What's the Point?

The fact that there is no downside to death is an upside infinitely greater than any that life has to offer. A dead man misses out on nothing. Unbeknownst to him, his family and friends may mourn, but while a man alive would take sorrow in this, a dead man sees nothing and feels nothing, instigated, itself, by his own nothingness. Simply put, he has no perspective on life; he, having transcended into a different dimension completely (so to speak), feels nothing. No pleasure, but more importantly, no pain. While many philosophers have stated that a life of infinite pleasure effectively bears none for lack of comparison, one cannot argue so for the case of death. Nobody has delved into the deep and boundless ocean that is death. Death defines more than a few minutes of an unbeaten heart, afterwards resuscitated by the voltage of a defibrillator. Death is the cessation of perspective completely. In my prior example, the perspective of the man with the short-lived “death” would leap from breath to breathe, surpassing a few minutes’ time almost instantly. Death is not this; rather, an incessant lack of perspective and observation suits the term better. While meaning should come only from pleasure, and does for many, few contemplate the option of suicide. Religion is largely responsible for the detail that I said many and not most, but I shall likely criticize it for its effect on the world later. Now, suicide is made out to be such a grim and terrible last resort, even purely the result of mental illness, in the media, by almost every individual on this planet, and by the hardwiring in our evolutionarily set brains themselves that the thought of its possible benefits rarely crosses the minds of the sane. For atheistic hedonists like myself, the maximization of pleasure, with little regard for ethics or morals, is the ultimate goal in life. But what if life does not give us this? Death, such a deeply unsettling subject for a product of evolution such as ourselves, is not seen as an option for anyone unless mentally ill, extremely dissatisfied with life, or… intelligent and conscious enough to realize that such critical dissatisfaction exists in almost everybody’s life. We are not meant to be happy. By evolution, pleasure is simply a brief and temporary release of chemicals such as dopamine for the sole purpose of a reward to the brain, telling us what to do and how to live so that we will be happy, but firstly so that our genetics shall be passed on as frequently and successfully as possible. While this feeling of pleasure is indeed pleasurable, it lasts for a short amount of time, is vastly outweighed by displeasure and misery of life, and may perhaps even be no more than a lack of pain, in the sense relative to death. “What’s the point? Should we just end it if nothing matters? No, says Camus, that’s the pussy way out. Instead, we should embrace the fact that nothing makes sense. So, to embrace the absurd, you have to acknowledge that life is absurd and live it anyway. Not because you hope you’re wrong, but because you know you’re right, but living is more fun than not.” Have a good life. If you want to. Die today if you want to. Be a dictator if you want to. Or be suppressed if you want to. Enjoy the person you are. Even if you consider evil nor good, do what you want to. Because, if you don’t what’s gonna happen, nothing. But if you do, what will happen, nothing. No matter what you do nothing makes a difference. Even if it creates indifference, it’s created only in the subjective consciousness. So, do what you want to. In the end, nothing matters.