If everything ends one day why don't we end it today?

Question

Is there any doctrine that gives the reason why to wait till the end of the world?

I'm 18 and not depressed.

I am not asking about the purpose of life. I'm asking why should we fulfill the purpose of the result or anything related to the purpose shall ultimately perish. Hence in a more direct way, I'm asking why should we fulfill the purpose. The question might sound like If God is the world then who created God and then who created the creator of God and so on. The question is not self-recursive but rather passive and seeking why fulfills the purpose.

My opinion says either there is nothing like complete or even if there is then we should fulfill the purpose to push the END as further as possible, something like RPG we know someone will defeat us but longer can we endure is the whole aim.

Answer 1

Obviously all major religions claim that life has a meaning, typically the purpose of gaining benefits after this life from doing good deeds. Typically the rewards are for all eternity in paradise, so the rewards never perish, even if maybe the world ends.

Religions typically are not clear about the purpose of the purpose, why any god would care about us going to paradise after plenty of good deeds. This would be for experts in a given religion to answer. But fantasy can make up so kinds of reasons for paradise.

If you select a worthy cause in life yourself as opposed to a religion, such as saving the rainforest, or becoming rich, then typically the idea would be to not care about the infinite future, but only about the imminent future. I cannot think of any external non-spriritual purpose that would remain meaningful once the world ends.

Without a spiritual purpose, your life is more like a ticket to spend a day in an amusement park one day before you die. Nothing you will do will change anything in the long run, you only have the choice of using the ticket to enjoy the day, or to not go and stay in bed.

There is no further meaning or purpose or reason. Or at least i never heard of anyone having found such a purpose that seems meaningful in the infinite.

Answer 2

If, for example, we simply wanted to minimise suffering, and knew that suffering is unavoidable in life, we might consider that ending all life immediately would be the best way forward. However, philosophy aside, from an evolutionary standpoint all living organisms have a strong will to survive and possibly for no better reason than that organisms with a lesser will to survive are now extinct. To that extent it is not a question of philosophy, which allows us to ask and answer questions that aren’t necessarily in our best interests, but rather an observation that we are who we are because of the path that has brought us here.

Answer 3

A couple of quotes from Al Alvarez's The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, page 88 & 90

Augustine took over Plato’s and the Pythagoreans’ argument that life is the gift of God, and our sufferings, being divinely ordained, are not to be foreshortened by one’s own actions; to bear them patiently is a measure of one’s greatness of soul. Thus, to take one’s own life proved only that one did not accept the divine will. ...

St. Thomas Aquinas sealed up the whole question in the Summa: suicide, he said, is a mortal sin against God, who has given life; it is also a sin against justice and against charity. Yet even there, in what was to be the center of Christian doctrine, Aquinas takes his arguments from non-Christian sources. The sin against God derived ultimately, like Augustine’s similar argument, from Plato. The sin against justice—by which he means the individual’s responsibilities to his community—harks back to Aristotle. As for the sin against charity, Aquinas means that instinctive charity which each men bears toward himself—that is, the instinct of self-preservation which man has in common with the lower animals; to go against that is a mortal sin, since it is to go against nature.

Answer 4

But also, why end it? This is the perspective taken up by Absurdism

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself." - Camus

I would say even in the face of troubles, it only takes curiosity to have sufficient motivation to continue. So I think cultivating curiosity is very valuable.

The most convincing argument though I think, is that of mysticism. What really is meaning, what does why mean, addressed in the mystic sense of direct observation of our own minds and exploration of unusual ways to think and be, help to catch some of the processes by which we construct the world, and to realise that there is something unconditioned about our minds, something that precedes all the construction work of motivations and meanings. And we can situate our approach to life from there, once we become familiar with that place.

"When … you realize that you live in, that indeed you are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exists, why conscious beings have been produced, why sensitive organs, why space, time, and change. The whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future, disappears utterly.

Obviously, it all exists for this moment. It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere… The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance."

-Alan Watts

"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."

-TS Eliot

"And there might not be a sadder thing

Than watchin' Saturn lose her rings

And black holes slowly dancing in the dark

It's a song that they were born to sing

About the end of everything

Until it all goes up in one last spark

Everyone you love is gonna die

But so is everything so wipe your eyes

You know nothin' lasts forever, but Lord, I try

And everyone you love is gonna die

All the saints and sinners are the same

We're blessed and we obliterate

And that's how it was written from the start

It's a song that we were born to sing

About the end of everything"

-Noah Cyrus

Answer 5

If everything ends one day why don't we end it today?

Because we have not learned to end it today.

I take it that people are mechanistic under behaviorist philosophy. Part of that implies that people are learning machines. Granted, I don't think that anyone has libertarian free will to commit suicide. Instead, taking one's life would be a behavioral response to having learned to do such.

So, "luck" or "happenstance" are driving factors. Sure, there are things that are correlated with taking one's life, but those things at best only influence the decision-making process. My presumption is that when escape becomes "accepted" as impossible, such as escape from a life-sentence in prison that brings about pain and suffering, then motivation to die becomes prevalent, such that the decision-making process to take one's life is initiated.

Given the resources to take one's life, the person who has had the decision-making process initiated that is biased in favor of life ending will take his or her life. The person will have "learned" to end it.