Something Instead of Nothing

Okay, given the aggregation of particular experiences, relationships and access to ideas that you had, you have come “here and now” to think this about it.

And, sure, that need be as far as it goes. This frame of mind [however it was derived] works for you and allows you to approach your own death in ways that many, many others are not able to. Their loss, your gain.

It’s no less an existential conrtraption to me but I’m not the one who matters here. Only you do. Instead, my point revolves more around the suggestion that it is not likely that philosophers will ever come up with the optimal point of view. A way in which rational men and women are obligated to think about death. The “best” way to think about it.

Each of us either finds something that works or we don’t. Most find that God reflects [by far] the best of all possible worlds here. If you can figure out a way to believe in Him.

On the other hand, does anyone really know how to distinguish one from the other?

You can go around the globe and bump into any number of cultural narratives:

[b]Sue Bryant

November 2nd is the Dia de las Muertos in Mexico: the Day of the Dead. Rather than a day of mourning death, this is a time of celebration. Altars are built in homes to deceased family members, graves decorated and vigils held, in the belief that the departed are returning to visit. It’s also a day of colorful parades all over Mexico – and a day where nobody does much work.

Death is marked in so many ways around the world that an understanding of different rituals can be helpful, particularly in a cross cultural environment. It’s not death, as such, which is a universal experience, but the expression of grief that differs so much between cultures.

In Korea, where cremation is becoming commonplace nowadays, there is a trend to have the ashes of a loved one refined and turned into colorful beads. While these are not worn, if you visit a Korean home and see these beads on display, they’re likely to be the ashes of a loved one of the homeowner.

White is the color of mourning in China, not black, as in the west, and as such, is regarded as unlucky; this is why giving white flowers to a Chinese person is inappropriate. Funeral rituals vary according to the age and status of the deceased but the official mourning period for a Buddhist may go on for 100 days. These rituals are elaborate and may even include hiring professional wailers, in the belief that the young in China no longer know how to show emotion appropriately. These mourners learn facts about the deceased and then start the process of expressing grief at the funeral, sobbing and wailing, opening the doors for any family mourners who feel embarrassed about public displays of emotion.

Japan is the opposite. Death is seen as liberation and acceptance is more important than expressing oneself. People bring condolence money to wakes in white envelopes tied with black and white ribbon. Bodies are cremated but the ashes then separated from the bones, these remains sometimes being divided up between the temple, the family and even the employer of the departed. The dead are remembered during a three-day holiday in August, Obon, when the spirits of ancestors are believed to return to the family home, graves are cleaned and fires lit. This celebration of the dead is common in cultures where ancestor worship is practiced. In these cultures, life is seen as cyclical rather than linear and the dead are believed to have powers over the living, such as the ability to bless or curse.

Ghana is another example of this belief in an afterlife, with a relatively new tradition of elaborate coffins, which will illustrate the interests, profession or status of the departed but also see them off into the next life in style. A coffin may take the form of an aeroplane, or a Porsche, or a Coca Cola bottle, an animal or even, in dubious taste, a giant cigarette packet. Coffin makers are highly sought after and are regarded as important artists. Funerals are enormous affairs, often costing more than weddings, and advertised on huge billboards so that nobody in the community misses out.

In other parts of Africa, funeral rituals have evolved from the blending of Christian, Islam and traditional practices. In southern Africa, like Ghana, funerals are enormous affairs involving entire communities. The death is usually announced on the local radio station and mourners will gather over the coming days, coming from surrounding villages and further afield to pray and sing. As numbers swell, catering becomes more complex, with animals slaughtered to feed the crowd. If you are an employer in, say, Botswana or Namibia, you need to allow time off for funerals and if you employ several workers from the same community, you may well lose all of them for days at a time in the event of a death.

In the Hindu faith, it is preferable to die at home, surrounded by family. The soul is believed to go on, according to one’s karma. Bodies are cremated quickly, usually within 24 hours, in order to liberate the soul quickly. Mourners wear white, not black, and people do not bring food to the wake, but to a ceremony 13 days after the cremation, at which the soul is liberated and the mourning period considered over. Ashes are scattered over water, the most desirable place being the holy Ganges and a lot of Hindu families living outside India will make the pilgrimage to do this.

Muslims bury their dead, rather than cremate them, in the belief that there will be a physical resurrection on the Day of Judgment. The dead are buried facing Mecca and graves raised above the ground, or marked by stones, so nobody walks on them. Because the death of a Muslim is regarded as a loss to the Muslim community overall, it is not uncommon for people who did not even know the deceased to attend funerals. Crying is expected at burials but a loss of control, wailing and shrieking, is seen as inappropriate. A mourning period of up to 40 days follows a burial.[/b]

But the bottom line remains that [to the best of my knowledge] no one really knows for sure what the hell happens to us when one becomes the other.

The I that is you is not set in stone but is an eternally changing one over your entire lifetime
So you adapt according to that eternal morality rather than seek a position which is absolute

We are generally quite afraid of death because we do not like to talk about it so we avoid it as much as possible
Yet the only way to overcome or at least reduce our irrational fear of it is by talking about it as much as possible

I couldn’t agree more.

Well, if in fact it’s true. So, how would one go about demonstrating it? In no way, shape or form am I suggesting that I can. It’s just another existential contraption to me.

What “eternal morality”? Cite some examples of this from your own life, from your own interactions with others.

What “for all practical purposes” is the difference between “eternal morality” and a “position which is absolute”? Existentially, down to earth.

Again, this post comes in the form of an assertion. You aver that this fear of death is irrational and that talking about death makes it go away.

And yet there are any number of others [like me] who react to this dumbfounded. How can anyone actually manage to think themselves into believing it?!

Yet look at all of the things over the years that I have managed to think myself into believing. Things that still dumbfound me.

Instead, what “works” for me is distractions.

It’s not necessarily irrational to fear death. If you love life and are embedded in any number experiences that give you considerable pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment, death obliterates them forever. “I” itself is obliterated

Or, rather, is if this is what you believe.

From my frame of mind your frame of mind – an existential contraption – is one that you have managed to think yourself into believing.

Good for you. You may even manage to take it all the way to the grave.

After that, well, who the fuck really knows?

Right?

An eternal morality is one that changes over time with the acquisition of new knowledge and experience

When I was a young man I was always right and everyone else was always wrong and everything was just black and white
Now I am an old man and I am not interested in right and wrong or black and white because everything is shades of grey
I look into the abyss and I do not like what I see but I have no choice but to look at it because what I am looking at is me

We are all afraid of different things : I am afraid of worms and heights and dentists but I am not afraid of death
I have nothing to lose by dying which may be why I am not afraid of it but whatever the reason I am perfectly calm about it so have no anxiety
I cannot make you any less afraid of death than you already are no more than you can make me any less afraid of worms or heights or dentists

You want to overcome a fear of anything then only you can do that because only you have that fear so the responsibility is yours
Of course others might have the same fear as you but their fear only affects them as yours only affects you so it is all subjective

What happens beyond the grave is not something I worry about because I have no reason to
For me death is nothing more than just a transition from consciousness to non consciousness

I have no problem passing very slowly into a state of non existence as I would want that anyway had I the choice
Also I was in that state forever before I was conceived so all I am doing is simply returning to where I came from

Again, you have managed to think yourself into a frame of mind that I would imagine is considerably comforting and considerably consoling.

So your best bet is to avoid narratives like mine altogether. After all, what if I begin to make sense?!

All that carefully crafted reasoning may well begin to…crumble.

I adapt the narrative that is the most convincing not the most consoling as this is of no consequence to me
And should you therefore convince me I am wrong and you and are right I will adapt your narrative instead

I know nothing and so claiming certainty about anything is unwise which is why I need to have an open mind
I will always know nothing regardless of what I actually think which is why I am interested in all possibilities

Larry Curley in Philosophy Now magazine

[b]

[/b]

Sure, why not. I exist therefore I define things. But suppose you define “nothing” in another way?

Or maybe just the fact that I exist to define things is as far as one need go.

But defining “something” as that which encompasses “properties” that do exist tells us absolutely nothing about why they do. In other words, why they must exist.

Okay, we can chalk it all up to serendipity. By coincidence that which you construe to be the most convincing frame of mind is also the most consoling.

Only human psychology can be tricky. The part that revolves around defense mechanisms can persuade you [subconsciously? unconsciously?] to embrace the most soothing frame of mind.

I don’t even pretend anymore to fully understood how these things all unfold given the complexity of the human brain melding into mind melding into “I” out in a particular world.

Still, what seems most important is that which you are [here and now] able to think yourself into believing is true.

Here, you can, I can’t.

Just out of curiosity, how many times in the past has someone actually been able to convince you that you were wrong about your narrative? Me? Well, atheists convinced me not to be a theist, Communists convinced me not to be a capitalist, Trotskyists convinced me not to be a Leninist, Social Democrats convinced me not to be a socialist, existentialists convinced me not to be an objectivist, nihilists convinced me not to put too much stock in any “ism” at all. Including nihilism itself. Instead, I came to be convinced that “I” is basically just an existential contraption ever and always subject to re-fabrication in a world of contingency, chance and change.

Here I still make that crucial distinction between those things [seeming facts] that exist for all of us in the either/or world and those things which seem to exist more “in my head” [subject-ively] in both the is/ought world and in discussions that go out to the very end of the metaphysical limb.

D.E. Tarkington from Philosophy Now magazine.

What this encompasses is the classic example of a “general description” “Intellectual contraption” in regard to assessments of things like this.

It’s more or less a “thought experiment” in which the words precipitate certain assumptions about existence that we appear to have no way in which to either verify or falsify. Experimentally for example. Or experientially.

But we let that slide because, well, what else is there?

Still, it suggests the way in which “worlds of words” can be used as a substitute for demonstrable proof. And for things [relationships] considerably less “metaphysical”.

Here is another aspect of conscious existence that boggles the minds of some more than others. What does it mean to ponder/probe existence in the absense of minds able to? How would/could the universe be approached and/or grappled with in the absense of entities able to perceive it?

That’s why God must come into play:

Of course, that’s an explanation for everything. For anything. Other than in explaining why God and not No God. So God necessarily becomes the equivalent of existence. If only in the minds of those entities able to perceive something rather than nothing at all.

Then consciousness itself:

Only here we are confronted with the final imponderable. While human consciousness continues to evolve further and further away from nothing at all, each individual conscious “I” continues to topple over into the abyss that is…what exactly?

Mike Addison in Philosophy Now

And around and around we go. Whatever can explain the existence of something is only there to be explained because this something has evolved into the existing entities that we encompass in “I”. And, try as we might, nothing has ever really been explained at all regarding why there is even a how to be discovered.

Also, the part about how some are considerably more fascinated by this than others. Or those who can even be disturbed by the fact of existing as this infinitesimally insignificant speck without any understanding of the point of it all.

At best they can speculate that maybe – maybe – it will all become clearer when they are dead and gone.

Is creation “magnificent”? Or, in the context of all there is, is that just another essentially meaningless word that specks of our ilk thought up only because for whatever reason it is something that we could think up?

The Science Channel just aired the following documentary. It is clearly pertinent to this thread:

sciencechannel.com/tv-shows … lly-happen?

Bottom line: The Big Bang is only one possible narrative attempting to explain the existence of Somethingness. And we really have no true understanding at all of the relationship between this and nothing at all.

Note Science makes the fundamental assumption [note assumption!] there is always something.
This assumption is taken for granted in Science, thus there is no way Science will ever prove there is something instead of nothing.

Science is limited and what is meta-Science is philosophy.
From the perspective of philosophy, it is impossible to prove whether there is something instead of nothing or nothing instead of something. Thus as Wittgenstein proposed, we should just shut up whereof one cannot speak of.

When grappling with the very existence of existence itself who doesn’t start with one or another assumption? This one is yours.

And you and I have no way in which to know for certain what science either will or will not be able to prove hundreds or thousands of years into the future.

Indeed, imagine folks around the time of Aristotle speculating on what might be proven by science in our time.

It’s just that “nothing” becoming “something” becoming “everything in the universe today” is one of those mind-boggling conundrums that most of us own up to as really, really hard to wrap our heads around. Both “nothing at all” and an ever existing “something” seem impossible to wholly explain.

Here I always come back to an earlier post of mine in regard to Bryan Magee’s reaction to all this:

[/b]

As with science, we have no way of grasping what philosophers either will or will not be proposing about these relationships well off into the future. For me though anything proposed is either able to be demonstrated as true for all of us or it is not. What we believe in our head about the either/or, is/ought, Big Question quandaries that we grapple with would always seem to revolve around that relationship.

Christopher Cokinos in Philosophy Now magazine

And yet would not the Bhudda be compelled to grasp this if he is to make any sense at all of all the other things he dispenses in the way of “wisdom”?

That’s the crux of it from my point of view. We have no access to the “final answer” yet we have no choice but to take our leaps to particular answers regarding actual existential interactions on this side of the grave.

Doesn’t that effectively cripple those answers ultimately? We propose them only because there is no alternative. But we can never assess them as any thing other than more or less educated guesses.

Or maybe not.

Last night on the Science Channel, they aired a documentary that just boggles the mind in regards to all of this: “The Battle Of the Dark Universe”.

sciencechannel.com/tv-shows … k-universe?

Here we are groping to understand something instead of nothing when it is estimated that only 5% of the known universe is actually within the reach of astrophysicists. The other 95% is composed of dark matter and dark energy. And they really [as of now] can’t explain them.

and you know, while this is certainly a curious question - where did it all come from, or was it always, or will it end, etc. - it’s not really the quest for an answer to these questions that drives the scientist and philosopher. rather it’s what an answer would imply that the scientist and philosopher is looking for. he thinks that if he is able to find a ‘creator’ (whatever that might be), he might be able to find some direction for his other, more pertinent questions; does this ‘creator’ want me to do something specifically and/or will what i do offend or appease this ‘creator’.

this indicates two rather intriguing existential problems; man doesn’t know what to do, and he can never quite grow out of his need for some authority (in religion, a father-figure on a cosmic scale).

now as a sport-theist, i like to put a spin on this traditional approach and suggest that if there were a ‘god’, it too would recognize these two rather embarrassing problems that man has and, to the extent that a ‘god’ would ‘want’ anything, wouldn’t want man to be troubled by such problems. or rather ‘it’ wouldn’t pay attention to those who do have such problems. i’d think that this ‘god’ would favor the bold and courageous… so much so that you might even imagine such a person being a living antithesis to everything hitherto held in high esteem by the prevailing major religions. who would have thunk it; the ‘antichrist’ as the personification of divinity?

now there is a long line of reasoning behind this proposal… reasoning that reveals the various ‘collisions’ between logic and such things as the ontological, cosmological, intelligent design, and argument from evil arguments. you might say that god is hiding behind these things, producing them for the purpose of being refuted by those intelligent enough to recognize them as illogical, and bold and courageous enough to take these conclusions to there greatest extreme. to liberate themselves of all restrictions placed on them by such doctrinal puzzles… puzzles which were designed to be solved only by a few.

if the transformation - transition into this divine state - could be put into the schematic language of music, it might sound something like this.

the stages:

0:00-4:29 = that existential anxiety and despair that comes packaged with religious belief not yet cleared of its errors. the immature stage; uncertain, at the kierkegaardian crossroads (to leap or not to leap), looking for a father who still ‘does not answer’ (nietzsche).

4:29-9:12 = begin the metamorphosis. one starts to lose faith… ‘this can’t be right, something is amiss, something is wrong’. one realizes how they’ve been deceived so many years. their minds begins to twist… a strength begins growing inside, plotting its vengeance, ready to finally liberate itself. one now understands, but doesn’t smile. not a smile, but a grin… a shit eating, sinister grin.

9:12-11:23 = breaks from the chains, rising from the ashes of the first stage and reaching that divine madness. it’s go time, alpha team.

11:23-12:30 = the final stage before death. all things must end. finished and exhausted, one is ready for their tragic death and goes willingly into its arms having lived as the ‘gods’ would have wanted.

so that’s pretty much what it would sound like. that would be the epic theme song ‘god’ wrote for the script. pretty fuckin’ good, right? everything else is just noise or elevator music god wrote to characterize the lives of those who couldn’t solve the puzzle.

You don’t seem to get the point.

Note re Big Bang Theory;

Hypothesis: The Big Bang is the beginning of the Universe.
Assumption: There is something rather than nothing.
Speculated Theory: Evidences support the theory BB is the beginning of the universe.

BUT, in this case the theory [conclusion] is conditioned upon the assumption.
As such you cannot covert the assumption to a conclusion, i.e.
‘There is something rather than nothing’.

Thus the best you can conclude is according to Science, the BB is the origin of the universe conditioned upon the assumption ‘there is something rather than nothing’.
Therefore we cannot be certain there is absolutely ‘something rather than nothing’.

What is most realistic and practical is this;

Depending on the case defined;

  • case X -there is something rather than nothing,
  • case Y -there is nothing rather than something.

Why people insist on one [mostly X] and not the other is because of their own desperate internal psychological state of insecurity.