waiting eagerly for you, than the one you're currently in that is bringing those feelings.
Quoting rossii
There's so much more than waiting for death! There's an entire life in between. You have it in you, this life. It's in you.
I'm in a pretty decent place right now, but the road to recovery from depression is full of ups and downs. Just when you think you've got it beat, some new stress will make you feel like you're back at square one. But if you're doing the right things - seeing a decent therapist, continuing to take part in life, taking care of yourself - you should get steadily better, despite the setbacks.
For me, the most important things for maintaining decent mood are sleep and exercise, but especially proper sleep. Being overtired is too close to the way depression feels, and it seems quite easy for your mind to slip into its old negative thought patterns.
Of course if you kill yourself without a good medical reason (disease or injury resulting in unacceptable loss of life-quality), then your act, itself, is as meaningless and purposeless as it gets. Hardly the thing to do, for someone who doesn't like meaningless and purposelesness.
Also, even if you're an Atheist and Materialist/Physicalist/"Naturalist", you have reason to expect only a bad time as a consequence. Remember Hamlet's.soliloquy
You'll be saying to yourself, "Ok,now what? I've done a difficult quasi-purposeful act, to achieve...what? How am I benefiting from it? What did I get? The loss of opportunity for everything that I like? Congratulations. Actively doing something purposeful to get nothing?" Right about then, you'll be feeling pretty stupid...an understatement.
You'll be in a state more depressing,and fully purposeless, meaningess and hopeless, than any in life--but now there will be no relief. And one difference will be that now there won't be anything that you can do about it. Another difference will be that you can thank only yourself for it.
Maybe you were expecting instant nonexistence, as if you'd never been born, like flipping a computer's off-switch? Death at least usually isn't instantaneous, and isn't quite like that. Hamlet had a point.
Quoting rossii
Sometimes, for actions, "Why, to gain what?" is a better question than "Why not?"
The older you get, the more people you know will die.Older family-members, older relatives, older media-stars. It's just an expected fact of life.
If you think maybe there's some more advice you can give, I'll be glad. I guess that's why I post here. Maybe to talk to someone who went through something similiar or to read what to do.
Exactly. You know that, and maybe confirmation of what has already occurred to you is helpful.
Even if you don't believe that you were born because you wanted or needed life, you still know that, having been born, you now do. This life might end before you're ready to be done, but you won't have to take credit for that.
What else?
What else? You're here to do, not to think about it and justify it. Who says it has to be justifiable.
Who says there has to be meaning and purpose? An Eastern traditions says that life is for "Lila", translated as "Play". There needn't be any meaning or purpose than that.
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, because right know in my head I believe the opposite. This internal conflict of what to do is just bothering me while I do any activity through the day.
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You're overthinking life, as if you have a need or obligation to justify it.
Michael Ossipoff
You didn't say what you'd be wanting to escape from? Suffering?
You won't know what suffering is until you commit suicide (without a good medical reason).
...intensified, hopeless suffering, to the point of outright nightmare.
Maybe you think you can make it as if you weren't born (What would that even mean?)
No, you were born, and you can't change that.
You'd be acting on a philosophical fallacy.
What's that? You say that it will be brief, or at least temporary?
I can't guarantee what your sense of time will be like, during the stages of shutdown during death.
You might not remember that there's such a thing as time. You might not have any sense that the nightmare can end..
But you'll likely have a sense that something really bad has happened, by your agency, and that you're in a nightmare.
Will you forget about the nightmare before the shutdown is complete? I can't guarantee it.
Michael Ossipoff
What I mean was:
Will the nightmare end before the shutdown is complete? I can't guarantee that.
You might say, "No problem, it's over after shutdown."
But you never experience "after shutdown". Only your survivors experience that time.
What do you experience?
By the time full shutdown is near, you don't experience time, and you have no idea that there ever was such a thing as time. You've reached timelessness.
Yes, the body will shut down, but you don't know that, because you have no idea that there ever was one anyway,
I suggest that, therefore, shutdown doesn't matter to you at that point, and that, for you, nothing changes due to shutdown, because you've already arrived at timelessness. The body quits, and of course your experience ends, but you don't know about that.
Now, obviously it would make a difference, whether or not your nightmare ends before shutdown. But I doubt that anyone could guarantee that it would. Will you be dominated, right to the end, by a dread sense that something really bad has happened?
Michael Ossipoff
I keep reminding myself in my head that suicide is irrational thing to do, but somehow I just don't believe it (even though I want to). How can I convince myself that I should go on? How can I finally start thinking with my own head and not become more depressed everytime I read through threads here that deal with topic of suicide (especially ones that try to convince you that life is meaningless, you're going to die anyway so why wait just kill yourself and be over with it).
I feel like I need to resolve this internal conflict that is inside me - I enjoy many things in life, find them satisfying - on the other hand these threads here convince me it is meaningless and it is not enough to continue my life.
If you read the confessions to its end you will find that Tolstoy comes to quite a different conclusion to that which he starts out with. So by the end of the book he proably strongly objects to the 4 types of people binary. However his salvation is in God, so treat it as you may. I certainly found the book worth while reading along side Albert Camus the myth of sisyphus. Both this books a generally dismissed by philosophers, but i find them to be of great value because they teach us, each in its own way, reasons for living. Reasons to continue living in this absurd world. Without a reason to live the rest of philosophy seesm to fall away, which is probably why Camus said that there is only one serious philosophical question, suicide.