Is life worth living?

[gad-fly]

Philosophy is not for the young (or faint) at heart. I postulate that as a general statement after allowing for exceptions. We grow old, and we retire, like Greta (hope you do not mind me mentioning your name). We have more time to think (and brag about philosophizing). I am not ashamed to say that I am wiser than ever before, for the good reason that I am older than before. In this respect, getting older does have its benefit, other than time to spare and think. At the same time, I must admit enjoy physical life less, and fewer events to look forward to.

Is life worth living? Let me pose that not as my personal quest, but as search for the meaning of life. When I was young, I was taught to believe that we as the master race have the responsibility to make this earth of ours (and perhaps the universe, by extension) a better place. What would those beasts living under the law of the jungle be, without us around. We have the right to grow, prosper, and multiple, because we are the best, in justice and in intelligence. True? No, as we are told more and more. The earth would be better off without us around, or at least with fewer of us around. Not that the earth cannot do without us, but that we are imposing ourselves against its wish for the better.

But why should we impose ourselves, if not because we enjoy doing so. Really? What is it that we enjoy less and less if we grow older? Is there a stage at our age when the balance is tipped, when the weakness, pain, disease, and isolation would surpass the endless leisure of summer and youth? If so, I would propose the aged should be allowed to end their life whenever they deem fit. Put this as their last contribution to what has been granted as their place in the sun: to allow the earth some breathing space with fewer people around.

The argument may even be extended to beyond the aged. Some would say: I have never requested to be alive. My birth is against my will, if you do not mind. At this juncture, I can clearly declare that my life is not worth living. Can you leave me alone please? Hey, should we leave him alone?

I pose this topic for your philosophical response. Please don't dwell on how much you enjoy sex, fine dining, and so on, as to leave breathing space for more focused discussion on the meaning of life.

[Sy Borg]

I agree. All my life, I have hoped to make some small contribution to the world, especially those close to me. If I became a long-term burden to them then it would undo so much of what I hoped to achieve in my life, effectively rendering much of my life futile.

[Papus79]

As far as I can tell, possibly more important than the Judao-Christian footprint, is our fear of each other. The platform for one person to make a rational decision ends up being the platform for one person to victimize another, and we don't have any clear legal filter for catching sociopathy on its own terms. It's 'other people's stupidity', or avarice, that seems to stop much of anything from happening.

I'd agree though that dealing with long-term futility is quite challenging. In my own case I find that while I could talk to people in my 20's, much of anywhere I'm online where I'm not in deep conversation I'm totally ignored (it seems to come down to 'can this person help be climb a social hierarchy' and my core interests have been utterly outside of that). There's a lot in that too which makes me deeply worry about the capacity of the human species to solve any of its problems in the long term without acute existential crisis being the only place where problems can be solved and where people's desire to climb all over each other abates long enough to let people who actually can solve problems do so. In that sense though we live in a time where it seems like almost any thoughtful person's voice is muted and their actions are crowded out by the limbic automation of other people.

The only thing I can suggest - for those who still haven't had kids - is have them, particularly if you feel like you're living in Idiocracy, because the counterfactual is a place where that really comes to fruition and anyone who can make sense at all will be suicidal under those conditions as they become something like 1/100, 1/1,000, etc..

[LuckyR]

Philosophy is not for the young (or faint) at heart. I postulate that as a general statement after allowing for exceptions. We grow old, and we retire, like Greta (hope you do not mind me mentioning your name). We have more time to think (and brag about philosophizing). I am not ashamed to say that I am wiser than ever before, for the good reason that I am older than before. In this respect, getting older does have its benefit, other than time to spare and think. At the same time, I must admit enjoy physical life less, and fewer events to look forward to.

Is life worth living? Let me pose that not as my personal quest, but as search for the meaning of life. When I was young, I was taught to believe that we as the master race have the responsibility to make this earth of ours (and perhaps the universe, by extension) a better place. What would those beasts living under the law of the jungle be, without us around. We have the right to grow, prosper, and multiple, because we are the best, in justice and in intelligence. True? No, as we are told more and more. The earth would be better off without us around, or at least with fewer of us around. Not that the earth cannot do without us, but that we are imposing ourselves against its wish for the better.

But why should we impose ourselves, if not because we enjoy doing so. Really? What is it that we enjoy less and less if we grow older? Is there a stage at our age when the balance is tipped, when the weakness, pain, disease, and isolation would surpass the endless leisure of summer and youth? If so, I would propose the aged should be allowed to end their life whenever they deem fit. Put this as their last contribution to what has been granted as their place in the sun: to allow the earth some breathing space with fewer people around.

The argument may even be extended to beyond the aged. Some would say: I have never requested to be alive. My birth is against my will, if you do not mind. At this juncture, I can clearly declare that my life is not worth living. Can you leave me alone please? Hey, should we leave him alone?

I pose this topic for your philosophical response. Please don't dwell on how much you enjoy sex, fine dining, and so on, as to leave breathing space for more focused discussion on the meaning of life.

Since the concept of time is a construct, the relative value of life (vs non-life) is a running calculation in real time (which is the only time). I agree with you that assisted suicide should be legal (and is in my jurisdiction). I also agree that life experience accumulates over time, thus retirees are generally wiser than their younger (less experienced) cohorts.

My one caution would be that depression is a known thing related to neurochemical imbalance that can make life not seem worth living and using a permanent treatment (suicide) to treat a temporary problem is a grave error.

[Tegularius]

To determine one's fate at any stage in life, providing there are no loose ends causing harm to others, is up to each individual to decide. Whatever credence is given or denied by any other individual or institution for any such decision has no bearing on one's personal existential choices. It's the person who decides the fate of what he owns.

Also, age in itself does not make one wiser and never has. What makes one wise by its colloquial meaning is when you begin to analyze the many things that life encounters and not simply a mind trained by society and the education system.

[Sy Borg]

... which makes me deeply worry about the capacity of the human species to solve any of its problems in the long term without acute existential crisis ...

Sure, eight billion variably rational people each wanting an ever greater slice of an ever shrinking resource pie. Something has to give.

Still, we ideally don't carry the world's problems on our shoulders. Most of it we cannot hope to influence; it would be akin to a ripple trying to change a tsunami. So, yes, the world we know has huge issues, but there are choices as to how much we engage in situations that we cannot change.

[Fellowmater]

In terms of living the life I would have wanted, and in that context being the person I had wanted to be, then that ship sailed over a quarter of a century ago for me...

But I would say that maybe what I wanted to be wasn't what I would have wanted to be these days....it might have been more fun, but these days I think maybe I'd have set different goals if I could go back...

Maybe you can become something better than what you wanted/want to be....maybe what you wanted to be was based upon some naive thinking, or unrealistic, or less mature than what you might have wanted to be, say in ten years..

[gad-fly]

I would like to bring attention back to focus as titled: Is life worth living? Let the discussion be constrained to that of life of the human race, and that of a sample individual, but not a specific person (man or woman, young and old, well or sick, etc.) Please comment as a member of the extended community. Please comment impersonally.

[Pattern-chaser]

I would like to bring attention back to focus as titled: Is life worth living? Let the discussion be constrained to that of life of the human race, and that of a sample individual, but not a specific person (man or woman, young and old, well or sick, etc.) Please comment as a member of the extended community. Please comment impersonally.

Impersonally, and biologically, life is about survival and reproduction, and in this context living life is a necessary condition, to which desirability does not apply. Impersonally, this is about our species, which must live to survive. The "worth" of life seems to play little part in such reasoning.

[Papus79]

We don't have context writ-large, which is what makes this a maddening question. When one asks about whether life is worth living and one can say that the suffering outweighs the enjoyment, it's that last step 'in what context is this occurring' that we'd need IMHO to make a really informed decision and, for better or worse, that's unobtainable information (or at least the feedback we get from the universe is divided/confusing).

[LuckyR]

Well, there are two ways of looking at this issue, once you appreciate that you will exist for less than 100 years in a universe of 13 billion years.

One is: what's the difference between 20 and 90 years when compared to 13 billion? Therefore it doesn't matter, go ahead and off yourself at the first sign of adversity.

Another would be: you're going to spend essentially almost all of the 13 billion years not existing, thus your time of existing is incredibly valuable because of it's rarity. Maximize every microsecond of this too brief episode before you go back to your default status of nonexistance.

I favor the latter.

[Tegularius]

If you're healthy and wealthy you got it made. If you poor and sick and likely to remain so a more permanent solution is required.

[gad-fly]

I would like to bring attention back to focus as titled: Is life worth living? Let the discussion be constrained to that of life of the human race, and that of a sample individual, but not a specific person (man or woman, young and old, well or sick, etc.) Please comment as a member of the extended community. Please comment impersonally.

Impersonally, and biologically, life is about survival and reproduction, and in this context living life is a necessary condition, to which desirability does not apply. Impersonally, this is about our species, which must live to survive. The "worth" of life seems to play little part in such reasoning.

Identify "worth" with "desirable". Skip "survival and reproduction" which is only the narrow biological perspective of life. Why must our species survive? Why should other species be extinct?
What are we here for? Would we benefit Mother Nature by being around? Are we here because it is paradise? Is our life worth living because comparatively we enjoy more than we suffer, physically? Is there a point by which life is not worth living because the balance has been tipped? These are questions for rumination.

[Pattern-chaser]

I would like to bring attention back to focus as titled: Is life worth living? Let the discussion be constrained to that of life of the human race, and that of a sample individual, but not a specific person (man or woman, young and old, well or sick, etc.) Please comment as a member of the extended community. Please comment impersonally.

Impersonally, and biologically, life is about survival and reproduction, and in this context living life is a necessary condition, to which desirability does not apply. Impersonally, this is about our species, which must live to survive. The "worth" of life seems to play little part in such reasoning.

Identify "worth" with "desirable". Skip "survival and reproduction" which is only the narrow biological perspective of life. Why must our species survive? Why should other species be extinct?
What are we here for? Would we benefit Mother Nature by being around? Are we here because it is paradise? Is our life worth living because comparatively we enjoy more than we suffer, physically? Is there a point by which life is not worth living because the balance has been tipped? These are questions for rumination.

Those are all good questions. I answered as I did because you asked for an impersonal response, based on our "human race" and "extended community", so I focussed on biology and a species-based perspective. The "worth" of life does not matter so much in that arena; "worth" seems more personal and local, somehow. But there are other arenas, as your questions imply, and there, life can have "worth".

Why must our species survive?

There is no "must", but every species strives to survive, as its members live their lives. Why must our species survive? There is no good reason why we should survive, that I know of, and no good reason why we should not.

Why should other species be extinct?

Why? Because they died out is the literal response, and the only one I can see that fits your question.

What are we here for?

To live and die?

Would we benefit Mother Nature by being around?

Based on our past actions, no.

Are we here because it is paradise?

No, we're here because this is where we were born. This is our home.

Is our life worth living because comparatively we enjoy more than we suffer, physically?

That's a personal - as opposed to impersonal - question. For me, the answer is "yes, partly that".

Is there a point by which life is not worth living because the balance has been tipped?

Life is what it is; we live until we die. What "balance"?

[Sculptor1]

Sometimes, sometimes not.

But what is the value upon which this is judged? Since the alternative is valueless, the bar is set pretty low.