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This process that gave rise to me also gave me a painful, lifetime disability ... in its wisdom.

patcon 7y ago
fwiw I find myself very torn to be rationalizing death when my mom just went into paliative care last week. I'm literally typing this as I should be walking out the door to the hospital. I suppose I'd like to push the button that let me mom live 200 years, but i also fear for that button ever existing. I don't think I could NOT push it. I promise I'm not callous. I'm maybe suspicious of the west's cult of the individual. I feel like sometimes we as individuals can't have what we want for ourselves, if we want the bigger ongoing project to succeed. Things are already so complicated, not least due to accumulation of generational wealth and inaction of the older generation. I worry the "curing" death will doom us all, and collapse this whole beautiful mess in on itself :/ Curing death sounds great when young startup folks are pushing it, but we all age out, we all get stuck inside the minds that grew up in old worlds. anyhow, much love to you and yours. truly
titzer 7y ago
I'm sorry that you're suffering. No one should discount your experience. Yet even through our cloudy lens we behold a miracle beyond our possession, even beyond our comprehension. We are all transitional forms, even the best of us. We'll all die. It's nature's equalizer, grinding everything to dust and recycling it. We're all made of garbage. Junkyard parts, you and me both, buddy. Isn't it incredible? We're all Wreck Gar https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wreck-Gar_(G1) https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wreck-Gar_(G1). I think the awe of that realization is worth the meager existence allowed to me for the moment.
- at_a_remove 7y ago
  Miracles do not necessarily have to be positive. Imagine Dante's inferno, where in some sections fire might rain down forever upon the limited sinners. That would also be a miracle. Possession, comprehension of miracles, all irrelevant if it is something to which you are subjected. If you are ill, if you are very ill and occasionally must ingest large quantities of painkillers, marveling at the exquisite engine of torment (how finely tuned! how painstaking its affordances!) is quite beyond one at times. Evolution is a shuddering conglomeration of what has worked to make a few more copies, over millions of oft-unlucky organisms, than a few thousand years ago. What persists exists, even if it is tortured. Evolution does not respect its individuals, all collateral damage, nor is it tender even to its most faithful adherents, as the male octopus, under a chemical spell, will tear off its own arm to proffer to a mate, and then to starve, function fulfilled. What a wicked wonder.
  - titzer 7y ago
    I'm not going to negate you here, because you have a lifetime of lived experience and I don't doubt your pain is and has been real. Yet people suffer in many ways and there are some deeply twisted realities that many people have lived. In our darkest moments we all feel we are the tortured one, but that is not the whole truth either. It is tempting to believe that we are at war with an implacable, all-powerful enemy. But truthfully, we are only at war with our own minds. The mind is ultimately a digging machine. It matters a lot where you point it, more even the lens through which you interpret all that you see. Some very disadvantaged people have put forth some incredible feats of overcoming. They refused to be defined by their disabilities, their pain, their hardship--and refused to rue their existence. This engine grinds us all, but this world is no hell. And that damn octopus, maybe he reaches the height of ecstasy in that moment, an orgasm beyond belief. Wicked is a judgment.

fwiw I find myself very torn to be rationalizing death when my mom just went into paliative care last week. I'm literally typing this as I should be walking out the door to the hospital. I suppose I'd like to push the button that let me mom live 200 years, but i also fear for that button ever existing. I don't think I could NOT push it. I promise I'm not callous. I'm maybe suspicious of the west's cult of the individual. I feel like sometimes we as individuals can't have what we want for ourselves, if we want the bigger ongoing project to succeed. Things are already so complicated, not least due to accumulation of generational wealth and inaction of the older generation. I worry the "curing" death will doom us all, and collapse this whole beautiful mess in on itself :/ Curing death sounds great when young startup folks are pushing it, but we all age out, we all get stuck inside the minds that grew up in old worlds. anyhow, much love to you and yours. truly

titzer 7y ago

I'm sorry that you're suffering. No one should discount your experience. Yet even through our cloudy lens we behold a miracle beyond our possession, even beyond our comprehension. We are all transitional forms, even the best of us. We'll all die. It's nature's equalizer, grinding everything to dust and recycling it. We're all made of garbage. Junkyard parts, you and me both, buddy. Isn't it incredible? We're all Wreck Gar https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wreck-Gar_(G1) https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wreck-Gar_(G1). I think the awe of that realization is worth the meager existence allowed to me for the moment.

at_a_remove 7y ago
Miracles do not necessarily have to be positive. Imagine Dante's inferno, where in some sections fire might rain down forever upon the limited sinners. That would also be a miracle. Possession, comprehension of miracles, all irrelevant if it is something to which you are subjected. If you are ill, if you are very ill and occasionally must ingest large quantities of painkillers, marveling at the exquisite engine of torment (how finely tuned! how painstaking its affordances!) is quite beyond one at times. Evolution is a shuddering conglomeration of what has worked to make a few more copies, over millions of oft-unlucky organisms, than a few thousand years ago. What persists exists, even if it is tortured. Evolution does not respect its individuals, all collateral damage, nor is it tender even to its most faithful adherents, as the male octopus, under a chemical spell, will tear off its own arm to proffer to a mate, and then to starve, function fulfilled. What a wicked wonder.
- titzer 7y ago
  I'm not going to negate you here, because you have a lifetime of lived experience and I don't doubt your pain is and has been real. Yet people suffer in many ways and there are some deeply twisted realities that many people have lived. In our darkest moments we all feel we are the tortured one, but that is not the whole truth either. It is tempting to believe that we are at war with an implacable, all-powerful enemy. But truthfully, we are only at war with our own minds. The mind is ultimately a digging machine. It matters a lot where you point it, more even the lens through which you interpret all that you see. Some very disadvantaged people have put forth some incredible feats of overcoming. They refused to be defined by their disabilities, their pain, their hardship--and refused to rue their existence. This engine grinds us all, but this world is no hell. And that damn octopus, maybe he reaches the height of ecstasy in that moment, an orgasm beyond belief. Wicked is a judgment.