Eat Chocolate Everyday

A friend once told me that he had thought about suicide. I told him not to kill himself because then you can’t eat any more chocolate.

He immediately replied that in the next life you may get to experience the best tasting chocolate you’ve ever had for all eternity. I told him that, yes, that might be what the next life is like. But I have no evidence for it. I know that there is chocolate right here in this world, however. And I know that when I die I can no longer enjoy this chocolate in this world.

For many people, the thought of a wonderful afterlife gives their life meaning. Whether it is the promise of seventy virgins, or playing the harp for eternity, or Robin Williams learning that Cuba Gooding, Jr. is his son, the pleasantness of the next world gives this world meaning. Take away that promise of a wonderful afterlife and people find this world to be scary and meaningless.

I work the opposite way. The thought of a wonderful afterlife does not move me at all. The primary reason is that I have no evidence for it. I’ve never seen it, and everyone who has died has been unable to tell us anything about it. And I don’t believe everything I read. Certainly part of being an educated person is to be critical about what you read. And I’m not impressed by the fact that so many other people believe it. Many people think that Adam Sandler is funny, so I don’t trust what many people think.

Instead of focusing on some dreamland perfection, I would rather focus on this world. The primary reason is that I have loads of evidence that this world is here. You have loads of evidence too! It just seems rational to me to focus on the world that exists.

So, what’s in this world? It is true that there are a lot of awful things in this world. It is the awful things that so often turn people to focus on the next world. It is, as Nietzsche tells us, a form of escapism. The reason why there are no atheists in foxholes is because no one wants to be in a foxhole. This doesn’t tell us anything about the next world, it just tells us to avoid foxholes.

There are also lots of things in this world that should be good but ending up being bad. Spouses run off with people they meet on the internet, children die, cars wreck, diseases cripple, teeth rot, bowels clog, toes stub, eyes go blind, ears go deaf, and you need a root canal. Your favorite stereo equipment is stolen. Your favorite car blows a head gasket. Your computer crashed. Your health insurance doesn’t cover that. Lots of things will go wrong in your life and they will continue to do so until you die. This world has a lot of awful things in it.

But it also has chocolate. It is true that there are many other pleasurable things in this world. But most of those things are unreliable. Sex is very pleasurable, but unreliable. Alcohol is very pleasurable, but it has way too many awful characteristics. I picked chocolate because it is very reliable and very primal. For me, eating chocolate really releases some basic essential pleasure. It is reliably wonderful.

And so I eat chocolate everyday. By eating chocolate everyday I am affirming that there is something in this world which I know is wonderful. By knowing that there is this one thing that is wonderful, I can then go on and see all of the other things that are wonderful, for there are many wonderful things in this world.