Value of life

[Chronosphere]

What exactly determines life's value?
Most of us are suicidal. Our lives are pretty much done. Some of us won't survive this year. It's easy for us to imagine our death and some of us probably made peace with themselves about it.
But culture depicts death as something way too important. Like, for example Jesus. They say he died for our sins. But I can die too. Any of us can. And will. So why our death is less valuable than his?
It's just an example, I don't want to make this thread about religion. There are celebrities who died from natural causes or suicide. And everyone is talking about it like it's a big deal.
Maybe I shouldn't talk using word 'us', sorry if someone feels I am wrong. But me personally, I just don't think life matters at all. Either it's religion figure, or celebrity, or an unknown junky who overdosed himself.

 

[Darkover]

value is subjective what i might consider highly valuable someone might consider complete worthless

 

[QueerMelancholy]

I have contemplated what value even means in a capitalistic society and then a religious one and then a secular one and so on and so on.

It seems to me that value is wholly subjective in the capitalistic one but wholly objective in the religious one if you're asking about the value of life.

Can it be both in such a society where religion and capitalism coexist? Is that a contradiction? Does one poison the other and vice versa?

Philosophers have been trying to decide on a proper definition for meaning for what seems like forever and even they can't all agree from what I've seen or read or heard being discussed.

Personally, I do think everything has a subjective value within the context of the human narrative and realm. I do believe everything has a causal effect on everything else. Something happens and something else happens as a consequence of that. We're all linked to each other through a chain of causality. The people we know know others and those people know others and it branches out and the experiences and ideology diffuse outwards touching more people than we could ever know personally.

I do think about how my death if by suicide would affect the doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, etcetera. I mean I am a small cog in the machine that is their years of experience but does that cog also affect how they treat and interact with patients after me? If we're all a word in the sentence being thought about in someone else's mind how far do we get spoken of into the future?

For a lack of better words: "God is the only one who knows."

 

[Praestat_Mori]

The value of life is subjective. If people have a good life they usually value it more than people who have a terrible life, live in agony due to many different factors that can cause suffering.

Personally, I valued my life and I never wanted to die early rather I wished to reach 100+ (given good health and all that what makes a good life) but now after my big failure my life isn't valuable anymore - it's rotting alive at home. I don't want to reach an old age this way.

 

[FuneralCry]

I believe existence to ultimately be meaningless as well. Existence itself is such a terrible, tragic abomination with no deeper meaning or purpose behind it, all that existing beings are doing is just waiting to die in an existence that was so harmfully imposed in the first place. Eventually no matter what this existence will disappear into nothingness and it'll be like we never existed at all, the thought of this is all that comforts me.

 

[sserafim]

I don't believe that life is inherently valuable. Things only have value because we assign value to them. We give them value. Society believes that life is valuable for a multitude of reasons, and that suicide is the ultimate evil and bad because you're choosing to end your life. I don't think that life is any more valuable than death. However, society views death as the ultimate harm and most people are scared of death and dying. They're terrified of it because they're scared of the unknown and life is all they've ever known

 

[grungy自殺]

it's all just quite unknown..

Of course it's subjective..

All i could say is this is one line from one song

"all in all is all we are"

 

[Forever Sleep]

I think when either celebrities die or youngsters who appeared to have bright futures ahead of them, what people mourn is the loss of potential. Who they could have become. What they might have achieved or experienced had they lived.

Our capacity to choose is important to us too. So- murder is a massive sin because it deprives another person of all their choices. Ironically though- suicide is a choice but people don't seem to want to accept it as a valid or even sane choice. In fact, they'll say it isn't valid because it isn't sane! I think people prefer to think that mental illnesses murder their loved ones rather than that their loved one made a reasoned choice.

But, I think a lot of it is about potential and I think people have rose tinted vision. They seem to ignore what a struggle life is. That the actual person may have been brilliantly gifted but maybe they didn't get any enjoyment from their achievements anymore. Even if it was something like depression causing that- if they couldn't get that effectively treated- just how likely would it be that they would have lead a happy life- even if they had lived? Isn't that worse? To struggle and suffer through an entire lifetime, never actually achieving your potential because various things held us back? How many of us will live like that?

The scary part is when awful things like 9/11 or the Boeing Max plane crashes happen. How are individual lives compensated for? In terms of monetry value- are all lives worth the same? Sadly, no. Some people are barely compensated at all. Not that it could ever bring the person back but- it just adds insult to injury. Look at the Bhopal gas tragedy and how hard it's been for them.

Clearly, we do have to assign value to life in order to stop homicide/ genocide/ manslaughter from happening but to my mind- an individual's right to choose needs to come first. If they themselves want to die- then, keeping them alive against their wishes is also a form of subjugation.