If you’ll be patient, he’ll be working on it… Sharpen your wits, or sharpen your blades may’tee… The hour glass be capsized, and yer sand be runnin thin…Arrrg
Actually one of my threads was in the rant section that was deleted. The posts that were deleted in this thread with the graphic images I did go into some description into explaining my perspective on death.
( The images were meant to make a mockery of death in a cocky fashion.)
I was reading something about Schopenhauer’s take on “oneness” (as I believe it was referred). From what I gathered, he essentially came to the conclusion that ‘differences’ or ‘individual distinction’ occurs only where there is space and/or time to separate two observable entities. Space and time both being ideas, and thus human conceptions of preconceived boundaries, we can say that existence is likely not dependent upon them outside of the human mind. Therefore, if you pull space/time away from existence, all must be one – there are no boundaries to set individual distinction.
I agree that our lives are essentially limited to and by our current organic form. However, perhaps “death” is not movement or change beyond superficial observations.
Let me tell you everything about your perspective on death… The further away it is, the more cocky you can presume to be; but when it gets all ugly and in your face it will be all yes siir and no siir…Let me see what you have to say when you have buried a few of your own and watched that grim sickle reap people you love and care about left and right around you and suck the breath from your nostrils once or twice…I have spit in the face of death before, but now I can’t have a quiet moment when the dead don’t come up to visit me… People I never knew so well and never saw much of come up and say hello…It is like they don’t know that they are dead because in my mind they are alive…I swear if I don’t die of loneliness it will be of nostalgia that runs like poison in my veins down every country lane… There are plenty of people who like to bad mouth death behind the back and a mile away; but get to know old smiley some time, and I’m sure you’ll change your mind…
Having contempt for women is like your left foot having contempt for your right foot…I can see your right foot having contempt for your az though…That makes better sense…
Schopenhauer was very ahead of his time, as he unknowingly illustrated special and general relativity in a rhetorical format. Albert Einstein was later influenced by Schopenhauer, and I’d say that Schopenhauer might even be the main person responsible for Einstein developing his theories of relativity.
In many ways, the contributions of Schopenhauer were far greater than that of Kant. Schopenhauer’s theories were more accurate in my opinion. Not only are they more accurate, but they are more poetic and their significance is longer lasting. Kant’s concepts dealt mostly with explaining perception and human knowledge; not just explaining, but formulating a complete theory on human knowledge and perception - a tedious task that wasn’t wholly necessary.
Schopenhauer (as well as Nietzsche) took Kant’s works for what they essentially were - a bunch of unnecessarily complex rhetoric that only ended up illustrating what is already common sense.
A few nights ago actually, I had been re-formulating some of my own thoughts on relativity and the difference between objectivity and subjectivity.
It has been more than a year since I’ve read Schopenhauer, but I came to some conclusions that are very similar to Schopenhauer’s concepts that you mentioned.
My conclusions were, in a state of absolute objectivity, space and time could not exist, and everything would be at a singularity.
I didn’t have Schopenhauer on mind though, oddly enough. I was actually contemplating the principles formulated by Gorgias On the Non-Existent, which states 3 principles:
Nothing exists;
Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and
Even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others.
Basically, I figured out that what Gorgias was implying was relativity - making this an ancient writing on relativity that was written far before Galileo’s relativity.
I will post a thread on this illustrating it further, as this post will become quite lengthy and off-topic otherwise.
Are you sure you got that right from the Georgias…It sounds completely stupid, and I did not read it that way many years ago…
Let me correct it: Existence is of two sorts; physical, of which we can judge, and moral of which we cannot judge…
Physical existence is measured by values, and moral reality is measured with meaning, and what value is to the physical, meaning is to the moral…
We can know about the physical to the extent it is finite, but we cannot know about the moral because it is an infinite… What we know we can communicate, in forms of value for the physical, and in forms of meaning for the moral…For us, the problem is that with infinites, no one can ever say they know with certainty… Life gives moral form meaning just as it gives physical forms their values, but it too is an infinite, and an infinite measure of infinites…
Yes I got that right from Gorgias. It does sound completely stupid, I think that might have been his intention with formulating it - shock value. Gorgias was a sophist who’s fame thrived off of deceptive rhetoric.
I don’t think correcting it is necessary. Your correction isn’t what Gorgias was trying to imply.
Did you mean to say “We cannot judge morality accurately”? I mean, we are still capable of judging it, just not always accurately. And in effect, when you say “physical existence we can judge accurately”, I do not see how this could be true. Perhaps what you meant is that we have the capability to accurately judge physical existence, without as much of a limit as there is with morality.
To be sure, both physical existence and metaphysical existence (expanding the term from “morality”, which you used) can not be judged accurately. Accuracy is something that can not exist. Not only is “accuracy” a relative term, but “true accuracy” is an impossibility.
We can not always communicate this information either. First of all, another person’s understanding of the concept will be flawed after we communicated it to them - understanding is relative. There will be variations in their understanding of a concept compared to yours. Also, the process of communication is limited to what the receiving individual is capable of understanding - as well as the communicator’s ability to communicate efficiently.
In a sense, every human action may be considered as a form of communication… Violence is a form of communication…Just ask our military and their terrorists… The question is: How can anyone be understood when the money is in miscommunication…If understanding you gets in the way of me making a buck, suddenly I can’t hear a thing…I would separate the ideas of understanding, which is practical in nature, and knowledge, which is abstract…For example, people are never moral out of knowledge, by abstraction…People are moral out of a certain understanding of the ways of the world, and how people should behave to get along… So Socrates was wrong; and knowledge is not virtue… I will agree that people do wrong out of ignorance, but the understanding people need to be moral does not come out of a book, but out of our navels, and I mean that literally…
Jung is not saying “death is not the end.”
What he says is that there are “peculiar faculties of the psyche” which transcend space and time, e.g. “dreams or visions of the future” and the ability to “see around corners” (these sound pretty unconfirmed to me), and so he says that we already exist in part beyond time and space. So when the interviewer asks “Do you yourself believe that death is probably the end?” Jung discusses the concept of belief and says “I don’t allow myself, for instance, to believe a thing just for sake of believing it. I can’t believe it! But when there are sufficient reasons for a certain hypothesis, I shall accept these reasons naturally.” I think Jung was trying to say that he suspends belief about what happens to us at the end of life.
For me, the most important part of the interview was the second half:
People find it impossible to imagine death…They never believe death is the end… All of our knowledge and all of our consciouness is built upon a spirtual conception… We have it, and it is all we know… Even if, in the case of death it is dead wrong, we cannot live without it… For humanity nothing, as a conception, is impossible…
Back in high school, when I pondered death the most, I settled on the idea that death is non-existence. The thought frightens me to the core. What is it like to suddenly stop existing? What is an eternity of nothingness and non-existence? It makes me feel so anxious…and guilty. I don’t know what that means.
If you don’t exist, it’s not like you would care that you don’t exist.
Schopenhauer put it well… its like sleeping, except for all eternity. Doesn’t sound so bad really
Yeah yeah, I know I know, and I knew this back in high school as well. But I’m still anxious about it. The thing is, I’m here now and there are all these things I care about - my family, my goals, my dreams, figuring it all out, life - so to think about losing all that, to think about a complete negation of it all, well it’s daunting to say the least. I know how to rationalize and intellectualize very well, but I don’t want to do that. I want to appreciate how much of a loss it is. Because once you’re dead, you can’t appreciate anything. You don’t exist. Sleep is always temporary and you get to dream there. Sleep is like putting life on hold. Sometimes sleep is a good break. But, if death is non-existence, then you lose everything. You’re done. I don’t want to be done. Maybe when I am 80 I will be ready to be done?
Even if the death is the moral equal of nothing it is still a spur to live the lives we’ve got with fire… We don’t need a God, we don’t need eternity for humanity, and we do not need eternal lives as individuals to do good and behave well…What we have in flesh and bone is will and power… Do good, be good…The fact that we only have one life as individuals that we share, with all life, should drive us to get it right, and then we can kick back and enjoy the view… Life is beautiful, full of beauties, and how do we spend it??? On the arc of the projectile, dwelling on blood…We seath… We work against each other in destruction… KIll off these, and there will be more…There always has been more…I’ll bet the germs are saying the same thing about us…
The trouble with “should be” and “oughta be” statements is that they force you to wonder why it isn’t so. The only real conclusion (after wading through all the bullshit we’ve been taught) is that people, and most of the modern customs and traditions practiced by us, exist in some realm of stubborn ignorance. Thus we have groups that prefer to dwell in - and live by - religious doctorine (or some form of ‘patriotism’, which is arguably religion in its own right) rather than what would seem common sense to a thinker. If we all treated each other without malice, wrecklesness, contempt, prejudice, etc. we would, in theory, live happy and die with a feeling of accomplished contentment.
But, like you said, we spend it at war with each other in every possible arena of interaction – social, political, personal, formal, business, sexual, etc. To me, this is what makes Nietszche’s theory of the “will to power” so moving; it becomes so obvious at once. Within every “distinct” group of animals, particularly/especially human beings, a drive toward ownership and authority is indulged to its utmost by at least one member. As long as there are prejucides and class systems there will be a desire for the ‘have-nots’ to revolt against their oppressors – a very basic principle from Marx that is undoubtedly true. This also seemed to me why Nietzsche (and I’ve seen a few others) emphasised the idea of a “Superman” in reference to the kind of thought and action needed to move beyond our common boundaries. For us now, that thought is idealistic and almost seems absurd because people defend their ignorance to the bitter end.
