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Longer as in not killing yourself this very second (or the next one). It's a worthy question--as Camus says in 'The Myth of Sisyphus', 'There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.'
So you're of the opinion that we should all just kill ourselves right now?
Because I'm always curious about 'what happens next?'
That's probably the best answer. However acute our sense of loss or grief, however tremulous our grip on experiential reality, we nevertheless yearn to see what's next, what's possible, what plans unfold, what novelty erupts.
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Originally Posted by Zymer
...I sat with a loaded gun in my hand and considered suicide...I mean *seriously* considered it. I weighed the pros, and I weighed the cons...in the end, my thought process boiled down to this- ending my life was a permanent proposition, whereas everything else was temporary, circumstantial...and I could always change my circumstances. So, I resolved to live my life as best I could, to take what enjoyment there was to be had, and if circumstances were not favorable to enjoying life I would change them.
Your point on permanence/temporariness is well taken, but the extent to which we have the wherewithal to change our circumstances, is debatable. To your own example, were you to have sustained a debilitating combat-injury, you could perhaps have adapted to resulting unfavorable circumstances, but you'd probably be unable to regenerate your body to its former capacity. Or if say a lawyer gets disbarred for some kind of serious criminal conviction, he/she might find an alternative career, but there's not much to be done about recrudescence of prior career.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Marcinkiewicz
Longer as in not killing yourself this very second (or the next one). It's a worthy question--as Camus says in 'The Myth of Sisyphus', 'There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.'
Camus is especially topical now. His book, "The Plague", speaks directly to the times. The essay that you quoted is my second favorite musing on whether or not to kill oneself, in the face of seemingly (or actually) pointless striving to perpetuate oneself. My favorite one is Boethius' "The Consolation of Philosophy".
Indeed! Your query can seem superficially fatalistic or pessimistic, and many people wouldn't see past that. But it's actually perhaps the most important question that an individual can ever ask themselves.
The personal answers that arise will not only reveal the individual's dreams and desires, but also all their blocks and limiting beliefs. And once made conscious, these can be seen thru and dissolved.
Such a question will always take a person out of the abstract auto pilot, where most people live, and into the present moment. That's a very good thing! It actually functions as a kind of koan, in that it has no answer in and of itself, but reveals to a person their own level of enlightenment.
So you're of the opinion that we should all just kill ourselves right now?
Interesting.
And what would be your reasoning for that?
...kind of?
One of my favorite quotes ever was said by Matthew McConaughey's character in season one of True Detective; it is as follows:
'I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.'
Nic Pizzolato, the creator of True Detective, was heavily influenced (heavily influenced to the point of near-plagiarism at times, including in the quote I provided above) by horror author Thomas Ligotti's work of pessimistic philosophy, 'The Conspiracy Against The Human Race', which I've read about half of and quite like. I consider myself a nihilist and think that existence is valueless/value-neutral; the idea of the human species collectively opting to kill ourselves would be rather beautiful while also of course incredibly tragic (I say this while still acknowledging that life is objectively pointless--this is one of the things non-nihilists misunderstand about nihilism, thinking that nihilism should dictate the lack of any emotional attachment to life--that is obviously impossible for any living human being).
Failing collective species-wide mass suicide of 7.8 billion or so (which is never going to happen in real life, of course), I think anyone should be free to take their own life at any time and for any reason. The decision to continue or cease existing is the ultimate personal freedom/'right' to which any given human should be entitled. Emphasis on maximizing longevity is a prison; forcing someone to exist through pain/trauma is a prison; imposing one's own values on anyone else, similarly imprisoning.
And I *certainly* think anyone should be 'allowed' to express thoughts such as all those I've just expressed without being assumed to be depressed or in need of intervention/reprogramming/proselytizing/etc.
Camus is especially topical now. His book, "The Plague", speaks directly to the times. The essay that you quoted is my second favorite musing on whether or not to kill oneself, in the face of seemingly (or actually) pointless striving to perpetuate oneself. My favorite one is Boethius' "The Consolation of Philosophy".
Boethius wrote that while imprisoned during medieval times, no? I'm going to have to google but I have read numerous references to Boethius over the years while never reading or even encountering the actual text for which he is remembered. I did read Alain de Botton's similarly titled 'The Consolation(s) of Philosophy' but that book is simply an intro to Nietzsche and a few other famous philosophers, from what (little) I remember.
Boethius wrote that while imprisoned during medieval times, no? I'm going to have to google but I have read numerous references to Boethius over the years while never reading or even encountering the actual text for which he is remembered. I did read Alain de Botton's similarly titled 'The Consolation(s) of Philosophy' but that book is simply an intro to Nietzsche and a few other famous philosophers, from what (little) I remember.
Boethius was a Roman aristocrat/politician in the amorphous and turbulent century after the empire fell. The dictator at the time was what Gibbon's generation would call a barbarian, but there still remained a veneer of Roman practices, rituals and civic dignity. Boethius was very nominally a Christian, but really even less one, than Jefferson or Voltaire. That didn't prevent later Medieval theologians from absorbing Boethius as one of their own. He was arrested and eventually executed on trumped-up charges (how that adjective has added meaning in recent years!) of the usual sort: treason.
The principal question that he asked, was by then circulating in written philosophy for 1000 years - since Socrates. Namely, if virtue so often gets scorned and vice so often rewarded, why be virtuous? If internal gauging is strictly subjective, but external gauging is flawed and corrupt, then how can we have any moral rigor? And if what we achieve is evanescent and liable to crumble, why ought we to have even bothered?
This latter point is basically the OP's. If my apartment's floor so soon gets dirty, why do I ever bother cleaning it? If our actions aren't really "archival" - if they get obliterated and have to keep getting redone - why bother? And even if they are archival, is it not silly, to assign them value on the basis of good opinion by nameless others, who will be born long after one has oneself died?
Boethius himself came to a gruesome end. But in a selfish way, I'm glad that he didn't off himself before he wrote his final book. In an even more selfish way, were he not to have been arrested and murdered, he'd likely not have had occasion to ever write such a thing. His personal suffering has given us a masterpiece of literature, now almost exactly 1500 years later.
Because there's still so much more to learn and experience.
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