Life

Life is crap - or, at least, the idea of it, from an unbiased point of view. What is the meaning of life? I’ll tell you what the meaning of life is. The meaning of life is to find a meaning for your life. Having realised this fact, which is a bit obvious when you think about it, the meaning of life is to find an ever better meaning of life. In other words, life is what you make it. "I dunno," says God, "you'll just have to make it up as you go along."

This is, of course, a simplistic view. In the long-term, prospects appear not to be too brilliant to such theorists - regardless of whether they used the logic I've used above - which I will call the Simplists. For example, in the grand scene of things, what is the point of living in the first place, regardless of the pathetic attempts of conscious beings to do something with themselves? Surely, says the Simplist, the only reason for being is to improve the prospects for future reincarnations (just in case they will exist) and for the universe as a whole. But if the soul is not infinite, and the Universe is not infinite, then once again, what’s the point? If the Universe will end, all that work will eventually amount to nothing. If you deduct what you have at the end of the Universe with what you have at the start of the Universe, what result do you get? Nothing. "Simplism" meets nihilism.

If we are to assume that Morality is important – that, despite being invented by humans, morality is of great importance to animals that are capable of experiencing pain in any form – then the way that we affect others (and thus, presumably, the universe holistically) is of great importance, too. So too is the enjoyment of life. Therefore: because life is what you make it, to make it good is inherently the correct thing to do*, regardless of alternatives (such as to negate one’s existence).

So why should life be wasted on the Simplists? Are they right, in which case everyone is either a Simplist or an Idiot at heart? Or should society force them to make what Simplists would call the logical decision, and banish themselves from the Land of the Living permanently?

Interestingly, using this logic, you can also show that heaven and hell are the same thing, as are God and the Devil.

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* See also: Plato (360BC), “The Republic”, Book I. The most popular (and, in my opinion, the best) free online English version is translated by Benjamin Jowett at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html. The site has always been temperamental, and links may not work. Failing that, the Penguin Classics version is passable (and very cheap).