- Me: After about age 35, your body begins to slow down, and it's pretty much downhill from there.
- Craig: Aright, so I have got about 7 more years ...
- Byron: To do What?!
- Me: Hahahaha ...
- My internal voice: Wait a minute, this is actually quite profound.
Do you have any idea what you're doing with your life? What purpose are you serving on this planet? Why are you alive? More importantly, why do you want to stay alive? Why do the vast majority of people that can't answer that question still strive to stay alive? Curious ...
Since I am an avid reductionist, I am going to put you in one of two categories:
There are basically two scenarios:
- You believe in an after-life, and you believe you can work towards a pleasant one by behaving or living a certain way in your current life.
- You don't believe in an after-life. You believe that this current life is the one and only life you will ever experience.
Now let's say you are in category #1. You believe that this current life is merely a transition, and not the end goal. The stronger your belief in an after-life, the more you "discount" the current life as being all that important, and the more content you are with just "getting through" the current life so that you can reap the benefits of a wonderful after-life.
On the other hand, let's say you are in category #2. You believe that after you die, *nothing* is going to happen, in the sense that you will no longer exist, and anything else that happens to the universe at that point will not be "known" to you. This is indeed quite an unsettling fact, and many-a folk would rather not think about it, especially if they are of a young age.
The interesting thing is that in both cases, you realize that life is more or less "useless". Personally I think category #2 is harder to be in ... since you will die someday, and there's absolute nothing-ness after that. Why would you deal with life's hardships? Why would you bother having kids? Why would you bother making sure these kids are financially secure *after* you die? Why not just get shoot heroin and feel artificially euphoric all the way up to the moment you die? Why be a "good" person?
I believe humans in category #2 go through a lot of cognitive dissonance when their life gets really tough: in one hand, life is useless anyway, so why go through this nonsense? On the other hand, their Selfish Genes keep them from committing suicide. This is why "motivational speaker" is an actual profession, and quite a lucrative one I might add. A better title would be "Existential Cognitive-Dissonance Resolver".
If you are in category #1, things might be a little easier. If life gets tough, you might say to yourself "nono, I must not give up ... this is just
This can get really dangerous, however, when there is a way for suicide to become "legal" in one's religion or beliefs. Take the case of Muslim suicide bombers ... they believe that by being a martyr and dying for their country/religion, they will enter an ever-lasting life of pleasure in paradise. If their current life is filled with poverty, illness, problems, and major unhappiness, the decision to suicide becomes quite appealing. It's that simple.
What should one do then? This is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't type situation. Well I believe that the best study of life is how it is, not how we want it to be. If you realize that life is just a temporary existence, one way or another, you might begin to take it easy on yourself, you might realize that you don't have to work yourself to death in order to leave a huge amount of wealth for your offspring. You might be able to stop yourself and enjoy the "little things" in life, as horribly cliche' as that is. However you will have to work harder at convicing yourself that having morals, being good to other people, being honest, etc are good things to be. I suggest a healthy dose of Epicureanism.
It seems, then, that the only way to fully enjoy life is to realize, one way or another, that life is completely meaningless ...
Until next time,
--Shafik
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3 comments:
Hrmm.... I have something else for you to ponder. This is like two tangents off of your post but it is related: How can you trust people in general?
(The connection is: If life ends and you don't move on, why be a good person --> What motivates you to be trustworthy/good to others? --> How can you trust people in general?)
This is actually something I pondered in-depth in middle/early high school. However, I wasn't mature enough to do so, stopped trusting people and became depressed. Anyway, here's the line of thinking that I went through.
This argument originates from one key assumption: People are pain averse and seek pleasure (call it Id, Selfish Genes, whatever).
From birth we are egocentric. The only thing that we care about is ourselves and the rest of the world is useful to us only to the extent that they help us.
We remain this way until our parents start teaching us how to behave by using positive and negative reinforcement. As we develop, we continue associating good behavior with our needs being met and bad behavior with punishment. Included in this conditioning is "playing well with others", "sharing", "being nice", and "putting others first".
Thus the act of conditioning is mentally linking pleasure with doing these things and pain with doing the opposite. Soon we stop thinking about whether being nice will benefit us directly and are "somehow" happy when we do good things for others.
However now I will pose a question: "If being nice to others and being a good person somehow hurt you, would you continue doing it?"
It is important to think of that question in isolation. There is no "being noble and doing it anyway" because that implies that your sacrifice paled to the benefit of the nobility of doing a selfless act. If there was no nobility, no recognition, no good feelings at all, ever, to be derived from doing it... only pain. Would you do it?
I think most, if not all, people would say 'no'. If one answers 'no' to that question, then there really is no such thing as a selfless act to that person. Everything that they do is driven by the benefit derived for themselves.
*Religious people do "selfless" acts, but by doing these acts they are rewarded by good feelings and promise of heaven.
*People in love do "selfless" acts for eachother because they know that the other will reciprocate and doing so makes them feel good about themselves.
*Parents do "selfless" acts for their children, but are rewarded by society for having raised a good child, are rewarded by their child and spouse with love
A second question: "Can you trust someone whom you know will only do right by you when doing so is to their benefit?"
I would argue that you can't. As a middle/high schooler whose mind hadn't matured completely, this fact bothered me. What I didn't do in high school was take the argument further:
A. Once you get past that humans are just intelligent animals, the fact that you can't trust them to do right by you becomes easier to swallow.
B. The fact that you understand this about people enables you to more-or-less trust them again, but you have to be careful. By considering what will maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain you can manipulate the variables to encourage them to do right by you. (Also known as manipulating people, which is frowned upon by society... but we do it whether we want to or not - just by existing)
C. In analyzing this line of thinking it is easy to forget that many people have been conditioned thoroughly. Well enough that it would take something big to make them not do right by others.
Anyway, I am tired and starting to not think clearly. But I thought you'd enjoy this. Take Care Shafik!
Perfect post ... I went through the exact same thought process when I was a sophomore in college.
This post purveys a dreadfully negative outlook. It also makes a disappointing logical leap.
The term useless is a loaded term and must be defined. Persons in category #1 may discount the here and now, but many of them believe that terrestrial lives are moral tests for the ever after -- far from useless. Similarly, less pessimistic persons in category #2 may not agree that a finite life is necessarily a useless life. We certainly don't feel this way about nonliving things. My oatmeal for tonight's supper may exist for a mere fifteen minutes, yet I would hardly consider its existence useless!
The retort I would expect to this last statement is that I am placing external judgment upon the oatmeal and that if the oatmeal were sentient -- and existential! -- then it would languish in the futility of its finite existence. But why would the oatmeal's negative internal judgment of its existence's value be any more valid than my positive external judgment? This question needs to be answered before jumping to the conclusion that finite lives are useless. In your answer you may find a need to dull your definition of the term useless.
Lastly, I think you underestimate the introspection of others. Not everyone looks at death as such an extreme downer. Yes, death is a downer. So is pain. Both are inevitable. It's good to think inwardly about both death and pain, but to dwell, to be fixated on them is to distract oneself from the good things available to the living.
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