mayorofthdesert
Active member
For lots of life (plant & simple microorganisms) it's less a choice than a built in manner of functioning. Imho "why" can be answered sufficiently by "natural selection."
But for a self-aware being the choice of whether to exist or not should be what matters before anything else, I'd think. But why choose life? If for nothing else the ability to continue to make the choice, I guess. I generally get a kick out of life, so it's not really a difficult choice. I do have bouts of serious depression where I think long and hard about not existing, but I'm usually aware that I'm in a funk and that my thinking is skewed & will return to normal happy thoughts eventually. Anyhow, I've told a freind in a hard place that I wouldn't ake serious life advice from anyone who claimed they've never considered or thought about suicide, or at least long and hard about their own natural demise and what it means to be alive.
I like this poem, it's on the subject:
“After Experience Taught Me ...”
by W. D. Snodgrass
After experience taught me that all the ordinary
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;
I’m going to show you something very
Ugly: someday, it might save your life.
Seeing that none of the things I feared contain
In themselves anything either good or bad
What if you get caught without a knife;
Nothing—even a loop of piano wire;
Excepting only in the effect they had
Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire
Take the first two fingers of this hand;
Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—
Whether there might be something whose discovery
Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.
And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.
You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press
No virtue can be thought to have priority
Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being.
Both fingers down around the cheekbone
And setting your foot high into the chest
No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed,
To live rightly, without simultaneously
You must call up every strength you own
And you can rip off the whole facial mask.
Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask
First, in other words, to actually exist.
And you, whiner, who wastes your time
Dawdling over the remorseless earth,
What evil, what unspeakable crime
Have you made your life worth?
But for a self-aware being the choice of whether to exist or not should be what matters before anything else, I'd think. But why choose life? If for nothing else the ability to continue to make the choice, I guess. I generally get a kick out of life, so it's not really a difficult choice. I do have bouts of serious depression where I think long and hard about not existing, but I'm usually aware that I'm in a funk and that my thinking is skewed & will return to normal happy thoughts eventually. Anyhow, I've told a freind in a hard place that I wouldn't ake serious life advice from anyone who claimed they've never considered or thought about suicide, or at least long and hard about their own natural demise and what it means to be alive.
I like this poem, it's on the subject:
“After Experience Taught Me ...”
by W. D. Snodgrass
After experience taught me that all the ordinary
Surroundings of social life are futile and vain;
I’m going to show you something very
Ugly: someday, it might save your life.
Seeing that none of the things I feared contain
In themselves anything either good or bad
What if you get caught without a knife;
Nothing—even a loop of piano wire;
Excepting only in the effect they had
Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire
Take the first two fingers of this hand;
Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”—
Whether there might be something whose discovery
Would grant me supreme, unending happiness.
And jam them into the eyes of your enemy.
You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press
No virtue can be thought to have priority
Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being.
Both fingers down around the cheekbone
And setting your foot high into the chest
No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed,
To live rightly, without simultaneously
You must call up every strength you own
And you can rip off the whole facial mask.
Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask
First, in other words, to actually exist.
And you, whiner, who wastes your time
Dawdling over the remorseless earth,
What evil, what unspeakable crime
Have you made your life worth?
