Ever wondered if life's worth living?
 

Let's face it. Life is pretty pointless. Between birth and death most people do the exact same things that billions of other people do, things that are essentially no different from the things even the stupidest animals do. Eat, drink, sleep, seek shelter, reproduce, die. There is no originality there, no authenticity, the core of human existence is determistic and mechanical.

Some say that things like love, excitement, friendship, art, beauty, sex, achievement, and other things like that make life worth living. But the only reasons that we value these things are cultural and genetic stimuli - either our genes or our upbringing tell us that we should consider them valuable, and so we consider them valuable. But in reality, they're absolutely contingent. We could value a completely opposite set of things, and it would be equally valid, equally "true". We value what we value because it's valuable, and it's valuable because we value it.

Our true measure of things in life is how we feel about them, and how we feel about life itself. Yet those things are entirely determined by neurotransmitters, and a few pills or a single shot of drugs can change our feelings altogether. Unhappy? Just take one single pill every day, and within a few weeks your shitty life will look all bright and sparkly. Bored? One single pill can send you into blissful ecstasy for the entire night. Introverted? A few lines of white powder will make you feel like the king of the world. Our most basic feelings can be radically changed by simple chemical substances.

And let's look at freedom, or free will. We experience it, believe it exists, and base our lives around it. Yet in reality, all freedom is, is the conscious experience of your brain and body moving towards a certain action. There is no actual alternate choice there, no independent soul that determines your course of action. There is just your physical, determined reality, and a consciousness that is tricked into experiencing this reality as if it were shaping it instead of just futilely riding along.

Now, if that were all, it might be bearable. Being conscious animals, or even machines, with random desires and values, often essentially futile, is undeniably bad, but it wouldn't be as bad as it is were it not for the fact that we are both mortal and subjected to the brute randomness that is life. From the day we are born, we are dying. Death is inevitable and unavoidable, and all our lives consist of is an extremely limited amount of time, which is utterly insignificant on the grand scale of things. Not only that, if even that tiny amount of time is at least spent in a pleasant way is determined by brute luck. Every moment gone is a moment lost, and if fate decides to step on us all we can do is squirm in pain.
There is no logic to it, no rationale, no fairness - a good person can be ripped from life before even reaching adulthood, while a mass murderer may have a long, enjoyable life. Some are born both stupid and ugly, while others are born beautiful and intelligent, and both can have their life shattered at any moment by the most insignificant little thing and be forgotten within decades. Yet death doesn't make them equal, because while the one may have nothing, the other has even less.

Think about it, the next time you are watching tv, working or playing a video game. You are spending time which can never be regained, and for every shitty little thing you do, there is an infinity of experiences escaping you. Ever wondered if "this" is all there is to life? Well, you have your answer. Yes, this is all - your life, your death, everything in between, it's all summarized in the trite, boring, insignificant moments it consists of. And even the very peak of your existence, the most glorious point in your life, can easily be topped by a single shot of heroin.

I don't know just where I'm going
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
'Cause it makes me feel like I'm a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' son
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I have made the big decision
I'm gonna try to nullify my life
'Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper's neck
When I'm closing in on death
And you can't help me not, you guys
And all you sweet girls with all your sweet silly talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess that I just don't know
And I guess that I just don't know

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

Heroin, be the death of me
Heroin, it's my wife and it's my life
Because a mainer to my vein
Leads to a center in my head
And then I'm better off and dead
Because when the smack begins to flow
I really don't care anymore
About all the Jim-Jim's in this town
And all the politicians makin' crazy sounds
And everybody puttin' everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds

'Cause when the smack begins to flow
Then I really don't care anymore
Ah, when the heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head
Then thank God that I'm as good as dead
Then thank your God that I'm not aware
And thank God that I just don't care
And I guess I just don't know
And I guess I just don't know

i used to argue this in high school pschology class. the subject of suicide came up and since i enjoyed pushing peoples buttons, i offered that i was fine with it and would even encourage it for those who are unhappy or just done with it. i continued by saying that we are all going to die anyway and in a cosmic sense our life is insignificant and on a cosmic timeline... we practically never existed anyway.

everyone was in shock. they started saying how selfish it was because of all the people that care about you etc... but i maintained that there view was in fact rooted in selfish behavior. more than anything, they would be upset at their own personal sense of loss. if they genuinely cared about the wants of the individual and were not selfish, they would respect the decision.

life is like a box of chocolates

I see the world as totally fucked, as we continue to destroy the environment. The rate of number of natural disasters is increasing, and many are just bad weather.

A really depressing book is "A Short History of Progress"

But I really enjoy living. Good food, good booze, great women. Great sex.

I am a happy man!

:thumbsup

So what makes life worth living for you?

For me, it's eating, drinking, smoking pot, fucking, travelling the world, reading, appreciating art and generally enjoying myself. All of which are much more fun than being dead.

I saw this Icelandic movie recently Reykjavik101 and there's this line in it (I'm paraphrasing here) "We're dead before we're born and we're dead after we die. So life is like a break from death."

I'm gonna enjoy my break from death. How about you?

:glugglug

deep post!!

tony

Not only that, the argument that the value of a human life can be derived from other people is logically invalid. After all, if A is valuable because B considers A valuable, that judgement can only have weight because B himself is valuable, and if B is valuable because A considers B valuable, it's circular reasoning. In order for human lives to be valuable, they have to be intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable in themselves.

somtimes its chewy, sometimes its sticky... and somtimes its not chocolate :helpme

:1orglaugh

CUT AND PASTE?

The only basic point in life is to survive. :2 cents:

Something can only die if it has excisted.

We aren't dead before we are born, we are unborn. Non-existent. Thats something different than being dead.

EMOs cut themselves to feel better...

:1orglaugh

If you were able to put a price on living...

What would its value be?

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man?s world

And from somewhere in our dark subconscious minds when were asleep
comes a haunting swelling mass of voice resonating
it screams of forgotten victims and their cries of innocense
and a desperate plea for recognition, and recompense

tiny voices...

sikadelic dude..

http://www.morel.org/photoalbum/shrooms.jpg
http://www.kingbong.com/acatalog/mex...ms-frame-1.jpg

Depends on the person.

I don't think there is any particular thing which makes life worth living for me. My personal life philosophy is a mixture of Stoicism, Epicureanism and radical subjectivism.

There is no objective reality or truth that we have access to, therefore we are forced to make all our decisions and judgements based on (empirical) experience, rationality and intuitions. Rationality helps us to combine experience and intuitions into a coherent whole. This coherent whole is necessarily entirely subjective, but at the same time it's the whole of reality as we can possibly understand it, and therefore it is, for all practical purposes, truth.

If our subjective reality is all we have, and thereby all there is as far as we are concerned, then the thing to do would seem to be to control it in the best way possible, to experience life in the most rewarding, painless way we can experience it. This can be achieved by always keeping a certain level of detachment from the physical aspects of life, while at the same time cherishing the achievable pleasures of life, especially the ones that provide us with longlasting feelings of joy, beauty or fascination. Things like leading a temperate, dignified life, fully recognising the beauty of nature, attaining knowledge of the world, seeing different cultures and environments and appreciating the great works of literature and art seem like the best ways to achieve this to me.

It has it's moments,but that's what makes you a stronger person.Everybody gets depressed every now and then,it's how you deal with it and don't sweat the little shit

Why is it so hard for the average GFYer to believe that there are, in fact, people in this world who are able to write more than three lines on a single subject?

...pass the doobie

Life is worth living...
Everyone has his justification on why he/she is living.

Mine is, we come to this world as a virgin energy that needs to be melded into a advanced form. Once this is achieved, we depart this world. There comes the randomness in life.

You must tell me what you are drinking, so I can have a few jars

If you're gonna be a useless troll who quotes very long posts and follows them up with some useless remark, at least make that useless remark a witty, funny or original one.

That's depressing...I'm gonna go pop some prozac...brb

It would be foolish to give up on life now only to find out later your conclusions were all wrong. The finality of suicide just makes it a bad option based on our limited reasoning ability.

:winkwink:

Is Bad Religion still around?

I'm pretty sure those top ones aren't psycadelic.

i know what youre saying bro

life is completely fucking pointless, we are all born to die.

learn, grow old, pay your taxes, die, your friends die, your family dies, no one remembers you in 200 years.
I cant see how people can live life all happy and cheery EVERY day. wtf are they happy about? they will be dead in 80 years. they will prob die from some form of cancer and spend the last few weeks of their life in a dull hospital room waiting to die.

how can anyone be happy

punkworld seems like the most educated person here :thumbsup

'Reality is
but a serotonin-induced hallucination" - Terence McKenna

I don't know how many times I'll have to repeat that on this board.

I enjoy the pains of life that come with the pleasures and do not take great measures to avoid things causing those pains. Much of the learning I or anyone else has done has been via some sort of pain through tough experiences. I even like the pain to help me achieve my less achievable goals that require the time, effort, and sacrifice that easier goals come without.

"Knowing", as best I can, that we can never have any real truth or true wisdom beyond what we observe or can infer from observation helps fill me with the wonder and curiousity of other possibilities. I think its exciting, at the same time as being frustrating.

The only thing that can be known with any reasonable degree of certainty is that we exist.

Cogito ergo sum

[QUOTE=punkworld] Let's face it. Life is pretty pointless. [QUOTE]

If you wrote a book I would buy it :thumbsup

It is the best way to show the world that you could not hack it, and did not want to try. Noting in life is easy, including life.

Some interesting ideas in this thread.

always look on the bright side of life

Putting life on a value system is dangerous.

Most of you should have stopped breathing years ago as an evolutionary step but thats just my 2 cents.

The key to what makes life worth living is being content that it will end.
Since living is merely a tempory state one may as well enjoy it or one can settle for the "inert" state at any time.

A Lifetime MUST be about the details.
If one is so bored with living, sun up sun down yada yada wondering what life is about perhaps one must wonder if they are missing somthing about life to begin with.

In all honesty I think Mankind is on the brink of Immortality.
Technology is proving it so every day. Bringing dead dogs back to life really took me back some to realise the potential just yesterday.

Nano tech etc. Its possible.

What then?
The only thing left to do is to find god, our maker and understand the things we are unable to grasp whether alive or dead.

"In strange Eons death may die." HP Love Craft.

Sorry, but the one thing you seem to know with any reasonable degree of certainty doesn't fly. "I think therefore I exist" (his actual reasoning was that he doubted that he existed, and that exactly that doubting was a certainly, therefore dubito ergo sum) contains several big problems.

First and foremost, it uses the concept of "existing". However, what "existing" is is left blank. Heidegger's Seinsfrage is probably the first serious attempt in philosophy of even asking the question of what "being" is in the right way. We have no clear and satisfactory definition or concept of being, so it is impossible to conclude it from anything. Furthemore, if you look at Asian languages which don't have a word bearing a meaning equivalent to "being" and subsequently don't ask any questions about it in philosophy, it seems not at all impossible that being as a concept is in fact a social construct.

That leaves us with Cogito/Dubito, I think/I doubt. However, the second problem we face is the concept of "I". What is "I"? Trying to prove the existence of a first person being "therefore I am" by assuming one in the premise "I think" is a logical fallacy.

Thirdly, both thinking and doubting are words. Words are not a priori, but rather a posteriori. Thus, to take their content and concept as a priori truths, is to risk turning something that is fundamentally a posteriori as a priori.


Now, the rest of what you said contains some very valid points, which are very culturally determined, and therefore necessarily very contingent. Your main conclusion, however, seems to strongly resemble my own position, namely that fully experiencing life and striving for personal mental development are worthwhile goals in life, insofar as worthwhile goals are possible.

Good point. Nanotechnology, genetic technology and artificial intelligence may indeed lead to (relative) immortality in the (relatively) near future. I know that I, for one, am hoping for it.

If that were to happen, however, it would lead to a change of the very essence of what it means to be human. We wouldn't have to look for gods anymore, we would be gods. Perhaps, then, the tragedy of human existence would disappear and be replaced by some sort of greatness. On the other hand, perhaps the greatness of mankind lies in its tragedy. Would we want to live in an artificial world of eternal happiness, like a Brave New World without the death? Are things like beauty, passion, even value still possible if we have forever to experience everything we could possibly think of?

Personally, I'm more than willing to find out. I do, however, fear immortality could be a burden that at least most of mankind couldn't handle, and one of which the mere prospect could be enough to destroy mankind.

:1orglaugh Hold that thought. I'll get back to you after a few more semesters.

I've barely even scratched the surface of suggested reading materials we've previously discussed.

Ya know bro, I am usually too busy having a good time to think about all that stuff. I'm sure if shit goes bad I might give it a thought. Haven't had to in 30 years so far. I'll let ya know if I do.

Heidegger is really worth reading. Sein und Zeit may well be the most important work of continental philosophy of the twentieth century. It takes a while to be able to fully accept his thoughts (and consequently build further upon them or reject them), but it is without a doubt worth the effort. Good luck with your studies :thumbsup

Immortality would most likely be a disaster. Lifetimes of everyone would stretch so far as to make death a vestigial concept of something 'lesser' and more 'inferior' being did.

If a Brave New World type of society arose we'd be no more than machines. Cogs in a greater machine greased to keep the world turning for no particular greater purpose than continued existance.

If there was no chance of death or other consequences for ones actions what incentives would there be to do or not do things. What would drive anyone to ever do anything?

Which leads me to have faith in a soul factor.

There is somthing I am sure of it.
I am not sure why I think so. I am not a religeous individual, I do not believe in ghosts or Jesus Christ or such things.

What I do know is that this universe has rules.
Rules for living and rules for not living.
How they work together is misunderstood I can only suppose.

Since there is no recollection of what it is to be dead for hours or for millenia or whether or not it has happened at all before the fact remains that I have been here for 34 years some months and some days and hours to the seconds.

Maybe time is irrelevant regarding life and death as both states must carry a constant. That constant must be awareness.

Ya can get atomic and theoretically say there is no such thing as "physical".
Nothing is solid but what makes them solid is the varying degree's of Gravity.

Gravity and Time have some scientific twists unto themselves.
How can it be that these "Masses" of nothing gather to shape what we percieve as reality? The dimension is pure gravity within the fabric of time.

Time is the real catalyst to begin deciding.

Deciding...

IS there a God? Is there somthing else beyond the scope of realisation when you realise that what we percieve is merely an anomoly caught within Time and Space flexing?

Answer is of course there is somthing.

Punkworld, you should know by now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with mind and follows it; then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, that nothing is more important than anything else.

In other words, a man of knowledge has no honour, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to reality is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavours, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.

A man of knowledge may choose, on the other hand, to remain totally impassive and never act, and behave as if to be impassive really matters to him; he will be rightfully true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly.

We must know first that our acts are useless and yet we must proceed as if we didn't know it.

I go on living, though, because I have my will. Because I've tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters.

Pleasure would probably drive people to do things, as would ambition for fame, intellectual recognition, social interaction... You might be right, immortality might indeed lead to disaster, but we have no real way to predict what the effects would be. Nor do we have a way of preventing scientists from achieving it, for that matter. The only thing that is beyond a doubt is that the next few hundred years will be very interesting both from a technological as well as a philosophical point of view. I'm particularly looking forward to the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence :winkwink:

I will see ya folks at the restaraunt at the end of the universe.

Count on it.