Ethical hedonism and the purpose of life

 "If I knew I'd die soon, would I be content with the way I'm living my life?"

That's a translation of the first phrase of the song "Riv i hjertet" by Sondre Justad. The title translates more or less to "Tearing the heart". 

Saint lost his brother today, completely unexpectedly. They're talking of heart failure, but both Saint and I are suspecting other causes. He was younger than me, only 35 years old. A single dad to a kid a couple of years older than my eldest.

Saint is shell-shocked obviously, but I can feel this affecting me too. Not because I was particularly close with my brother-in-law. We'd met a few times, but he wasn't someone I talked to regularly. It's affecting me, not because of who he was but because of the sudden death of a kinsman has an effect in itself. He was younger than me. He had a kid, a job, a life. Friends, family. Regardless of whether he did it on purpose or not, death suddenly feels a lot closer. 

It makes me review my own life. If I knew I'd die soon, would I be content with the way I'm living my life? If I knew I'd die soon, would I be content with my epitaph? To quote Havamal, verse 77-78: 

"Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
But a noble name will never die,
If good renown one gets.

Cattle die, and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
One thing now that never dies,
The fame of a dead man's deeds."

Once you're dead, you're dead. I don't believe there's anything afterwards. Even if I had hope for anything else, life here on this earth would end with death. That means there's only the now, here, this is my only chance. Chance for what, exactly? What is the purpose of life? What is the purpose of death? 

To me, those are two very different questions. The purpose of death doesn't matter for me personally. I'll be gone, it's completely irrelevant for me. The only thing I can leave behind, is my legacy, just like Havamal says. That means the people I've affected, the memories I've helped create... So the purpose of death, to me, is to leave behind the best possible legacy... But that's not all. 

Because life has purpose too. I don't believe in any sort of heavenly reward, that puritan idea that suffering and sacrifice in this life would earn me a perfect existence after death. Sacrificing myself for others might help my legacy, after death, but it doesn't do much for my life here and now. It doesn't directly make my life better. 

I'm not a philosopher, and trying to go down a philosophical rabbit hole just left my head spinning. Suffice to say these thoughts aren't well-digested and can't really be logically defended, however my gut feeling is that the purpose of life is pleasure. That means ethical hedonism; Maximizing pleasure, while minimizing pain, for ourselves and others.

I can minimize others' pain by helping raise my kids to be good, well-balanced people. I can minimize my own pain by taking care of myself the best way I can, being true to myself, working on myself to gradually lead a better, healthier life. By not being a burden, sure, but also by allowing myself to be loved. Because love is pleasurable, and feeling love for another (even for one as undeserving as I often feel), means feeling pleasure. By allowing myself to be loved, and to love in return, pleasure is maximized. 

By maximizing pleasure, and minimizing pain, here and now as well as in the long run, I also leave behind a decent legacy. People who love more, enjoy more, are happier and more content than they would have been without me. So the meaning of life might be pleasure, but being true to that meaning will also give purpose, meaning to death. Pleasure as a guiding principle will therefore hit two birds with one stone (poor birds). And that's all one can ask for, I think.