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you'd say I'm rationalizing it, but I do not believe that death is a problem to be solved As I take it, that line of thought (that death is just a problem to b

by bsedlm 5y ago

you'd say I'm rationalizing it, but I do not believe that death is a problem to be solved As I take it, that line of thought (that death is just a problem to be solved and that immortality is something to strive for) leads to solving death just before going on to "solve" childhood. Why do we have to be born ignorant of the world and must "waste" some 20 years learning about it (possibly more) before we can go on to be socially productive persons? another 'challenge' for medical science to "fix"... no, no. I repeat myself, death is not a problem, immortality is nonesense. To percieve death as opposed to life is a consequence (IMO) of thinking with words and only with words; i.e. within language (and logic) these two seem opposite, but there're are ways to think beyond just the logical-linguistic.

WhitneyLand 5y ago
Ok, how about if all efforts are aimed only at eliminating sickness and suffering? If somehow that were possible for all ages would you be for that? Then, since death is not a problem we could just “schedule” it for some reasonable date in the future to retain all the philosophical benefits it brings? You first?
- bsedlm 5y ago
  thing is, I've begun to consider old age as a graceful easing out of life, as if without old age ceasing to be alive can only be violent affair (violent like an explosion or a high-speed crash)
  - molpeio 5y ago
  - therealcamino 5y ago
    Old age can be many things, and is often far from graceful. I wouldn't romanticize it.
  - jamiek88 5y ago
    Old age is horrific torture and I hate it. How I used to be strong and fast and smart and now I’m a withered husk of a man. Death is to be conquered like all other obstacles fuck this surrender.
ben_w 5y ago
Can the death penalty constitute a punishment in your view?
Majestic121 5y ago
That's a lot of words, but I still don't see a justification why death (I.e. the end of life) is not a problem for people that do not want to stop living (most people).
- glenstein 5y ago
  Yeah, I was confused as well. I think the argument is that it's a slippery slope to a different thing, and since the different thing is bad, solving for death is bad too. I don't think that runs.
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    this is a very shallow reading of the point you correctly appreciate the structural way in which the argument works. but you still do not seem to want to see the underlying subltety; that death and life are merely parts of the same larger entity and that our language (our rationalist analytical way of thinking) makes us "miss the forest for the trees", to focus on life and death as opposing rival forces when in fact they're different edges(ends, or sides) of the same larger phenomenon.
    - glenstein 5y ago
      I think I fully understand this new subtlety and consciousness dismiss it as ridiculous. Two unlike things were being compared, and the underlying idea that life and death are complements (1) is so vague and open ended that it would take a lot of clarification to understand whatever you think it brings to bear here and (2) on account of its vagueness, functions as a pretty broad expression of a casual acceptance of death that invites all kinds of slippery slopes far worse than the one you are identifying. And since I'm on the side of thinking we can appeal to analytic concepts to distinguish between health problems that emerge in old age and "solving" childhood with horrific consequences, and you are on the side of seeing them as the same because those distinctions are trapped in strictures of analytic thinking, I imagine that you give your full blown acceptance a pandora's box of outrageous situations. Genocide? Eugenics? Letting global warming happen? Letting war happen? Nuclear bombs? All just the flip side of life, part of a greater dialectic that unites them, and ultimately all fine and good. Since you reject separating out good and bad cases according to any reading that would have structure, I trust that you embrace this slippery slope just as much as the one you want to attribute to the project of combating health issues in old age.
bitwize 5y ago
I don't think it's a problem we can solve. If we ever solve aging we'll get up to so much other malarkey that we're bound to die some other way, and not much later than if we'd died of old age. Personally, I'd rather enjoy old age and go out suddenly than spend the last 20 or 30 so years of my life slowly crumbling to death, so addressing the diseases of aging is a worthwhile endeavor.
cyber_kinetist 5y ago
Perhaps have you read Baudrillard (specifically, Symbollic Exchange and Death)? He talks precisely about this problem: that by rejecting death and segregating it from life, we end up immortalizing death and suffer from this distinction. And this ontological paradox ultimately encompasses every aspect of Western society: not only how we treat the dead (rise of suicides and euthanasia, and our reaction to it), and soon-to-be-dead (the elderly abandoned in nursing houses), but also the functions of Capital and labour, the breaking down of social democracy, the ever-increasing opposition between the State and terrorism, and the eventual rise of fascism (the perverse aestheticization of death). All of this is quite complex and I can't do justice here in this single comment, but I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. (I personally think this is Baudrillard's magnum opus, whereas most people only remember him for the book Simulacra and Simulation and the concept of hyper-reality.)

by bsedlm 5y ago

WhitneyLand 5y ago

Ok, how about if all efforts are aimed only at eliminating sickness and suffering? If somehow that were possible for all ages would you be for that? Then, since death is not a problem we could just “schedule” it for some reasonable date in the future to retain all the philosophical benefits it brings? You first?

bsedlm 5y ago
thing is, I've begun to consider old age as a graceful easing out of life, as if without old age ceasing to be alive can only be violent affair (violent like an explosion or a high-speed crash)
- molpeio 5y ago
- therealcamino 5y ago
  Old age can be many things, and is often far from graceful. I wouldn't romanticize it.
- jamiek88 5y ago
  Old age is horrific torture and I hate it. How I used to be strong and fast and smart and now I’m a withered husk of a man. Death is to be conquered like all other obstacles fuck this surrender.

ben_w 5y ago

Can the death penalty constitute a punishment in your view?

Majestic121 5y ago

That's a lot of words, but I still don't see a justification why death (I.e. the end of life) is not a problem for people that do not want to stop living (most people).

glenstein 5y ago
Yeah, I was confused as well. I think the argument is that it's a slippery slope to a different thing, and since the different thing is bad, solving for death is bad too. I don't think that runs.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  this is a very shallow reading of the point you correctly appreciate the structural way in which the argument works. but you still do not seem to want to see the underlying subltety; that death and life are merely parts of the same larger entity and that our language (our rationalist analytical way of thinking) makes us "miss the forest for the trees", to focus on life and death as opposing rival forces when in fact they're different edges(ends, or sides) of the same larger phenomenon.
  - glenstein 5y ago
    I think I fully understand this new subtlety and consciousness dismiss it as ridiculous. Two unlike things were being compared, and the underlying idea that life and death are complements (1) is so vague and open ended that it would take a lot of clarification to understand whatever you think it brings to bear here and (2) on account of its vagueness, functions as a pretty broad expression of a casual acceptance of death that invites all kinds of slippery slopes far worse than the one you are identifying. And since I'm on the side of thinking we can appeal to analytic concepts to distinguish between health problems that emerge in old age and "solving" childhood with horrific consequences, and you are on the side of seeing them as the same because those distinctions are trapped in strictures of analytic thinking, I imagine that you give your full blown acceptance a pandora's box of outrageous situations. Genocide? Eugenics? Letting global warming happen? Letting war happen? Nuclear bombs? All just the flip side of life, part of a greater dialectic that unites them, and ultimately all fine and good. Since you reject separating out good and bad cases according to any reading that would have structure, I trust that you embrace this slippery slope just as much as the one you want to attribute to the project of combating health issues in old age.

bitwize 5y ago

I don't think it's a problem we can solve. If we ever solve aging we'll get up to so much other malarkey that we're bound to die some other way, and not much later than if we'd died of old age. Personally, I'd rather enjoy old age and go out suddenly than spend the last 20 or 30 so years of my life slowly crumbling to death, so addressing the diseases of aging is a worthwhile endeavor.

cyber_kinetist 5y ago

Perhaps have you read Baudrillard (specifically, Symbollic Exchange and Death)? He talks precisely about this problem: that by rejecting death and segregating it from life, we end up immortalizing death and suffer from this distinction. And this ontological paradox ultimately encompasses every aspect of Western society: not only how we treat the dead (rise of suicides and euthanasia, and our reaction to it), and soon-to-be-dead (the elderly abandoned in nursing houses), but also the functions of Capital and labour, the breaking down of social democracy, the ever-increasing opposition between the State and terrorism, and the eventual rise of fascism (the perverse aestheticization of death). All of this is quite complex and I can't do justice here in this single comment, but I highly recommend it if you haven't read it. (I personally think this is Baudrillard's magnum opus, whereas most people only remember him for the book Simulacra and Simulation and the concept of hyper-reality.)