Is a moment of bliss, joy, beauty, love worth our eternal thanks for being?
If the moment itself is an eternity …
that’s an interesting question but to be frank if we already thought that it was, we’d have killed ourselves to end our constant suffering.
But one may always return to that moment through memory. Therefore in a sense it is eternal and that would be the reason for not killing ourselves and ending our suffering.
Can that moment be worth decades of pain and misery? Isn’t that moment enough to counter-balance our suffering and allow us to be grateful and thankful for having lived.
Hello Undergroundman,
for the longest time I have awaited this question from you, or something very similar to it. Why? Last semester I took an existentialist philosophy course where we analysed a number of philosophers texts. One of these was Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. The book, to me is all about answering your question. Answering whether a nasty, dark, fetid, and atrocious life is worth living.
I assume that your nickname is related to the book and hence I awaited a question regarding one or more of the central tenet’s of the book.
And so to answer your question I look to a source you will likely be most able to relate to. The Notes from the Underground themselves…whether life is good or bad matters not, what matters is whether or not you have lived life according to your free choice. Choice is the greatest power and purpose in life of all, for as Dostoyevsky puts it about choice:
“–is that very most advantageous advantage which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms.”(Chapter 7, pp. 17)
So at the end of our lives we must answer the following question for ourselves “whether my life was good or bad, did I live it according to my own will?” If so, life was worth it regardless of pain and agony. If not, then all the happiness and wonder in the world isn’t enough to make your life worthy since you didn’t live it according to your will.
What’s your take?
^in nutshell what you describe sounds like existential “authenticity”…
anyway… Nietzsche presented the tragic view of existence where pain and suffereing can be used to spurn on our fight for life… in a sense, it helps give us meaning… or as Marilyn Manson once said, “Without the threat of death there is no reason to live at all.”
I don’t have much experience with existentialist philosophy, but the whole idea of people living a life where beauty, joy, and such are the goals is absurd! Can’t beauty and joy and all that we choose to see as good be the overwhelming presence in our lives? It seems that the “bad” is almost inevitable, but couldn’t it be obscure and minute in our lives instead of the presence that we are trying to escape?
One should not have to suffer. I fully agree with the idea of living to your standards that you have chosen. If one lives for oneself and not for society’s laws then how can any real suffering be present. You have control of your life, don’t suffer!
So yes, you should be eternally thankful for the joy that exists in your life because the moment should be your whole life. Feel and create the beauty!
illocusionary,
sure pain and suffering CAN be used to spurn on our fight for life, but that wasn’t the point I was trying to get at. Since you bring up Nietzsche, I will attempt to advert your attention to his Eternal Recurrence, which is more to my point. I simply wanted to answer the original post by saying that no matter what life is like, good or bad, there is something beneath such a simplistic understanding of life. There is something greater that keeps us holding onto life. I chose to use ‘choice’ as a potential answer, simply for the relevance to UndergroundMan’s nickname. But I don’t mean ‘choice’ to be the only thing that can by the primary factor of our lives. When you speak of “authenticity” you remind me of Kierkegaard’s definition of it. Although I disagreed with a majority the work I came across from Kierkegaard, he nevertheless made a very big impression on me. He too spoke of accepting life for what it is and being able to choose to live life in an infinite loop. Though I don’t wish to get into his classification of people and his aesthetic, ethical, and religious steps to attaining our authentic selves, unless you think it somehow pertinent to the point.
Hope that clarifies things.
What’s your take?
“Is life worth the price of pain this world gives us?”
I would say yes, but I would also add that life does not have to be so complicated or that painful. I think we have made life more uncomfortable ourselves and only we have the ability to change that. For eg: When the govt. takes income tax, it should provide clear services to the public like free standard housing and basic utilities together with an explanation of how the money is spent. SO, major headache from your life is gone because houses go on for a long long time, so the expense should become less and less on it. To me it doesn’t make sense that ‘the beautiful part of our life we spend to save for housing’ and then just leave all that when we go, that’s crazy. Housing should be free, standard housing only. Now, what would people really have to worry about after this, food, medical, dreams, clothing, interests, hobbies, transport, education upto grade12 must be free, etc., right? So, don’t you think life would be simpler and more enjoyable and many would not just be surviving but making their dreams come true? Whatever, that’s what I think. Inside the city I would even make the transport free. Do you know all the big vehicle companies would be after me because then they would sell lesser cars and vehicles. Also, I wouldn’t let anybody invest in land. You can have land as much as you like and pay taxes accordingly but you can’t buy it, it’s wouldn’t be anybody’s property to buy, not even the govt’s. Hehehe! That would take away money from the rich and make the poor richer, instantly, because the poor have nothing to invest and the rich get richer by doing that. So, you see, it’s us who have made life so complicated, but life does not have to be so.
BeenaJain you seem to have a very superficial and immature view of pain.
I’ve personally met an exceptionaly happy homeless person and plenty of miserable affluent people. I’m affluent myself and this changes absolutly nothing about pain, happiness ect.
“bliss, joy, beauty, love” are free for everyone and only these things plus choice make life worth while.
Gadfly is most assurly right however, I agree with what you wrote 100%.
No, I don’t have a superficial or immature view of pain. But where, “Is life worth the price of pain this world gives us?” is concerned, I would also say that, there are some people who can have little in life and yet find a lifetime of happiness in it, it all depends on our perspective I believe. Some are happy with less and others with more, and it’s all ok. So where TheUndergroundMan says, “Is a moment of bliss, joy, beauty, love worth our eternal thanks for being?” then I guess the answer is that, for some the answer may be yes but for others who desire more, perhaps the answer may be a no.
Although if you look at it rationally, it is human nature to want more and more, when are we really satisfied with what we have? Once we have it we want more or other things. So, my feeling is that if we are in a moment of bliss or joy then we might feel that it’s all we ever desired, but once the moment or time passes, our thinking or feeling changes again and with it changes our want too. Then we want something else, or more. I feel that we can resign ourselves to a life of simplicity or boredom if bliss or joy is not a continual occurence but the desire for experiencing more bliss and joy never really leaves us. And the fact is it shouldn’t leave us or we’d grow depressed and die soon because there would be nothing to hope for or look forward to. I think chanbengchin summed it all up in one small sentence very appropriately above, read what he says 