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19-09-2013 Jesus, I would have to read that quote 10 times to fully understand it. What a complicated writing style. |
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19-09-2013
Yes, he isn't always easy to read because the English is kind of strange. Archaic? Also, it's the translation from French so... maybe the translator is to blame, too I better add some amphasyses and line breaks to make it easier to read at least visually)) |
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19-09-2013 Most of the contradictions Rochefoucauld observes can be traced back to his conception that the mind is a monolithic thing.Yes, some parts of my mind think that not-living is preferable to living and some parts vehemently disagree. But some parts think smoking cigarettes is a really good thing, some parts disagree. That's not necessarily a sign of any philosophical significance. I would argue that Rochefoucauld makes the mistake of assigning equal intellectual "value" to these different parts/views/feelings. Basically, the lizard and horse parts of my brain are saying: "Stay alive. Food. Sex. Food. Sex" while the higher developed parts say: "What the f*** is going on here? Why am I in this place with all these crazy people? How do I get out of here? I want to speak to the manager!" |
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19-09-2013
You mean contradictions in treating death? I think he's quite right in arguing "the contempt the peer shows for death is but the love of fame which hides death from his sight; in the peasant it is but the result of his limited vision that hides from him the extent of the evil". Here's a giid illustration for your comment: I also think when we treat death as something abstract,-- without vividly imagining how it would feel to know that this is it, now are the last moments and there's nothing you can do to change that, -- we tend to think it's fine, whatever. Sort of like a lot of people overestimate their courage when thinking they could easily jump with a parachute, they truly believe it would be easy. Up until they're standing on the edge of a plane looking down and their legs suddenly start shaking. |
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01-11-2015 Privyet Irina,What an apt post for what I am feeling tonight. Perhaps watching some scary Halloween movies got me in a morbid mood First, I should comment, I actually went skydiving so I know what it means to be completely calm until the last minute when your legs start shaking. The exact thing happened to me I still jumped, though. Tonight, driving home on some back woods roads, I got to thinking about death. For the first time in awhile, I felt fear of death and how the darkness envelopes us all at the end of our journey. How it's guaranteed to happen after only a few decades on this planet. How we come from nothing after billions of years of non existence, and how we go back to nothing for billions of years. It gave me pause. Of course, that lends itself to the question of: what is better than the alternative of death? Is it better to live forever? And if one were guaranteed a good life to live forever, maybe it would be worth it to never die. And then the guarantee of death makes me wonder what is the best thing for someone to do with their short life before the end. I can't think of too much worthwhile, in my case, except for travel So, I don't know. Just a reflective mood on a Halloween night. The problems of death may be insolvable. |
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01-11-2015
Death is a problem because we're wired to dread it. If you think about it, all the harms death brings happen while we're alive, death as non-existence poses no problem because there's nobody there to feel anything as a problem. Just like we haven't been suffering in nothingness for billions of years before we popped in here and becane conscious, so we'll not be inconvenienced after we seize to exist. It's this existence that is the problem. The fact that we can't easily accept that it will be terminated. The anxiety, the helplessness, the dread - all the 'presents' the limited life of ours brings with itself. But for me, of course, it isn't the only problem with life, it's virtually everything else that's the problem, so I wouldnt want to be trapped here for ever even if I'm physically well. What about animals eating each other every second? Just keep blocking it out for eternity? Why would I want to do that? I only have to last a few decades in this nightmarish world, no way I would want to stay any longer. Just notice how you're thinking eternal life only in opposition to the prospect of having to die. Would you want this life on its own, for the quality it has, for somethig valuable and worth experincing forever were there no fear of death? What would you be doing? If there were no suffering, nothing to fix, nobody to help, what would be your plan for the first half of eternity? People get bored having too much free time very easily, they can't figure out what to entertain themselves with. Here's my translation of the piece from this great book by Artsybashev called 'Breaking Point'. It deals primarily with dying, telling stories about one doctor's patients, their lifes and their last days. This passage is the thoughts of an old professor on his death bed: "Why have You given me life? So it was all just a trap?.. The youth, the starry nights, the hopes, the love, the science... all this just a bait in order to allure, to entice and then to squish with inescapable and torturous death!.. But I don't want this! Who has the right to abuse me like this? Damn You with all your universe, stars, eternity and suns! You're nothing but a petty, mean trash who takes pleasure in tormenting and abusing the weak, defenceless people, who can do nothing to You!.. And I hate and curse You! Was this what you wanted when You were sweating over Your universe?.. So take it, enjoy!" There is an English translation online, but at least this free one is rather poor, lots of very important emotional nuances omitted. So I'd check out what Amazon has to offer, maybe a better translation. |
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01-11-2015 Wow, thanks for your response Irina. It seems like you are an optimist on the problem of death It seems like you are a pessimist about the world, which is completely understandable. If there were no major suffering in the world, perhaps you'd be an optimist? For me, the reality of death makes being an optimist difficult. |
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02-11-2015
It's hard to imagine sufferingless world and our living in such. We are problem-solvers, we need a sense of purpose, of mission. Fighting 'evil', 'making a world a better place', as in finding cures for debilitating diseases, inventing stuff that makes human life more comfortable - this gives meaning to a lot of peoples lives. Others find meaning in raising children - which to a large degree is a craving for immortality. What would people do if tomorrow they could just sit around and remain alive effortlessly forever? With our current psychology it's hard to picture a human being being happy forever doing nothing of value, in a world that doesn't need much improvement. Sure, I suppose, creativity could still exist: I'd stil be making jewellery and souvenirs, somebody would paint, others - write music. But that's some people, not everybody is creative. Would other immortal folks just sit around watch TV? Run around laughing and dancing? What? I don't know. What would that eternity look like? If the world was drastically different - we'd also have to be drastically different. And imagining a different human using our current psychological makeup is, again, not so easy, we can only speculate what that would be like. As Kirk replied to you below, the problem starts with birth. No point thinking how to fix death, if we weren't 'awaken' in the first place we'd never have to deal with death. It's part of the package of life, of all sentient life on Earth. To me it's like asking how to prevent a heroine addiction from ending badly for the addict. Don't start it, this is how it always ends, there's no fixing it. |
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02-11-2015 @Brian For me, living is an imposition. Something unasked for which has no lasting value and comes at great expense and suffering, for me and for others. I think sometimes people have trouble envisioning the "null" set. As a mathematician, it makes sense to me, but seemingly for others it is scary, or confusing, or something.It's not death that is problematic, it's living and dying. I often hear people use the phrase, "It would be the end of the world" as if it were something to be avoided, and what they really mean is an end to human existence, or actually their existence, not the end of the world, which to me is when the planet earth is destroyed or at least made uninhabitable by life. "Why, if everyone thought like you did, it would be the end of the world!!!" Shrink in horror, or something. They don't expect me to say, "How would that end the world, and even if it did end human existence, so what?" They can't conceive of it. I think this is the problem ANers face, lack of imagination on the part of the rest of humanity, yet they can certainly imagine the fire that might burn their house, or the college their unborn child might attend, or the car they might buy, etc. An infinite life? How many breakfasts can one eat? The only real good thing about life is that it is very temporary, though the possible 30,000 plus daily marks on the wall can surely seem interminable, until they no longer are ... |
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02-11-2015 My two questions, cooked up when I was very young, to try to get a handle on why the heck my parents brought me here and then what to do about it. The "accidental" almost drowning at 9 in the local lake didn't anticipate a brother ready to tattle that I had "gone swimming" and a dad that was too quick to dive in and pull me from the bottom.What is true? What is worth doing? This is surely eventually even the most dense individuals would come to ask after several thousand years of watching Simpsons reruns. ВїCuГЎl es la verdad? ВїQuГ© merece la pena hacer? in my best Spanish. My answers have turned out to be ВЁVery little of what people believeВЁ and ВЁFundamentally, not much.ВЁ ThereВґs a fool on the hill for you... |
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03-11-2015 Interesting comments, Irina and Kirk! I agree with you that the problem starts at birth. We can stop that process by not having kids ourselves, of course |
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03-11-2015
Let's all not have kids, travel and party and sit at home in silence and peacefully make jewelry and other art. Yeah. Not forever. For a while though. |
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03-11-2015 Irina- that sounds good! Except for the jewelry and art part, for me I read an article about a kid that shot his mother then shot himself. Wonder if his parents thought that could happen when they had a kid? Yeah, no thanks. |
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03-11-2015
How about wire trees? Home decor stuff. Made my 2nd one, getting the hang of it. |
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03-11-2015 Having to find ways to pass the time, if one is not exhausted from working to meet temporary needs, like food, shelter, etc. is a form of suffering many people don't even think about.Thinking about that, though, an image comes to mind of us sitting around a campfire, making spears and jewelry and giving each other haircuts… Which then brought to mind a little thought exercise, which maybe you already know, but just in case… You visit an isolated small town that only has two barbers and you need your hair cut. After visiting each one briefly, you notice one has a rather bad haircut, and the other is looking good. Which barber do you go for your cut, and why? No cheating, that's just boring! --- > Edited 03-11-2015 04:19:07 |
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03-11-2015
Having to find ways to pass the time, if one is not exhausted from working to meet temporary needs, like food, shelter, etc. is a form of suffering many people don't even think about. I seriously don't know how people manage to live like that, it's a form pf suffering in itself for me - not having enough time for pleasurable activities. Me - I try to make my pleasures my source of income. Website making first started as a hobby, then it turned into my main job. Now I'm trying to turn my craftsy hobbies into at least a supplementary income, but I'll be happy even if it just pays out occasionally. No cheating, that's just boring! LOL. I think it's quite evident that barbers usually don't make their own haircuts, so you'd go the the one with a worse one. But actually, if one of the barbers is a sly bastard, he, knowing that logic, would actually spoil his own haircut to make the other guy look worse! haha. |
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03-11-2015 @Mr Douglas,I know you're probably not speaking to me because I have yet to get back to you on the free will debate (I guess you can blame determinism for my tardiness ), but the answer is that you go to the barber with the bad hair cut, because he got it cut by the barber with the good hair, i.e. the one whose hair HE cut. If my logic is wrong and you pounce upon it with ferocious gusto then I fully expect Irina to remove this comment so as to maintain my heretofore reputation as genius par excellence. You don't want the townsfolk to stop calling me 'Dick with the swollen head', do you? ... Well, to be honest, they only call me that at formal gatherings, like when the Queen is unveiling a plaque in my honour, etc. As it's quite a mouthful, most of the time they usually omit the 'with the swollen' part when addressing me. |
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03-11-2015 Look up this actor's 1000 year old father and you will see:https://twitter.com/uriupina/status/655492293806419968 |
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03-11-2015 Wow Irina, nice wire tree! Those are real diamonds, right? |
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