I’ve been contemplating meaning of life, suicide, god or no god stuff in a past few years.. And in this search for answers, Alan Watts in one of his talks suggested that things that human organism does automatically (breathing, growing our bones, beating our heart…) is done by none other than us. All those functions we do by ourselves, and they are not really automatic, we’re just not aware that we do it.
So, yesterday it occurred to me. If this is so (and it makes perfect sense), and one day when the body is old, a person subconsciously decides to just stop all bodily activities, and dies. You end your own life!
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Even when I wasn’t suicidal I would eat foods that were assisting to my death, and didn’t care because it tasted good. Sad right and it has become normal.
For as many things as Alan Watts said in his lifetime, I wouldn’t use him as your authority for how exactly the human body decides to die. I’m sure in the course of history there have been billions of people on their death bed who wished with every ounce of their being for their heart to keep beating for another day or even another minute. I get what he is saying in a metaphorical sense, people in some level of their consciousness have to get to the point that they’re ready to give up before their body decides to die, but I’m sure by now we would have at least one person who truly had the will to live longer and longer and there’d be 500 year olds walking around. There’s a message in what Alan Watts says but maybe not always to be taken literally.
Suicide implies a concious choice to end ones life due to an inability to desire to live. Old age shows more of nearly the exact opposite as people who reach old age have done so by years and years of surviving and living their lifes. To say old age people decide to die is like saying that a guy who just tried and failed to hang himself wants to live, it makes no sence as they both just did the exact opposite to what you say about them wanting to die or wanting to live. I read somewhere that it is oxygen itself that while we need it to live also speeds up cell death. Mabye we are being killed slowly by nature itself…