The Philosophy Discussion Forum

If you can't choose your life, are you a victim of life?

abdullah masud wrote: ↑Sat Nov 08, 2025 1:48 pm We were born into this world without any desire for it, without even being aware of it. Why wasn’t it possible that someone else could have existed instead of me? Every single day, thousands of children are born, and perhaps everything happens randomly — but why am I part of this randomness? There could have been anyone else. Then what kind of randomness is this?

You were born into this world an anonymous constitution, a pattern with a long evolutionary beginning. Your species pattern has changed over the eons, but you're still a pattern, a pattern with a constitution, and on arrival you are not you; you are nobody, devoid of identity. You are not greatly different from all the other species patterns, so everyone at birth is a nobody. The mold that will create in you a sense of identity is an awaiting environment context, and context defines you and what you think and feel you are. The process itself is not random, for although the evolutionary process is based on imperfection, in evolution imperfection is perfection, just not the commonly understood type. True perfection would mean death, the ceasing of evolutionary adaptation. The bewildering truth, I believe, is that all life is of a common essence, and the other like forms of humans are you. Life is what it is when the subject and object/organism and environmental context are one. Experiencing the rapture of life without identity lets you know that this experience is common to all life forms --- we are all in this together.

What a mystery this world is. People are born without their choice, without choosing their name, their upbringing, or even the end of their life. We have absolutely no control over how life begins. Even during our lifetime, countless things happen inside our bodies without our awareness.
But the question is: why are we in this world? Is life only about eating, drinking, making a career, and engaging in worldly affairs? If the answer is yes, then I think there is no deeper meaning to living. In that case, death would seem better, since by dying, everything would simply end, making today and tomorrow the same.[/quote]

As Schopenhauer stated, life is something that should never have been. Sometimes I think, seeing as one is here, one should make the most of it. Personally, I would rather live under a delusion and live happily than know stark reality and be miserable.

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Yet another question arises: if our coming into this world is beyond our control, then who knows — what if, after death, there is another beginning, just like this one...?
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Life is a process with many forms but with one essence. The challenge is to make one's own life meaningful while living in the wilderness. A little repetitive of an earlier post, but enough new material to make it worthwhile.