Is Life Worth Living? asks William James
November 12th, 2007
In Is Life Worth Living? by William James James says: “Pessimism is essentially a religious disease.”
He clarifies thusly: This “is why I call pessimism an essentially religious disease The nightmare view of life [arises from] the contradiction between the phenomena of Nature and the craving of the heart to believe that behind Nature there is a spirit whose expression Nature is.”
He is expressing a simple thought which I’ll compress thusly:
Life is worth living if you are undisturbed by pointlessness.
James is right but it is not the root of the matter. Pessimism is a purely chemical phenomenon. Proof: Smoke a little marijuana and life becomes worth living. What happens is that the chemical produces a change in philosophical outlook!
From depression, where nothing is important (is worth undertaking)
to elation, where anything is important (is worth undertaking).
And sometimes to anxiety, where everything is important (must be attended to immediately).