Guilt

Religion and Society use Guilt to manipulate you to believe as they do. Guilt is the most powerful motivator--it causes people to avoid eating donuts, it makes you go to bed early, it even makes you beat yourself up when you do something "wrong."

But who determines what is "wrong?"

Realistically we are all individuals and determine right and wrong on our own --I know, that's a very relativist statement. [we think eating donuts are bad because they will make you sick, ie fat ie unhealthy ie shorten your life, but if you think a short life is perfectly acceptable for you then what's so wrong about eating a donut  and being fat and unhealthy? --if you're comfortable with the outcome, it doesn't matter.]
MMmmmm...

The problem is that people aren't comfortable with certain outcomes because of guilt: society makes you think that being fat is bad and they ostracize fat people. Society is obsessed with living forever and finding ways to prolong their lives, so they frown upon people who want to live a short, happy life.

You beat yourself up because you want to fit in with society. You want to prescribe to the same things that everybody else does and you have a subconscious desire to believe what the rest of society believes. You simply want to be a part of the "in" crowd.

You don't have to be.

You are an individual.

My recommendation is to live your life questioning everything. Question why people believe the things they do. Question why people do or don't do things that you clearly want to do. And after you do or don't do those things that people don't want you to do, question whether they really bring you what you want.

Everything you need to understand about life comes back to elementary school jokes: If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?

Value of a life

What is the value of a person's life?

This question suddenly intrigues me... 

Most people find it easy to think about value in terms of money. Is a person as valuable as the total amount of money they earn in life? How about the total assets they own, cash included?

A second prominent measure of value I have heard is "number of people touched" though i don't agree with this measure of value because it disregards individuals who create great value for their own lives and not others, which i do find valuable so long as they don't do it at the expense of other people.

Nor do I fully prescribe to the moral philosopher's measure, the total "good" he or she has contributed minus total "bad", though I think it comes very close to an accurate measure...if it were only possible to measure in that way practically.--until it happens you really don't know what will happen.

Every life is valuable. Every life has the right to make choices and live the way they choose. No one has the right to take another's life nor do they have the right to force another to live their life a certain way. Further, no one has the right to judge another, because doing so implies that the judge knows THE only way to live life. Judging a life, in effect, forces another person to prescribe to a specific way of life.

The value of a life is highly personal. Neither you or I can gauge the value of some other person's life except by our own subjective judgements. The only person who can gauge the value of your life objectively is you. Only you know what you value and if you have done everything you can to create value in your life. In the end, you will hold yourself accountable for your successes and failures. And, really, the only disappointment in life is when you quit trying.

Death is the opposite of life, and if life is valuable, death is not. Death is of no value to anyone, not yourself and not others. Since we do not know what awaits us after this life, the only understanding that matters to us is this life. What we do now, we can guarantee will affect this life, and because we have seen the far effects of those who have come before us, we know that what we do in this life counts. There is no guarantee that in death we start over. There is no guarantee that what happens to our spirits after we die is beneficial. In other words, we can only rely on the value of this life.

In essence, you are valuable so long as you are living, because if you are living, you can keep making value. And you can keep making value so long as you determine in your mind that you are valuable. The value of a life is limitless so long as that individual values his or her self.