Why are we Alive?

Any man has the capacity to end his life. Yet few do. So the answer to "why are we alive?" is relatively simple: because we choose to live. Explaining why we choose to live is more complicated. In Thoughts on the Nature of Intelligence, I suggested that the universe is guiding us towards a certain direction. The rules of survival of the fittest favor the strong over weak, the intelligent over stupid. But even more dramatically, survival of the fittest favors beings that want to survive over suicidal ones.

The continuation of life is in some respects inevitable. Even if a species decided that life was miserable and devoid of meaning and chose to kill itself, it would be replaced by a species that did not feel that way (or was incapable of suicide). Our predisposition to prefer life over death is something of a biological illusion, a necessary corollary of the rules of nature. Nature does not fill our lives with joy or meaning, it only provides a biological command to stay alive. It does not give us a purpose but instructs us to survive without one.

Most creatures lack the intelligence to meaningfully consider the point of their existences. Mice scurry about, satisfying one hunger after another--never contemplating why they do what they do. Socrates wrote, "the unexamined life is not worth living.” I do not know if he is right. I refrain from passing judgment on the quality of life of your average field mouse. I only know that nature does not distinguish between the unexamined and examined life as sharply as Socrates.