Life is Damage

About this episode

The episode explores the inherent damage in living, both to oneself and to others, and the ethical implications of such damage in decision making.

In the last episode we posited that in order to achieve self actualisation, purpose, or peak experience, you have to risk your more basic needs - food, shelter, safety. We further posited that living damages you. You cannot live without taking damage, whether from the various knocks and blows, mental and physical, or through the process of aging. And the flip side of that is that you cannot live without damaging those around you, whether by eating them or through the moral and ethical decisions we make every day. You cannot live a full and interesting life without hurting people - friends, family, the loved ones who become exes. You cannot have agency without sometimes having to choose the lesser of two evils. We’re not endorsing this, we’re lamenting it - but it’s still true. You can’t live without hurting people, and you can’t live without being hurt. The question is what does that mean ethically? What are the implications for your life and existence? We must navigate between the Scylla of nihilism - accepting this and not caring about it - and the Charybdis of inaction and stasis, being left frozen and unable to act because to act is to harm. Once you notice this you see…

Topics covered

• self actualisation
• ethical implications
• agency
• nihilism
• damage
• decision making

Keywords

• self actualisation
• damage
• ethical decisions
• agency
• nihilism
• life choices

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