Is Life Worth the Strife?

Is life worth living? A stupid question, an impudent question - because it is impossible to answer? No. Quite the contrary: because everybody knows the answer. We can be be assured that not one person who opens this thread has either the folly or the spirit to deny single inscrutable piece of wisdom... a black monolith in the recesses of all minds. Everyone, from the old to the young, from the sagacious to the silly, from the cheery to the melancholy... all of them enter a sort of primordial unity to unerringly answer: no. Of course, many of you will be very non-committal; some will treat the question as if it doesn't matter. Others will refrain from answering directly, transposing, embellishing and ultimately concealing their writings with the kind of impish skill which belies the heavy-handedness of what went before. Some of you will flee, or condemn this thread as mere nostrum of existential angst. But this all points undeniably to one thing: that you in fact do know the answer. Which is - no, life isn't worth living.
Albert Camus famously said that suicide is the only philosophical question, but he was wrong. It is the only answer. It is the answer to every question mankind has ever asked, the fateful point at which the antithetical wills of men - so often in thunderous variance - can finally intersect, and all can agree. For let it be said (even though it is already known) that life is a sham, a joke, a devilish and hopeless malady.

Every human being in history, from the noblest martyr to the meanest crook, can be reliably said to have gone to the grave with a formidable body of philosophical achievement. Every worm that feasted on human flesh was feasting on a philosopher.

The tragedy can be blamed on the intellect. Nothing is more lamentable than the fact that human beings have 'minds'. Nothing in nature is more ill-fitted to its purpose, nothing more useless and profligate than the mind. It constantly asks questions which it cannot answer, meaning that, in sum, it serves to frustrate, unhinge, and generally unsettle with puerile neuroticisms the tides of human thought. The mind is a machine without a function, a tool
without a task, a weapon without a target. And how destructive it is! Yet this lumbering, useless, mendacious thing - how seductive it is for a human being! How powerful its hold over us! One may suggest the rejoinder that I seem to be saying that we are seduced by the very faculties which seduce us. This is unfounded, however: for man is essentially an animal, and the intellect not part of his essence at all... although the intellect distorts this. The intellect despoils us, distances us from nature and our original provenance, and casts a long and perfidious shadow over civilization. Behold the untoubled ease of the cow chewing the cud: nobody can put 'ideas' into its head and transform it to a ghastly facsimile of itself, because it has no mind!

Reason is like trying to open a locked music box: it is a grave struggle for a silly jingle. But I will not keep my reason in slavish abeyance!

The most original thought most people have is that they have original thoughts. But all know this... all know the answer to life's cardinal problem. What they don't do is act on it. My spirit redounds with valour, my blood is alactric - the world echoes with my fate. I must take a knife to my throat.

You probably think I'm being very silly. I am. I'm typing and not slashing my wrists. Really, guys, what's your morbid fascination with life?

I want to feel love and be happy. Love and happyness is worth the pain.

Let's ask the dead. Let's ask those who are waiting to be born.

Let's ask the dead. Let's ask those who are waiting to be born.

By definition those who are least qualified to answer?

At the moment, I enjoy life. I've never experienced death but I just take life for what it is, the simple pleasures. Purhaps my purpose in life or maybe my reason for living is to make changes to this world that I feel are necessary to me so that someone like me might lead a less troublesome life. Throughout this life I've noticed we're all searching for that person, or people, who are so much like us... are we searching for ourselves? We are truly social creatures, with no reason for doing anything other than to share the experience with others. Solitude is always empty, at least in my experiences it is. Is life worth the strife? It HAS to be, this reality is a giant balance with infinate dimensions, a little pain, a little pleasure. In the end it all evens out. What you give is what you get, no one can disprove that. Is suicide the answer? I'd say suicide is the answer for a boredom of life, nothing else. It's not the answer for getting rid of the pain... thats the wrong way to fix pain in my opinion. If you're going to die for a cause, die a martyr. If you're going to die from boredome, kill yourself. I believe the weak commit suicide to get rid of pain, any person worth living would fix the problem.

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By definition those who are least qualified to answer?

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Maybe those we can't speak to us to have the better deal.

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Nothing in nature is more ill-fitted to its purpose, nothing more useless and profligate than the mind. It constantly asks questions which it cannot answer, meaning that, in sum, it serves to frustrate, unhinge, and generally unsettle with puerile neuroticisms the tides of human thought. The mind is a machine without a function, a tool

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I don't necerssarily agree. In fact I completely abhor to that debilitated idea. Perhaps i've misinterpreted the context. Yet, see some philosophers get very pedantic about this idea that questions are insolvable. Other philosophers accept that there aren't answers, and that there never will be. However reason will suffice and that reason is all that we have. The mind has a reason in itself.

Anyways, to address the thread topic-
Is Life Worth the Strife?
This depends on your frame of reference. And whether one considers life actually being a strife. A strife refers to the bitter struggle. But before you think ahead. Stop and think. A strife depends on what the struggle is against. Therefore in addressing this question "Is Life Worth the Strife?" this requires a qualitative judgment on the actual value of life to the individual, and whether this value is worth fighting for. Death will eventually win, it is inevitable. But what is one fighting against?

Perhaps you are right - perhaps the mind is capable of answering the questions it poses, and my chagrin is just a result of my (implicit) knowledge that each answer indefinitely poses a new question. Thus, an endless chain of questions - each a logical antecedent to the other - is what constitutes the labour of the mind... this is the sum of her yield, the fruit of her fields. Perhaps this is true. It's a view which, offhand, I can't impugn. If we think about it though, this isn't a very serious modification of what I say in my original post. To make them converge, we might say that each new question is just, as it were, a refinement of the original question; that they are, at bottom, a series of linguistic, philosophical and syllogistic amendments undertaken in light of what prove to be our failed attempts to answer the question. As soon as we try to answer the question... as soon as we set in mind in motion... a prodigious maelstrom of contradictions, dichotomies, and rampant antitheses are summoned to do battle... and their seismic reconciliations and fiery clashes give birth to ever new questions, which conduct their dionysian coalescence ad infinitum. It is a work of pyrotechnics - a display of lights and nothing more. The understanding remains dark and shadowy, an abyss which will consume all of us... in due time.
Nope, when we refine these questions we only RECONFIGURE our minds, without truly enriching them. We add riders, caveats, complications, permutations - but no new insights. This is one of those illusions which serves a very strong biological purpose - namely, to distract us from the stark futility of life, and keep that animal life-impulse alive and indomitable. But, though we are indeed animals, we have been impured by reason: and it is only a weakness of the will that stops us from facing up to what it has shown us.

That is why life is tragic to all those honest souls out there who can say: "yes, life stinks, and I will not settle for simply putting a peg on my nose. My blood will drop to the ground, and my soul will rise to heaven".
To those who live nature's ancient lie... well, your life to us tragic folk looks like a comedy. And comedies are not enjoyed by the protaganists.

"To those who live nature's ancient lie... well, your life to us tragic folk looks like a comedy. And comedies are not enjoyed by the protaganists."

I just really liked that quote so I had to give you credit.

Besides that... it seems the more I learn about reality, the more I hate it. Do we all slowly emerge from that shield we call faith as we learn of this life? Tragically, in my experiences, God is only found in naiveness. The harsh realities of life are too much for many people to submit to, so I don't blame them for their faith. Wisdom is a one way path, a few exits on the way when you find a comfortable place, but surely, turning around is insanity. Every realization I've come to is a little more tragic and a little less magical than the one before it, always making all too much sense. I wish we could live in a world where the hero always prevails and death is a welcoming utopia but I'll accept my fate, I'll accept what I know to be true and I'll find refuge in the things I find to be beautiful in this world. That's all any of us can do.

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It is the hidden parts of the mind, the sub-conscious, that will always experience and share the appreciation that your conscious efforts bloom towards.

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Nothing is hidden. Everything is open to view. We can make our minds - and by extension, life - more bustling, nuanced, multifarious and in the end more interesting by the laborious acquisition of skills and interests: this I don't deny. But all this distracts us from the harrowing truth of the matter, which is, when when you get down to it, that nothing matters. For this reason, to cravenly immerse oneself in life so that one may affect a sort of self-abnegation amounts to mavauis fois... a grevious case of moral bad faith. If one is a painter, one should paint in blood...

Amazing indeed to our wretchedly human minds, but still, no less, a mere masquerade that averts our gaze from the desolate absurdity of our predicament.

"Right" in what sense? We were both enforcing what are no more than bald assertions, and since you've turned the matter into a wager, you seem to be acknowleding that neither of us can claim comprehensive victory on a philosophical level. If you're talking about what assumptions you live your life in accordance with though, of course it would be better to affirm your more 'optimistic' world-view and live as life as if it is worth while. And I do. In case you haven't noticed, I haven't cut my throat, and my somewhat pithy tone - which you identify early on - does sort of suggest that I was merely wearing a literary 'mask'. And this is the very point I'm trying to make: no matter how clearly I stare into the abyss, no matter how unflinchingly I disrobe 'love' and 'pleasure', I still live on, and my elan vital still flows. I only think that it would be better if I couldn't think at all, so that my elan might be allowed to continue its tremulous course unimpeded.

"And of course, I am right for I choose no absolute in a realm of probability."

LOL, that was the most retarded thing I've ever heard. In a realm of probability isn't it just as wrong to claim an absolute as to claim no absolute? The fact is YOU DON'T KNOW. Which means YOU AREN'T RIGHT or perhaps aren't right for sure. But what's the worth in an answer that isn't tied to undeniable reason or truth?

No need to post such a splenetic reponse Chris, but you're right. Laplacean probability dictates that we should apply the principle of insufficient reason in a situation like this, assuming that each possibility is equally likely. So to mention probability in that way is to effectively call a truce.
Perhaps that was just a slip though, so I'll ignore it.
The main problem is your idea that "a plethora of little pieces all eventually lead to a larger whole" is patently wrong. The larger whole is NOT forthcoming. You say - how do I know? Why not keep the faith whilst we cannot be sure? Well, I'll have to be honest... I have some philosophical baggage. I don't have time to flesh it out though. The most crucial thing to say is that your Enlightenment idealism (because that's what it is) rests on a misundertanding of the relationship between comprehension and perception. As Kant said, therare are no "percepts without concepts": that is, the way we understand the world is conditioned by the conceptual framworks with which we think in the first place. It is called the "sapir whorf" doctrine and was propounded by my namesake and a Russian called Vygotsky. And the upshot of it is this: understanding is not progressive, but historical. We do, by a process of accretetion, acquire a whole plethora of little bits - our index of inferences grows ever wider - but our apprehension does not, and indeed cannot, approach the "greater whole". The absolute possibility of such a greater whole is not excluded, of course, but only the the notion of us comprehending it. And we cannot even do so in a partial manner. A hostile barrier remains in place between us and the the intricate system of comprehension which underlies and governs our thoughts. And this barrier is precisely what makes us animals - for it places limits on our self-consciousness, and reduces us to a subjugation the kind of which makes us 'things' rather than 'beings', objects rather than subjects.

You're a Hegelian, Decius, whether you know it or not. And this fits neatly for my purposes, because the cultural implications of Hegelianism represent that boorish propensity of modern man to overrate himself, to think he can command his own destiny... and penetrate the depths of 'absolute truth'. EO Wilson, John Gray etc etc have stridently warned against this. We are ANIMALS, and the idea of MAN is a construction borne of the capricious machinations of the 'mind'.
There is much that remians unsaid here, but I don't have the time to hang around at the moment.

Can we agree that everything in this reality we inhabit has infinite properties? You can cut something infinately small, you can continually explore the infinately large. One must ask himself, when do we call it quits? There is no such thing as the best, there is no such thing as the worst. Seriously, when do we just say fuck it? I think the only reason I do anything in this life is to reach some ideal I have in my head. Does everyone do that? Is it because we are all envious of that ideal that we struggle so hard to achieve it?