Why do we love life?

[Gorki]

Despite pain and sufferings, man still loves life. Why? Just because you never get a second life? Can't be just this simple reason. Please share your elite views.

[Vonny]

A great topic Gorki!

The first thing that pops into my head is, "I know why the caged bird sings" - because it has a song.

[Panglossian]

I dispute the notion that "man loves life". Personally I never think "I love life". I'm not saying I hate life, it's more that I see life as a kind of labyrinth: I'm in it; I appreciate moving through its countless spaces armed with the wonder of consciousness, but it's easy to become hopelessly lost, and most of the time it's difficult to know which way to turn. And even though I know that I will one day arrive at the exit-point, I further know that the exit will not necessarily equal freedom. So what I’m basically trying to say is life is a disquieting experience. To love it seems somewhat unrealistic to me.

[Delta40]

I have seen a man who like many took his life for granted. From the teenager who scowls they didn't ask to be born to the middle aged man who starts to feel the wealth of self abuse.

'When your number is up, its up so what are you gonna do? Enjoy it while you got it' So he did because there is little to stop death and he boasted he would always be ready for it.

Later, when he was wired up to all manner of machines, riddled with cancer, ****ting and pissing himself, he rationalized desperately that he could live a while yet. He found if the nurse turned his head to the left he could see the local footy game from the fifth floor of the hospital. It was important to always know what the score was, he said and to know who was winning.

Did he love life? In the last five minutes, probably.

[Vonny]

It's funny because I'm not generally a big fan of people in general.

But when I ask myself this question, why I love life, I realize that it is the for the people, especially the few closest to me, (even including some who have hurt me.)

And secondly the reason I love life, is animals.

Thirdly I love life because of nature.

And then the love of life is about words, literature, books, music, art, etc.

All of these things make the pain or suffering of life worthwhile, as long as the suffering isn't too excruciating. If the suffering were to be excruciating, I wouldn't want to be alive anymore, but I'd still love life, as it includes everything I mentioned above.

[The Atheist]

Despite pain and sufferings, man still loves life. Why? Just because you never get a second life? Can't be just this simple reason. Please share your elite views.

I actually think it is that simple. People love life so much they want it to keep on going, hence beliefs in reincarnation and spiritual continuation/heaven. It's all just those selfish genes - we are born genetically selfish and what could rival life itself to be possessive of?

Other than clinically depressed and other mentally ill people, there are very few people who don't love life so much they don't cling onto it for grim death. The world spends trillions of dollars annually trying to keep people alive longer and nothing at all on euthanasia.

On the other hand, those same genes render most of us less likely to recall and think about bad things, so life seems more wine & roses than pain and anguish.

Life's good; enjoy it while you have it!

[KatnissEverdeen]

Why do we enjoy life...
Because we create every moment, and make it our own. No matter if it's bad, good. We somehow make it our own. And we enjoy it that way.

[JuniperWoolf]

I don't think that it's about love of life at all, I think that it's about fear of death.

[The Atheist]

I don't think that it's about love of life at all, I think that it's about fear of death.

Love's much easier to deal with than fear.

[MarkBastable]

Because it's better than the alternative.

[OrphanPip]

I would contend that people hold on to life to the bitter end. This is true at times, but the elderly also tend to have the highest suicide rate after teenagers. And people do go out of their way to fly to Switzerland for assisted suicide. The propensity of right to die organizations and the ready availability of services on the internet for the ill who want to take their lives also suggests that many people regularly reach points where they no longer want to live. Dismissing them as all mentally ill seems a little silly. There are times where suicide is a rational choice to avoid certain ways of living that simply aren't worth it.

I don't particularly love life, if I started to show signs of dementia, Alzheimer's, or any wasting painful disease, I'd quite happily end things before I lost the ability to do so.

[MarkBastable]

I would contend that people hold on to life to the bitter end. This is true at times, but the elderly also tend to have the highest suicide rate after teenagers. And people do go out of their way to fly to Switzerland for assisted suicide. The propensity of right to die organizations and the ready availability of services on the internet for the ill who want to take their lives also suggests that many people regularly reach points where they no longer want to live. Dismissing them as all mentally ill seems a little silly. There are times where suicide is a rational choice to avoid certain ways of living that simply aren't worth it.

I don't particularly love life, if I started to show signs of dementia, Alzheimer's, or any wasting painful disease, I'd quite happily end things before I lost the ability to do so.

Quite. So we let go when we feel it's worse than the alternative.

[MystyrMystyry]

Quite right - and the best things in life are free anyway, so demented, senile or chronically wasting, there are still sunrises and sunsets, cloud formations, the smell of musk, and music, the sound of rain on the roof, the flicker of light on a lake, and rainbows, and lots of things to enjoy after the last marble has fled - just that some people are so screwed up with other people's expectations they start to believe the BS - and that would drive you nutso

When I'm old and ratty I think I'd much prefer to spend my last days in a mountain cottage with a nearby tarn than in a hospitable bed (though a net connection would probably be important too) - in fact I wouldn't mind it now...

[Gorki]

Well, it's the personal experience of individuals which helps them decide whether to love life or not. Sometimes your predicament forces you into such obscene and difficult situations that you feel it's better to quit. Life is a melange of experiences, both bitter and sweet. I don't stand for suicide, for only cowards do so, but what about such conditions when you feel smothered in the jamboree of life. When conditions seem ossified, suicide is the only ostensible solution, is that so?

Seems as if MystyrMystyr is a great fan of John Keats' "A Thing of Beauty". Personally I don't like that poem. It's too fantastic and unrealistic.
---A thing of beauty is a joy forever..
It's loveliness increases, it will never
be lost into nothingness..-----------
How can someone say that beauty increases with time rather than fading away? A new dress seems beautiful when it's new. A beautiful woman loses her charm as she ages, a beautiful structure subverts with time, even our nature, the ecosystem is degrading [ courtesy anthropological activities ]. Does beauty stay forever and ever?

[LitNetIsGreat]

With Keats think in terms of art - its beauty increases with the passing of time/with its hold over us and our relationship with it.

[Leo Bloom]

Because it's better than the alternative.

I'm not sure, that Ernest Hemingway, Romain Gary, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Stefan Zweig, Heinrich von Kleist, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kurt Tucholsky and many other writers would agree with you. :smile5:

[MarkBastable]

I'm not sure, that Ernest Hemingway, Romain Gary, Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Stefan Zweig, Heinrich von Kleist, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kurt Tucholsky and many other writers would agree with you. :smile5:

Well, yeah. But this is one of those attitudinal positions that's impervious to oppositional argument, innit?

So I accept the list - but I kinda note that, of the listed writers that I know, I pretty much despise the lot. Not that that means they're wrong. On the contrary, their antipathy to the premise is likely to inform why I despise them. So - y'know - yay, them.

Then again, having been that objective, I think I can allow myself one outrageous subjectivity..

Hemingway. I mean, what? He's crap, isn't he?