All right, this isn't about suicide, but about being born in the first place. Is all the good in life worth all the awful things that happen? Or would we be better off never being born, as we wouldn't even know what's good or bad to begin with and would just not even exist to think or feel about anything?

I ask this because there's been a lot of stuff recently that has embittered me. I used to think bad stuff happens, and then you move on. Why do we move on? Do we move on because we realized the bad stuff wasn't that bad? Or do we move on because it's just impossible to not move on? In other words, things suck horribly but the body and the mind aren't meant to think everything sucks all the time so moving on has to happen and we just continue to live in a world that sucks even if there's no resolution to all the suckiness?

A couple of days ago, the sister of my best friend's girlfriend was murdered in her room. She was in language school in Tokyo, living in a room with her roommate. That roommate had rejected a guy from the same school who wanted to date her, and apparently that guy didn't take it very well. As she had packed and put her boots on, ready to go to Hokkaido with some friends, the guy paid her a visit and stabbed her in the neck and in the back multiple times. That wasn't enough for him, he also went to the bedroom and stabbed, also in the neck and in the back, the sister of my best friend's girlfriend who was sleeping in her bed.

But this kind of stuff isn't that rare, bad **** happens all the time. In the last few months, a murderer has been roaming the streets of my home city and now killed five people. Every time, a young person leaving from a bar or a party in the same area in the middle of the night, alone, who disappears and is found a few days later drowned in the river.

A friend of mine knew a guy who was hit and killed by a train, at 22. Another friend knew a guy who went on vacation, got a jetski accident and died, also in his 20s.

My girlfriend was kidnapped after class on her way to Starbucks, in the middle of the freaking day, by two men who handcuffed her to themselves. They took a picture of her when she was naked, sexually abused her and then said they would post the picture if she didn't give them $500 and rape her if she didn't give them $1000, which she did, and they let her go.

She also knew a girl who died in the tsunami last year, apparently just shy of college graduation.

A friend of mine was raped twice.

Less personal, the ex-editor in chief at Kotaku, Brian Crecente, had to deliver the news in person to his brother that his 16 year-old daughter had been shot and killed by an ex-boyfriend.

I'm sure you guys have a ton more examples from your life or people you know or even history, which proves that those events aren't rare, and it seems like some of those things are just so cruel, so wrong, that it's making me re-think how grateful humanity should be to be in this world. What do you think about the idea of life -- and by that I don't mean that your parents gave you life, but life for all humanity, whether you believe it was given to you by a god or by science. Is it a gift or a cruel joke?

Holy ****, I'm glad nothing like that has happened to people close to me.

Well life is perceived differently by different people. To someone like you who has had such tragedy happen to people around you I would imagine you would perceive life to be more in the cruel joke category, while someone else may have had a much more peaceful existence. Personally I don't view life really as a gift but more of a cruel joke, though I know my life is much better than a lot of people out there.

So generally I would say that while life does have its good times they tend to be outweighed by the bad; so you need to make the most of those good times while you can.

In terms of life vs nothingness, I am more in favour of nothingness as life just doesn't seem to be worth it in the end.

I sympathize with you. People close to me have been through similar tragedies. I used to be super religious and figured that everything is made right in the afterlife. But, then my 10 year old nephew died, and I realized that there really isn't anyone watching over us and protecting us. And, there probably isn't an afterlife. I would think most of us on this forum have it pretty good, we're not hungry or without a place to sleep. So, life seems like a good thing. But, every now and then something horrible happens, either to you or someone close to you. You have to be honest with yourself, with so much pain and heartache, sometimes it makes sense to say it would have been better to have never been born. For me, what makes life worth it is my wife and kids (I know that sounds so cliche, but it's true). If that was taken from me, I'm not sure I would want to go on living. I don't know if I would ever find a way to get over that. Losing my nephew was the worst thing I ever had to go through, and I still think about him all the time. I guess, the way I see things now, everyone of us needs to find what makes life meaningful. For, some of us, I think that life can be bad enough to say it would have been better to never have been born then live through that much tragedy. My hope is that we all do find something that makes life worth living.

I agree with everything that's been said so far. illusion in particular, put it better than I ever could. As far as your outlook on it, I think it would just depend from person to person. I know if I went what Yanikun did, I sure as hell would look at life as one cruel joke. Or illusion that lost his nephew; my nieces are the biggest spoiled brats I've ever known lol, but if I ever lost either one of them I don't think I could handle it. It's really weird how life can be so rewarding yet so punishing at the same time, but that's the way it is.

But in the grand scheme of things, I agree with CDUpwns that it's more nothingness in the end. I'm not cynical or anything but I personally don't believe in the whole "everything happens for a reason" stuff and all that.