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Most people reject truth and reality when these two concepts are in conflict with their own ideas and prejudices. Therefore the following essay is of value only to those readers who can prevent their emotions from blocking their objectivity. The intent of this essay is not to persuade you to a particular point of view, but rather to present to you a wide range of facts and opinions that may help you expand and articulate your own views on this intellectually challenging subject:

IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?

The answer is not as obvious as it may seem. For example it depends on whom you ask and when. A person on his honeymoon bed will probably answer the question differently than someone on his deathbed. Someone surfing in Hawaii probably would respond differently than someone rummaging through a Philipino garbage dump in search of something useful.
In fact, the question is rarely asked at all, but it should be, especially when people consider having children. After all, we are already here and thus we owe it to ourselves and to others to make the best of our lives. On the other hand to cause the birth of a child into a hostile world may satisfy one's ego, but is it in the best interest of the child? In this respect the question should be changed to: Is life worth giving?
Unfortunately it is as easy to become a parent as it is difficult to be one. All that is required for parenthood is a set of functioning male and female reproductive organs, a bit of aerobics and correct timing. It is interesting to note that to cut hair for a living or drive a car for pleasure requires proof of competence. Even something as simple as fishing requires a licence. But for parenthood, the most important job of all, no license or proof of competence is required.
Parenthood is widely regarded as a right and even as an obligation. The belief that having children is a source of boundless joy is universal and promoted by religious and business interests alike, but disillusion commonly sets in shortly after birth when fantasy collides with reality: Children rarely turn out as parents expect and surveys have shown that most parents would not have children again if they could do it all over. Another fantasy is that children bring parents closer together when in fact marital stress intensifies after the birth of the first child and most divorces occur after (not before) children are born.
Most people are not competent to be parents and for most children the world is not fit to be born into. The teenage years are particularly difficult for children and parents alike. In the US every 10 minutes a teenager attempts suicide and every 90 minutes one succeeds. Suicide among children is now the second leading cause of death in the US. Canada is not far behind. Suicide is the last taboo subject in society and most suicides are never reported by the media. The spiralling increase in school violence is further proof that childhood has lost its innocence. Ask a teenager what he thinks of school and the most enthusiastic response you'll get is: "It's OK." To most of them school is "a drag." The biggest attraction of school for most students is that's where their friends are! Most people think their children will be different and will avoid all these serious problems that beset so many others like drugs, pregnancy, alcohol, car mishaps, violence and so on. Of course, there are many children who are well-behaved and many families who are quite happy, but the risk that children may get into serious trouble should never be underestimated. Moreover, it is essential to see a child's future not only on a personal level, but also in the context of major negative forces converging globally such as climatic changes, resource depletion, armed conflict, famine, microbial mutations and increasing environmental toxicity.
On balance it must be recognized that there is both joy and misery in every life and that only the ratio differs from person to person and indeed from place to place. There is no doubt that the vast majority of people consider life worth living, but when asked what it is exactly in life that makes up for all the misery that comes with it, chances are they will not be able to present any convincing evidence to prove the validity of their point of view. At least that is what this eye-openers' survey revealed:

These were the two questions:

1. WHAT--if anything--makes life worth all the suffering that is an unavoidable part of it?

2. HOW can human reproduction be justified in our already overpopulated and rapidly deteriorating world?

These were some of the answers:

1. I don't know,that's a very hard question.

2. A child is a blessing from the lord meaning the world must go on.

1. Think about what you wrote: joy and misery are the result of a conscious decision. They are feelings. No matter what evidence is available the resulting joy or misery is based on the individual's decision to be joyful or miserable. The real issue you need to investigate is what causes an individual to decide to have either a positive or negative attitude.

Your first question is based on a judgment you have already made (i.e. life involves suffering). I don't agree with that. I have seen other people suffer but I personally have enjoyed 65 years without it, unless the occasional allergy or bladder infection qualifies for your definition of suffering. It seems that you need to define what you mean by suffering and what you mean with your term "life".

2. Your second question assumes that the world is overpopulated and deteriorating (whatever that means). I disagree with that conclusion. Since I disagree with the assumptions upon which you have based your biased questions, it is a waste of time to attempt to give a rational answer.

1. I agree with the question 'how can one enjoy the highs and emotions of the life experience without the suffering that must accompany them.' How indeed do you recognize a good life experience if no "poor" experience gives it the perspective needed to act as a backdrop. One can feel for those whose lives always seem to be one of perpetual pain and suffering and for me the question is how do they fit into this equation.

2. 'HOW can human reproduction be justified in our already overpopulated and rapidly deteriorating world ?' It appears to be true that we are overpopulating, but it is more a matter of redistribution of current resources and keeping population growth within bounds. Anyone who believes that population growth should come to a dead stop at this point in time will face a bleak future in a few years. But yes too large a growth can not be sustained and will lead to a real gotterdammerung crisis.

1. Life is worth all the suffering because in the end I come out to be a stronger person. There are many kinds of suffering, but I like to use the words 'difficulties' or 'tests,' because in the end when I have gone through the difficulty I have learned more and gained more insight into life. If suffering was not there then I would never learn and never grow in life.

2. Human reproduction can be justified in this crazy world of ours in more ways than one. I believe that if a couple want to bring a child into this world with the utmost love and affection and the child will not be abused then it is justified because they are ready for the responsibility of another life on this earth. If a teenager is being careless and feels the need to have a child, then to me that is not justified.

1. WHAT makes life worth all the suffering? Joy! Orgasm! The pleasure of whomping the piss out of bureaucratic whores who would enslave us!

2. HOW can human reproduction be justified? I suppose you are a proponent of the Nazi eugenics movement?

1. I'm going to answer your first question with a quote by Einstein that has been an inspiration to me for many years:

"I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society." Albert Einstein
I would add: 'One of the biggest tragedies of my life is the loss of my companion and wife, Mary. But through that I learned why she left me, and the social knock-on effects of a totally destructive social, political and economic system that encouraged behaviour that affected me very negatively as a child, that carried over into my adult life. The experience has strengthened my resolve to do my damnedest to change that, so that our children don't have to suffer as much, and can have meaning in life about which, I'm sure that Einstein is right. To answer another way, it is true that humans suffer, but I think that is because we allow ourselves to be divided by those who would exploit us. The bonding from human solidarity is an amazing feeling.'

2. I would answer that the world is not yet overpopulated, because we have the ability to feed, clothe and shelter everyone currently alive, but not if we allow human greed to be the engine of human relationships. As Mahatma Gandhi said: "There is enough in the world to provide everyone's need, but not everyone's greed."

1. To learn, to laugh, to love, to make anything just a little bit better - for oneself and others.

2. As I observe the world from my unique perspective I realize that each and every one of those 6 billion feels, experiences, desires, achieves, cares and reproduces, just as I do. I cannot imagine to deny to others my own precious right and wish to live and to do, and to provide my children the opportunity to experience the joys, enhanced by sorrows, as have I. And perhaps to improve - anything. It may take many generations more, it may need a war or a plague, but we will, one day, create a synergy that truly answers these two questions.

1. Life is only miserable when you search for answers to it outside of God's Word! Your life must be filled with a heap of suffering since you are willing to look for evidence to support what you call an unprovable theory by a survey. My soul, man, open your Bible.

If we are going to attempt to have happiness we must do one of two things. 1. Decide ourselves what will make us happy and live for it. 2. Find out from the creator what he wants and please Him. The great part of this is that God leaves this decision up to us. You may live for yourself and never have the answers or you may live for God and have the truth.(John 8:32 KJV) And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. In this freedom is true happiness!

2. Human reproduction needs no justification. It is a command, and not obeying God is the cause of the deterioration of this world: "And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein." (Gen 9:7 KJV)

1. As for life being a joy, I think you had a few quotes that hit it on the head, "Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn; and he alone is blessed who never was born." I have no idea why people hang onto this life. I have often wanted to leave it and only held back because my dear mother lost my father when he was 62 and her youngest son took his life when he was 30. I love her so much that I would not put her through losing me too. But she is 77. Someday, I will be able to exit at will.

2. I agree with all the quotations you added. I have no children of my own, for which I am grateful, because it gives me the opportunity to love other people's children when it suits me. I have three wonderful nephews, none of whom live near me, but all of whom love me and enjoy visiting me. That's good enough.

1) Life is worth all the suffering if we learn to love enough to change lives for the better.

2) Limited human reproduction is justified only if our offspring learn to love enough to change lives for the better.

1. Life is worth the suffering for most people because the pleasure usually outweighs the pain. That does not mean that there is a dynamite level of happiness very often, but taken over a lifetime more time is spent in happiness or a neutral level than in a crisis mode. If our basic needs of health, social contact, sexuality, success, need for validation, needs of stimulation, cooperation and competition are reasonably well met there is usually a sense of contentment. Our basic drives are not based on reason, that is a recent evolutionary overlay. Our emotional and intuitive aspects really govern our behaviour and desires. The cosmos determined what we are, and we have very little idea about the nature of the forces involved.

2. Human reproduction does not have to be justified. We did not make the rules, and again we have very little idea what those rules really are. They seem to be built into the nature of matter and energy. The drive to reproduce is a basic principle of living organisms. It is not human reproduction that is threatening our survival, but our inability to reproduce at a slower rate. Our basic adaptations are for a world that no longer exists, and we have not adjusted to the level of power we now possess due to the relatively recent scientific method and its translation into technology.

1. To begin with, we have very limited choice about being born. At the start, how can we justify our very beginnings? Having already been born we seem to have two choices, -- to continue living or to commit suicide. Few animals, apart from the well-known northern rodent, deliberately commits suicide. Of course there are instances of some insects throwing themselves into a lethal situation for the sake of their race. Army ants have been reported to leap into a crevasse in large numbers to provide passage for others. In fighting, many insects plunge into combat even when the odds of surviving are minimal. For us, could we consider joining the army as a form of incipient suicide? There is no question but for almost every person there are times of great pleasure and in some cases, ecstasy. For many people achieving scientific success is a joy, especially when it brings public recognition. The price? There is probably no one who, in his lifetime, doesn't suffer sadness, hopelessness and pain, occasionally extreme pain. Dying is only infrequently accomplished without pain. The price, clearly, is high, but is it worth it? I think so. Anyway, we revert to the two ineluctable choices to which I referred earlier.

2. Only for those hoodwinked by religious superstition is procreation the sole reason for copulation. Overbreeding, entailing diminution of the means of future life, is not uncommon. Witness the deer, who, in a limited environment, multiply and devour irreplaceable vegetation upon which they feed, leading to a scrawny, feeble and short-lived progeny, who, by dying early, in some cases permit the recrudescence of vegetation. The omnivorous and feckless human is clearly doing the same to our environment, which in our case is limited by the whole world itself. So we turn to the question of why procreate? The answer for most of the world is, initially ignorance bolstered by the pleasure of intercourse. For those of us who are not that ignorant, should we forego the joys of sexual congress? Why? We certainly know how to have sexual fun without committing pregnancy. So how do we educate the world? It cannot imaginably happen. Thus, though WE know we shouldn't overpopulate, the world will continue do so, predictably resulting in intolerable shortages, and, adding human greed and aggressiveness, brutal wars which contain the likelihood, granted nuclear, chemical and biological warfare technology, may have the effect of severely limiting the human race and conceivably, terminating it, possibly together with much other life on earth. What an optimistic view of the future!

1. The two questions you pose can only lead to individualistic, non-rational answers. They involve matters of perception and--ultimately--faith. Albert Ellis, one of my favorite (cognitive) psychologists and an atheist/humanist talks a lot about the role of perception in creating or minimizing one's suffering, and I think he is correct on this. It's not a new idea as it goes back to the Greek philosophers, but I believe that it captures a lot of why people experience pain and suffering. In my own case I find life worth living due to relationships - with my wife, brother, children, little granddaughter, friends and (some of our) neighbours. I also value my work as a psychologist -- seeing many, but hardly all, of my clients struggle for wholeness, respect and betterment defined in a myriad of ways. I never encounter people who aspire to do worse in their lives although all too frequently impulsive and poor judgment lead to misconduct and heartache.

2. As for human reproduction: it is true that the world is overpopulated. Because of overpopulation I am sure we will see more broad-famines, diseases, pollution, etc., but along with that there is an impetus to develop better energy, medical, political and agricultural approaches that MIGHT improve our lot -- so long as our world pop is held at ZPG or reduced, and that is already starting to happen in the more developed countries.
There are enormous cultural and economic factors involved in high birthrates and, theoretically, as people start to become better off they may rely less on large numbers of offspring as sources of economic security, particularly for their old age. In the end SOME reproduction is justified, i.e. enough to maintain ZPG or less and, hey, it's great fun!

1. Life is worth all the suffering BECAUSE its moments of pure joy and happiness and the memories thereof outshine and outlast the memories of the daily drudgery and misery.

2. Human reproduction is justified BECAUSE without it the human race would vanish from the earth. The degree of human reproduction is another matter. Here maintenance of an equilibrium between birth and death rates would probably be a desirable condition. By the way, I noticed that you omitted Schopenhauer's outlook on life "Life is one long pain - happiness is the temporary absence of pain and trouble. If the pain is overcome then boredom sets in."

This cross-section of views on life shows the great diversity of opinions people have and that most of them feel life is worth the suffering that comes with it. It is a view that is not shared by some famous writers and philosophers as the following quotes show:

"Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end." JOSEPH CONRAD

"Life is little more than a loan shark: it exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes." LUIGI PIRANDELLO recipient of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature.

"Everyone would have declined the gift of life if he could have seen it and tested it beforehand."
SCHOPENAUER

"Why have we imagined that not to be is a great ill, when it is clear that it was not an ill not to be before we were born?" VOLTAIRE

"All the reasoning in the world, all the proof-texts in old manuscripts, cannot reconcile this supposition of a world of sleepless and endless torment with the declaration that 'God is Love.'"
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Sr.

"Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn; and he alone is blessed who never was born."MATTHEW PRIOR, author of Solomon on the Vanity of the World

"Not to be born is the most to be desired." SOPHOCLES

"The only way to end all social injustice, all environmental destruction and all human suffering is to end all human reproduction. All other attempts are but cruel illusions." AUTHOR UNKNOWN.

There is another aspect of life that is widely ignored in evaluating the living experience: death. Life is less than a blink of the eye when its length is compared to the length of death. Although most people seem to live as though death only happens to others, death is as much a part of life as is birth. The time between birth and death is short indeed when measured against eternity. The brevity of life is important to consider--especially when viewed in the context of religion--for it raises the question how to accept the concept of divine justice when most religions hold that our eternal future depends on how we behave during our very short sojourn on earth.
Even more perplexing is the fact that few people recognize the link between birth and death even though one could not happen without the other. To understand this, consider the joy most people feel when a child is born and the great sadness people experience when a loved one dies. Few make the connection between that person's birth and death. In other words, if (s)he had not been born, (s)he could not have died. And when people gaze upon a newborn with joy in their hearts, how many think of the baby's death down the road? It is interesting to note that everyone enters this world crying and no one leaves it laughing.
Life is indisputably short, but is it worthwhile? That brings us to the quality of life or the lack thereof. No one has ever passed through this life without being victimized by illusions. We are born into a set of illusions which may include the stork, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus and the infallibility of parents, teachers and other persons of authority right up to and including the pope.
Most people manage to get rid of these childhood illusions, only to replace them with others some of which stick to them for the rest of their lives. Indeed death itself is generally presented as an illusion. People are dressed up and made up as though they're headed for a party instead of the grave or oven.
Very few people in this world are willing and able to accept the realities of life. Even fewer are capable of basing their behaviour on those realities. Instead people distort reality to suit their needs and to soothe their fears. They practice Reality Denial.
Reality Denial is a form of mental self-defense. It is obviously easier to deny a problem than to deal with it. For example, most people believe that the global environmental crisis is no direct threat to them or their children. This enables them to continue living as before, i.e. consume, waste, destroy and reproduce without giving any serious thought to the consequences of such a lifestyle.
Paradoxically, most people claim to want to know the truth, but unless it matches their own prejudices or serves their own particular objectives, they will go far out of their way to deny it.
Make-believe--not reality--is the motivating force in our society. It is the foundation of the multi-billion dollar advertising industry, it allows preachers to fleece their flock and it is make-believe that is the key to success in the movie industry. It also gets politicians elected.
It is a lot easier to sell fantasy than reality. For example phone sex and psychic scams generate a lot more interest (i.e. money) than programs that provide food and basic health care for starving and ill children in war-ravaged, impoverished nations such as Sri Lanka or Ethiopia.
The foregoing is only a small sampling of illusions: there are obviously too many to identify them all. The reader should be aware of the extent that fantasies influence--if not shape--our lives. It is not an easy task. Recognizing illusions has become extremely difficult, since the major media increasingly present opinions as facts and fewer and fewer people have the analytical skills to tell them apart. Alistair Cooke has said that people read more to reinforce their own prejudices than to learn new ideas. It's quite true that whatever point of view one wishes to embrace, one can always find some evidence to support or disprove it. For example, one can argue as easily that any given city is a great place to live as argue the opposite. Most people reject ideas that contradict their own prejudicial perspectives. If that is not complicated enough, studies have shown that clinically depressed people have a far more realistic view of life and the world than so-called 'normal people.' One such depressed--but articulate--person agreed to express his thoughts in writing for eye-openers. Here is an abridged version of the text:

This world, like the universe of which it forms an infinitesimal part, is a mind-boggling place. Life is complex, ingenious and basically barbaric. The natural world is hostile to life. Consider the lethal facts: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, droughts, diseases, starvation and a lethal bio-diversity within which each species lives at the expense of many others.
The human race has added other deadly factors to the mix such as war, ionizing radiation, pollution, deforestation, habitat destruction, species extinction, global warming and so on. In addition to the negative environmental factors there are the social ones: unemployment, crime, domestic violence, poverty, sexual abuse, homelessness, drug abuse, malnutrition, economic exploitation, racism, family disintegration, overpopulation and so on.
Since life is difficult and death is incomprehensible, most people choose to live in a fantasy world. The human mind is capable of believing almost anything and it hungers for comfort even if that exists only in make-believe form. As some wit has said: "No one has ever gone broke giving people hope."
As a society we prefer fantasy over reality. We shield our sensibilities against the insane, the terminally ill, the prisoners, the slaughterhouses. Out of sight indeed is out of mind. People pet a lamb in the afternoon and have one for dinner in the evening without acknowledging the link. It is doubtful one person in a 1,000 would eat a wiener if (s)he could see how it was made. How many meat-eaters have seen the killing of animals in slaughterhouses? How many have witnessed the cutting and hacking of the carcasses as they swing suspended from meat hooks while rubber-booted, blood-spattered men walk through their steaming entrails, the stench filling the air? How many would have any appetite left by the time the unrecognizable meat is ground and squeezed to form a wiener?
The world is a cauldron of misery and suffering, no matter how hard we may pretend with drugs, drinks, spectator sports, movies etc. that it isn't. No sensitive, rational person would deliberately bring innocent children into this rapidly deteriorating world if it weren't for sex: that powerful, irresistible instinct hard-wired into our brain which overrides both logic and compassion.
What joy is more intense, yet more fleeting and beyond accurate recall than sex? No wonder Somerset Maugham referred to sex as "nature's trick to assure human propagation." The drive is so strong that people, especially men, often risk their careers, their health and even their lives for a few moments of furtive pleasure. Sex is a multi-billion industry in terms of prostitution, medical care and legal consequences. The Roman Catholic church in the U.S. has spent more than $600 million in court settlements for the sexual abuse committed by their priests and bishops.
In society as a whole, sex causes more agony than ecstasy if one considers the multitude of possible undesirable consequences, including unwanted pregnancies, abortions, diseases, criminal charges (fights to murder), paternity suits, divorce etc. The high failure rate of marriages and other sexual relationships is the direct result of people confusing love with lust. Just like our failure to associate the cuddly lamb with our evening dinner, so the human mind refuses to associate birth with death , even though the latter is impossible without the former!
Just like a slaughterhouse tour does not create an appetite for a hot dog, so a visit to a hospice fails to serve as an aphrodisiac. The human mind carefully separates images of baby cribs from coffins even though in the real world they are inextricably linked! The price of life is death. To really love children is not to cause their birth, but to love and help those already here. Religious opposition to contraception and governments offering financial incentives to baby-producing couples is both stupid and immoral.

CONCLUSION: The reader may not agree with the foregoing, but one cannot deny that these cogent thoughts are rooted in reality and are difficult--if not impossible--to disprove. So where does that leave us? Some will argue that the more important question is: "What is the meaning of life?" But this presupposes that life does have meaning and that therefore it must have purpose. There is no proof of either. Here are some quotes on the meaning of life:

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. HENRY MILLER (1891–1980)

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation. GEORGE ELIOT (1819–80)

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live—moreover, the only one. E. M. CIORAN (b.1911)

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age. ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879–1955)

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them. PAUL GAUGUIN (1848–1903)

It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care. PABLO PICASSO (1881–1973)

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ALBERT CAMUS (1913–60)

In the society of men the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is no longer possible if it is not a lie. R. D. LAING(1927–89)

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life. LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867–1936)

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say. VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941)

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it. VACLAV HAVEL (b. 1936)

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position. SOREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–55)

Life is a lottery: There are many losers and very few winners. Life is also genetic roulette: where one is born and to whom largely determines one's future. This irrefutable fact is reinforced when witnessing extreme poverty in Third World countries. Many people live in hovels we wouldn't store our garden tools in. They eke out the most meagre existence imaginable from a very harsh and barren environment. No matter how hard they work, they can't possibly extricate themselves from their deplorable circumstances.
In this bleak existence sex is the greatest (if not only) joy and so children are born in far larger numbers than their parents or the land they live on can possibly support, while their Catholic priests keep telling them that contraception is a sin. These children spent little, if any, time in school. As soon as they are able they work alongside their parents to obtain life's most basic necessities.
Seeing this with open eyes and a sensitive heart one feels extreme sadness mixed with rage for one knows these children are condemned to a poor, uneducated, disease-ridden existence from which with rare exceptions there is no escape. Compare this to a child born in an affluent country to parents who are financially well off and the unjust inequality of the situation is painfully obvious. Ironically, people who can least afford it usually have the largest number of children, while those who can best provide for them generally have the fewest. Thus global disparity grows exponentially and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.
So whether life is worth living depends to a large extent on one's circumstances and expectations, precluding a simple universal answer. Apart from economic considerations, we have to take into account one's health status and various other factors. Nevertheless, if we add up all the negative and positive factors of life on a global scale, then it is undeniable that for the vast majority of people life offers a lot more pain than pleasure.
Meanwhile the global human population continues to mushroom and with it an ever-increasing presence of disease-causing pollutants and a growing consumption of goods. As the world's nonrenewable resources are being depleted, competition for the remaining ones becomes increasingly intense. This in turn will lead inevitably to armed conflict in a world bristling with weapons of mass destruction and the sophisticated means to deliver them.
For the first time in decades diseases are on the increase. New ones emerge and old ones reappear. For example, there are now more cases of tuberculosis than ever before! Meanwhile bacterial and viral mutations render more and more antibiotics ineffective. Under these circumstances one of the cruelest acts people can commit is to bring innocent children into this world. Unfortunately most people's behavior is governed by hormones instead of intelligence and so we move as a species to unparalleled disaster and quite possibly towards total extinction which ironically could prove to be a lifesaving development for all other life-forms....
The counter argument is that life is what one makes of it and that material wealth should not be confused with happiness, after all the most important things in life cannot be bought: love, trust and friendship, for example.
So the key to happiness is our attitude, especially how we treat others. Every day each one of us has many opportunities to make life better or worse for others. If by our actions we show we care about others, our lives will acquire meaning. Through caring for others we may find peace in ourselves. The less we expect from life the less likely we will be disappointed. Buddhism teaches the only way to end all suffering is to abandon all desire and that by doing so we will gain a deeper sense of appreciation for life. In other words the subjugation of the ego is the road to nirvana, a hard-sell in our hedonistic, materialistic society! Giving up all desire may sound profound, but it subjects practitioners to exploitation by people with a materialistic bend. And while there are unmistakable virtues in simplicity, poverty sucks--to use a vernacular term currently in vogue.
It is also true that life offers countless sources of great joy and awesome beauty ranging from the ecstasy of being in love to a spectacular sunset. A concert, a play, the fragrance of a rose, all can fill our hearts with joyful emotions. To a large extent we cause our own joy and our own sorrow by focussing on one or the other, for our thoughts create our feelings. Our minds allow us to think about whatever we choose. If we want to feel happy--so the theory goes--we should think about happy things. Similarly the reverse means we can also cause our own misery if we think unhappy thoughts. The human mind is capable of conning itself into believing almost anything, including that life is wonderful even when it isn't. Let's look at some beliefs that are widely held without any factual basis:

1. The belief that there is cosmic justice in this world. It is expressed in the common expression: 'what goes around, comes around.' This is the socalled karma principle which is also embedded in the New Testament. In other words, if one performs kind deeds towards his fellowmen one will likewise be rewarded and if one commits unkind acts one will similarly "reap what he sows." (Galatians 6:7). Yet, there are countless examples of scoundrels who live happy and healthy lives, while large numbers of kind and altruistic people suffer all kinds of miseries and injustices.

2. The belief that love is the principle that governs the world, perhaps the universe. It holds that God is love, life is love, Nature is love. But anyone who has ever seen a documentary film about predators and prey in nature knows there is nothing loving about life in the wild. Quite the opposite: Life in the natural world is barbaric. For example, crocodiles drag zebras to their deaths by drowning them. Lions pounce on their prey and break their neck. Certain insects lay their eggs on their victims after paralyzing them without killing them, so that the young--once hatched--will have a living supply of food.

3. The growing belief in the para normal. It is a gigantic paradox that in this age of incredible scientific achievements cults, superstitions and psychics are enjoying a renaissance reminiscent of the Dark Ages. Psychic scams abound and people spend millions of dollars on con artists who claim to know the future without any evidence that they do. No matter how often psychics are wrong, countless people continue to pay for their advice. One of the world's best-known psychics is Sylvia Browne, author of several best-sellers. She predicted that the new president of the United States would be Bill Bradley... See for yourself. It is number 28 on her list of predictions: http://www.sylvia.org/home/2000pred.cfm  Even rational people may believe irrational things. In psychology this is called cognitive dissonance: the holding of two contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs. For example, a lawyer who uses logical arguments in practising his profession, may throw all reason aside and check his horoscope or consult a psychic to get a glimpse of his future, because what people reject professionally they often accept personally. If a psychic tells them they shouldn't fly on a certain date or marry a certain person, people commonly accept such advice. But if a judge based his verdict on a psychic's recommendation, his judicial career would come to an abrupt end.

The foregoing should convince the reader that most people live in a fantasy world and by doing so ignore the fact that while thoughts and beliefs can change feelings, they cannot change reality.

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