I wanted to apply the Socratic method to myself so I could know myself better:

I started with the most obvious question:

what do you value most in life?

My future family. I was sure of it.

Why?

Because they will be what remains after I die. Because I came into the world to change things, to leave a mark. I want them to leave even deeper marks.

First trap:

what if they do not want to leave marks? What if they prefer a quiet life?

I would value them just the same. They are my life project.

Contradiction: if I value them the same regardless of their achievements, then legacy is not what really matters. There is something more fundamental. What is it? I still do not know.

Second trap:

then is my family really what I value MOST, or just a useful direction for now?

Brutal honesty: it is a provisional direction. The meaning of my life, my dharma, my values, are capricious, chosen arbitrarily. That is to say: I chose them after a conscious decision. After weighing different sets of values, I chose this one. But just as I chose these, I could have chosen others.

Just as I chose them in the past, there is no reason they cannot change in the future.

One chooses the meaning of life, because life by itself has no meaning.

But these values are not completely capricious, right? I chose them for a reason: I know I am going to die. “Leaving a mark” is my way of facing death.

And what is problematic about death?

That I will stop existing. And I do not believe in God or in an immortal soul. The survival instinct demands some kind of answer. Otherwise I would stay still like a stone, waiting for the scythe, or wandering without purpose.

Third trap:

how does “leaving a mark” solve the problem of ceasing to exist?

I will still be dead. I will not be there to see anything. It does not solve the problem; it only distracts from it.

So why keep going? Because otherwise, as Camus said, I would have no reason not to kill myself. Circle closed: what keeps me here are my goals. But my goals exist only to keep me here. Circular reasoning. A crutch. Useful self-deception. Camusian absurdity dressed up as purpose.

Reflection

But perhaps Socrates was right about something deeper than mere questioning. It is not that my values are capricious because they lack a rational foundation. It is that any ultimate foundation is, by definition, unfounded.

Axioms are not proven; they are chosen.

The question is not whether my values are justified, but whether I am willing to hold them knowing that they are not. I discovered that “leaving a mark” does not solve death, but it is not trying to. It is an existential answer, not a logical one.

It is not an argument against death; it is a stance toward it. A way of saying: yes, I am finite, yes, I will disappear, nothing matters, and even so I choose to act as if it does.

The circle is not a failure of reasoning. It is the structure of conscious existence. We live because we choose to live. We value because we choose to value. The absurdity is not that my reasons are circular, but that I expected to find reasons that were not.

Maybe the Socratic method is not for finding solid foundations. Maybe it is for discovering that there are none, and that we go on anyway. And in that sustained contradiction, in knowing that I am dancing over the void and choosing to dance gracefully anyway, there may be something more valuable than any definitive answer.

There are people who do not know why or what for they live, perhaps because they have never asked themselves, or perhaps because they believe the answer exists somewhere, without realizing that the answer, in fact, does not exist on its own. One can search for an answer in one’s surroundings, possibly in society.

I reject that

I chose why I live. I decided it myself; it was not imposed on me.

I choose to be alive.

The Naked Truth

We are beings without purpose. Survival machines, as Richard Dawkins said. Chemical replicators that developed consciousness and now suffer for it.

Any ethical reason is a human invention. An invention without logical foundation, axiomatic, circular. At best it can be coherent, as Wittgenstein said. A language game that follows its own rules, but whose rules have no external justification.

There is no ultimate ground. There is no final reason. There is only the choice to hold certain axioms and live as if they mattered. And maybe that is enough. Maybe dignity is not in having ultimate reasons, but in choosing to hold your own even while knowing they float over the void. I choose to leave a mark because I choose to choose.

I choose the music of my life because the alternative is silence. I choose to dance.