Suicide is the art of war. It is the way of the warrior.

The Hakagure establishes: “The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance.”

“It is a principle of the art of war that one should simply lay down one’s life and strike.” The samurai renounces self-interest and self-preservation, choosing master and loyalty instead. The samurai must serve “as though his body were already dead.” The warrior is unattached to life and death. He is useless otherwise. Victory and defeat are secondary. Death moves beyond rightness or righteousness. Avoiding shame in death is utmost. Honor is paramount.

Yukio Mishima asks: What does it mean for a living being to confront death? His answer is: “purity of action.” Thus, even a futile death can acquire meaning and infuse dignity.

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Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, William Scott Wilson trans. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1983).
Yukio Mishima, Yukio, The Way of the Samurai, Kathryn Sparling trans. (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

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To say that human being cannot have meaning is false, of course. Human life has plenty of meaning for many human lives and some never question the meaning of being or that being has meaning or that being would not for some reason have meaning and would wince at having to do so. For some the meaning of being is an absolute certainty and they will live the entirety of their lives accordianly.

For others, meaning in being human is elusive or doubtful or devoid in and of itself. Meaning is superficial or insubstantial or manufactured. Meaning suffers from the illusion of being grounded in something absolutely good and true that’s looking out for you. Meaning is varnish that true life strips away without apology or sentiment. And so at bottom meaning in being human can be both adamantine and brittle, fullness and emptiness, honest truth and sinister lie, as illustrated by the quadrilateral of human being that means.

The base of the shape of the meaning of being is given and grounded in a story of unshakeable truth on what surviving, thriving and propagating truly means. What it’s all for. There is no good wind for a sail without direction, say the ancients. One thinker calls this the telos of being. Sometime the story is a mixture of teloses. This is where we get the word telethon as the desperate race to reach your goals in life.

One side of the shape of the meaning of being is erected by way of events and trajectories and realizations and hopes and memories over time and across place that confirm or retell or perform the orientating story on what surviving, thriving and propagating truly mean. Experience evidencing proof-positive the meaning of human being. Idea and experience, mutually generative and reflective, as they say.

The other side of the shape of the meaning of being sets in as experience that contradicts or confounds what life is supposed to mean so that the meaning of human life is even more deeply affirmed. Stories of meaning often build failure into the road to success and happiness. The little Frogger is run over, flattened, which only means move quicker and more nimbly next time. A broken little frog heart will surely mend and lead to true love in the end. A chorus of frogs wanders the desert, barren and dry, so as ultimately to arrive in their wet woodland paradise. These failures only prod frogs earnestly to keep on going. Keep hopping up that road. Keep hopping up that hill.

Then what’s called the Top Hat of the Quadrilateral of Human-being Meaning is the world overarching that lays down and instills and reinforces and enforces stories of a better tomorrow by way of upbringing and transmission, promise and prophesy, myth and institution. Human life has meaning because being in this world tells you so. This brings the quadrilateral of meaning in human being full circle in the stories we tell each other and ourselves, individual and society, society and species. When all four sides properly jointed work together in and over time and across place to shape being by way of meaning the effect is called being-quadrillangulated which is simply rounding off human being, which is to say human being that is meant within and all around.