Note: Please read my previous post, "Is all this for nothing?" prior to reading this one.
Hello there. After posting 'Is all this for nothing?', I read the whole post all over once again. After doing so, I was surprised that I left out the most important aspect of life: Suffering. The primary reason why people fear death is suffering. Since death is common to all, people try to eliminate other causes of suffering. That, is why we need 'virtues', and comforts; just to avoid suffering and be happy. Hence, I strongly believe that the primary purpose (assuming that we have a purpose) in life is the avoidance of suffering: both for us and for our children.
Since suffering cannot be absolutely avoided, what we call 'virtues' are certain set of rules, which, a person, upon practising in life, can avoid suffering to the maximum extent. That is also the main reason why these virutes change from time to time, and, in certain cases, person to person. What I mean is that way to happily live one's life is not a universal constant. Early men, in the dark ages, had many causes for suffering. So, what they did was to form certain rules (mostly by trial and error) to avoid suffering so that they and their future generations need not suffer in the same way. Thus, the rules underwent many changes to become the rules (virtues) that we have now.
This leads us to the question: Are we suffering any lesser than the people in the dark ages? Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because we need not fear saber-toothed tigers entering our homes and devouring our children; No, because they never worried about large metal birds crashing onto their caves and killing them all. I personally think that the 'yes's outweigh the 'no's but I might be very wrong.
So, are we better off after all these years of evolution? I don't think many people have an answer for that. The only thing that we can do about it is continue doing our job of trying to eliminate suffering for us and for our children.
Cheerio!
Ravi Teja R.
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