Will to Live... or Live to Will?
It’s been a staggering realization that I can’t convince myself that humans truly desire their lives. Not that we want to stop living. I mean, people possess and maintain and lose and struggle and so forth, but the actual “will to live” may not actually be there. People miss each other when they are no longer with us, or they fear death’s outcome and the possibility of an afterlife, but that’s still not a need to live.
Not that I would do anything to limit a life just because I selfishly desire something. But it just doesn’t seem as if it’s all that necessary to go around for a few decades moving matter from one place on this sphere of rock and water to another, perceiving things, maintaining homeostasis for a while, and then decaying. None of the assumptions from those perceptions, the unrequited loves, the unanswered questions, the unsought desires-none of these things are really important to the universe a mere three generations after death, as the world will keep spinning around and revolving that bright sun over and over. We are records and photographs and stories, daring to be forgotten. The universe isn’t exactly in danger if the local business owner can’t afford a loan, or if the rap artist can’t sell that latest track, or the kid doesn’t get the new console game for Christmas. It’s all just the phenomenological choices, the moment-to-moment wishes that propel us around until we can’t anymore.
I know that some sociopaths will use this line of thought as an excuse to go take things and hurt people. But they are breaking their own rule… if they don’t acknowledge any intrinsic value of other people, who is to say that hi/r desires are intrinsically important either? Why should the sociopath work so hard to get hi/r idiosyncratic needs met if s/he admits that none of those desires has any absolute value? One must be delusional to undertake such an irrational position and let that determine hi/r actions. Just because there is desire doesn’t mean action must be taken.
For me, I simply do whatever it takes to prevent others from losing their flimsy and arbitrary desire for agency in this universe. I do what it takes to keep the people around me from losing their passion for their holding society together. Basically, I’m doing that because it’s the only thing to which I can assign any kind of intrinsic worth.
That’s why I don’t like to commit to people and jobs. I don’t know how many mistakes or conflicts it takes before they get tired of trying to help me. And at that point, I don’t really have any purpose to be around them. Or, sometimes people at my job will need something for which I haven’t been taught or shown anything in detail, so I wind up with some hodgepodge role that doesn’t really help anyone very well. In other words, I can’t convert the people I work for or with into an excuse to value what I do. So, I burn out.
It would be nice to commit to something and see something intrinsic to protect-something valued by all people that can make life less of a day-to-day sisyphean act. It just seems like, no matter who we are, we are just helping others get the food, clothes and shelter they need so they can keep making products that make it more enjoyable for people to get other things that make it more enjoyable to get yet more food, clothes and shelter,... Etc. Etc. Etc.
I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been spewed on LiveJournal a million times. But truthfully, is there anything worth all this eating and clothing and sheltering? Family? Art? Discovery? Human interaction? Doesn’t that just help us produce more generations of people who make more products for other people who need food, clothes and shelter?
If people enjoy discovery, that’s lovely. If people enjoy playing the piano, that’s great. But in a way, no matter what, it just feels like I’m trying too hard to enjoy anything. It’s just…not enjoyable. It’s like my brain has just sublimated all the desires and hopes and urges that I used to feel into something generic and aimless. I’m just…here. And everything seems equally degradable.
So, often I’ll look back and see if I can preserve something that used to exist when I was little. A type of fun music or a video game or a toy or something. Something nostalgic, I suppose. It’s all I’ve got. But it’s more of an illusion.
I don’t know. It’s just difficult for me to desire things.
Not that I would do anything to limit a life just because I selfishly desire something. But it just doesn’t seem as if it’s all that necessary to go around for a few decades moving matter from one place on this sphere of rock and water to another, perceiving things, maintaining homeostasis for a while, and then decaying. None of the assumptions from those perceptions, the unrequited loves, the unanswered questions, the unsought desires-none of these things are really important to the universe a mere three generations after death, as the world will keep spinning around and revolving that bright sun over and over. We are records and photographs and stories, daring to be forgotten. The universe isn’t exactly in danger if the local business owner can’t afford a loan, or if the rap artist can’t sell that latest track, or the kid doesn’t get the new console game for Christmas. It’s all just the phenomenological choices, the moment-to-moment wishes that propel us around until we can’t anymore.
I know that some sociopaths will use this line of thought as an excuse to go take things and hurt people. But they are breaking their own rule… if they don’t acknowledge any intrinsic value of other people, who is to say that hi/r desires are intrinsically important either? Why should the sociopath work so hard to get hi/r idiosyncratic needs met if s/he admits that none of those desires has any absolute value? One must be delusional to undertake such an irrational position and let that determine hi/r actions. Just because there is desire doesn’t mean action must be taken.
For me, I simply do whatever it takes to prevent others from losing their flimsy and arbitrary desire for agency in this universe. I do what it takes to keep the people around me from losing their passion for their holding society together. Basically, I’m doing that because it’s the only thing to which I can assign any kind of intrinsic worth.
That’s why I don’t like to commit to people and jobs. I don’t know how many mistakes or conflicts it takes before they get tired of trying to help me. And at that point, I don’t really have any purpose to be around them. Or, sometimes people at my job will need something for which I haven’t been taught or shown anything in detail, so I wind up with some hodgepodge role that doesn’t really help anyone very well. In other words, I can’t convert the people I work for or with into an excuse to value what I do. So, I burn out.
It would be nice to commit to something and see something intrinsic to protect-something valued by all people that can make life less of a day-to-day sisyphean act. It just seems like, no matter who we are, we are just helping others get the food, clothes and shelter they need so they can keep making products that make it more enjoyable for people to get other things that make it more enjoyable to get yet more food, clothes and shelter,... Etc. Etc. Etc.
I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been spewed on LiveJournal a million times. But truthfully, is there anything worth all this eating and clothing and sheltering? Family? Art? Discovery? Human interaction? Doesn’t that just help us produce more generations of people who make more products for other people who need food, clothes and shelter?
If people enjoy discovery, that’s lovely. If people enjoy playing the piano, that’s great. But in a way, no matter what, it just feels like I’m trying too hard to enjoy anything. It’s just…not enjoyable. It’s like my brain has just sublimated all the desires and hopes and urges that I used to feel into something generic and aimless. I’m just…here. And everything seems equally degradable.
So, often I’ll look back and see if I can preserve something that used to exist when I was little. A type of fun music or a video game or a toy or something. Something nostalgic, I suppose. It’s all I’ve got. But it’s more of an illusion.
I don’t know. It’s just difficult for me to desire things.