Life is meaningless, but it also has meaning—or, more accurately, meanings. There is no such thing as the meaning of life. Many different meanings ar… - David Benatar

Humans may exceed other animals in their sapient capacities, but we also surpass other species on our destructiveness. Many animals cause harm, but we are the most lethal species ever to have inhabited our planet. It is revealing that we do not refer to this superlative property in identifying ourselves. There is ample evidence that we are Homo pernicious – the dangerous, destructive human.

Our lives contain so much more bad than good in part because of a series of empirical differences between bad things and good things. For example, the most intense pleasures are short-lived, whereas the worst pains can be much more enduring. Orgasms, for example, pass quickly. Gastronomic pleasures last a bit longer, but even if the pleasure of good food is protracted, it lasts no more than a few hours. Severe pains can endure for days, months, and years. Indeed, pleasures in general—not just the most sublime of them—tend to be shorter-lived than pains. Chronic pain is rampant, but there is no such thing as chronic pleasure. There are people who have an enduring sense of contentment or satisfaction, but that is not the same as chronic pleasure. Moreover, discontent and dissatisfaction can be as enduring as contentment and satisfaction; this means that the positive states are not advantaged in this realm. Indeed, the positive states are less stable because it is much easier for things to go wrong than to go right. The worst pains are also worse than the best pleasures are good. Those who deny this should consider whether they would accept an hour of the most delightful pleasures in exchange for an hour of the worst tortures. Arthur Schopenhauer makes a similar point when he asks us to “compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.” The animal being eaten suffers and loses vastly more than the animal that is eating gains from this one meal. Consider too the temporal dimensions of injury or illness and recovery. One can be injured in seconds: One is hit by a bullet or projectile, or is knocked over or falls, or suffers a stroke or heart attack. In these and other ways, one can instantly lose one’s sight or hearing or the use of a limb or years of learning. The path to recovery is slow. In many cases, full recovery is never attained. Injury comes in an instant, but the resultant suffering can last a lifetime. Even lesser injuries and illnesses are typically incurred much more quickly than one recovers from them. For example, the common cold strikes quickly and is defeated much more slowly by one’s immune system. The symptoms manifest with increasing intensity within hours, but they take at least days, if not weeks, to disappear entirely.

A fourth way in which suicide is criticized is by claiming that it is a cowardly act. The idea is that the person who kills himself lacks the courage to face life’s burdens and thus “takes the easy way out.” Courage, on this view, requires standing one’s ground in the face of life’s adversities and bearing them with fortitude. One way to respond to this criticism is to deny that accepting life’s burdens is always courageous. This will seem odd to those who have a crude conception of courage according to which the unswerving, fearless response to adversity is always courageous. More sophisticated accounts of courage, however, recognize that a steely response may sometimes be a failing. This is what lies behind the adage that sometimes “discretion is the better part of valor.” On the more sophisticated views, too much bravado ceases to be courageous and is instead foolhardiness or even foolishness. Once we recognize that courage should not be confused with its simulacra, the possibility arises that some of life’s burdens may be so great and the point of bearing them so tenuous that enduring them further is not courageous at all and may even be foolish.