[quote name='THE_wizard' post='758614' date='Mar 4 2008, 10:48 PM']I was recently doing a paper on Life and I wonder, how do some people think there is no purpose in life that they kill themselves?
I really want to hear ur comments
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I was attracted to this thread by the title, wondering what people's philosopies of life were, then found in the original statement that it is more a question about whether or not life has a purpose and if people who kill themselves don't think there is any purpose in life and that this leads them to kill themselves.
First of all I admire the complexity of the grammar. It forces you to contemplate exactly what is meant. For instance,
"how do some people think there is no purpose in life? ..." Well, that's an easy one. A lot of people think there is no purpose in life. Alot of people think it doesn't matter how they live, that there is no justice in the world, no meaning, no reason for reaching for the stars, nothing but what appears on one's plate.
Then comes the next part of the original statement:
"and that this leads them to kill themselves." In this point, I would disagree. There are many people in the world who believe there is no purpose in life who are happily sipping beers, eating ice cream and doing cannon balls into swimming pools with very little concern as to whether life has any purpose or not. For people who are happily without a purpose, I think there's a simple way of gauging one's progress through life and that is to do an internal check as to whether what they are doing is making them happy or not. If what they are doing is making them happy, then they keep doing it, and if what they are doing makes them unhappy, then they change it.
A purpose may come into play when this process is externalized. If what they are doing makes
other people happy,
and they are happy, then they will keep doing it. If what they are doing makes other people
unhappy, etc. etc.
Those two are fairly simple mechanisms. Complexity of purpose, however, may occur when one removes the ability to judge from the center of one's own being and places it in the hands of a god or a deity or a higher purpose or a matter of karma or a cosmic theory. In that case, one must first build up a frame of reference which includes this external judgment mechanism. Having built up this larger frame of reference around oneself, whether it be religion, science, politcs or whatever, it might then be possible to say, what is the purpose of my being within this larger picture which I've constructed?
I don't think there are many problems with suicide in the first two cases. The easy systems of judging whether one is living correctly on the basis of either being happy or unhappy or of helping another to be happy or unhappy are good mechanisms.
When the question of purpose is taken out of one's hands and placed into a larger framework, the issue becomes more complex. It is no longer the simple question, am I happy or unhappy? Am I creating happiness for others or unhappiness for others? It is now necessary to perceive one's own happiness or unhappiness through the imaginary perspective of an external force. For instance, within the political framework, I am a Tibetan being looked at by a Chinese governmental official. As the Tibetan viewing myself from the perspective of the Chinese governmental official, am I a person worthy of existence? Do I have a purpose which will fit into the framework of the political construction? Or as another example, I am a handicapped person. Do I have a purpose within the evolutionary framework? Within the technological framework? Am I useful for this external framework?
For someone who is suffering from suicidal thoughts, it might be easier to return to the simplest mechanism for awhile: am I happy or am I unhappy? Like a compass, this can point to a way out of feelings which could be cycling helplessly and fruitlessly in one of the bigger frameworks.
Those are my thoughts.
Zllio
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