RE Ms. Spears: I guess I’ll just have to say, “De gustibus non disputandum est.” :-)

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I believe the philosopher you have in mind is (the great classical-liberal and feminist hero) J.S. Mill (or his predecessor, Jeremy Bentham); i.e., the Utilitarians.

While I am impressed by Mr. Mill’s political/social philosophy, I find utilitarianism to be a deeply problematic grounding for ethics.

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You are right to point out that “weighing options” and “writing up pro/con lists” is how people very often approach their decisions in life. This means that there is something about this way of looking at positive and negative things that is, or can be, helpful to people (at least in many situations). If it wasn’t at least a little helpful, much of the time, people wouldn’t do it so often. People are stupid, but not that stupid.

However, from within the depressive state, I have found such an approach (weighing goods and bads, adding up positives and negatives) to be decidedly unhelpful. And I think one of the reasons it’s unhelpful is that it is somehow nonsensical, at its root, when expressed in the question “Is life worth it?”

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I have these two phenomena in front of me:

(1) We, each and every one of us, have certain duties that we can only fulfill if we continue to live. Thus we, each and every one of us, have a duty to live.

(2) When a depressed person “does the math,” and she or he will often conclude that the negatives in life outweigh the positives, and thus that life is not worth it.

Thus, a depressed person will often find herself with the duty to live a life that seems to be not worth living. This is a deeply frustrating and paradoxical situation.

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Some people might attempt to alleviate the paradox by claiming that the depressed person miscalculated the weight of the bad things in her life. They might try to convince the depressed person that things “really aren’t that bad,” or “aren’t as bad as they seem.”

I, on the other hand — and speaking from personal experience — would argue that things are as bad as they seem. In other words, I would argue that the mistake is not in assigning too much weight to the negative things in life — and thus coming to a negative result when everything is added up — but in thinking negative and positive things can be added up at all.

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Rather than thinking of the relationship between the good and bad things in life in terms of a number line (with bad things being negative numbers, and good things being positive numbers) or in terms of a scale (with bad things on one side and good things on the other), I suggest that bad things and good things are apples and oranges.

Or, if they can be combined at all, perhaps they are like blue and yellow, which when added together do not cancel each other out (as a negative number does to a positive number), but produce a third color: green.

In other words, I wish to solve the paradox of having the duty to live a life that isn’t worth it by claiming that the the phrase, “life isn’t worth it,” is actually the product of a misinterpretation of our inability to give a positive answer to a senseless question.

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I’m not sure that my comments here have really answered your comment. But they have helped me get a little clearer on exactly what it is that I’m up to. Thanks!

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Jeff–

I’ve only ever read Mr. Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, and found it to be a deeply confused book. However, the idea/argument of his which you present above is deeply insightful; I really like it. Kind of Aristotelian, in a way (Aristotle believed, evidently, that the conclusion of some arguments are actions, rather than propositions).

RE cost-benefit analysis. There does seem to be something suspicious about the idea that life is subject to mathematization/calculation, no matter how modern science sees the world.

B) Jesus calls us out to a wider existence than the life boat mentality where we weigh all our transactions in a strict cost-benefit analysis.

One could analyze things in terms of cost, but I think some clarifications would have to attend such an analysis.

First, my time and effort are good things too. So if I see my money as representing time and effort, then I’m still exchanging good things for good things. (My time/effort for icecream.)

In this sense, “cost” means something like, “what good things I have to give (up or away) to get another good thing” or “how many good things I am willing to exchange for another good thing.”

Second, to speak of cost in terms of pain/suffering is something else. To say that something cost a certain amount of pain and suffering is to use cost in a different sense than to say it cost money, time, effort, energy, etc.

In this sense, “cost” means something like, “what bad things I had to go through/endure to get to a good place.”

In the second sense (cost as having to do with negatives), there is no trade or exchange. It’s not like you give someone something bad, and she in turn gives you something good (which is what happens when speaking of cost as having to do with positives).

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Now, it does seem natural and helpful to analyze life and worth in the way you do in (B). (Thanks! by the way :-)

Every bad thing (every “cost” in the second sense) is like a negative number, and every good thing is like a positive number. A good thing is “worth it” if when I add it to its costs, my net result is greater than or equal to zero.

My claim in this post, however, essentially amounts to the idea that good things and bad things are incommensurate. They do not have a common measure. They cannot be placed on the same scale, the same number line.

(E.g., beauty, sexiness, and cuteness do not belong on the same scale. A person doesn’t suddenly become beautiful by reaching a certain point on the sexiness scale, nor does a person become sexy by reaching a certain point on the cuteness scale. Britney Spears, for instance, got sexy by ceasing to be cute [observe the difference between the covers of her first two albums] not by becoming cuter. And Ms. Spears hasn’t become beautiful by becoming more sexy [observe the difference between her second and later album covers]. She’d have to become more like Olivia De Havilland or Ingrid Bergman to be beautiful.)

In other words, I don’t think that good things and bad things can be added and subtracted, can “balance out.”

Nevertheless, we do speak of things being “more trouble than they’re worth,” and I’m not sure what to do with that.

More to think about :-)

B)
I’m grateful for you–the cost of knowing you (making my brain hurt, differences in world view) is exceeded by the benefits (brain stronger for exercise, better articulation of world view). And thus far I’ve found that the other benefits of your friendship do not carry any appreciable attendant costs, so the net benefit of your existence for me is considerable!

The way you look at (the way you “intend”) things has significant practical consequences.

And fortunately for us, there are methods (e.g., cognitive behavioral therapy) and medicines (e.g., SSRI’s) that can help us improve our abilities to intend things in the right way. (The mind can need practice and exercise and medicine, just like the body can.)

For you, for example, instead of wondering the worth of driving for your wedding, you could have told yourself “I promised myself to my soon-to-be-wife, so it is my duty to drive here.”