do you think my psychoanalyst is right. you see my thoughts. am i depressed.
what do you fear mostly in your thinking about god and an afterlife.
by the way i pleasure myself plenty. and i like what i do. but having that joy makes it even harder when a loved one dies.
Does the idea that you might be depressed depress you?
I agree with this excellent advice:
I think if a person does this as a real discpline, and not just another idea to accept as a nice and reasonable one, that person will benefit psychologically and help make the world a better place. To some degree we have to learn to feel fulfilled while soberly understanding the world as it is. Our culture doesn’t promote that ability - on the contrary, it promotes the association of fulfillment with avoidance.
anon thanks. can you write more about that fufillment through avoidance thing.
i am depressed. my psychoanalyst is right. what i see in the world makes me sad. i think it is terrible out there. and the delusions we continue to hold on to sometimes causes so much trouble.
That we will die, that loved ones die, is something most people would like to ignore, in order to live a “fulfilling” life. We don’t think we ignore, but we do. We don’t really feel it. But I think avoiding certain truths, because they are uncomfortable, is in fact a recipe for anxiety and depression. The urge to avoid suffering, and the plans we make and pains we take to construct personal heavens for ourselves, are in fact the reason we suffer so much.
I’d blame advertising, and sometimes I do, but advertising is based on the real ignorance that most of us have with respect to suffering (i.e. angst) and fulfillment. Something isn’t right, and we grasp at the wrong things in the attempt to make it right.
A good way of accomplishing that is to start treating YOURSELF better. The world isn’t ugly in itself, just the image of the world can be ugly (or beautifull) - so change the image! Be fatalistic! -Only when you accept the good and the bad in the world as ONE will you aquire the power to seize control over your life and ENJOY in it…
-It’s not impossible that the universe is an ugly thing in itself, but even if it is - our thinking about it makes it far WORSE than it would normally be…
It will be just as it was before you had been born, you already experienced the lack of experience (so to speak) that wasn’t so bad was it?
How can I know if your psychoanalyst is correct? How can i know if you truly are depressed? Your thoughts don’t actually tell me, one way or the other, if you are depressed, turtle. I can’t read all of your words and I can’t “see” or “sense” you, except perhaps in a way in which I may be projecting. I don’t know you. To say the words doesn’t necessarily mean that you are depressed. What I do see about you is that you are intelligent - and have many questions that you would seemingly like answered. But it may be possible that you know the answers to these questions even more so than many of us do, at least more than I do. You need to have intelligence and knowledge in order to ask the kind of questions you ask. Aside from that, there is just not enough evidence to form even just an opinion as to your depression. That does not mean that you are not depressed - just that i am not able to see it.
Nothing actually, unless I allow my preconceived and catholic, up-bringing conditioned ‘beliefs’ to get in the way of my rational thinking.
You may have to elaborate on that. I’m not getting it.
I know this. There is absolutely no way in the world to prepare ourselves for and run from the pain and suffering that will happen to us when a loved one dies. The only real fruitful thing that we can do is to treasure them while they are alive…make them aware of how deeply we care about them, love them and value their presence in our lives. Even then, we will suffer a great loss. Aside from that, we need to learn to trust that no matter what happens to us, we will continue on, we will survive; that is, if we truly want to. It all comes down to willing. And ‘seeing’ what a great big beautiful world there is out there and that many of the people who inhabit it are beautiful too.
Perhaps what we can do is to try to imagine our lives without them and in that way, we will have a greater sense of what being without them would be like, and that at least can act as the guide that allows us to love them as we truly want to and not to allow meaningless nonsense to get in the way. And perhaps, we will not have many regrets…and we will have to remember that in order to have had the great gift of their love and presence in our lives, and the joy they brought us, we have to accept the pain that comes with that. That is, if we have to.
It all depends on ‘seeing’.
I don’t know, how could I. 
Same with death, it is not something that happens to us, only to others [they experience our death as an observation].
Huh? 
I was joking along with him with the first line ~ he said you already experienced the lack of experience, which I presumed he inferred as to the impossibility of such.
Same with death, it cannot be experienced. Other people will notice you die but you cannot.
Huh?
Well, if i were to die, i would certainly be aware of/have that experience and everything that it sent my way. I would experience death and in a matter of speaking, my loved ones who were there to ‘notice’ my death, would also experience my death though not in the same way.
Isn’t an experience, by its very nature felt and absorbed?
Well if there is nothing there to feel and absorb it? You would notice that you are dying or possibly going to, but you wouldn’t notice that you have died ~ there is no longer that which notices.
that’s the theory, I happen to disagree with it as I think the soul continues ~ in which case again I would not notice my death, as I would still exist. Naturally I would notice the demise of my physical form, but in no way would I experience death in either theory. 
see sig 
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Can something exist and not exist. To say death is the “end” I believe is half true, it is the end of your life but I do not think it is the end of you. As the body returns to more basic matter through decompisition it still exists simply in different forms, as matter , but that matter that was you doesn’t become non existant. I believe the same would apply to the soul that the souls purpose does not end with the death of the body and that the soul continues to exist eternally. Perhaps that is part of lifes purpose to alter what a soul is, how the soul functions and what makes up that soul. As for the saying that all things that begin must end In a way is true, a story may end but its setting, character traits, morals and themes can and will manifest themselves in both the stories of those who have read of the story and those who have not.
I find it amusing that in a forum for philosophy many people commenting seem to simply be leaving opinions on what death “is” without leaving an inquiry as to why.
To try and understand death I believe you should first try to understand life.
We exist (at least I believe we do), in 1,000 years will we not exist simply because we are not alive as we are now?
Great thread by the way, it’s interesting to see so many different perspectives from life-affirming to those a little more on the down side of the death situation. One thing I do see pop up again is whether we should even bother questioning it in the first place. Like Nietzche seeking a new metaphor for God, maybe we come to different conclusions to give ourselves a metaphor to help reduce our overall anxiety about the greatest tragedy in our lives - our death!
I saw the Cosmos Carl Sagan ‘star stuff’ reference early on, and like it. If all of our matter after decomposition becomes parts of something else, maybe i’m part kick-ass Tyrannosaurus Rex! (likely not, but still we can dream right? )
Yes indeed.
However, most people have become so inauthentic with themselves that it is literally impossible for them to feel these emotional responses to the notion of death.
Yes, of course – energy cannot be created or destroyed, however energetic forms can be. We are not “energy”, we are a system of interconnected energetic forms. “We” in terms of the “I am” is only one small part of this system, and a highly contingent and dependent part. Once sufficient organic decay or disruption occurs, the “I am” disappears. “We” then “die.” The notion of “death” is somewhat a reification, as if we could actually “die”, rather we simply are here one moment, gone the next, and that’s it. Experiencing death is an oxymoron.
Yes. We apes need such trivial comforts in order to maintain our habitual “sanity.” There is a loving infinite all knowing being looking out for me personally, who cares about me personally, and no matter what I will never actually cease to exist, there is no oblivion, for I will go on living forever.
Really. Have we really matured so little? Do people seriously believe these sorts of things? What state of mind would be required to actually give such nonsense the light of day? I’m not sure I even want to know.
No, don’t ever, ever wish that. They gain nothing by their ignorance. Blissful idiocy is just as meaningless and valueless as everything else.
The sane never die. When given sufficient physical authority, neither do their friends.
They gain peace of mind. Ignorance can in fact be bliss if you believe there is a loving, just and merciful God. If you believe in Paradise. Whether this in fact is true or not is irrelevant to the mind that believes it.
And, in particular moments: If I could believe it I would. If that makes me “inauthentic” then so be it.
But I see all this in the manner in which Ren viewed heroin in the film Trainspotting. The idea is to take away the pain. And, given the manner in which I view my current set of circumstances, that is often the center of the universe.
Yet I would never expect someone who is not me to understand this. After all, how in the world could they when they are not out in the world as me?
A frame of mind such as this is far beyond the reach of philosophy.
It is more analogous perhaps to this one:
From Simon Critchleys’ Very Little…Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy and Literature
[b]As Adorno writes in the closing chapter of ‘Aesthetic Theory’, ‘Those childlike and bloody clowns’ faces in Beckett, through which the subject disintegrates, are the historical truth about the subject’. What this means for Adorno is that the 'catastrophes that inspire Endgame, notably the fact of Auschiwitz which Beckett never calls by name…have shattered or disintegrated the conception of the individual still predisposed in the absurdist vision of existentialism. That is, although Camus might begin ‘The Myth of Sysyphus’ from the postulate of the world’s absurdity—i.e. the absense of meaning in a world without God— this absurdity is viewed from the standpoint of the individual. The task of existentialism, on this reading, is a shoring up of the individual subject and its claims to freedom. For Adorno, Beckett’s drama abandons this existentialist position, ‘like an outmoded bunker’…Adorno declares, ‘what is left of the subject is its most abstract characteristic’ merely existing and thereby already commiting an outrage. Beckett’s characters are simply ‘empty personae’, truly mere masks through whom sound merely passes.
In Adorno’s hands, Beckett engages in a reversal of existential philosophy, ‘which has been standing on its head, and puts it back on its feet’. What this means is that Beckett accepts the postulate of absurdity and hense the meaningless of existence as a starting point. In Jasper’s and Heidegger’s terms, he accepts the situatedness into which we are thrown. However, unlike existential philosophy, Beckett refuses to transfigure this initial meaninglesslness into a meaning for existence…For Beckett, the absurd cannot be turned into a meaning for the meaninglessness of existence, for if it did so it would become something universal, an idea.[/b]
What does it mean to be stare down into the existential abyss? In an absurd world, there is no way in which to differentiate “authentic” from “inauthentic” behavior.
It is the stark naked, brutal facticity of human existence—of life and death—that Beckett gropes futilely about to communicate knowing full well this sort of communication is as ultimately futile as the “action” up on the stage. Or out in the world.
And whatever emotional and psychological reaction we might have pondering this is, in turn, essentiallly interchangable with any other.
Nietzsche, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger and all the rest of the postmodern thinkers felt compelled to blink, in my opinion, in confronting the abyss that is oblivion. They told us human existence was essentially meaningless and absurd and then commensed immediately on philosophical projects to provide us with a script nonetheless: How [existentially] to live your life meaningfully [authentically] in a world that is [essentially] meaningless.
For me, there is only living your life and acknowleding this or living your life and refusing to. Or, if you are particularly fortuitous, livng your life completely oblivious to it.
And thus is derived the highest human value: innocence.
In service of this value, truth, philosophy and authenticity find purpose and grounding. They accomplish this by silencing the discord chaos within the unrefined subject that is insufficiently known to itself and is thus unable to skillfully avoid repeated encounters with its own brutal subject-hood and the destabilizing (world-encountering) subjective events that cast the subject into suffering and despair. Only the subject freed of a sufficient amount of inner turbulence, chaos and unknowability (unknowabilty is in this way a function rather of the potential sphere of knowledge of the subject), as is often the case with children, is able to enjoy a higher form of innocence.
The danger, of course, is that when truth, philosophy and authenticity are taken as axiomatically valuable they push past this horizon and begin to dissolve the subject’s own innocence, and thus turn against their own (and only) truly sustaining value.
Innocence is just a point of view we all take to the grave.