Actually, if we're going with a cake metaphor - which, tip of the hat to you Stairc, I really like this metaphor - the more analogous question would be, "What's the point of eating a cake if afterward it's gone?"
Because that's what is being argued. At the end of life, it's gone, so why live it? At the end of cake, it's gone, so what's the point of eating it?
The presumption here is the end result is the sole determinant of value, that the end state defines everything that came before it. But this misses the whole point of cake, and also how eating works. Yes, after you eat the cake, you have no more cake, but just because the cake is no more doesn't mean it never was. There was a cake, and through each bite you took of cake, you experienced the cake through the process of eating the cake.
And indeed, the process of eating a cake not only does not deprive a cake of value, it gives the cake value. It determines the cake's value. Because a cake that simply goes stale, rots, and decomposes has no value. A cake never eaten is a cake that is wasted. Only a cake that is eaten truly has lasting value. A cake that isn't yet eaten can have value, but only in its capacity to be eaten. Even the prettiest cake is only valuable in its potential to be enjoyed, in the idea that it will eventually wind up eaten. Whereas cake that is stale and inedible has no value, and is said to be wasted.
Thus, the value of the cake is in the value of the experience of eating it.
Such is life. The value of life is in the experience of living it.
And on a side note I would argue that immortality is a curse and not something to strive for.
Why?
Setting aside the potential disasters such as overpopulation that would be caused with today's technology if all people everywhere simply didn't die, what makes immortality a curse?
Actually, if we're going with a cake metaphor - which, tip of the hat to you Stairc, I really like this metaphor - the more analogous question would be, "What's the point of eating a cake if afterward it's gone?"
Because that's what is being argued. At the end of life, it's gone, so why live it? At the end of cake, it's gone, so what's the point of eating it?
The presumption here is the end result is the sole determinant of value, that the end state defines everything that came before it. But this misses the whole point of cake, and also how eating works. Yes, after you eat the cake, you have no more cake, but just because the cake is no more doesn't mean it never was. There was a cake, and through each bite you took of cake, you experienced the cake through the process of eating the cake.
And indeed, the process of eating a cake not only does not deprive a cake of value, it gives the cake value. It determines the cake's value. Because a cake that simply goes stale, rots, and decomposes has no value. A cake never eaten is a cake that is wasted. Only a cake that is eaten truly has lasting value. A cake that isn't yet eaten can have value, but only in its capacity to be eaten. Even the prettiest cake is only valuable in its potential to be enjoyed, in the idea that it will eventually wind up eaten. Whereas cake that is stale and inedible has no value, and is said to be wasted.
Thus, the value of the cake is in the value of the experience of eating it.
Such is life. The value of life is in the experience of living it.
So you're saying that you can't eat your cake and have it too, but there's no point to an uneaten cake, besides to be eaten? I like this metaphor a lot.
To extend the point a bit, one could say that the purpose of life is to eat the most appealing cake, be it the most flavorful or the most in line with the flavors you desire to consume. And if one doesn't care for a more usual cake, then they can work to make their cake more exciting to themselves. Or am I overdoing the metaphor?
I could philosophize a more nuanced and defensible argument, but here's a simple point:
If life is so miserable that death seems superior, you're doing it wrong.
That could not be a more incorrect statement. That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around. I think it's the fear of death that keeps us from choosing the alternative to living, not to mention how many religions punish suicide.
As for the cake, it can be argued that there is no point to eating it just like there is no point to making it. It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology. Eating the cake doesn't give it value either, the very act of consumption does not give value. Whether it goes bad or remains stale, it still has no value.
Any value you believe to be given is given by you alone. Nothing else GIVES it value. Not the experiences, not the taste, but you. Those other factors simply are. They are little more than sensory data taken in by you, and you determine whether they have value to you.
So NO. The value of life is what you assign to it and nothing else.
That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around.
In sentence one, you deny the reality of objective metrics for life. In sentence two, you claim that our ancestors' lives were worse than ours according to some metric. There seems to be a contradiction here. How, exactly, were our ancestors worse off? If our ancestors were worse off, doesn't that imply that we're better off? If we're better off, might our descendants someday achieve a best, or at least continue to make progress towards it? And conversely, if there are no objective metrics, how can our ancestors have been worse off? If they weren't any worse off, what is there to explain about their lives and decisions?
It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology.
Whence "merely"? What is insufficient about biology (or anything else on the table) as an external source of value? What possible external source of value would be sufficient? When you look for external sources of value, what are you expecting to find and not finding? And why are your expectations where they are? Could it be those expectations that are the trouble? And if there are no external sources of value, if value really does come from the self, so what? Is internally-sourced value less real or less valuable than externally-sourced value? If so, how so? If not, how is it not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question?
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I could philosophize a more nuanced and defensible argument, but here's a simple point:
If life is so miserable that death seems superior, you're doing it wrong.
That could not be a more incorrect statement. That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around. I think it's the fear of death that keeps us from choosing the alternative to living, not to mention how many religions punish suicide.
As for the cake, it can be argued that there is no point to eating it just like there is no point to making it. It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology. Eating the cake doesn't give it value either, the very act of consumption does not give value. Whether it goes bad or remains stale, it still has no value.
Any value you believe to be given is given by you alone. Nothing else GIVES it value. Not the experiences, not the taste, but you. Those other factors simply are. They are little more than sensory data taken in by you, and you determine whether they have value to you.
So NO. The value of life is what you assign to it and nothing else.
Your problem here is treating humans as fully conscious and free willed beings, when in fact most of who we are and much of what we do is not at all under our control. Case in point, you can't simply decide not to care. We are all innately afraid of death and innately drawn to value life. We wouldn't survive very well as a species if we didn't. Yes, obviously this isn't absolute, but there's nothing to gain trying to go against it or letting yourself drift away from it, only pain and suffering before you die. Yes, sometimes life can be pretty close to death, but that's only the reason why you have to work to make life enjoyable. You don't have anything else.
That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around.
In sentence one, you deny the reality of objective metrics for life. In sentence two, you claim that our ancestors' lives were worse than ours according to some metric. There seems to be a contradiction here. How, exactly, were our ancestors worse off? If our ancestors were worse off, doesn't that imply that we're better off? If we're better off, might our descendants someday achieve a best, or at least continue to make progress towards it? And conversely, if there are no objective metrics, how can our ancestors have been worse off? If they weren't any worse off, what is there to explain about their lives and decisions?
It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology.
Whence "merely"? What is insufficient about biology (or anything else on the table) as an external source of value? What possible external source of value would be sufficient? When you look for external sources of value, what are you expecting to find and not finding? And why are your expectations where they are? Could it be those expectations that are the trouble? And if there are no external sources of value, if value really does come from the self, so what? Is internally-sourced value less real or less valuable than externally-sourced value? If so, how so? If not, how is it not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question?
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point. As for saying one is doing something "wrong" if they get to the point of choosing life over death, that ignores all the factors that come into play that aren't even of their own doing.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational. It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god. One could say it is a fabrication of the mind to fool oneself into believing life to be worth living.
Also I'm pretty certain you can decide not to care, plenty of people already do and some even have died as a result. Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better". You have death and life, and to some death is more appealing. They don't want to struggling fruitlessly because of the recycled sayings of "working to make life worth it". That struggle is part of the reason why they wish to die. What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point.
I think if you're going to ask questions, you should be prepared to answer them as well. Try answering mine. You may find that they address your point after all. I mean, just for starters, I very explicitly suggested an answer to your original question using the words "how is this not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question", so I'm quite unperturbed by complaints that I didn't do that, and rather more perturbed by the implication that you didn't read it.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational.
If the value of something is what you assign to it, how is it rational to expect the value to be in the thing before you've assigned value to it? If I established that books are written by human authors, and then immediately afterwards claimed that an author should only write a book if it has already been written by some nonhuman means, would that make any sense to you?
It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god.
What about believing in the existence of belief? Since the act of valuing is what generates value, and the act of believing is what generates belief, but the act of believing in God doesn't generate God, doesn't belief seem like a better analogy here than God?
Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better".
How is it even logically possible for you to gain anything from dying when dying is by definition the event after which there is no "you" to gain or lose or indeed possess any properties whatsoever? Can you improve a car's performance by destroying the car?
I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point.
I think if you're going to ask questions, you should be prepared to answer them as well. Try answering mine. You may find that they address your point after all. I mean, just for starters, I very explicitly suggested an answer to your original question using the words "how is this not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question", so I'm quite unperturbed by complaints that I didn't do that, and rather more perturbed by the implication that you didn't read it.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational.
If the value of something is what you assign to it, how is it rational to expect the value to be in the thing before you've assigned value to it? If I established that books are written by human authors, and then immediately afterwards claimed that an author should only write a book if it has already been written by some nonhuman means, would that make any sense to you?
It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god.
What about believing in the existence of belief? Since the act of valuing is what generates value, and the act of believing is what generates belief, but the act of believing in God doesn't generate God, doesn't belief seem like a better analogy here than God?
Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better".
How is it even logically possible for you to gain anything from dying when dying is by definition the event after which there is no "you" to gain or lose or indeed possess any properties whatsoever? Can you improve a car's performance by destroying the car?
What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
What's the point of avoiding struggle? How can the end of hardship have any value if there is no such thing as value?
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
Yes it is logically possible for you to gain something by dying, by losing what was causing you pain and suffering in life. By losing everything, even "you", you gain an end to your suffering and pain. But your response fails to address the promises of those who say things will get better if they live. Not to mention your car analogy falls flat since a car does not feel pain, and a car has no ability to terminate it's existence.
The rest of your questions are not relevant to my original point.
Hmm, for me this is a wonderful world. So I want to live. Our group is going to have a cosplay photoshoot in March, and other fun activities planned as well. Can't do those if I'm dead. ^___^
Oh, and the mall near my house has just started doing Modern FNM.. would probably get trounced on the first time attending.. but still I'm excited to try my Affinity deck there.
No one would take care of my pet cat if I'm dead.
I want to help my parents manage our family business. I like to give them some things, to thank them for all the things they've done for me. Can't do that if I'm dead.
And other things too many to mention. This is life is full of responsibilities. It's not fun all the time, but still I'm enjoying life and want to continue living. *_____*
I mean, if life is about preventing suffering as much as possible
You never answered my question regarding this statement. What makes you think this is what life "is about?" Please clarify this.
Considering that every form of life does this in some manner or another it would be reasonable to say that is that aim of life.
I believe you have this exactly backwards. Humans and other animals don't behave in ways to specifically reduce hardship or suffering; they act in ways to increase happiness (or pleasure, or joy, or etc). Now, acting to cause absence of hardship will often appear to be a thing, but reducing hardship is actually just increasing happiness.
A dead organism doesn't have any additional hardship, it's true, but it also has no happiness. So being dead isn't achieving the goal, it's just avoiding it.
Positive suffering is the same as negative happiness; indeed it is plausible that suffering, like cold, doesn't exist; it is just the experience of the lack of its opposite.
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
Doesn't this kind of give up the game? If you're taking the things that all of life strives for as things that we ought to strive for, then what does all of life strive for more than life itself? Do you know what hardship organisms will willingly suffer to stay alive? Have you ever seen a trapped animal gnaw off its own limb rather than die in the trap?
And even if you're not impressed by such anecdotes, have you given a thought to the underlying evolutionary theory? Does it make any scientific sense at all for organisms' functions to be aimed at avoiding hardship, as opposed to sustaining life? What exactly is the selection pressure for that supposed to be? And isn't hardship itself just another one of those functions? Where do you think the sensations of pain and suffering come from, if not evolved features of your nervous system responding to certain environmental stimuli? So why do you think those features evolved? If all life is striving to avoid hardship, wouldn't the best way to do that be never evolving hardship in the first place? But since these features did evolve, is it possible that they evolved because they help keep us alive? Could it be that we feel pain as a signal to avoid dangerous things that might injure or kill us? And if so, wouldn't dying as a response to pain be completely missing the point?
Yes it is logically possible for you to gain something by dying, by losing what was causing you pain and suffering in life. By losing everything, even "you", you gain an end to your suffering and pain.
But there is no "you", so who exactly is gaining? If there's nobody to gain, then how can there be any gain? What logic is there in holding simultaneously that "X has property Y" and "X does not exist"? How can both be true?
Considering that every form of life does this in some manner or another it would be reasonable to say that is that aim of life.
No it isn't reasonable to say that.
Yes, all lifeforms on this planet do seek to avoid suffering - the ones that have the capacity to suffer, at any rate - but Blinking Spirit has demonstrated that such lifeforms also take great pains, through often extraordinary measures, to remain alive. If you're arguing death to be a cessation of suffering, then by your own logic, the aim of life would definitely not be to prevent suffering as much as possible, since every single lifeform on the planet seems to take great pains to keep itself from dying. In fact, just about every life process seems to be geared toward staving off death. So by your logic, life would be "about" not dying.
But the thing is, your logic isn't valid, for just because lifeforms tend to do something doesn't mean that is what life "is about." Every form of life engages in respiration in some manner or another, that doesn't necessarily mean breathing is what life is about.
So I ask again:
I mean, if life is about preventing suffering as much as possible
Why hasten it? It's inevitable, it will happen one way or the other.
As with all philosophical questions, there are no right answers. But I for myself find the most value in Highroller's statement.
Or put another way: The original thread title could very well be 'Why try to die, if you will die anyway?' There is no point to rush, death will come.
Yes, your actions don't matter on a cosmic scale. Yes, except for the people you know your death will change nothing and even for most people who know you your death will not change their life significantly. Yes, no matter how important you are, at some point, all the memory of you will be nothing more than dust. Put in another way: You can't screw up that bad. At some point you will die and give the world another 10000 years or so and your mistakes won't matter anymore. Your life is fool-proof.
There is that one quote in 'Rick and Morty' that is rather famous and in the same spirit: 'Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We're all going to die. Come watch TV.'
But there is another part to my point of you: Suicide is always the easy way! Any idiot can go into the kitchen and slit his/her/tigerself throat with a kitchen knife. The hard way is to live and to struggle, to learn and to grow! Not because you're afraid to die, but because you take it upon you to live. Because you choose it that way! And that in itself is meaningful.
I have heard these answers before but they don't address the issue. Death seems logical since it is the end of suffering and one doesn't have to worry about trying to live a meaningful life (which is it's own sort of suffering we impose on ourselves). Why try to gamble that your life might be worth living in the future when the certainty of death is close? You can end up waiting for something that never comes. It just does not make sense. But I also get that the majority who say life is worth living are probably in a state where they haven't really endured much at all or haven't thought about why they continue to live when all that they are will eventually be forgotten.
First of all, to say that the people who are saying that life is worth living are saying this because they have never actually suffered is incorrect.
Which brings us to a key point: suicidal depression is not a state of enlightenment. It's a life-threatening condition of severe emotional pain and numbness that should to be addressed by a mental health professional.
But as to the rest of the paragraph, you're not making any sense. You're saying that the risk is one may never find meaning in one's existence. So, we can gather from this that you feel it's bad to never feel that one's life has meaning. Your proposed solution is to kill oneself, and thereby ensure that one never finds any meaning in one's life.
That makes no sense. If you're scared of dying without ever finding meaning in your life, how does dying as quickly as possible help solve this problem? Answer: it doesn't.
I have heard these answers before but they don't address the issue. Death seems logical since it is the end of suffering and one doesn't have to worry about trying to live a meaningful life (which is it's own sort of suffering we impose on ourselves). Why try to gamble that your life might be worth living in the future when the certainty of death is close? You can end up waiting for something that never comes. It just does not make sense. But I also get that the majority who say life is worth living are probably in a state where they haven't really endured much at all or haven't thought about why they continue to live when all that they are will eventually be forgotten.
First of all, to say that the people who are saying that life is worth living are saying this because they have never actually suffered is incorrect.
Which brings us to a key point: suicidal depression is not a state of enlightenment. It's a life-threatening condition of severe emotional pain and numbness that should to be addressed by a mental health professional.
But as to the rest of the paragraph, you're not making any sense. You're saying that the risk is one may never find meaning in one's existence. So, we can gather from this that you feel it's bad to never feel that one's life has meaning. Your proposed solution is to kill oneself, and thereby ensure that one never finds any meaning in one's life.
That makes no sense. If you're scared of dying without ever finding meaning in your life, how does dying as quickly as possible help solve this problem? Answer: it doesn't.
Answer: it does. Because it takes away the problem of finding meaning in life and all the suffering that comes with it. It also helps to remove any pain you main be enduring in your existence. In short I'm saying it puts an end to the guessing game and all the suffering that brings.
You say that life forms strive to survive, but they don't have the intelligence humans so and therefor don't question why they should continue to survive. They just act.
And contrary to what most might think, I think depression is a more honest view of reality than that peddled by the genera population. It strips away the rose colored glasses. But people through the ages have celebrated life and demonized death for no real good reason than simple fear of the unknown.
I can also easily just say how to you know that life isn't about avoiding suffering? Life forms do their best to avoid suffering and death. That seems to be what life is. Death is the ultimate end to suffering, but animals don't seem to have the intellect to understand that. He also makes the mistake of life being some kind of conscious being with and intent and purpose. It's also rather telling that humans are the only ones on the planet with this level of intelligence and they contemplate suicide. That punches a large hole in that "life struggling to live" theory.
And Blinking Spirit just asks irrelevant questions instead of answering the topic I mentioned. Evolution has no purpose, it merely acts. It has no direction. Just because that's what biology doesn't doesn't mean that's what should be.
Why hasten it? It's inevitable, it will happen one way or the other.
As with all philosophical questions, there are no right answers. But I for myself find the most value in Highroller's statement.
Or put another way: The original thread title could very well be 'Why try to die, if you will die anyway?' There is no point to rush, death will come.
Yes, your actions don't matter on a cosmic scale. Yes, except for the people you know your death will change nothing and even for most people who know you your death will not change their life significantly. Yes, no matter how important you are, at some point, all the memory of you will be nothing more than dust. Put in another way: You can't screw up that bad. At some point you will die and give the world another 10000 years or so and your mistakes won't matter anymore. Your life is fool-proof.
There is that one quote in 'Rick and Morty' that is rather famous and in the same spirit: 'Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We're all going to die. Come watch TV.'
But there is another part to my point of you: Suicide is always the easy way! Any idiot can go into the kitchen and slit his/her/tigerself throat with a kitchen knife. The hard way is to live and to struggle, to learn and to grow! Not because you're afraid to die, but because you take it upon you to live. Because you choose it that way! And that in itself is meaningful.
Wrong, wrong, and absolutely unequivocally wrong. Suicide is the hardest thing to accomplish, as it requires one to bypass several psychological defenses that keep you alive (which most take for granted). Suicide being depicted as cowardly just showcases the fear of those scared of death so they try to paint living as being brave even though they are just succumbing to their biological drive to live. They clearly don't understand suicide.
Answer: it does. Because it takes away the problem of finding meaning in life
If the problem is finding meaning in one's life, then the solution should be to make effort toward finding meaning in one's life. Suicide prevents this. Therefore, suicide is not a solution to one's problems.
And contrary to what most might think, I think depression is a more honest view of reality than that peddled by the genera population.
If you are arguing that depression, a crippling mental state born out of a person being so emotionally numb or in such pain that the person's ability to live his/her life is impaired, is born out rationality, you are completely mistaken.
But people through the ages have celebrated life and demonized death for no real good reason than simple fear of the unknown.
If we should not act out of simple fear of the unknown, then you have invalidated your argument for suicide. You have stated here:
I have heard these answers before but they don't address the issue. Death seems logical since it is the end of suffering and one doesn't have to worry about trying to live a meaningful life (which is it's own sort of suffering we impose on ourselves). Why try to gamble that your life might be worth living in the future when the certainty of death is close? You can end up waiting for something that never comes.
So, in other words, simple fear of the unknown.
You are contradicting yourself.
I can also easily just say how to you know that life isn't about avoiding suffering? Life forms do their best to avoid suffering and death. That seems to be what life is.
I mean, if life is about preventing suffering as much as possible
You never answered my question regarding this statement. What makes you think this is what life "is about?" Please clarify this.
Considering that every form of life does this in some manner or another it would be reasonable to say that is that aim of life.
Yet, now you're arguing it's reasonable.
You are faulting Lithl's basis for saying something and then saying something with the exact same reasoning.
Death is the ultimate end to suffering, but animals don't seem to have the intellect to understand that.
Yet humans do and the vast, vast, vast majority choose otherwise.
It's also rather telling that humans are the only ones on the planet with this level of intelligence and they contemplate suicide. That punches a large hole in that "life struggling to live" theory.
And yet...
Suicide is the hardest thing to accomplish, as it requires one to bypass several psychological defenses that keep you alive (which most take for granted)
Even suicidal people struggle to live.
You have contradicted yourself once more.
And Blinking Spirit just asks irrelevant questions instead of answering the topic I mentioned.
His questions are not irrelevant, and he's asking them to expose the flaws in your argument.
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
This is massively ill-informed. There are few things ALL life strive for and the main one usually involves purposely putting oneself through hardship and suffering(procreation if you couldn't figure it out).
So now that we've established that avoiding suffering can't be the purpose of life; with it probably being procreation. The point of stalling the inevitable is most likely so that you can procreate as much as possible. That was simpler and more obvious that I expected.
Death is the ultimate end to suffering, but animals don't seem to have the intellect to understand that. He also makes the mistake of life being some kind of conscious being with and intent and purpose. It's also rather telling that humans are the only ones on the planet with this level of intelligence and they contemplate suicide. That punches a large hole in that "life struggling to live" theory.
Are you asserting that animals do not commit suicide? Because that's absolutely false. Cows have thrown themselves off cliffs, dogs have drowned themselves, and even pea aphids can turn the food they've eaten into a chemical bomb (killing themselves in the process).
Heck, the animal actor that was primarily used for the part of the title character in Flipper drowned herself in front of her trainer.
Because that's what is being argued. At the end of life, it's gone, so why live it? At the end of cake, it's gone, so what's the point of eating it?
The presumption here is the end result is the sole determinant of value, that the end state defines everything that came before it. But this misses the whole point of cake, and also how eating works. Yes, after you eat the cake, you have no more cake, but just because the cake is no more doesn't mean it never was. There was a cake, and through each bite you took of cake, you experienced the cake through the process of eating the cake.
And indeed, the process of eating a cake not only does not deprive a cake of value, it gives the cake value. It determines the cake's value. Because a cake that simply goes stale, rots, and decomposes has no value. A cake never eaten is a cake that is wasted. Only a cake that is eaten truly has lasting value. A cake that isn't yet eaten can have value, but only in its capacity to be eaten. Even the prettiest cake is only valuable in its potential to be enjoyed, in the idea that it will eventually wind up eaten. Whereas cake that is stale and inedible has no value, and is said to be wasted.
Thus, the value of the cake is in the value of the experience of eating it.
Such is life. The value of life is in the experience of living it.
If life is so miserable that death seems superior, you're doing it wrong.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
Setting aside the potential disasters such as overpopulation that would be caused with today's technology if all people everywhere simply didn't die, what makes immortality a curse?
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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So you're saying that you can't eat your cake and have it too, but there's no point to an uneaten cake, besides to be eaten? I like this metaphor a lot.
To extend the point a bit, one could say that the purpose of life is to eat the most appealing cake, be it the most flavorful or the most in line with the flavors you desire to consume. And if one doesn't care for a more usual cake, then they can work to make their cake more exciting to themselves. Or am I overdoing the metaphor?
That could not be a more incorrect statement. That implies there is an objectively "best" way to live, which there isn't. It also doesn't explain how despite how much worse off our ancestors were they still decided to stick around. I think it's the fear of death that keeps us from choosing the alternative to living, not to mention how many religions punish suicide.
As for the cake, it can be argued that there is no point to eating it just like there is no point to making it. It's assuming life has an inherent value by living it when it really does not. It simply is. Living it does not give it value, it's merely acting according to biology. Eating the cake doesn't give it value either, the very act of consumption does not give value. Whether it goes bad or remains stale, it still has no value.
Any value you believe to be given is given by you alone. Nothing else GIVES it value. Not the experiences, not the taste, but you. Those other factors simply are. They are little more than sensory data taken in by you, and you determine whether they have value to you.
So NO. The value of life is what you assign to it and nothing else.
Whence "merely"? What is insufficient about biology (or anything else on the table) as an external source of value? What possible external source of value would be sufficient? When you look for external sources of value, what are you expecting to find and not finding? And why are your expectations where they are? Could it be those expectations that are the trouble? And if there are no external sources of value, if value really does come from the self, so what? Is internally-sourced value less real or less valuable than externally-sourced value? If so, how so? If not, how is it not a perfectly sufficient answer to your original question?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Your problem here is treating humans as fully conscious and free willed beings, when in fact most of who we are and much of what we do is not at all under our control. Case in point, you can't simply decide not to care. We are all innately afraid of death and innately drawn to value life. We wouldn't survive very well as a species if we didn't. Yes, obviously this isn't absolute, but there's nothing to gain trying to go against it or letting yourself drift away from it, only pain and suffering before you die. Yes, sometimes life can be pretty close to death, but that's only the reason why you have to work to make life enjoyable. You don't have anything else.
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I would prefer answers rather than a series of questions that don't address my point. As for saying one is doing something "wrong" if they get to the point of choosing life over death, that ignores all the factors that come into play that aren't even of their own doing.
Giving something value which has no value in itself is irrational. It's about the same thing as believing in the existence of god. One could say it is a fabrication of the mind to fool oneself into believing life to be worth living.
Also I'm pretty certain you can decide not to care, plenty of people already do and some even have died as a result. Based on their view you have much to gain from dying since you aren't burdened by hope or suffering or the empty promises that it will "get better". You have death and life, and to some death is more appealing. They don't want to struggling fruitlessly because of the recycled sayings of "working to make life worth it". That struggle is part of the reason why they wish to die. What's the point of living if everything you do is a struggle?
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If the value of something is what you assign to it, how is it rational to expect the value to be in the thing before you've assigned value to it? If I established that books are written by human authors, and then immediately afterwards claimed that an author should only write a book if it has already been written by some nonhuman means, would that make any sense to you?
What about believing in the existence of belief? Since the act of valuing is what generates value, and the act of believing is what generates belief, but the act of believing in God doesn't generate God, doesn't belief seem like a better analogy here than God?
How is it even logically possible for you to gain anything from dying when dying is by definition the event after which there is no "you" to gain or lose or indeed possess any properties whatsoever? Can you improve a car's performance by destroying the car?
What's the point of avoiding struggle? How can the end of hardship have any value if there is no such thing as value?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Considering that every form of life does this in some manner or another it would be reasonable to say that is that aim of life.
Whether the end of hardship has value or not, it is still something that all of life seems to strive for. Most organisms have some function or another that is used to avoid hardship.
Yes it is logically possible for you to gain something by dying, by losing what was causing you pain and suffering in life. By losing everything, even "you", you gain an end to your suffering and pain. But your response fails to address the promises of those who say things will get better if they live. Not to mention your car analogy falls flat since a car does not feel pain, and a car has no ability to terminate it's existence.
The rest of your questions are not relevant to my original point.
Oh, and the mall near my house has just started doing Modern FNM.. would probably get trounced on the first time attending.. but still I'm excited to try my Affinity deck there.
No one would take care of my pet cat if I'm dead.
I want to help my parents manage our family business. I like to give them some things, to thank them for all the things they've done for me. Can't do that if I'm dead.
And other things too many to mention. This is life is full of responsibilities. It's not fun all the time, but still I'm enjoying life and want to continue living. *_____*
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I believe you have this exactly backwards. Humans and other animals don't behave in ways to specifically reduce hardship or suffering; they act in ways to increase happiness (or pleasure, or joy, or etc). Now, acting to cause absence of hardship will often appear to be a thing, but reducing hardship is actually just increasing happiness.
A dead organism doesn't have any additional hardship, it's true, but it also has no happiness. So being dead isn't achieving the goal, it's just avoiding it.
Positive suffering is the same as negative happiness; indeed it is plausible that suffering, like cold, doesn't exist; it is just the experience of the lack of its opposite.
And even if you're not impressed by such anecdotes, have you given a thought to the underlying evolutionary theory? Does it make any scientific sense at all for organisms' functions to be aimed at avoiding hardship, as opposed to sustaining life? What exactly is the selection pressure for that supposed to be? And isn't hardship itself just another one of those functions? Where do you think the sensations of pain and suffering come from, if not evolved features of your nervous system responding to certain environmental stimuli? So why do you think those features evolved? If all life is striving to avoid hardship, wouldn't the best way to do that be never evolving hardship in the first place? But since these features did evolve, is it possible that they evolved because they help keep us alive? Could it be that we feel pain as a signal to avoid dangerous things that might injure or kill us? And if so, wouldn't dying as a response to pain be completely missing the point?
But there is no "you", so who exactly is gaining? If there's nobody to gain, then how can there be any gain? What logic is there in holding simultaneously that "X has property Y" and "X does not exist"? How can both be true?
Why do I need to address promises I haven't made?
Have you considered the possibility that pain might map to a different property in the analogy, one which the car does possess?
You don't think questions about what value is and where it comes from are relevant to your point that life allegedly has no value?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yes, all lifeforms on this planet do seek to avoid suffering - the ones that have the capacity to suffer, at any rate - but Blinking Spirit has demonstrated that such lifeforms also take great pains, through often extraordinary measures, to remain alive. If you're arguing death to be a cessation of suffering, then by your own logic, the aim of life would definitely not be to prevent suffering as much as possible, since every single lifeform on the planet seems to take great pains to keep itself from dying. In fact, just about every life process seems to be geared toward staving off death. So by your logic, life would be "about" not dying.
But the thing is, your logic isn't valid, for just because lifeforms tend to do something doesn't mean that is what life "is about." Every form of life engages in respiration in some manner or another, that doesn't necessarily mean breathing is what life is about.
So I ask again:
what makes you think this is what life is about?
As with all philosophical questions, there are no right answers. But I for myself find the most value in Highroller's statement.
Or put another way: The original thread title could very well be 'Why try to die, if you will die anyway?' There is no point to rush, death will come.
Yes, your actions don't matter on a cosmic scale. Yes, except for the people you know your death will change nothing and even for most people who know you your death will not change their life significantly. Yes, no matter how important you are, at some point, all the memory of you will be nothing more than dust. Put in another way: You can't screw up that bad. At some point you will die and give the world another 10000 years or so and your mistakes won't matter anymore. Your life is fool-proof.
There is that one quote in 'Rick and Morty' that is rather famous and in the same spirit: 'Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We're all going to die. Come watch TV.'
But there is another part to my point of you: Suicide is always the easy way! Any idiot can go into the kitchen and slit his/her/tigerself throat with a kitchen knife. The hard way is to live and to struggle, to learn and to grow! Not because you're afraid to die, but because you take it upon you to live. Because you choose it that way! And that in itself is meaningful.
Which brings us to a key point: suicidal depression is not a state of enlightenment. It's a life-threatening condition of severe emotional pain and numbness that should to be addressed by a mental health professional.
But as to the rest of the paragraph, you're not making any sense. You're saying that the risk is one may never find meaning in one's existence. So, we can gather from this that you feel it's bad to never feel that one's life has meaning. Your proposed solution is to kill oneself, and thereby ensure that one never finds any meaning in one's life.
That makes no sense. If you're scared of dying without ever finding meaning in your life, how does dying as quickly as possible help solve this problem? Answer: it doesn't.
Answer: it does. Because it takes away the problem of finding meaning in life and all the suffering that comes with it. It also helps to remove any pain you main be enduring in your existence. In short I'm saying it puts an end to the guessing game and all the suffering that brings.
You say that life forms strive to survive, but they don't have the intelligence humans so and therefor don't question why they should continue to survive. They just act.
And contrary to what most might think, I think depression is a more honest view of reality than that peddled by the genera population. It strips away the rose colored glasses. But people through the ages have celebrated life and demonized death for no real good reason than simple fear of the unknown.
I can also easily just say how to you know that life isn't about avoiding suffering? Life forms do their best to avoid suffering and death. That seems to be what life is. Death is the ultimate end to suffering, but animals don't seem to have the intellect to understand that. He also makes the mistake of life being some kind of conscious being with and intent and purpose. It's also rather telling that humans are the only ones on the planet with this level of intelligence and they contemplate suicide. That punches a large hole in that "life struggling to live" theory.
And Blinking Spirit just asks irrelevant questions instead of answering the topic I mentioned. Evolution has no purpose, it merely acts. It has no direction. Just because that's what biology doesn't doesn't mean that's what should be.
Wrong, wrong, and absolutely unequivocally wrong. Suicide is the hardest thing to accomplish, as it requires one to bypass several psychological defenses that keep you alive (which most take for granted). Suicide being depicted as cowardly just showcases the fear of those scared of death so they try to paint living as being brave even though they are just succumbing to their biological drive to live. They clearly don't understand suicide.
If you are arguing that depression, a crippling mental state born out of a person being so emotionally numb or in such pain that the person's ability to live his/her life is impaired, is born out rationality, you are completely mistaken.
If we should not act out of simple fear of the unknown, then you have invalidated your argument for suicide. You have stated here:
So, in other words, simple fear of the unknown.
You are contradicting yourself.
You are contradicting yourself. Notice:
Here, you argue that just because life does a thing, it does not mean that thing is life's point or purpose.
And yet...
Yet, now you're arguing it's reasonable.
You are faulting Lithl's basis for saying something and then saying something with the exact same reasoning.
Yet humans do and the vast, vast, vast majority choose otherwise.
And yet...
Even suicidal people struggle to live.
You have contradicted yourself once more.
His questions are not irrelevant, and he's asking them to expose the flaws in your argument.
So now that we've established that avoiding suffering can't be the purpose of life; with it probably being procreation. The point of stalling the inevitable is most likely so that you can procreate as much as possible. That was simpler and more obvious that I expected.
Heck, the animal actor that was primarily used for the part of the title character in Flipper drowned herself in front of her trainer.
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