So why is it important? What makes it a charade? Charade from what? — schopenhauer1

I think both you and I have a fairly similar understanding as to why it's a charade. It's pointless, scary, harmful, absurd, hilarious, enjoyable in some respects and uncomfortable in many others...an actor on an empty stage facing an empty audience is practicing a charade just as much as any of us are.

It's important only insofar that we continue to view it as important. From my view, the preservation of culture is of utmost importance because culture is a manifestation of our collective subconscious fear of death and a need for comfort. If nothing else society offers us little distractions in the form of consumerism. The creation of needs. The subsequent dependency on conglomerates to satisfy our cravings. The reverence and worship of cultural demigods celebrities and politicians.

Are you high right now?

Jokes aside, the implicit messages that society is trying to convey about life is that it's simultaneously a good thing and a dangerously violent thing, a thing filled with suffering and yet also worth living, a silly charade and yet an important silly charade. It's a contradiction. The advertised optimism is shallow and the social critics don't go deep or far enough, because nobody wants to expose just how absolutely stupid most everything is.

Mr. Robot is my favorite television show, partly because they picked the perfect music for each episode:



Such an amazing psychological thriller. I really liked the nod to Fight Club.

It won't be necessary to wait that long. By any stretch of the imagination, the 'bubble' will have burst long before then. — Bitter Crank

I agree that we'll probably die out before then. However if it is the case that we happen to exist for that long, then the eventual entropic heat death will kill us all.

Thank you. What do you think the patriarchy is?

I think we should make a distinction here between progress: forward or onward movement toward a destination. versus progress: advance or develop toward a better, more complete, or more modern state. I'm using the second term. — schopenhauer1

I don't see why we would need such a distinction. A better, more complete, more modern state just is a destination.

Is there something that is "shown" to us in this understanding that we can "progress"? Sure, much of it is habituation that gets stronger over time, or accumulation that gets more integrated, but it is a function of the human experience to experience this "getting better" "getting more refined" or just progressing. I'm not sure I have this fully fleshed out, but there is something I am trying to get at, and perhaps a dialogue will tease it out. Don't worry, I'm not trying to get all Nietzschean or rosy-eyed optimistic here, but I am just trying to work with this concept of progress in the individual and group sense. — schopenhauer1

Nietzsche's cool though. I'm not entirely sure what you are describing but in my view, knowledge is a very valuable commodity. Humans are one of the few species on Earth that use their intelligence as their primary survival tool. When faced with a dilemma, we feel anxiety and must resolve the issue. We don't want a silly answer, though - a silly answer doesn't help us survive. We want an accurate, correct answer.

So philosophy is a process (or progression) towards the systematization of our manifest image.

In the everyday common sense term, progress just means to move forward. If we obtain a goal, we progress. If we acquire something better, we progress. If something changes, it progresses, thus progress is tied inherently to process (a process can progress through stages).

In the more philosophical, existential sense, progress, in my opinion, is an unsustainable process that can only happen in a "bubble", or in more scientific terms, a system with a consistent source of energy. The environment we call Earth can be harnessed to produce technology that better aids our societies. We can progress out of more archaic moral ideas. All of this progress exists and is entirely dependent upon the "bubble" we call Earth.

But eventually Earth will be destroyed as the Sun loses hydrogen and helium to fuse and begins to expand and contract in a fluctuating process before it slowly simmers out. If humans haven't moved on from Earth, all of our progress will have been destroyed. The "bubble" will have been popped.

If humans manage to escape the inevitable doom of the Earth, the bubble will be moved to a different location. This cannot continue forever either, though, and eventually the bubble will pop. It's inevitable.

Got any juicy sources on that?

Why do men need to be good for anything to them? Why are you instrumentalizing the sexes?

Out of necessity, not because that's all women think men are good for.

I've noticed the same thing about those saps who actually believe that there exists a single women who doesn't want all men dead or in prison - they're always stuttering. So strange. — csalisbury

Hey, I stuttered and had a lisp when I was younger. I still stutter sometimes. Perhaps it's a sign of an open mind?

Do tell.

People are psychologically flexible. They can bend and twist in various ways to cope with pain. Like a rubber band, it's flexible but it takes a single cut in the band to make it all come unraveling. With the mind, this cut usually has to be specific and deep.

I don't think coping means being easier to bear. To bear is synonymous to cope. Both involve not succumbing.

I don't think it makes sense to cope with pain. By the time it hits, it's already too late -- pain is pain, it doesn't get better except by being eliminated. But then that's not coping with pain, but rather avoiding or eliminating it. — The Great Whatever

Ever yell "FUCK!" when you stubbed your toe? Made the pain a lot less sharp.

Coping involves resuming your general activities as if nothing has changed (i.e. not succumbing), and also includes directing your attention to finding an elimination of the pain.

In other words, can illusion really claim that the mind only "feels" like it exists, but does not really and that's the end of the story or does the "feels like" phenomena of illusion still have to be accounted for in some way? — schopenhauer1

Yes, or so they claim. The feel-like qualia of the mind still needs to be accounted for. But I'm not entirely convinced that we can reduce qualia to something non-qualitative. For something to be non-qualitative, we need to have a concept of what a qualitative thing is. There needs to be a flaw in the very concept of qualia to be able to eliminate or reduce it to something non-qualitative

For example, we can clearly imagine something supernatural happening. Thus, everything we see not supernatural we dub natural. But we also know of qualitative things, and to say that everything is non-qualitative would require us to ignore the very reasoning process used to come to terms with the concept of qualia, unlike in the supernatural/natural example. It would be self-defeating to say qualia is actually not qualitative at all.

The position most familiar to me regarding the elimination/reduction of the mind would be eliminative materialism. As far as I have seen, eliminative materialists tend to be very bold and passionate, and everyone else is like "eh okay then".

That being said:

Some people in both the idealist and the materialist camp (in much different fashions) want to claim that first person consciousness is an "illusion" of some sort. — schopenhauer1

I would like to know who is claiming this.

I laughed out loud when this song played at the "shocking" end of a Game of Thrones episode. The juxtaposition was awesome and hilarious. The song ain't bad either.

Epicureanism, and also Stoicism, are philosophies that have a perfect figurehead as a goal to attain. To a certain extent this is also present in Buddhism, as well as in Christianity.

Basically, a follower of Epicureanism or some other kind of philo-religious doctrine imagine a kind of "superhero" that would be able to deal with what they normally cannot do. For example, the evangelical Christians will say "What Would Jesus Do (WWJD?)?" and appeal to the demigod Jesus as the penultimate figure. The Buddhist sees the Buddha as the goal to attain (as well as nirvana), the ideal person. Epicureanism and Stoicism create an image of a person who is able to deal with pain and whatnot by sheer will alone - what a strong person they must be! Essentially, these kinds of beliefs revolve around a quest for the ideal hero.

I'm always a bit skeptical of philosophies or religions or self-help books that attempt to solve a problem in life without recognizing that life is problematic just because of this problem. Certain early Christian sects recognized the problem of life and essentially shunned existence, eventually going out of existence entirely since nobody had children and it was apparently too nihilistic for everyone else. Buddhists come right out in the open and say that life is suffering, and then offer ways to deal with this suffering (it wasn't until it became more of a religion that Buddhism started to see these techniques as part of some kind of cosmic law).

But you don't really see this in the Greek philosophies. Some of the techniques used can work to an extent no doubt, or at least help reassure the individual, but they still don't quite go far enough to recognize that an unproblematic life is not one that you have to use techniques to deal with.

I mean we could argue a kind of idealism, similar in some respects to Neo-Platonism, in that the entire world is the Idea of the Demiurge, and we are just incarnations of the Demiurge's thought. It's a bit metaphorical as a lot of Continental philosophy seems to be but basically the Demiuge/God/Will/[insert thing here] is what grounds existence. For Aquinas, God was like a man in a lighthouse who saw the entirety of the world, past-present-future and focused the beam of light on a certain area, called the present.

Reminds me of the creationists who think the world really is only 6000 years old but God/the Devil just made it look like it was 7 billion years old to test our faith/trick us.

My path is sad. The waving sea of the future
Promises me only toil and sorrow.
But O my friends I do not wish to die,
I want to live - to think and suffer... — mcdoodle

I've toyed with this idea before. That life, or perhaps consciousness, is a good thing regardless of what is experienced.

I don't think it's a very defensible position. Nobody wants to suffer, and if they do, well, they aren't suffering. I don't think a romanticism of suffering accurately portrays what suffering is like. Or at least suffering without any meaning.

Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much suffering to justify bringing a life into the world?

Why do you object to me doing that? — Bitter Crank

There is a difference between being worth continuing and being worth ending. You can have a life not worth continuing while not having a life worth ending. Of course, having a life worth ending means you have a life not worth continuing. But sometimes there's just not enough pain to make suicide a viable option - but there's enough to make life a burden. It's mediocre. It's just something to get through.

Alternatively you could make a life worth living by other means, like rebelling or finding meaning in your life. This goes beyond what Schopenhauer thought and into the existentialists. But most of the existentialists were focused on the life already given and weren't focused on the potential lives. If we have to find a way to deal with life then it should be an alarm that perhaps this isn't something we ought to continue.

Suicide ideation in this case does not mean that people are actually thinking of putting the knife to their wrist and taking a warm bath, but rather the abstract notion that you have power over your very existence. — schopenhauer1

Interesting perspective, I basically agree. It's interesting because it reminds me of Nietzsche. Dignity, meaning, self-hood, POWER, REBELLION, these things transcend the experiences of pleasure and pain. If we aren't looking for survival resources or distracted by a certain novelty we're spending our time nursing our self-esteem or managing our CONTROL (power) over ourselves, our environment, and perhaps even other people.

Letting someone else kill you would be allowing them power over yourself, an unacceptable notion that stains the ego.

Antinatalism, at least as it has appeared in on-line discussion forums, seems more like an adolescent game than a serious philosophical position (though some people are serious about it). To me it begs the sarcastic question of "why don't you commit suicide if being born was that bad?" I don't think antinatalism leads to suicidal ideation, unless one were otherwise heading in that direction. — Bitter Crank

Certainly there are different ways one can arrive at antinatalism. Hating life is but one reason.

I personally don't hate life. Nor do I love life like those sappy Christian youth ministers proclaim. I find it to be mostly mediocre, just a blip on the cosmic history. And I believe that although I've lived a relatively stable life, this is by no means a given. A lot of these pessimists were able to write about the poor quality of life simply because they managed or were lucky enough to live a relatively stable lifestyle and understood this lifestyle was contingent and never a given.

Basically a "posh" pessimist as you seem to imagine them being is keenly aware of not only their own posh lifestyle but also the contingency of it.

I think that even though these pessimists were and are not largely living horrible lives of tremendous suffering, they nevertheless are aware of the contingency of the stable life. They can write about the aesthetics of the human conditions, which end up being negative.

Dorothy Day's optimism was at least in part inherently tied to her belief in Catholicism. A religious belief allows a person to attach themselves to something greater than themselves, and distract them from their day-to-day lives. It's an idealism.

Like most political activists, left and right, she felt the need for society to change. If you're a leftist, then you want "progress", and if you're a rightie, you want society to "go back to its roots". For the leftists, the progress ideology is a longing for a society that is Platonic-ally perfect, and for the righties the past and the traditional are given a reverent nostalgia. Both are idealistic. Leftists predict a bright, happy, hopeful, productive future (one that is always just one step away that we never are quite able to reach), and righties ignore the fact the we progressed out of their reverent traditions largely because we found them unnecessary or harmful.

For any political idealist, though, the current situation is not good enough.

The pessimists are quite similar in that they would agree that the current situation is not good enough. It's just that they don't think it can be made substantially or structurally any better, and perhaps may even get worse. They don't personally need to be going through a hellish existence to argue this. Sometimes it's just enough to have something happen to you to break the spell of optimism. Something that makes you realize that optimism is a comfy illusion and not an accurate representation of reality. It's this disillusionment and the subsequent attempts to live in a still-illusioned society that much of pessimism gains its angst from.

The existence of these pleasures however, in my opinion, to a far less vocal and obsessive antinatalism than one practiced by those elsewhere on the internet. Even if being born is risky and unnecessary, the subsequent life is usually not horrendously awful. It is mostly mediocre, with genuine highs and lows but characterized by an almost ever-present feeling of dissatisfaction in varying degrees. We can be reasonably reassured that most people will be able to cope with this willing.

Schop if I understand him correctly thought that most lives were not worth living. Like I said before, not worth living for is not equivalent to worth dying for. But Schop also thought that geniuses could rise above this mediocrity (coincidentally and probably conveniently he thought he was one of these geniuses).

No doubt. Hope in future pleasures is another attachment. But does this translate that thus future people need to exist to be attached to the hope of future pleasures? — schopenhauer1

Not if it comes at the price of great suffering, or the potential thereof. Too often are pleasures remedial instead of independently worthwhile.

Then you are simply making normative pessimist distinction of the difference between a life worth starting and a life worth continuing and there is nothing wrong with that — schopenhauer1

I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with it. That's why I suggested it to see if you have any thoughts.

The Will and such proposed by Schop is not painful in the sense a headache or a stab wound are. It's not something to be dreaded or hated per se. It certainly is not something to be avoided by suicide. But neither is it something good in itself.

Benatar wrote about this very thing extensively. I believe it had to do with the fact that once alive, one is attached to his own interest in continuing to exist, and thus the threshold is higher. These interests in continuing to live do not exist for any particular person in the life worth starting scenario and thus do not need to be in consideration. However, attachment to life (fear of death being one of them), does not de facto make life better to have been started in the first place. — schopenhauer1

Cioran also talked about this. But this makes it out to be that the only interests to continue to live are excuses and not actually reasons. This is absurd. We can have genuine reasons to continue to live, not just excuses like a fear of death or an attachment to friends and family.

I can't speak for anyone else of course, but I suspect that if you took away my fear of death or family attachments, I'd still have some reasons to continue to exist, at least right now. I'm not clutching to life like some desperate animal, motivated by fear. The reason I fear death is not just because it's unknown and possibly painful but also because it results in the loss of genuine pleasures. These pleasures I think tend to get overlooked as unimportant by the severely depressed, but the reality is that although the greatest of pleasures will never outweigh the greatest of pains, they are still extremely pleasurable.

Do your parents know you're an antinatalist and a poignant pessimist?

Just thinking about this a little more, perhaps we can have a more moderate stance of antinatalism based upon structural flaws in life without pro-mortalism. Essentially this would mean that life is not worth starting, and neither is it inherently worth continuing, but additionally neither is it worth the effort to end (in most cases at least). Like it's not good enough to start, but neither is it bad enough to end.

To sum up what I am arguing for: it cannot be that a life not worth starting is a life worth continuing, since continuation requires a beginning. Perhaps we could appeal to some existentialism, like Camus, and say that we would rebel against this system and live regardless. But rebellion does not work against pain. When I get a headache, I don't just suck it up and "rebel" against the headache. I take an aspirin. When life is quite a burden, nobody would "rebel" against it - they'd end it. The rebellion is focused on nihilism and a lack of meaning, not on compensating for great pain.

Because what I sense this is all about is an overabundance of suffering. We wouldn't not have kids because they will be exposed to a meaningless universe that somehow threatens their own dignity - they can rebel and relish in their rebellion. We wouldn't have children because they might feel extreme pain and live a life not worth living. The sheer potential for great pain is enough to argue against birth. But if we go further and claim that all lives are of great pain, then there's really no reason to live anymore except by a fear of death or a need to spread the word.

I am not a relativist, but I also don't think that everyone has to agree with the position for it to be true either. — schopenhauer1

True. But the classic pessimists were arguing that all lives are structurally problematic. They were claiming an verifiable aspect of a person's life - such as the constant "willing" of Schopenhauer - was a severely problematic thing. Now it's one thing to say everyone wills, and a totally different thing to say that because of this will, life as a whole is bad. Seems to me that the only person who can say whether or not their life is bad is the person themselves. This makes the classical pessimists seem almost authoritarian in their philosophies - they apparently know more about someone else's value of life than the person themselves. And if this person disagrees in this evaluation, well, they're just wrong. Certainly these philosophers were not just suggesting an evaluation of life, either. They were asserting (via argument) that life is bad.

It doesn't make any sense for the optimistic mafia (as you called them before) to tell you that your life is great. That's up to you to decide. So it equally does not make any sense for someone to tell you that your life is bad. If you happen to agree with them, then cool you agree with them. But that's based upon your evaluation of life, not on some logical proposition that can only be denied if someone is incapable of understanding logic.

First, I don't buy that not everyone AT SOME POINT does not feel ennui or angst. They may say they don't, but that's a different thing. — schopenhauer1

Do you think they feel ennui or angst regarding the same things that you do?

One can endure life, but not want others to endure life. — schopenhauer1

If I'm eating a stale piece of pizza, and don't want anyone else to eat this stale piece of pizza, then why am I eating this stale piece of pizza? Why am I subjecting myself to something that is ultimately not necessary and is rather gross too?

I know for a while, the big bad classic pessimists have been the gazelle you have been wanting to take down and replace with a more suitable utilitarian theory, but I just don't think it really does the trick. — schopenhauer1

Absolutely not. I think the classic pessimists have a lot to say about the human condition, and in fact I suspect they are correct on a lot of it. I think it was Cioran who said that suicide ought to be a legitimate option, and I've taken this to heart. I live my life with a keen understanding of the contingency of pleasure and an acceptance of the option of suicide.

What I don't know about these pessimists (including Cioran) is whether or not they actually did view suicide as a legitimate option for themselves. Were they suicidal? Were they just barely living? I suspect not. I suspect they derived a certain amount of pleasure from life. Because if they were not suicidal, then their pessimism just turns into a romanticized cynicism or social criticism. A stub in the toe does not make life not worth starting nor worth ending, and the pessimists weren't focused on these little pains. They were focused on bigger, more overarching pains, pains that logically lead to a desire to end them.

It is not handed down on tablets from Moses and everyone just gets it. — schopenhauer1

But the point of a philosophical position isn't just to gain a following. It's supposed to claim itself to be correct. You can be humble and aware that you might be wrong, but those who reject your position cannot be right if you believe yourself to be right. They must be wrong. I assume you aren't a relativist.

So I'm not claiming that because people disagree with x, x is wrong. What I am claiming is that a certain kind of x is wrong just because people disagree with it because x claims something about those who disagree with it. If it claims to cover humanity as a whole, and yet fails to account for other variables (disagreement), then it's flawed. This does not apply to every position.

Well, some people will just say the same about pleasure and pain, unless it's physical. Then it will be about how people look back on the pleasure and pain. — schopenhauer1

Pleasure and pain are felt by everyone. We can easily see how giving someone pleasure is good and giving them pain is bad. But aesthetic experiences are ultimately grounded in pleasure and pain - I enjoy looking at a piece of art, and I do not enjoy watching a lion tear out an antelope's throat on a nature show. But I can't necessarily say this about everyone. Not everyone feels ennui or angst about the human condition, it seems. And if this ennui or angst is enough BY ITSELF to make life not worth being born into, then it's enough to make someone suicidal. And if it's not enough to make someone regret being born, then being born is not problematic (if this is the only argument used).

What if aesthetics is subjective? Unlike pleasure or pain, how the world affects a person aesthetically seems to be subjective.

In the end, aren't aesthetic judgements based in pleasure or pain?

Can aesthetics be a justification for ethical action (or lack thereof in this case)? If aesthetics aren't bad in the pain/pleasure dichotomy sense, how can it be bad in the ethical sense?

Taking out the fear of death and pain, then for some, I imagine there is little holding them back. Otherwise, I think I sufficiently answered your question. Life is not utter agony and that isusually not the position. Rather, for the pessimist, it is a sufficient burden to not perpetuate to others, and endure while one is alive. — schopenhauer1

This is what I wanted to discuss. Sounds to me that this "sufficient burden" implies a certain level of mediocrity. Not enough to kill oneself over, but not worthy enough to begin a new life. It still implies a measure of risk, though. The worst case scenario trumps the best case scenario, even if the best case scenario is worth living for (which is my position if you want to know).

Additionally, if life is merely mediocre (and doesn't have risks for really bad experiences), then there's no reason to be abhorrent towards birth. It's just something that happens, nobody has been harmed, because life is merely mediocre. But if life is bad, then birth is problematic, but this also leads us into suicidal tendencies.

The trouble is that I don't really think the classic pessimists thought life was merely mediocre - they thought it was bad. Like, really bad. And I don't understand how someone can think life is really bad and yet not be the least bit suicidal.

I don't get this question really. — schopenhauer1

It's okay, don't worry about it for now, we'll discuss this part later.

Again, I don't want to get into another antinatalism argument. At this point, you can probably dig through all my previous posts and find perfectly good answers that I would use for these questions. — schopenhauer1

But in this case, arguing for antinatalism by appeal to structural issues of life is inherently connected to suicide. If you don't want to participate, nobody is forcing you to. But that's the topic of this thread.

You are caught up in the idea that if not all people are pessimists, then pessimists must be wrong by the mere fact that others are not pessimist. — schopenhauer1

I'm not though, considering I'm a pessimist myself. I'm just interested in what the classic pessimists like Schopenhauer thought about suicide and how they managed to have such a bleak view of existence and yet apparently not wish to die themselves.

Most people live in the world of the small. Everyday is just a day at work, a day to go home, a day to do this or that. There are negative moments, there are positive moments, but there is very little evaluation of it on a larger scale. If they start doing this, they may start seeing patterns, noticing certain things. The pessimist conclusion comes from seeing these patterns and understanding it in a certain way. Once they see this, their world becomes more understandable. Not everyone will see these patterns. — schopenhauer1

I get it, I notice these patterns as well. And actually I think most people do notice these patterns, too. It's why satirical comedy is so popular. But does this recognition of patterns and its subsequent disillusionment lead to antinatalism? Do these patterns threaten the "vision" of humanity so much that we can't be allowed to continue?

Anyways, it is enough to warrant no birth, but the aesthetic alone does not warrant immediate suicide. Again, we are not in utter agony. — schopenhauer1

Right, I just want to get a clearer understanding here. Does the aesthetic alone attack our sense of pride or individuality? Like Voltaire said, every man shits from his butt hole. Some just do it in more stylish clothing. This is supposed to show that no man is aesthetically "superior" and to show that the King is just like everyone else.

So in the every day, we go along like nothing is wrong, but with the aesthetic outlook we find ourselves in a kind of nihilism. But is this nihilism alone enough to warrant no-birth? If the aesthetic does not by itself harm someone, and if most people are not in misery, then how can the aesthetic by itself lead to antinatalism? There needs to be an additional argument, that of risk and the potential for a really bad life.

The aesthetic I describe.. let's shorten it to survival/boredom/flux for the sake of brevity (still not brief I know), is a sort of inescapable understanding. One can have a pleasure and successive moments of happiness, but this understanding does not change. One does not let the aesthetic takeaway your happy experiences, but one does not find the happy experiences are all there is, and indeed fits into a larger picture of how existence operates. — schopenhauer1

In other words, I take your (and basically my) position to be that pleasure is contingently dependent upon structural issues.

If these structural issues aren't enough to make life worthless to continue (because of real pleasures) then why should we be against birth (if we argue the structural issues route)? It seems like the aesthetic understanding of our world is inherently connected to disillusionment (the breaking of fantasies). But is this breaking of fantasies by itself enough to warrant no-birth or even suicide? Couldn't we just say "whatever" and pursue pleasures?

You sort of answered your own questions. Most people fear death and the end of their personal identity. It's not like ending a bad habit, this is the very self that experiences the world in the first place. This is not a light decision. As I said in the other thread, not many pessimists think life is complete and utter agony where the self must be destroyed at all costs and as soon as possible. Rather, they will continue to experience the happy moments when this occurs. However, the understanding is that our world imposes on us needs of survival and unwanted pain in a certain environmental and cultural constraints. Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure. Being that we can never have true satiation, we are always in flux and never quite getting at anything in particular. It is a world to be endured. One may try to become ascetic, or simply live out the normative lifestyle but simply keeping this aesthetic in mind. — schopenhauer1

So like I said before in the other thread, life is like cake: sometimes really good, but ultimately fattening and bad for you. You can't have cake without the fat. And so it's an aesthetic issue instead of an actual experience issue like a toothache.

I think he is addressing this to pessimists (the handful on here). The argument for him is IF the premise IS that life sucks, then why don't you just kill yourself. This is kind of the knee-jerk question people ask antinatalists all the time. I gave my response above. — schopenhauer1

Sort of. I'm not arguing that you should actually kill yourself. I'm arguing that IF these are your premises (life sucks across the board), THEN you have to at least desire for the suckiness to end, i.e. suicide.

What I am not arguing for is anyone actually carrying out a suicide, as it may be impossible for fear of death and other constraints. But if we remove these constraints (excuses) for not dying, would you continue to live (because of reasons)?