Death makes life precious? So what...

[ParanoiA]

So my teenager is lamenting about life last night, pondering why we should live life and experience pain and misery when we could just die and be free from it.

 

I shared the whole balance thing..."Without death, life is not precious. Without pain, you can't appreciate pleasure." that sort of thing. But then he returns with questioning the value of that appreciation. Why does it matter if it's not precious? Why is that a point of reason? If we lived forever, without a chance of dying, and without sadness and pain, wouldn't that be better for humans?

 

I scrambled and clawed and managed little more than a punt downfield. It should be easy to counter, but I get the point. I'm making assumptions that I cannot support.

 

Is this whole balance philosophy about death and life, pain and pleasure, love and indifference, really a bunch of hogwash? Wouldn't immortality, freed from all pain or negativite emotion, actually be just fine?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

If you're dead, you're not going to be around to appreciate the lack of suffering.

[Royston]

It's quite simple, if I'm dead there's no room for something good happening...it's impossible to make a change if you're inanimate, change could lead to something good, (depending on what your Son considers good).

[Phi for All]

Unfortunately, we tend to make our greatest achievements only after struggling for them a great deal. The guy who builds a business over years and goes through all that heartache is much more respected, experienced and tempered than the guy who wins the same amount in the lottery.

 

Immortality would take away the caution and therefore the risk of living with our choices. Some of our worst decisions are made when we judge the risks to be negligible, and some of our best moments happen because we judged the risks NOT worth the outcome. When we can turn down an opportunity because the risks aren't worth losing what we've already attained, it honors what we've attained and shows us how far we've come.

 

Even a teenager has their accomplishments they can be proud of, and at every stage we should honor how far we've come. Too often though, we forget the mistakes and the successes of just two or five years past. We tend to focus on the now and the near future too much.

[Royston]

He wasn't talking about immortality, he was wondering what difference it makes 'ultimately', if he was alive or dead. Which entirely depends on the person asking the question.

[Phi for All]

He wasn't talking about immortality, he was wondering what difference it makes 'ultimately', if he was alive or dead. Which entirely depends on the person asking the question.

 

Wouldn't immortality, freed from all pain or negativite emotion, actually be just fine?

Perhaps I'm just confused, but it seemed like he WAS talking about immortality, the way he ended with this question and all. And I don't really think immortality would necessarily end all pain and negative emotion. I we lived forever, we might not fear death but we probably wouldn't appreciate life as much.

[Royston]

Perhaps I'm just confused

 

Immortality was bolted on by Paranoia, the initial argument from his son was 'what's the point.'

[Phi for All]

Immortality was bolted on by Paranoia, the initial argument from his son was 'what's the point.'

 

I shared the whole balance thing..."Without death, life is not precious. Without pain, you can't appreciate pleasure." that sort of thing. But then he returns with questioning the value of that appreciation. Why does it matter if it's not precious? Why is that a point of reason? If we lived forever, without a chance of dying, and without sadness and pain, wouldn't that be better for humans?[emphasis mine]

Sorry, that's not how I took it. But I'll hush now.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

If we lived forever, without sadness or pain, what'd be the point?

 

Or, more directly, I think we need a bit of suffering to be able to enjoy things. Remove the common sources of suffering and people invent new things to be upset about. A few hundred years ago we were worried about dying from dysentery, and now we get annoyed when the cable TV guy shows up two hours late. Invent a world where TV repairmen always show up on time and we'll find a way to complain about how they left dirty fingerprint marks on our new plasma TV.

 

People aren't capable of living without suffering.

[ParanoiA]

Thanks guys.

 

To be more clear, I was asking about the conjunction of immortaliy and the lack of pain - in other words, removing all the unpleasantness from our mortal lives.

 

This assumes that death is bad. Pain is bad. Hate is bad. So if we remove all of these negatives, we should end up with immortality and nothing but happiness and contentment.

 

My challenge to that was that it would be a worthless existence. How would you understand and appreciate pleasure, if you didn't know what pain felt like? How could understand and appreciate life, if you didn't die?

 

It was to that appeal, that he essentially shrugged his shoulders and asked why it's necessary to appreciate such things. What is the benefit from appreciating happiness and immortality? Who cares if we don't understand happiness because we've never experienced pain? What does that really matter?

 

That's where my assumptions have stranded me.

 

Invent a world where TV repairmen always show up on time and we'll find a way to complain about how they left dirty fingerprint marks on our new plasma TV.

 

People aren't capable of living without suffering.

 

Yeah, your post captures the idea. Interesting too, because he loves to complain. I'll bet he could identify with this.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

He should read Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. His teenage independence should clash with the utopian lack of suffering in Brave New World. You can only get one at the cost of the other...

[ParanoiA]

He should read Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. His teenage independence should clash with the utopian lack of suffering in Brave New World. You can only get one at the cost of the other...

 

Cool. I'll check this out. Thanks.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Cool. I'll check this out. Thanks.

 

Although watch out, because the sexual freedom in Brave New World may coincide quite nicely with his teenage ideals...

 

Brave New World is basically 1984, but achieved via drugs and mental conditioning, rather than suffering, so everyone's happy but oppressed. But they do get lots of sex. Are they truly happy? Not when they see how people used to live.

[Royston]

Sorry, that's not how I took it. But I'll hush now.

 

I appreciate the fact you took the time to reply to someone, who can't read a sentence correctly.

[randomc]

Why should we strive to appreciate life? Because we'll be miserable if we don't. Trite and obvious, but why complicate it further than that?

Someone asking this sort of question is more likely expressing a pyschological twinge than engaging in detached reasoning, so to go looking for some sort of universal is to ignore what motivated the question in the first place.

I'd suggest reason is sometimes the worst possible tool to pull out of your bag of self-management tricks. Much better off with good old-fahioned bone-headed common sense.

That's how i get by anyway .

[Sisyphus]

So he's wondering whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them?

 

More specifically, the question of what is the benefit of appreciating happiness is a strange one. How else would one define "benefit?"

 

As for "whether it all matters," I personally just say that "it" has what meaning we give it, so if "it doesn't matter," one has only oneself to blame.

 

And of course, no rational argument is going to be a quick cure for teenage intellectual awakening and the inevitable accompanying cynicism, angst, and ennui. Though sometimes it can help. As an angsty teen myself I got into the philosophy of Albert Camus, which provided a satisfying (to me, at the time) answer to what "the point" of it all is, as well as appealing to my rebellious sensibility. The important book was The Myth of Sisyphus. (The username is just a coincidence, BTW.)

[padren]

So my teenager is lamenting about life last night, pondering why we should live life and experience pain and misery when we could just die and be free from it.

I'd put it this way:

Lets say you ask that question, and have no good answer. In 10 years you ask that question again, and again have no good answer. Then again, in 20, in 40, and you are having a rather miserable life and then one day at age 60 it suddenly makes sense why we should live life and experience pain and misery when we could just die and be free from it.

 

It's entirely possible to have that revelation sooner than 60 or never at all, but the one thing that is certain is you have to be alive and kick'n to have even a chance of answering that question, which is not a bad answer to that question.

 

 

I shared the whole balance thing..."Without death, life is not precious. Without pain, you can't appreciate pleasure." that sort of thing. But then he returns with questioning the value of that appreciation. Why does it matter if it's not precious? Why is that a point of reason? If we lived forever, without a chance of dying, and without sadness and pain, wouldn't that be better for humans?

 

I scrambled and clawed and managed little more than a punt downfield. It should be easy to counter, but I get the point. I'm making assumptions that I cannot support.

 

Is this whole balance philosophy about death and life, pain and pleasure, love and indifference, really a bunch of hogwash? Wouldn't immortality, freed from all pain or negativite emotion, actually be just fine?

 

The balance thing is somewhat hogwash. There may be truth in that you cannot fully appreciate the ups without some downs, but life often has a way of really belaboring the point.

Are we blissfully ignorant and take the ability to walk for granted after having all but eradicated polio? If we brought polio back, would those of us that survived appreciate life more in a way that would justify the toll taken by polio on those less fortunate?

 

I'd say that I don't know what the world would be like without any danger of any suffering or mortality but since it's here and I can't change that (I can reduce it, but not remove it), I can at least be sure to not let it go to waste and use the experiences to appreciate what I want to appreciate more.

 

 

That said, we really find our own reasons for accepting or even choosing adversity in our own time, and we are always glad we stuck it out long enough to find them.

[Double K]

Oddly enough I pointed someone else to this for a different reason today, but I believe it explains extremely well the dilema, whilst I sit here nodding at the simplicity, I do not think I could manage to throw this together in my own words so I shall just link it for you.

 

1. Life means suffering.

 

To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.

 

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

 

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. The reasons for suffering are desire, passion, ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving for fame and popularity, or in short: craving and clinging. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, thus suffering will necessarily follow. Objects of attachment also include the idea of a "self" which is a delusion, because there is no abiding self. What we call "self" is just an imagined entity, and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming of the universe.

 

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

 

The cessation of suffering can be attained through the unmaking of sensual craving and conceptual attachment. Extinguish all forms of clinging and attachment.

 

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

 

There is a path to the end of suffering - a gradual path of self-improvement.

It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely "wandering on the wheel of becoming", because these do not have a final object.

 

Gautama Buddha.

[john5746]

Why should we live life?

 

I guess my answer to a teenage son would be, "because I love you."

 

I'm sure that would get one heck of a response!

 

I have a hard time wrapping my head around buddhism, since attachment is the point, IMO. I don't want to be content to sit in a cave meditating. I guess its all about balance, as usual.

[Mr Skeptic]

Why live? Why suffer? Why not always turn God mode on in all the video games and be invulnerable?

 

It turns out that humans always need a challenge. Without a challenge, we get bored. And when we get bored we need a change of scene. Perhaps your son needs a new challenge, an objective. Maybe a hobby, or a job, or helping others, or making friends.

 

Also, dying is scary. Even scarier than roller-coasters.

[Ladeira]

I asked kind of a similar question when I was 7 to my grandmother, "wouldn't it be better if we were all dead so we wouldn't need to live so we wouldn't need to wake up or breathe...? it would be much more simple!".

 

I think there is no argument in favor or against this. It's totally closed to how each one handles with their own experiences in life.

 

If you don't live so you don't know that you don't live cause your conscience does not exist anymore. Being dead doesn't ends up suffering only, it simply ends up your existence and any possibility of being conscious of it.

 

If you live then you know where you are and what you are and what you can do. You can imagine, you can dream and create. You can get AIDS, have cancer, feel horrible kinds of pain.

 

Living or dying have their advantages and disadvantages so that we should just balance. If the pain is so high you can't stand for it, if the suffering is over the wish of keep breathing then we'd just go back to euthanasia and suicide taboos.

 

This is life.

[rigney]

I read a short poem some years back that has hung with me since. It may even be a short dichotomy as to why parents put such questions to their children, and why children reply as they do. Time, love, patience and understanding; are the greatest equalizers to any conjecture.

 

A wreath on the door

 

His name ain't on no table, in no park his statue stands

All his life he grubbed for wages, you could tell it by his hands

 

While his total earthly wealth wouldn't fill a tobacco can

I had to come and thank him just for being my old man

Edited May 29, 2010 by rigney

[Severian]

So my teenager is lamenting about life last night, pondering why we should live life and experience pain and misery when we could just die and be free from it.

 

I ask myself the same question every day.

 

A similar issue is one of my biggest problems with Christianity. Namely that I don't think oblivion sounds so bad. I don't think I really like the idea of heaven because I have the nagging suspicion that I would hate it. Intellectually of course, I understand that heaven will be a wonderful place, but I find that hard to believe on an emotional level.

 

I watched the movie "Knowing" the other day, where in the end the Earth is completely destroyed by a solar flare, and I found myself wishing it would happen in real life. I can't help feeling that I would be a bit pissed off if I was to be resurrected afterwards.

Edited June 2, 2010 by Severian

[Eros]

We are the entire universe experiencing itself. That's what makes life precious to me.

I am made out of the food I eat, the air I breathe, the suns energy, and the water that flows through my body.

 

All of our heavier elements that make up our bodies were created in the center of stars. The universe was once just hydrogen and helium. Now there is love, imagination, consciousness. This is precious and if you dont feel that this very moment is precious then you have lost touch with who you really are, the whole universe being conscious of itself.

 

I personally feel very lucky to be alive as a human being and have this vibrant and complex awareness of the reality that I grew and evolved out of.

 

Life is beautiful and precious. Just my opinion.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I ask myself the same question every day.

 

A similar issue is one of my biggest problems with Christianity. Namely that I don't think oblivion sounds so bad.

 

A literary answer:

 

The storm reached its howling peak overhead. A seagull went past backwards.

 

"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?"

 

Death thought about it.

 

CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.