What would you sacrifice your life for?

Discussion in 'Existentialism' started by Idlewild, Aug 31, 2020.

  1. Idlewild

    Idlewild Members

    Messages:
    517
    Likes Received:
    575
    I'd sacrifice my life for my wife, maybe even my dog, depending on the situation. I might sacrifice my life for someone who is being wronged if I acted on impulse -- probably not if I had time to think about it.

    I have trouble understanding how people can sacrifice their lives for political figures, like Kyle Rittenhouse. In all likelihood, he'll be going to prison for a long time. And for what?

    I just don't understand how some people can have such little value for their own lives. Have they just given up on the world?
     
  2. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,694
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    a world in which no one ever hated logic, consideration, honesty or imagination.
    one where no one tried to tell anyone else what to pretend about the unknown.
    one where you could build and live in any damd thing, that wasn't going to put anyone else at risk.
    one where value is measured by enjoyable utility, and not symbolic quantity.

    and yes, i would work, right gladly and with gusto, for 'nothing', if everything were free.
    at least as long as i could choose and rechoose the nature of that work

    but no, i wouldn't ever want to kill anything that i wasn't going to eat or wasn't trying to eat me.
     
  3. themnax

    themnax Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,694
    Likes Received:
    4,465
    this is understandable, but eventually life times out, and then what? no one really knows, even if anything or not.
    but there's this other thing to, and that's the kind of world we all have to live in, and how we all together participate in making it the way each of us individually has to live in.

    i'm absolutely in no hurry to be dead no matter what.
    but if my survival were to depend on the non-survival of large numbers of other people, is honestly any of us, any less expendable then any other of us?

    yah its too romantically easy to say we'd die for anything, but how about what we live for? what we're willing to endure, to avoid having to endure something else?
    and what happens when we don't? how does it all work?
    and i can tell you what i've observed for 72 years, and i can also tell you i'd already observed enough to arive at much the same conclusions when i had only lived 12.

    and that is that yes, statistics are real, that the sum of our behaviors add up to what individually we must then experience. and that whatever gods, beliefs or anything else.

    and what is so worth living for? it is the beauty of landscapes of our natural and built surroundings and of how they interact, or lack of it,
    and that again comes from the statistic of how, what each of us do, are all added up together.

    whatever we tell each other, our doing so is one thing, but rocks and trees and galaxies, are what is there, whatever we tell each other or not,
    along with whatever we bump our toes into in the middle of the night. just the silly physical things.

    yes being in a hurry to die for anything is dumb, but there is also more to it then that.
    when a person is willing to put themselves in harms way for others, i believe they do earn our honor and respect for doing so,
    even if perhaps nothing else about them might otherwise do so.

    i have an idea, and other people might have other ideas, about how we could have a kind of world that everyone could enjoy, could find what gratifies them to do so, to enjoy living in.
    i don't think people killing each other can ever itself create that kind of a world. but being logically and impartially and universally considerate of all things, is, i believe, the one thing that can.

    would such a world be worth dying for if that were what it would take for it to exist? none of us can say for anyone else.
     
  4. scratcho

    scratcho Lifetime Supporter Lifetime Supporter

    Messages:
    22,493
    Likes Received:
    14,738
    My children, my grand children, your children, your grand children and when I see parachutes in the sky.
     
    BCG420 likes this.
  5. BCG420

    BCG420 Members

    Messages:
    157
    Likes Received:
    683
    My biggest fear is that when I'm most needed I won't be there,

    My family is my #1 priority
     
    scratcho likes this.
  6. rasta g child

    rasta g child flower power

    Messages:
    487
    Likes Received:
    101
    da universe
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice