Spirituality
08 Jun 10
Originally posted by AThousandYoungI agree with AThousandYoung that life is a blessing and indeed that most people find it so.
I disagree. I think humans by nature are happy and kind - if they have sufficient resources, including human ones like parents, friends and educators.
Many if not all people with severe and debilitating disabilities, even accompanied by pain, state that they prefer to be and to remain alive.
Most people living in conditions of total poverty and disadvantage choose to struggle for life and seek only for betterment, not for termination. Even victims within Nazi concentration camps (when this was possible and they were not simply killed) sustained a will to live and a sense of purpose, albeit under such intolerable and long lasting pressures that in time many did despair and die.
For many people of quite different philosophies, there is a conviction that suffering is to some degree an illusion, something that is not objectively real but rather a state of mind which can be overcome.
The argument that life is not worthwhile is frequently associated with very oppressive and unpleasant regimes and or behaviours. It is typically applied to others - deemed less fortunate or less worthy.