What is the will to live?

[trenton]

I have been reading about people who survived extreme circumstances. I am currently reading Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl. I have found some valuable lessons in how to manage one's relationship with suffering. I started exploring difficult situations like these partially because I noticed discrepancies in how moral philosophy is taught in western countries. I noticed that if applied consistently, then most people would fall in line with Nazis and remain passive during a genocide.

I therefore began challenging the moral frameworks with extreme scenarios that do not match western assumptions about love, meaning, purpose, morality, and existence. This included love in the darkest moments possible. I have found many interesting psychological insights that overlap with many areas of life including my relationship with death and human connection. Some of it made me cry due to imagery of a parent holding their dying child while singing a lullaby about how precious the child is regardless of circumstances.

I found that these lessons in love and resilience are relevant for me when I navigate darkness largely alone. I have found secular frameworks that offer equivalent benefits to religion without requiring faith in a supernatural entity or Savior. Love is something that cannot be taken away even in death as the being lives forever in your mind and heart along with the warmth they gave when alive. It is something that gives a person the will to live even when all else is lost.

This relates to an abusive situation I try to navigate with my family. I'm looking for psychological tools to prepare myself to potentially become split from an abusive family forever and find new meaning outside of the narratives they imposed on me. It is something I face largely alone and sometimes it contributes mental health problems by undermining my will to live. Much of my research focused on perpetrator psychology as in my previous thread, but the deeper problem is how perpetrators have impacted my relationship with meaning, life, purpose, love, and so forth.

So what is the will to live? Personally, when my family was cruel to me, I felt my reality fall apart along with my identity. The identity crisis never fully resolved. Part of me knew that my family was feeding me lies as they had no real moral philosophy. I sought to ground myself in truth, believing that the truth is what I live for. If I reject truth, then I reject myself, making self love in a sense impossible if I must be erased and live a lie such as a false identity. I came to spirituality partially because of seeking the true self. Learning was a method of seeking truth while using epistemology as a survival strategy.

It seems that the will to live is not merely a cost benefit analysis based on the pros and cons of staying alive. The consequentialist philosophy which western education is biased toward might guide someone toward this kind of assumption. There seems to be something prior to any rational or irrational cognitive layer that can be bypassed through love and without needing to argue with the content of the mind such as the exact right answer when struggling to find the words for experience. I seem to be leaning toward a detached, arational relationship with the mind, seeing that rationality or irrationality can be bypassed toward a deeper and more present being.

The will to live does not seem to merely be hope that things will get better. It seems to be a core self that refuses to be erased. Is this ego survival? Or is it something different? Why does it refuse to be erased? It seems to desire unconditional love, both offering and receiving. Maybe it is the work of some spiritual force, or maybe it is the structure of human survival, or maybe it is both. I don't really know what the will to live is or why it operates in this way. It is like a creative force seeking expression no matter the content of experience.

A relevant thread of this inquiry may be what is will. As for the will to live, what is it at it's core? It seems to be a creative force of love seeking truth to know itself. This seems to be at the heart of my will to live and why I haven't killed myself.

What do you think?

[gettoefl]

Forgive them as they know not what they do. Also take not one piece more of their shit. Cut these folks off root and branch. Only then can life be meaningful and purposeful. First few decades of life we have no say in what passes. We have to insert a full stop and go our own way. It is going to take time to adjust, settle and heal. This is the first beautiful stage of the self-directed life. Hang in there, take your time and set your stall for the long haul ahead. If you do it right, life hits bottom and then only gets better and better.

Edited 7 hours ago by gettoefl

[trenton]

@gettoefl I have a question about forgive them as they know not what they do. Sometimes it appears that they do know what they do. For example, the sadistic pleasure in degrading me feels hard to ignore. They seem happy to cause me suffering and keep me beneath them. This makes me confused about forgive them as they know not what they do.

When there is apparent ill will and intentional harm, I find it much more difficult to forgive them. I feel a burning hatred and deep contempt for those who harmed me. Their degradation is unacceptable and intolerable. I understand that part, but I am lost on the forgiveness piece. I can't seem to let go of this resentment I hold toward people who degraded me, seemingly on purpose with sadistic pleasure.

[gettoefl]

1 hour ago, trenton said:

@gettoefl I have a question about forgive them as they know not what they do. Sometimes it appears that they do know what they do. For example, the sadistic pleasure in degrading me feels hard to ignore. They seem happy to cause me suffering and keep me beneath them. This makes me confused about forgive them as they know not what they do.

When there is apparent ill will and intentional harm, I find it much more difficult to forgive them. I feel a burning hatred and deep contempt for those who harmed me. Their degradation is unacceptable and intolerable. I understand that part, but I am lost on the forgiveness piece. I can't seem to let go of this resentment I hold toward people who degraded me, seemingly on purpose with sadistic pleasure.

Everyone just repeats patterns that they have been conditioned with. It is survival. They do to others what others do unto them. To forgive means they did not harm the essence of what you are. To do that is impossible. They harm themselves; they do not harm you. Any evil directed your way is fuel for your awakening. We need to suffer to wake up. If we don't suffer, we see no reason to change.