The paradox of living

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. (The call of the wild, Jack London, 1903).

There are like a thousand reasons for not being here and we choose to name a person as a reason to stay, that seems kind of unfair isn't? That person now named "a reason to stay" has a burden, unaware of this new label the person will continue its existence also looking for a reason to stay. I assumed that we all look for that reason in a person, hobby, job, project or whatever we want. I don't think that everybody is happy with the way things are. Even the self proclaimed new stoics also struggle resurrecting this old ancient Greek thing they barely understand to keep going with their lives. Other animals just accept things the way they are and sadly we take advantage of that by enslaving them and torturing them to death; therefore accepting things the way they are looks like a non viable way to solve this puzzle, even though when the Buddhists claim that's the path to Nirvana. The look for purpose is indeed a puzzle, it's the main goal and we all have our favorites, from trying to move up on the socioeconomic ranks, mastering a discipline, trying to create something that changes things for everybody, all intentions are welcome to solve this riddle. We need one otherwise we start dying, sometimes taking the jump right away and other times we rot slowly. I said before that other animals don't have the same issue as us but we are not certain about that, perhaps we don't understand how they establish purpose in their lives. 

Maybe we can try to find clues about it in the line where human and non human animals converge: human cities. In those places we find them both stimulated and changed by almost the same things. One of the most hearth breaking evidence isn't the statistics but the faces of those animals locked inside in a cage, yard, pet store, zoo or other thing for locking up animals: it's a sad look with no hope, the eyes reflect pain and disappointment, they could've attacked the gatekeepers or refuse to go in but instead they trusted them and now they are trapped, confined or abandoned; some others were born inside those places but the face is the same; there is no amusement in being locked up, that's for sure. We find similar faces on workers in an office, kids in a classroom or any other place for confinement, or should I say institution?

Animals living in places where there's war have a face like that, they are terrified, they don't know when the shit will hit the fan but they know that it will. Uncertainty, sadness and pain is what we find on those faces from human and non human animals, that is what we have done to ourselves. In this kind of screwed up human environment we are desperate to find a reason to justify all the horrors perpetrated against animals and other life forms, a reason to stay in this place and get by,  a purpose to try to change the way things are. Some of those ways make things worst for others, specially for non human animals; from my perspective it might look fine and convenient but from a non human animal's perspective might be something really bad. For instance let's say I buy a car, that would mean for me the result of several things, hard work and climbing the ranks as my social status goes up, for a stray dog is just another potential killing machine on the streets. 

We tend to add a moral value to a purpose, like if we already understand why do we need one in the first place or how other biological life forms thrive. I believe that we act negligent and delusional because we are judge and party when we determine a purpose to stay here based on things outside ourselves, missing the big picture all the time: we are not just a moving part in a city, nor a subject contained in a normative and moral human system, we belonged to Nature, we evolved from there (to be honest, we have never left it, we just can't). The Naturalistic fallacy is around the corner when we talk about this, justifying crazy ideologies or religions for the sake of progress or to achieve power is a common mistake that even whole countries or nations have made. I'm not trying to establish some form of superiority or distinction among humans, I'm just saying that makes sense to focus on something common to other living organisms: homeostasis. Any disruption to that and we certainly face illness or death and that will change the whole game from having a lot of purposes to chose or things to focus our attention to only one thing: recovery, trying to go back to that homeostatic equilibrium. Maybe that's why non human animals don't focus their deeds in moral values like us, they have bigger things to take care of, like not dying or staying as fit as possible. 

When we are facing some kind of illness our priorities immediately change, everything gets a secondary spot in our life. Of course that depends on the illness, some people will wait till the last moment to do something about it or just let it go and keep prioritizing other things despite the symptoms. Some other times there isn't much choice because that illness will stop us from doing our daily activities, that's when we have only one thing to worry about, one priority, all the rest starts loosing meaning and most of our purposes seem to be overshadow by that one thing in our heads: getting better, to heal, to recover our life as it used to be or at least some of it. In those extreme cases we are ready to give up everything as long as we can recover our health, even money, status and all of our precious valuable stuff. Those dark times seem to reveal some hidden truth about existence, something that was out of our sight and now it's clear; a lot of people who recover from something like that are changed for ever and like a sacred gospel they are ready to share it with everyone on their path. But not everybody gets to that conclusion by the way of an illness and even when it's the case they find some other interesting things to do instead of what I'm saying. 

Following the same line of thought as before, I said that we care about being as fit and healthy as possible when our health is damaged and deficient, then we start focusing only about that, but what happens once we reach it? Do we continue focusing our attention on achieving our best shape and performance as we can? The short answer for that is yes but unconsciously we tend to forget about it at the summit of that. It's possible to see that forgetfulness of living in other animals, for instance a leopard hunting prey on a mountain. The feline will jump up and down risking everything just to get its prey, cliffs and rocks falling from the mountain wont stop either of them, their fit and strong bodies will endure everything during the chase, for moments forgetting they are not flying animals, only one fall from that huge height will be enough to end their lives. That kind of death seems like a tragedy to us but that doesn't make it a bad thing, after all Nietzsche said that "tragedy is the highest art of saying yes to life" (even if he were only talking about art). 

We find the same attitude of forgetting that one is a mere mortal in athletes from different sports, maybe the reason behind all that is found in what Twain used to say about death: "the fear of death follows from the fear of life, a person who lives fully is prepared to die at any time". Human and non human animals reach that point only when they are fully focused on that bio-mechanical part of their being. It seams reasonable enough for me to put that as a main goal for human beings (or reason to stay), not as a standardized thing, we all have different bodies and capacities, that shouldn't be forgotten, what I mean is to avoid the degradation of our bodies for the sake of acquisition or any other material thing. Having that as a base line for the rest of the plan will ensure us that we all can reach that summit of life. There's still a big deal to do after that, it's not like this solves all the issues that we have as humans, I'm just saying that the base line I mentioned does more in terms of reducing suffering in our species, maybe once we understand that all living organisms thrive in the same direction we'll stop causing damage and suffering to them as well.