to be or not to be

topic: life vs. death

this is my first review, so i figured i'd go all out. i was contemplating just reviewing life, but i figured that a comparison review would be more fun to start with.

life:
no one will argue against life having at least some perks. if it weren't for life, the universe would be a barren wasteland of worlds moving only according to physics and the most interesting parts would be the layout of all and climates of each of these balls of matter. of course, there would be nothing there even capable of being intrigued by these aspects of planets and solar systems. life is necessary for this blog to even exist. well, i guess one can argue that there does exist an extremely remote possibility that through the randomness of nature a grouping of specific elements and energy might form together to create a computer with this blog stored in memory, but it wouldn't have meaning or actually be called a blog. essentially, i see no reason why life would not be good. without life, there is no emotion, no dreaming, no desire, and no reason. without life, there would also be no violence, no hate, no depression, and no other "loss" what-so-ever. however, it is just silly to say that a lack of life would solve those problems, because it is life that determines them as "problems" and creates the values that oppose those "problems". for example: although destruction as we know it would still exist through natural disasters, those natural disasters could not be considered destructive or disasters or even natural - they would just be things that occur. concepts like disaster and destruction are based on a loss of life or valued objects, and the concept of something being natural is simply a distinction of origin that could not exist since everything would happen because of "nature" or essentially the physics of the universe.

many of the things that we can attribute to life are also pleasant things. most importantly is the ability of certain living things (like animals) to find things pleasant. the ability a creature has to enjoy things is arguably the best facet of life. once again this blog could not exist without such an ability. life (indirectly) offers me the chance to give a value of more or less "good" to objects, experiences, etc... realizing that, i must enjoy that which graces me with the power of enjoying.

death:
life brings about death, and death cannot occur without life. we know that something first must have life in order to have death. we also assume that something that has life will eventually have death; though the reason we believe that now is simply because we have no proof otherwise. one could argue that the universe has a life but since it is infinite, cannot have a death. that would then be a metaphorical usage of life and death or at the very least alternate definitions of each which i am not reviewing at the present time. as stated earlier, i could not place value on something without life (even if i were a plant and had no brain to form concepts or "values" i would still basically "value" life with my adaptations and instinctive attempts to stay alive and reproduce as best i can). in turn, i would not be able to value life without death. therefore, the value of death essentially becomes the value of life. thus, they both become good. this is where the review becomes tricky.

at this point we need to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of an individual death. to those around a person who dies, the outcome is almost entirely negative. of course there are always exceptions such as a person acquiring something that the one who died used to have - thus making that other person's life better. a positive may also come for someone who hated or was being hurt by the person that died. for the sake of argument though, we will sum up the gross overall outcome on others as a negative. many people have religious beliefs regarding death and an afterlife (or something similar). often a pleasing environment or scenario awaits a person in his/her afterlife. some people also believe that they might get the chance to start over in a new life. these options can sometimes be considered better than a person's current situation. a large portion of the people that believe in an afterlife usually don't think that a bad experience will necessarily happen to them once they die. in a case where that person is wrong, then death would obviously be a bad thing for them. for those that do believe that they will be harmed in an afterlife, the time spent worrying about such an occurrence, would be wasted. if this time of unhappiness is very great in comparison to their lifespan, and their philosophy on death was wrong... death may come as a sweet release. there are also those that believe there is nothing once dead; that when something dies, it is simply ended. this makes a forced neutral experience for the one dying, since that person can no longer experience anything (positive or negative). all in all, besides a few perks here and there, a death is mostly a negative experience.

conclusion:
although both life and death basically have equal value, the act of living is almost always much better for all involved than the act of dying. also despite the value being about equal, in both cases we are actually valuing life anyway. hands down... life wins.