Giving Up

The irrepressible crushing weight of chronic depression has left me broken and dismayed.  I no longer view life as a fruitless struggle to justify one’s irrelevant existence before that existence utterly ceases.  I now view life as a cruel and unnecessary affliction that withers away the psyche by presenting the promise of cognition, emotion and physical sensation only to slowly erode away these faculties as your inevitable death comes to bear on you.  The many joys and splendors life has to offer are far outweighed by all the sorrow and suffering that is constantly inflicted upon the living.  And yet, to forfeit one’s life to silence the torment, though it seems the only rational solution, is itself a terrifying endeavor.  Surrendering one’s entire being to the unknown and eternal void of death seems such a horrifying prospect as to give pause to all but the most desperate and miserable seeking an escape.  Thus, the living organism is cursed for the duration of its life with an overwhelming self-preservative instinct.

Although preservation of the self is instinctive, there may be rational reasons for postponing death.  The most obvious rational reason for avoiding death is that death is absolute.  Since there exists the possibility that whatever death holds is even more agonizing than life and since there is no proven way to revert from complete death it seems reasonable to continue to tolerate life until it has completely run its course before venturing into the timeless folds of oblivion.  Even if death is somehow filled with unimaginable spiritual pleasures, it would not be any less so after living a few more decades, so it even seems reasonable to suffer needlessly for the better part of a century rather than rushing to the sweet release of death, since the prolonged suffering of life may actually make the eternal joy of death even more fulfilling.  Whatever death holds, it cannot be known by those who live.  As such, it takes a great deal of compounded suffering before death becomes a welcome companion.

Although there are some rational reasons for avoiding death, there seem to be no good reasons for living.  An individual may acquire knowledge, possessions, power, influence and pleasant experiences while alive, but death eventually separates the individual from these things.  Even if death is postponed significantly in order to prolong the individual’s worldly comforts, as time passes and the individual ages knowledge is forgotten, possessions wear out, power is usurped, influence wanes and experiences grow intangible.  Eventually, all personal reason for living is lost.  The longer one lives, the more completely meaningless living becomes.

In much the same way, there is not much sense in continuing to live for the sake of the species.  No matter how much we accomplish as a species the world will eventually be swallowed by our sun and all our accomplishments destroyed.  This is true even if we spread across the galaxy and colonize other worlds or create solar-powered space station colonies to orbit other stars.  No matter how much knowledge, power and influence the human race acquires it will not be capable of preventing the eventual death of the universe itself.  The struggle for life, in its entirety, is pointless.  Fare thee well!