Life Sucks

For most people for most of the history of human kind, life sucks. Consider...

The people who have it good are the people with power. They have the best food, the best shelter, the best warmth in winter months, (no air conditioning until the 20th Century), the easiest jobs, you name it. Relatively speaking, only the people in power have ever had good lives. Their underlings often benefited from close association with power and lived better than most. But the further people got from power, the suckier their lives have been. Dirt floors. Leaking roofs. Inadequate nutrition. Short life expectancy. Very little control over destiny.

In industrialized countries in the 20th Century, things improved for the working man to a significant degree. Eventually, things improved for some minorities and for women. But, the working class still lives a much suckier life than the power elite. 

And third world countries are full of people who may as well be living in the Dark Ages.

So, why do we continue on? I know people express great concern over the suicide rate. But my question is, why isn't the suicide rate higher? Why, given the suckines of life, don't more people opt out?

One reason is the religious prohibition against suicide and the promise of rewards in the afterlife. If you live a good life, you get rewards in the afterlife. If you commit suicide, you lose those rewards; this prevents the early exit option. 

For people like me who don't believe in an afterlife, the religious explanation doesn't cut it. Why, given the sucky nature of life, do we continue? I have no interest in perpetuation of the species. I don't feel any obligation to anyone to remain around. But, there is in all of us, in all living beings, a survival imperative. Is this imperative so strong that it forces us to endure the suckiness of life?

I don't know. But, I think for most people, the answer must be, yes. This may be good for the species but I'm not so sure it's good for the individual. I'm a firm believer in QUALITY of life over quantity of life. And it seems to me that many people have very little quality of life and the survival imperative is merely prolonging suffering.

I'm NOT promoting suicide. I'm simply wondering why more people don't opt for suicide given life's circumstances. It puzzles me.