Eternity captured in a fist would render the present into shards. Splinters of time would sliver in accordance with fixed laws and our vision would transcend into a quivering mass of realisation. The instability of time runs against our desire for stability. Our poor minds are too small to encapsulate eternity, however; even 100,000 years is difficult to contemplate. 13.7 billions years? Don’t even try.

So much for the beginning, not even our own individual one! What about the end? And by this I mean our “The End”. Death, the current of thanatos, which resides like the shadow of carrion over our heads.

I consider the two most horrible combinations of aspects one could attribute to a being are:

(1) Consciousness

(2) Mortality

And it is these two with which we are “blessed”. You are aware of yourself and your existence… and you are aware of your oncoming demise. Truly, what a joke life turns out to be. A cruel one, but one we should laugh at. Regardless, one question which arises and of which we must contemplate is voluntary death.

In the sense of giving rise to autoeuthanasia, what is it we are willing to die for? My point here is to raise the contention that the only thing I am willing to die for are my loved ones. There is not a single idea, or belief, or abstract philosophical concept for which I am willing to die or kill. The extenuation and recession of life is only in my fist and aimed toward those I love (whether in defence of their lives, or the replacement of my own).

No idea, I repeat, no idea is worth dying for. I have made the case before that even ideas we greatly respect and admire, from the equality of the sexes, and so on, are not worth dying for. They are not sacred or beyond criticism. Ideas are open to a kind of agora mindset – or the market place of ideas the Greeks so loved.

So, consider the question: What are you willing to die for? It is more important, in my opinion, than redundant and ignoble questions about the existence of gods and so on. I do not think that the question of a god’s existence is important to one’s life. I know many nonbelievers who do. What I think they mean is this: The question of whether to believe the current trend of thought, which many believe, and which many find comforting, is central to one’s life. This says nothing about gods – which I think is a rather silly topic and unimportant.

What matters are those question we can answer: How can I be good? What is “love”? Who should I “love”? How do I help my fellow man? These have answers though not end-answers. That is, the answers are the endeavours to achieve those goals rather than actually achieving them. For example, we can continue to do volunteer work in the liberation of women (which is central to solving poverty), but it doesn’t mean we have any hope of eradicating poverty in our life time. The journey is the destination. Most of our answers will simply be winding paths and not glass palaces, in which we can put our feet up and be content.

Kenneth Minogue described ideals like stars, by which we guide ourselves. We never hope to actually reach the stars, but we certainly use them as guidelines, as reflections on the current path. And ideals and ideas are similarly entwined. None are worth dying for because they are echoes of where our hearts should be: Namely, those we love.

So, I reiterate: What are you willing to die for?