#sea-wolf

Just a few quotes from my favourite book, "The Sea-Wolf" by Jack London. It's a particularly piercing and cruel novel with its description of life, though not incorrect. The whole book is full of these thoughtful dialogues. I'd suggest it to anyone willing to truly think about what is being read. It's incredibly powerful.

“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself?  And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour.  Take that man I had aloft.  He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies.  To you?  No.  To me?  Not at all.  To himself?  Yes.  But I do not accept his estimate.  He sadly overrates himself.  There is plenty more life demanding to be born.  Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world.  He was worth nothing to the world.  The supply is too large.  To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself.  He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies.  Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone.  He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.”

“I held that life was a ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and that living was merely successful piggishness.  Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world.  There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless.  Nature is a spendthrift.  Look at the fish and their millions of eggs.  For that matter, look at you and me.  In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.  Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.  Life?  Bah!  It has no value.  Of cheap things it is the cheapest.  Everywhere it goes begging.  Nature spills it out with a lavish hand.  Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.” -As spoken by Capt. Wolf Larsen

Maybe people are pretty similar to Yeast...

"Life, when it knows that it must cease living, will always rebel."

For what is life, after all? Does anyone truly know? I constantly think of it— for what goal could life exist? To what end, save our ultimate destruction? For we all die. We have no say in it! For if we did, we may linger on in the furor, and weigh down this world to drown him in the liquid cosmos. But being mortal as we are, we instead drown in the very solid thing we call Earth— though, having first been drowned in life, this seems inconsequential. Until we sink from life with weights on our legs, we have free reign of all that we do! What a glorious thing! But the question comes yet again— for what goal could life exist, and to what end?— It seems irrelevant, does it not? It becomes a thing of pride; of ego. You exist, and continue to exist, out of an urge to exist. A personal and quite selfish urge to exert your energy upon the Earth and its other inhabitants— and in life, you act largely out of fear of death! Ah, what is death? It is nothing! And that is abysmal— we hate it. We lose ourselves upon death. We lose our thoughts, our consciousness, our will, and our physical form. Or, the physical form loses us, and is instead buried in the ground to feed the Earth with toxins. And that is all- our last memory is not. We don't know any comfort that death may bring- and any pain is forgotten as soon as it begins. It is a merciful thing, this death— but such a torture when living! So, I submit that the only value to life is the value one ascribes to their own life. Though it is an unwarranted value— it has no relation to anything real other than your desire. If you were to ask another what your life would be worth, they will undoubtedly think it to be worth less than theirs, whether they say so or not. Whether they realize it to be untrue or not. It is an instinct— you do not think it, you feel it.

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“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself?  And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour.  Take that man I had aloft.  He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies.  To you?  No.  To me?  Not at all.  To himself?  Yes.  But I do not accept his estimate.  He sadly overrates himself.  There is plenty more life demanding to be born.  Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world.  He was worth nothing to the world.  The supply is too large.  To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself.  He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies.  Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone.  He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss.”

Wolf Larsen, The Sea-Wolf

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You may spend your life however you see fit— for it is yours, and it holds no major effect upon others. And while I largely agree with the above quote, I must say I don't see it quite so brutishly. But I cannot say it is inaccurate.

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“I held that life was a ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and that living was merely successful piggishness.  Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world.  There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless.  Nature is a spendthrift.  Look at the fish and their millions of eggs.  For that matter, look at you and me.  In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives.  Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.  Life?  Bah!  It has no value.  Of cheap things it is the cheapest.  Everywhere it goes begging.  Nature spills it out with a lavish hand.  Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it’s life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”

for these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon them and unwilling to die. and i remember that the sounds they made reminded me of the squealing  of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and i was struck with horror at the vividness of the analogy.