What do you live for?

[GrandizerII]

Obvious title is obvious.
The answer is not cookies, and no suprise, it's not even waffles.
Nor shall it be pizza, and pizza shall it not be.
For those who don't get it: what is your purpose in life? Why have you not killed yourself yet?

As a human being, it is not in my nature to kill myself. We are genetically wired for survival.

Exactly!

[TheRealJoeFish]

I live for every little bit of sensory input. I mean to say: every little pain, tiny smell, every sound, every tree I see scattered across a mountain range, every taste... every glorious interaction between my body and the rest of the world, every electrical stimulus that the big glob of fat and water and sugar in my skull converts into meaning, or notices, or barely takes notice of...

I guess this basically boils down to existence for the sake of existence, but... what a fun, wild way in which we exist!

[Sappho]

Suicide is not one of the main causes of death around the world. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
It isn't natural for people to kill themselves, most people don't. I haven't because I don't want to, it's that simple. I believe in the right to die, I do not think suicide is immoral. If I wanted to die, I would first seek medical treatment incase the desire was caused by some physical or mental illness. If I found myself to be healthy and of sound mind, or unhealthy and untreatable, and still wanted to die after that I would find a place where I could end my life in peace with minimal interference from others and my life would end. But I don't have any desire to die so it's not really relevant.

Excuse me for being mistaken. I was pretty convinced of it, so I didn't look it up.

And your answer indeed sounds pretty reasonable.

[Ben Davis]

[Sappho]

I live for every little bit of sensory input.  I mean to say: every little pain, tiny smell, every sound, every tree I see scattered across a mountain range, every taste... every glorious interaction between my body and the rest of the world, every electrical stimulus that the big glob of fat and water and sugar in my skull converts into meaning, or notices, or barely takes notice of...

I guess this basically boils down to existence for the sake of existence, but... what a fun, wild way in which we exist!

Love it.
Same.
Almost same.

---

And on a more serious and slightly cheesy note, I live for the thought of feeling normal again

I'm interested.
Would you mind expleeeen?

[Iroscato]

I will answer what stops me from killing myself first.
Here we are, on this 12,000km - wide rock orbiting a stable nuclear explosion, that has existed for more than 4 1/2 billion years before I came along...and will continue to exist for 5 billion years after I'm gone. Our planet is just one in quite possibly hundreds of sextillions, and is most likely nearly unique in its ability to support life. This ancient cosmos in which we reside is billions of light-years across - far too large to comprehend with our puny human brains, which are also the most advanced and complex objects that we know of, far exceeding the power of any supercomputer we are capable of building.

In the face of this disquieting immensity, complexity and history, I believe that no earthly problem we encounter is insurmountable. Call it a religion, a belief system, what have you. Call it head-in-the-clouds nonsense. All I know is, it gives me a lot of perspective, has seen me through some tough times, and is what I draw on when I start to feel the bite of depression.


What do I live for? That is somewhat harder to explain. I don't have especially lofty goals - a good job, plenty of sex, and good times with my friends and family (or perhaps an extremely careful combination of several of these at once) are my main goals, and so far I'm quite good at achieving all of these, dry spell notwithstanding. If you want to go deeper, I do want to leave the world a better place than I found it, however small a change it may be. So yeah, the same as most people's goals in life, really.

[Whateverist]

Why have you not killed yourself yet?

1) I don't find the condition of being alive so noisome as to consider killing myself.

2) I've just been so gosh durn busy.

3) What, and never find out how the story ends? No way.

[Whateverist]

Being human transcends our natural behaviour.

Did you just say being human transcends being human? How is that even possible?

Yes of course, it is in our genes to not kill ourselves, but we can easely put that aside. There is a reason why suicide is a main cause of death around the world. So that's why the question: why don't you kill yourself?

Perhaps it is because of age old traditions of religious faith which gives hope and joy to so many?

[Pyrrho]

... Why have you not killed yourself yet?

I think you have the matter backwards.  One does not need to decide to keep living.  If one makes no decision, one keeps living (excepting for accidents and such things that are not acts of will).  One's inertia is to keep living, not to kill oneself.

This is discussed in David Hume's essay "Of Suicide.":

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/704#lf0059_label_889

So, in order to kill oneself (willfully, not accidentally), one must decide to kill oneself.  But one does not have to make a decision about living or dying to keep living.

So the answer to your question for everyone who is alive is either that they have not decided to kill themselves or they tried and failed at it or they have just recently decided to kill themselves and have not done it yet.

One of the really interesting things about this is that people who live horrible lives often do not kill themselves.  This is because animal species (including humans) have a natural aversion to suicide (otherwise, they would not live to produce the next generation).  Fundamentally, the "choice" to live is not rational at all; it is the default position which it takes great effort to overcome.  Losty mentioned this natural tendency already.

[Losty]

Suicide is not one of the main causes of death around the world. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
It isn't natural for people to kill themselves, most people don't. I haven't because I don't want to, it's that simple. I believe in the right to die, I do not think suicide is immoral. If I wanted to die, I would first seek medical treatment incase the desire was caused by some physical or mental illness. If I found myself to be healthy and of sound mind, or unhealthy and untreatable, and still wanted to die after that I would find a place where I could end my life in peace with minimal interference from others and my life would end. But I don't have any desire to die so it's not really relevant.

Excuse me for being mistaken. I was pretty convinced of it, so I didn't look it up.

And your answer indeed sounds pretty reasonable.

I think "what do you live for?" is a wonderful question without the unnecessary addition of why "haven't you killed yourself?".

I live for a lot of things. The world is a beautiful place. There are so many places I want to go things I want to see. There are my children who are my whole life right now, I love them more than I ever imagined it possible to love someone. There's bacon and ice cream and yes even waffles thanks to be Neim. Sometimes life sucks, there's a lot of pain and sadness and loss, but it's still awesome! I mean seriously a platypus..."you can't explain that!"