Philosophy and death

Sorry to tale so much time.

The proof is sort of in the pudding, metaphysically because one can argue that the sub stance or the axiomatic consistamce of natural science evolved consistently, in corresponding , methodical function.

How so? The analysand of the substance developed the brain’s functional latency with conjunction of the ability to analyze that, of which it was constituted.

The philosophy of mind shows that the brain develops so as to enhance it’s functional utility to break down the substantial, physical constituant of which it consists and apprehend that analysand, which changes substantially the analysand, or material that becomes the object of analysis

The analysand or, the substance analized would become anathema. or even un-seen, ununderstoid, and left unanalyzed without the cognative evolution which is essential and substantially reductive a-posteriori. that series of trial and error tests that build up certainti from a-priori ‘inventions’ literally- as Peace girl caulks them

The substance literally appears in a different substantial mode in closer examination, and actually, the modus operans results in the test that analyzes the kind of substance as both prior, and suceedomg to various held and verefued reductions to certain levels of apprehension congruent with cognitive development.

The end result of cognitive development is able to assess the comstituciam of the substance as that of an energy field, inclouding it’self : the matter if which the brain composed.

That is basically the metaphysical proof of correspondence with those of the physical, and that s is why the proof is in the pudding

Death is only a change in preception of levels of that change , on a continuous flow of perceiving a differentially relating functional appearance if utilizyng themselves within changing contextual appearances.

It can never end, because there is mo death as how we under-stand it conventionally.

We do pass conventionally but who we are will always become, a consustance of energy fields which can, or can nit dissipate and change .

The fear if otherness. of fearing that we are part of that otherness, is fearful and can lead to agression. which is a denial of that othernesd and a projection toward fearing that projection from others.

I personally have not arrived to bu able to eliminate all doubtful fear , but at least i am beginning to understand the validity of it, without actually perceiving that.
I must actually see it to believe it.

sorry fir the duplicate

Note to Alan:

Funny. Really funny. :exclamation: :exclamation: :exclamation:

I’m glad it gave You some reprieve !

Indeed. But only because I assumed that was your intent.

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

How can something that is all perfectly natural for every living thing – death and dying – be thought of as a scandal? Simple enough. Most don’t want to die and as far as they are concerned, it’s a goddamned scandal that we do.

So, let’s put an end to it. And for those who wish to explore it all philosophically, let them.

You know, for our children’s children’s children. You and I are almost certainly not going to be the first to live forever. So, for us, for now, philosophy is basically all we’ve got.

Please, don’t make this a bullshit ideological issue. An issue that is subsumed in the arguments of what’s good for “society” versus what’s good for the “individual”.

Lots and lots and lots people have so much to live for they simply don’t want to die. And if science can add years or decades or centuries or even immortality to their lifespan, who really cares if it’s more about “I” or “we”?

As long as there is the option to die if, for whatever personal reasons, there are less and less incentives to want to live. I doubt that many will be in favor of forcing people to live forever if, say, their life is in the toilet…with no prospect of getting out.

Cue dasein if you are looking for them. As with most other things some will be predisposed to keep things as they are while others will not be. Some will opt for a gradual increase in our lifespan but nothing “artificial” like science inventing the fountain of youth. It’s like the squabbles over stem cell research or euthanasia or assisted suicide or cloning. Arguments for them, arguments against them.

What else is new?

But if science really can bring us dramatically closer to a much, much longer lifespan? And we agree to bring the philosophy here down out of the clouds?

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

Death at the scientific level. And what might that be? As opposed to, say, death at the philosophical or theological level.

Science it seems would focus almost entirely on achieving advances that would prolong human life. And, if some day they are able to prolong it indefinitely, there would be no “after life” at all. Whereas theologians would be aghast at that. After all, what is a mere 70 odd years on this side of the grave compared with an eternity side by side with God Himself in Paradise.

As for the science of aging and death itself, might I interject with “Rummy’s Rule” here? The gap between living to a 100+ years now and living forever. All the unknown unknowns we may not have even thought of?

As for philosophers, that’s what this thread is all about. What constitutes “wisdom” in grappling with the fact that as of now we all do die…will die.

Immortality and…political prejudices? Then the part where, as is almost always the case, those with wealth and power jump to the head of the line. Creating yet another aspect of the “class struggle”. Other groups organizing – unionizing? – to be next in line?

Then potential calamities like this:

See how morality, good and bad, political policies etc., unfold here? Existentially. Embedded in contingency, chance and change. There’s right and wrong now. Then a change as dramatic as immortality comes along and a whole bunch of things need to be thought through all over again.

Like China once limiting parents to one child. Typical of the draconian Communists some said. Only now for demographic and economic reasons parents can have three children. Imagine if, around the globe, fewer and fewer people died but babies were still being produced by the millions.

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

See how it works?

There’s the way we think about pensions [and lots of other things] given our current rate of longevity. What’s deemed reasonable or unreasonable, moral or immoral revolves around the fact that on average most live only into their 70s and 80s. But then along comes science and increasingly more and more people live as long as they choose. What then becomes reasonable and moral in regard to any number of social, political and economic issues.

The part where lots and lots of us wish that we could live forever. The part where that in and of itself takes precedence over “the law of unintended consequences”.

So, one day it might be “just natural” to live for hundreds – even thousands – of years. So what then becomes “just natural” in the way of reacting to this new reality ethically? Nature basically called all the shots until evolution created us. Creatures not only able to lasso and hogtie nature itself but, in the process, create mindful matter able to pass judgment on it.

Well, presuming of course that we do have at least some measure of free will.

Indeed, imagine a world where the population exploded, requiring the human species to tame nature all the more just in order to sustain the race. And might not the moral and political landscape shift all the more to the “might makes right” model?

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

My guess: given that we already live in a world where there are only so many resources to go around, once a 7.9 billion world population becomes a 79.9 billion world population, the class struggle will really kick into high gear.

Then the psychological turmoil that will revolve around the reality that while medically/biologically we might come up with a way to live forever, that won’t prevent us from dying from, among other things, accidents or being murdered. Imagine if you could live forever…how might that make you live your live from day to day given a very different frame of mind? Would you be more or less likely to engage in death defying, extreme behaviors? More perhaps because with the stakes that much higher, the thrill of risking death would be too. Less because you would have so much more to lose.

Think of the criminal code. What might the penality be for first degree premeditated murder if in taking someone’s life you derived them of hundreds or thousands of years to exist.

That’s basically how it works. If there is something that, selfishly, you really, really want, then you more or less become the center of the universe. And the getting what you want takes precedence over everything [and everyone] else. It might be from the perspective of the sociopath or, for some, it will become important to concoct, say, philosophical arguments that make it the optimal moral perspective for everyone. Thus the law of unintended consequences gets subsumed in that. Any of those will be dealt with somehow when the time comes. Just so in the end you yourself get to live on and on and on.

Like this guy…

See? Trust him: we’ll make it all work out. Just that many more human-all-too-human contingencies to deal with. Besides, as with things like climate change, it’s still “down the road” before we find out for sure what those consequences will be.

Or as Milan Kunfera put it:

my emphasis

But Satyr’s reflection on “eternal return” has always been more or less my own as well. If God is dead and religion is no longer an option what then are the Übermensch to do if oblivion terrifies them. Why of course: live your life far, far above that of the herd. Make it a superior life so that if eternal return is an actual “thing” you will at least deserve to relive it over and again.

What constitutes the superior life? Well, trust me: that will vary in the details from issue to issue, from one Know Thyself clique/claque to another.

But what counts is that those like Satyr are around to provide you with an actual Scripture. Only this time a philosophical Scripture. A secular catechism to the One True Path. And the irony of it all in a No God world never, ever sinks into their fulminating fanatic objectivist minds.

Oh, and since Satyr notes this on the free-will thread, trust him there to. We have it. And it’s all in the genes. Somehow – somehow – he just knows that lifeless/mindless matter figured out how a way to evolve biologically into the autonomous human brain.

And, no, Mother Nature didn’t even need God to come up with it!!!

That is totally right, except bringing up the second rate justification of the objective purpose of philosophy, can be summed up with the cliche:

If God does not exist, HE had to be created.
The two way interpretation of Dasein, as Heidegger took pains to understand it, or rather tried to make it so, puts intentionality within close range of transcendence.
Why does this matter?
Another causal factor that Jesus tried to get across , relating to fear, is that one has to die here and now to transpire to heaven.

Nietzsche was interpreted by Heidegger, shifting the literal parable of Christ toward the more configured Nitzchean one, to abfuscate and diminish the much more complex literal idea surrounding the progressive need to elevate that idea into it’s progressively higher formed conceptual context

It was by way of logical necessity that philosophy came to represent the cognative need to attain the WORD’s phenomenological advance- toward the upper limit that the Ubermensch came to represent.

The limiting egress into a third proposal- that philosophy’s job is not to describe. but actually change history, is an ambiguous tour’de-force which invites the totalitarian control that had to nihilize any public concerns about fears of the afterlife.

Alright Meno, for fuck’s sake, that was petty good.

Ok , thanks Pedro …

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

This part sooner or later pops up regarding many, many things like this. There are those who immediately focus more on “society”. Trying to come up with one or another rendition of “the greater good”. While others [here and now] are pretty much content with shoving “society” down the toilet in order to secure “what’s in it for me”. Like the debate over climate change or wars. If right now the big bucks revolve for you around burning fossil fuels or manufacturing armaments, that need be as far as it goes. Same with immortality, right? Screw you and everyone else if somehow science can add hundreds or thousand of years to my life.

Let alone if they can extinguish death altogether

My guess: even if we really could live forever, we would still ever and always be wrecking our worlds. Why? Because the wrecks themselves often revolve around conflicting behaviors embedded in conflicting goods…and absent a font able to resolve them one person’s maturity becomes another person’s recklessness. Living longer won’t change that.

Only the intervention of God [or His equivalent] holds out much hope to stop the wrecks that we mere mortals make of things.

". “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is . . . Yet the wagon is, because when the wagon is was, Addie Bundren will not be. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And I then must be . . …”

  • William Faulkner, ‘As I Lay Dying’.
  1. “…the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.”
  • William Faulkner, ‘As I Lay Dying’.
  1. “We go on, with a motion so soporific, so dreamlike as to be uninferant of progress, as though time and not space were decreasing between us and it.”
  • Darl, William Faulkner, ‘As I Lay Dying’.
  1. “I knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor in the face of a cyclone.”
  • Peabody, William Faulkner
  1. “Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down.”

  2. “Sometimes I lose faith in human nature for a time; I am assailed by doubt.”

  3. “I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.”

  4. “It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.”

  • William Faulkner, ‘As I Lay Dying’.

Fascinating ‘As I Lay Dying’ Quotations

Biggy, could you annotate each of the above?

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

Of course, from my frame of mind, living forever wouldn’t make that life any more essentially meaningful or purposeful. And to have a thoroughly enjoyable life it wouldn’t have to. All this emphasis on meaning misses the point of living one’s life to the fullest. If from day to day you have access to great food and conversation and art and music and accomplishments and relationships and distractions etc., leave meaning and purpose to the objectivists.

Sure, rooted in dasein, it is possible that some will come to this conclusion about immortality. They’ll imagine growing tired of themselves…of even hating themselves. Me? So far not even close. As long as I had access to the things that I “worship and adore”, I still imagine I could go on forever.

No, instead, what makes immortality unbearable to me is not having the option to end it all. Imagine if you literally could not die. Your life might become such that the pain far and away overwhelms the pleasure…but you can’t end it.

Indeed, the whole point of the religious folks inventing Hell, right?

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

Again, tales of this sort will try to convince you that if you really think about death and immortality rationally, you’ll eventually live long enough to choose the abyss. Much like Raimon Fosca in Simone de Beauvoir’s All Men Are Mortal. He comes to conclude that he is “cursed to live forever”.

And, sure, no doubt about it if, in living forever – literally not being able to die/Hell on Earth – that would be truly appalling if that life consisted of far, far more pain than pleasure.

But this whole bit about not caring for anyone and anything? Well, for me all I would need to care about was whether I can sustain the behaviors and the activities that bring me fulfillment and satisfaction. No need for me to come up with a way to subsume that in some overarching meaning and purpose.

Maybe for you, okay. But no way for me.

In other words, as with most things, it depends largely on the unfolding contexts in which this immortality plays itself out.

To wit:

Blah, blah, blah.

Sure, if, for all practical purposes, you can’t truly love your life for what it is – bursting at the seams with deeply satisfying experiences – without something in the general vicinity of God or Humanism, there you go. That’s what you have come to believe. It’s just that what I have come to believe could not possibly be more opposite. I’ve been luxuriating in great food, great music, great films, great books etc., for decades now. I can’t even begin to imagine that one day new food, new music, new films, new books will suddenly strike me as “just not worth it anymore”.

Death and the Human Animal
Mary Midgley questions the superficial allure of endless life.

Here, again, the only way I can imagine myself losing interest in the things I pursue in order to sustain fulfilling experiences is if for whatever reason there was never anything new around. Only the same food and books and movies and music and quality television fare. And, for those who interact with others, only the same people. The same relationships.

But even here that would not be much of a problem for me. I pretty much eat the same foods, watch the same movies, listen to the same music etc. Only here I have access to hundreds and hundreds of films and thousands and thousands of songs. And the food that I eat is no less delicious. Only in regard to books and magazine articles do I pursue both the old and the new.

Immortality might become a problem for you with respect to this, but I would be astonished if it ever became a problem for me.

Next up: boredom

And even without education there are so many things in this modern world that you can choose to pursue. I think the last time I was bored was back in the Army when I was assigned tasks that were utterly inconsequently and numbingly repetitive. Trust me: if you ever do become your own best friend, and your life is filled rewarding and challenging experiences it’s almost impossible to be bored.

What’s the context, as it pertains to Mary Land’s abortion dilemma?

Bring it Down to Earth…stop huffing and puffing, creating warm currents upon which to lend flight to your conceptual contraptions.
What does it even mean?

Note to Others
Let us pow wow and compromise a shared narrative…let us create truth and fabricate out fo nothingness our own reality, our own world…
Let us be a collective god.

Now that Urwrong and Mr Fun have become the latest “get Biggy!” tag-team here, I refuse to tell them apart.

Thus…