I guess the more you live the more you die EJ. Each day you are a little closer to that ending. You have discovered it is ephemeral, futile, and sweet. Then live sweetly. And breath as much as you can.
I understand what you're saying EJ. I accept my death for different reasons. More so because I feel like a prisoner in a lost world than a free spirit.
Kind of shortchanging life there aren't ya? Aww come on, you seriously can not be implying that you have done everything thing there is to do in a life span? You seem more struck by ennui then a grand realization.
EJ, for some reason your post seems sad to me. This is it? I don't know...that sounds sad to me. This is the way I see it. Life is here now, and I'm going to have fun and enjoy it. But death, that is yet another adventure. Since I know nothing about death I'm 50-50 on whether it will be good or bad. But since in life I always kept my head up, even when facing bad times, I'm going to keep my head up. There is a decent chance that what I'm going to find after death will be pleasing, a decent chance that I will go on. I do not fear death...not at this moment. Things may change of course, but if I have lived my life, and this body is waning...I will know that death is near and I will remember my lack of knowledge...let us not assume...assumptions are surely one of the most tragic vices.
Hello, Here's how I see my situation: From an objective point of view, I'm a mortal. I will die. I've seen people die, and others will likely watch me die. From a subjective point of view, I'm immortal. I will never live to experience my death. There are no dead men, only dead bodies. Death is not a state of being. It is a limit of our experience which we can approach, yet never reach. I will surely die, but I'll never be dead. The Spanish philosopher, Fernando Savater, thought that we might never have imagined the idea of life after death if we didn't dream in the course of our sleep. If we possess an over-arching consciousness, one so powerful that it could survive our body having being fed through a meat grinder or roasted on a funeral pyre, then where is this consciousness when I take an afternoon nap or when I undergo general anesthesia? Why do people awaken from deep, dreamless sleep or from anesthesia remembering nothing of the time they were unconscious? Should we honestly expect that an un-worldly consciousness, which is entirely absent during our short periods of living unconsciousness, somehow activates only after we've been eaten by worms or consumed by flames? Among my litany of reasons for not believing in an afterlife is this: Since we don't even survive our life, what makes us think we could survive our death? To live is to change. Life gives us the opportunity to become. I think it was Hegel who said, "Man is not what he is, and is what he is not." I doubt I'll survive until next weekend without encountering some quiet metamorphosis. I don't want to survive as I am; as long as I live I want to become what I'm not. My favorite aphorism is by Søren Kierkegaard: "The self is that which we are in the process of becoming." The French have a saying: "Partir, c'est mourir un peu" (To part is to die a bit). Whether or not this is so, the reverse is not true; to die is not to part. To part with someone you love means that you go somewhere else; you go on to do something else in your life with the memory of that person you love. But in death you go nowhere and you do nothing. You aren't locked up in solitary confinement (as Thomas Nagel remarked) where you tear at your clothes and gnash your teeth out of home sickness, or better said, person sickness. Death is not a parting; it's not a goodbye! If I sigh my last sigh all the while looking into my wife's beautiful hazel eyes, through all eternity there will never be a moment in which I'll be without her... Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of the lake: So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me. Summer Night, Tennyson Michael
What is it we want to preserve in an afterlife? Our ego? The person who likes chocolate, but dislikes spinach? The person who supports his football team and laughs at people playing cricket? Hmmmm... Things like the ones I mentioned seem to be to close interwined with the brain. Change the brain, and the personality changes. You can see this in Alzheimer patients or in experiments. Since the brain can die and decay, from a scientific point of view, it is very likely that the personality dies with it. But I always think that science hangs above us like an unquestionable dogma, while scientists themselves can't find ground for science in logic or anywhere else. The only argument they have is: "it works". In the movie Solaris, someone says: "there are no answers, only choices". I think that is well said. People forget that they can chose to believe in an afterlife. Believe in God, believe in goodness. Since there are no answers, there is no way of objectively scoring people's beliefs. Science works, religion might work too. Who has the pretenion to rule out all spiritism, only based on science, which has no proper foundations to begin with. So.... based upon a great deal of belief, mixed with some common sense (I hope), some scientific findings and some small scale study of the big religions, I think it is ok to say: I believe in God, I believe that there is more than matter alone. Besides, one good reason to believe in all things spiritual is the pretention of some dedicated followers of science. Bwah. Come and get some Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
