Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Why to Live

Why do we have to live?

In my philosophical quandries, I have thought up this question and I cannot for the life of me produce a convincing universal argument for this query. Of course My question is unanswerrable since it automatically assumes that in each and every scenario possible, The Human involved has to live.But in reality, Nobody has to live; you could get a 9 and put it on your noggin. It is not likely that you will continue to live. As such, There is no solution to this query since the underlying premise is false.So maybe i should rephrase my question



Why we should strive to live?
Why should we wake up each and every day and labour extensively to keep on existing? We all share some basic fears that help keep us living. The fear of death, fear of the unkown, fear of the afterlife e.t.c. These fears act as a negative reinforcement against giving up on life. But is there any positive cause that can help push a person into deciding to keep on living? is there any cause that encourage us to continue with life? Of course, there are many personal reasons or answers to this question. We all have dreams, aspirations, goals, commitments and many other ties to our existence that keep us moving or striving on for more life. For example, I want to single handedly revolutionize Africa to be on par with the western nations,I want to make east africa to be an economic powerhouse able to create and sustain growth at levels comparable to European countries and the USA. I want to make Kenya rich and keep it stable. I want to elevate the Kikuyu tribe to be more than just a tribal entity but a social, political, economic and corporeal group. I want to make Mbari ya Njagi super cool, and achieve super awesome things, I love my family and would want more power for them. These thing keep me tied to life, they are the fire on my backside, spurring me on to keep living and to keep striving.




Is there anything like this that can be applied universally to all humans to argue that all of them should keep on striving to live?

I am not naive enough to think that my goals can be applied to anyone else. Of course, some people share goals, dreams and ideals. I am probably not the only one trying to improve africa or east africa. I am not the only Kikuyu that is working to better the status of the tribe, My brother, sister, mother and father are all doing their level best to improve Mbari ya Njagi. But some dreams are not shared, everybody has some unique dream or aspiration in their life, for example nobody in my family shares my dreams of participating in rallying or race car driving, I dare venture to say that nobody in the whole of mobile, Alabama even thinks about going to Nyandarua, Kenya or Mucharage, Kenya to go swimming and mud bogging in the rivers there. Nobody in the entire world regularly daydreams about marrying a specific girl(who I wont name)in Kenya and then touring the US. and Kenya in an RV. Nobody does.

The world is so diverse that I cannot think of a single thing that is universally strived for. You might say happiness is a universal ideal but not everybody is looking for it, Some people are all too pleased to cause calamity and disaster. You might say that peace is the universal goal but some people derive profit,satisfaction and happiness from violence or war. You might say it is Order but i personally know more than one anarchist who will disagree with you profusely, You might think that everyone wants sunny skies but some people are actually praying for rain. This might go on and on for eternity and in the end would turn out fruitless.

Is there any clear goal, dream, aspiration or ideal that can be applied universally to all humans to argue that all of them individually should keep on striving to live?

No, there is not. If I find one, I will have to update this article.





P.S:
I try to update the blog as often as possible but as always when i try to document my ideas, they seem to get stuck in my head or in rough draft form ,uncharacterisable and unrecognisable to others. I thought that I would try to experiment with shorter posts but I don't want to turn my blog into something like twitter where half baked ideas coupled with irrational human impulsiveness has created a garrishly fickle social catastrophe.

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