Should You Want To Live?

Should you want to live? Read that again. Should you want to live? It's not an obvious question. It's a fishy question.

The term "should" implies a moral basis for an action.

For an Objectivist, the purpose of morality is enjoyment, long-range, i.e. life.

The whole problem of morality is that we often want to do things detrimental to that goal. Moral thinking reveals the ideas and the courses of action that further our interest, rather than our immediate pleasure or satisfaction.

If you don't want to live, moral arguments are irrelevant, because you've given up what moral argumentation appeals to: the desire for durable joy. The choice to live is pre-moral. Morality is about how to live. Before you can care about morality, you must choose to live—to pursue happiness. Morality cannot make the choice for you.

Some think that because "man's life" is the standard of value in Objectivism, bare survival is all that Objectivist morality involves. They hold that any desire for happiness—above bare survival—according to Objectivism, is morally superfluous. They claim that Ayn Rand didn't provide a moral defense of the desire for happiness. So happiness, to them, is just so much moral "gravy." Staying alive is the essential thing, morally speaking.

Some hear the above argument and attempt to provide a moral defense of the desire to be happy by proving the survival value of happiness. They say things like: "Being very sad can kill you. Being happy can keep you alive so wanting happiness is morally good."

This is a severe error.  The error is in seeking moral justification for wanting happiness. The desire for happiness, however, isn't morally justified. Happiness is an end in itself. Morality serves it, not the other way around.

There is no moral defense of the desire to be happy because happiness is the only reason for acting morally.

(To clarify: while the enjoyment of life (happiness) is the goal of morality, the standard of morality is life itself, i.e. being alive to experience that enjoyment. Objectivist morality seeks smart ways to enjoy yourself. Hedonism isn't smart.)

Ayn Rand did not provide a moral defense of the desire for happiness. None is possible or necessary.

To put it plainly: Your happiness needs no moral permission. Stop looking for such permission. Don't question the morality of becoming happy. Instead, pursue your happiness, using the best technology available for doing so: objective morality.

The question in the title of this essay is invalid. It's actually a poor way of expressing a deeper question.

That question(s) is: "Is life worth living? Is 'all this' worth the trouble?"

It's a metaphysical question, not a moral one. It's a factual question about the nature of one's life. It implies many other questions:

"Can I get more out of this life than I put into it? Can I benefit from existence, or is life an unrewarding struggle?

"Is this world something I can love, or will I forever hate it?

"Do I love what life may offer, or do I despise the burdens life puts on me?

"I never made this world. Do I love it, or do I hate it? Would I enjoy making it better, or is any such effort an admission of defeat in my battle for the life I wish for?

"Can I live on earth, or is heaven the only home I will accept without animosity?"

Those are the metaphysical questions one asks when explicitly deciding whether to live.

Do you want to live? Can you be happy?

If the answer is "no", then I don't have any advice for you. But please do me a favor. Before you commit suicide (or do something worse), please ask yourself why you bothered reading this essay.