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New years brings forward thought of life and death, all the more so with the wave of Omicron so many people are dealing with. I diverge from the author's under

New years brings forward thought of life and death, all the more so with the wave of Omicron so many people are dealing with. I diverge from the author's understandably unhappy perspective. Death isn't an end of the literal energy and parts that make up people, only in our ability to perceive and act on them. It's the end of counting minutes or years, in essence. The human mind can conceive of that, that upon death time ceases to be a crawl and zips forward seamlessly and limitlessly until or unless something ... reconstitutes the parts, energy and pattern that makes each of us human. It's hard preparing for death, I sympathize with the author, but it's also hard living with some understanding of how limited and temporary our lives and worlds may be.

KronisLV 5y ago
> ... only in our ability to perceive and act on them. Personally, i think that our consciousness is all that matters, therefore i cannot agree with this. > The human mind can conceive of that, that upon death time ceases to be a crawl and zips forward seamlessly and limitlessly until or unless something ... reconstitutes the parts, energy and pattern that makes each of us human. What about the heat death of the universe and entropy? If that were to be the eventual outcome of the universe, there are no guarantees whatsoever about anything of the sort.
- nerbert 5y ago
  > What about the heat death of the universe and entropy? A romantic take is that human evolution will ultimately solve this.
- marton78 5y ago
  The time has come again to recommend Asimov's "The Last Question" in case you haven't read it.
kmtrowbr 5y ago
The human mind is designed to solve problems, and so this is its mode. It perceives death as a problem & in doing so, sets itself an unsolvable problem. Also, consider that human language can describe things and situations which are nonsensical. Yet we have a very hard time imagining "not existing." There is no experience associated with nonexistence. Time will not "zip forward." If we are "reconstituted," as imagined here, we will have no memory of any prior existence. Or if, in the infinite permutations, we do remember, how odd and what a perverse reality that would be. This all may have already happened many times. These are the boundaries of our experience. You can have any attitude you like towards this, but why not a positive attitude which will lead you to enjoying this existence as much as possible, and also helping others to do the same? Lucretius laid out The Nature of Things very well in 79 A.D.: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to-fear-lucretius-epicureanism/ https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to...
weatherlight 5y ago
“For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.” ― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

KronisLV 5y ago

> ... only in our ability to perceive and act on them. Personally, i think that our consciousness is all that matters, therefore i cannot agree with this. > The human mind can conceive of that, that upon death time ceases to be a crawl and zips forward seamlessly and limitlessly until or unless something ... reconstitutes the parts, energy and pattern that makes each of us human. What about the heat death of the universe and entropy? If that were to be the eventual outcome of the universe, there are no guarantees whatsoever about anything of the sort.

nerbert 5y ago
> What about the heat death of the universe and entropy? A romantic take is that human evolution will ultimately solve this.
marton78 5y ago
The time has come again to recommend Asimov's "The Last Question" in case you haven't read it.

kmtrowbr 5y ago

The human mind is designed to solve problems, and so this is its mode. It perceives death as a problem & in doing so, sets itself an unsolvable problem. Also, consider that human language can describe things and situations which are nonsensical. Yet we have a very hard time imagining "not existing." There is no experience associated with nonexistence. Time will not "zip forward." If we are "reconstituted," as imagined here, we will have no memory of any prior existence. Or if, in the infinite permutations, we do remember, how odd and what a perverse reality that would be. This all may have already happened many times. These are the boundaries of our experience. You can have any attitude you like towards this, but why not a positive attitude which will lead you to enjoying this existence as much as possible, and also helping others to do the same? Lucretius laid out The Nature of Things very well in 79 A.D.: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to-fear-lucretius-epicureanism/ https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to...

weatherlight 5y ago

“For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death—and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering—slowly or quickly—as we draw near to death. This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.” ― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race