Was this serendipity (an unplanned coincidence) or just life rolling along?
Having just started to read “The Human Predicament: a candid guide to life’s big questions” by David Benatar, a friend from my youth phoned to say his 93-year-old mother had just died.
He was unsure of when the funeral would be, but at the risk of being considered rather sad or even disturbed, I looked forward to the rather solemn event in Echuca.
Benatar discussed, early in his book, the futility of life arguing that maybe it would have been best not to be born at all and so avoiding the pain, stress and difficulties experienced even by those who enjoy the best of lives.
My friend’s mother’s funeral was an example of all that pain and stress, certainly for those still living, but like most such end of life events it became almost a party as family, friends and acquaintances, many who had not seen each other for sometimes decades chatted, laughed and enjoyed that reconnection.
So, considering Benatar’s thesis, would it have been better for my friend’s mum never to have been born, well from my friend’s point of view, most certainly not as he wouldn’t be here.
This is a rather difficult and hugely troubling question that most would wrestle with for we have been born, we are here and so have a pointed vested interest and it’s almost impossible to imagine not existing and untangling what it is that makes up a life.
Death, the inevitable outcome of birth, would unquestionably be celebrated by our present coalition government as it is strangely about prosperity and slots in almost perfectly with its “jobs and growth” mantra as it, and birth, are expanding industries.
It seems right at this point to quote Benatar:
“Life is tough. It is full of striving and struggle; there is much suffering and then we die. It is entirely reasonable to want there to be some point to the entire saga.
And, “The bits of terrestrial meaning we can attain are important, for without them, our lives would be not only meaningless but also miserable and unbearable. It would be hard to get up each day and do the things that life necessitates in order to continue.”
So we all manufacture meaning for our lives for as American and as poet Henry Miller said: “Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning” and walking around Shepparton I pass bricks and mortar examples every day of the strident efforts of many to give their lives, and that of others, meaning, and along with that a reason and hope.
Considering Benatar’s thoughts about whether it would have been best had we not been born at all, I read through there prologue of Charles Mann’s new book (published just last month), “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet”.
Following the birth of his daughter, who, by the time she reached his age would be living in a different world, Mann wrote: “Like other parents, I want my children to be comfortable in their adult lives. But in the hospital parking lot, this suddenly seemed unlikely. Ten billion mouths, I thought. How can they possibly be fed? Twenty billion feet— how will they be shod? Ten billion bodies— how will they be accommodated? Is the world big enough, rich enough, for all these people to flourish? Or have I brought my children into a time of general collapse?”
Walking about Shepparton and enjoying the wonder of the city, I can only think of what the late U.S, author James Cabell Branch said: “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”
