How to Live with Dying
theamericanscholar.org
theamericanscholar.org
“The actor, for instance, to please his audience need not appear in every act to the very end; it is enough if he is approved in the parts in which he plays; and so it is not necessary for the wise man to stay on this mortal stage to the last fall of the curtain. For even if the allotted space of life be short, it is long enough in which to live honorably and well...
But somehow, my soul was ever on the alert, looking forward to posterity, as if it realized that when it had departed from this life, then at last would it be alive.”
Summary of Cicero’s On Old Age here as well:
https://butwhatfor.substack.com/p/takeaway-tuesday-on-old-ag...
That's why they say family is more important than work. Your work will probably not outlive you, unless you're a rockstar scientist or lucky businessperson. That famous Feynman's letter to his friend was right.
Plus, ever since having a kid, I've begun to appreciate living more and more.
The future seems to be grim and dark at the moment, but in the darkness, the light shines the brightest! So, lets work together to make things work, burn away the darkness and do not let our self get trapped in depression.
I keep getting sucked into negativity online and I feel I am toxic as well.
I will take a break from HN and go play with my dad.
Notably he points out that they tested people blood after doing long distance events and found that many of them had chemicals usually found in heart attack victims, indicating heart damage.
Basically he says that the long term overexercise/heart damage means the heart muscle constantly has microtears which heal up and the healed tissue is scar tissue which is hard and not like normal heart tissue - much harder and less elastic. So people who overtrain end up with a heart much older than their physical age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U728AZnV0
Transcript:
https://singjupost.com/run-for-your-life-at-a-comfortable-pa...
Another video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g8eEYwtfSo
And from another author on extreme exercise and the heart:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/extreme-...
Running marathons and the like do not seem to promote health and can actually harm the body. And anecdotally, I've known a few folks that are obsessive long-distance runners and cyclists, and they physically look older than others in their age group.
The idea that running is just shuffling along at a steady pace is a straw man, and looks nothing like what actual runners do!
And the current evidence is that your maximum exertion is what matters, not time spent exercising. So someone that does a few sprints, to max intensity, over 20 minutes actually will have better cardiovascular health than someone that runs or jogs for an hour or more.
If you’re sprinting at full exertion for a few minutes, you’re able to hit a much higher max than you would if you were running long distance.
Put that alongside evidence that sustained exercise (how sustained I have no idea) has negative effects (as per above comments), and the argument seems plausible.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...
This cannot be true, it contradicts literally all the best training knowledge for distance runners. NCAA cross country coaches and professional distance coaches have their runners doing high mileage easy days and intervals on hard days, and as someone who has experienced this training first hand, you absolutely cannot do the hard days at a proper intensity if you haven’t built up your aerobic capacity through a LOT of easy to medium effort long runs. If they could get all the cardiovascular benefits from HIT, they would only be doing that. The teams that win college championships and the pro teams sending athletes to the Olympics are the ones with the fittest runners, the fittest runners are the ones with the best training. They are doing the majority of their mileage in long easy efforts.
Anecdotally, myself and many teammates I’ve known have seen our biggest jumps in performance come from increasing weekly mileage (more easy miles) and while keeping the volume of hard efforts the same. Time spent exercising matters very much.
> HIIT (high-intensity interval training) and sprint interval training (SIT) for 6-8 wk increase VO2peak more than or at least comparable to MCT (moderate-intensity continuous training).
> The clinical and physiological benefits of HIIT compared with those of MCT are shown in Table Table1.1. In multiple RCTs, a wide range of targets, including skeletal muscles[19-22], risk factors[21], vasculature[19-22], respiration[22,23], autonomic function[24], cardiac function[20,22,25-27], exercise capacity[26], inflammation[27], quality of life[27], physiological markers such as VO2peak, and endothelial function, showed better improvements with HIIT than with MCT.
This is true even though the HIT groups were spending just minutes sprinting a few times a week, vs the MCT groups that spent 30 minutes to an hour running or jogging.
You might not call it Tabata training, or HIIT, but once a week you are probably doing 6x15second sprints, every other week will do something like 10x60 hill repeats (which others might call a sprint), and most weeks will be running some form of speedwork. This could be 8x800m/2 minutes, some form of pyramid (1min, 2min, 3min, 2min,1min, 2 sets), or some other combination. All of these though come down to going unsustainably hard for a short period and then having a recovery period. Is that not what HIIT is?
The same applies to many other sports where this simple caricature is applied. Most sports, done right, do involve high intensities, and recoveries.
I mean, the literal original Greek Marathon Runner who ran the 26 miles to warn of the war/invasion, according to lore, actually killed him upon his delivery of the message....
Imagine, a Japanese (mostly fish+seaweed) diet + walking 30 miles a day, and how healthy that pop would be...
Most of us don't do enough of it and it's one of the safest forms of exercise. We really should be designing our cities and built environments to be more walkable so more people get in 30 minutes of brisk walking daily just from running errands without really trying to exercise per se.
People would be healthier. Pollution levels would be lower. Studies show that walkable, mixed use neighborhoods foster higher sales for local businesses and are thus typically more prosperous. "Eyes on the street" is a known antidote to crime and you get that primarily by having a pedestrian-friendly built environment.
And I don't believe walking has any track record of fostering heart attacks.
Not everyone lives in the big city. Not everyone needs to. Even within the big city, there is lots of room for improvement.
And making it possible for more people to run some of their errands on foot doesn't mean "You aren't allowed to leave this 5 square kilometer area and can never drive or use public transit." It just means some of the things you do normally can be reached on foot (for a greater percentage of people than is true currently).
We have forgotten how to do that kind of thing, but that doesn't mean it cannot be done. There is a lot we can do to mitigate urban heat island effect and use design to make even our outdoor public spaces pedestrian-friendly in terms of local weather.
https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00380121/document
I run r/UrbanForestry. It's brand new and we are likely to talk about passive solar design at the city level as part of what we do there. I already mentioned the thing I stated above about Middle Eastern cities. You are welcome to join us there.
Some terms that may be helpful in a search: Iranian vernacular architecture; desert vernacular architecture; passive solar.
It is something I hope to put more information together on, but one challenge is that I imagine a lot of primary source materials from that region of the world are not in English and I never learned any of the major languages of that area, like Farsi and Arabic.
I do occasionally speak with Middle Eastern planners and the like and ask them questions, but I haven't yet hit pay dirt in a big way. My recollection is that articles about Iranian architecture have generally been the most useful and promising so far. Iran was previously known as Persia and it is one of the older cultures on the planet and has a rich history.
Edit: I threw some more articles together here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanForestry/comments/jhmmuz/the_d...
Also, there is supposedly a study showing 30 min of jogging 4 times a week halves a person's heart risk.
Ultimately we strive for moderation, but ought not without consideration as to what it should entail.
That doesn't really do justice to the story. First he ran more like 150 miles to request assistance to help them combat an invading force. The 25 or 26 miles he ran before dying was the tail end of a much more epic effort.
I made my peace with my mortality in my thirties when I spent a year at death's door. And then, silly me, tried to share that with people in online discussions and it didn't go like I expected.
One day, someone older than me more or less told me "You are scaring people because they haven't yet made their peace with their own mortality."
Stories like this can be a good thing to write for the author. It can be a therapeutic process that helps them get unstuck from a big emotional experience and move on and live more in the present with the time they have left.
And it can be experientially valuable to the reader. It can be interesting to read of the subjective experience of coming that close to dying and what that looks and feels like to this one person who stood that close to the void and didn't quite fall in.
But stories like this are unlikely to help most people come to terms with their own mortality -- though if you, also, find yourself standing on the precipice or having recently come back from it, stories like this may be especially meaningful and valuable. But for those who haven't spent time anywhere near the precipice, this is highly unlikely to be some means to deliver enlightenment or some such.
How you relate to a piece like this will have a lot to do with where you are in life and where you have been.
What I think I want to know about from older individuals (like 80+): are you afraid of dying? My grandma went last year (92) and her and I had long wonderful conversations knowing she was weeks out. She talked about how much of a wonderful life she had and that she was not in the slightest scared.
That's a mental gap for me. I can't grok the concept of not being afraid to death like that. I would love to learn that the overwhelming majority of older people don't fear it, suggesting that it's very likely I won't fear it either if I make it to old age.
As for dying early... I think it's best not to think about it any more than to build a sufficient motivation to live life well.
As a note: much like the GP post you replied to, it was around that 30 mark and my great grandfathers passing that I no longer worried about death.
Really?
It seems like the Covid situation is unveiling exactly how most old people are seriously terrified of dying even requesting everything being put to a halt.
I don't think anyone ever truly gets over the fear of the process of death. I know that while I do not fear it, if I imagine myself burning to death or falling to my death in a plane crash with other people around me screaming in futility. I can give myself that oh crap I hope I does not go down like that feeling, but that is different than being terrified of being dead.
This so much. I just read Montaigne’s “To philosophize is to learn how to die” [1] and I’m just sad I can’t really share it with anyone because nobody seems to be really mentally prepared to accept and embrace their death.
I can't handle that thought any more or less than the thought that I'll die - As a cartoon dog said, I just distract myself with pointless stuff, it seems to work.
But the presumption here is that the same “time passage” we’re familiar with here, exists there, and pretty much 100% of NDE accounts (depending on whether you believe thousands of witnesses of it constitute credible eyewitness testimony) state that there’s “no time” there or that “time is weird”. Here’s a simple question: Do you think there are immutable aspects to your person? Aspects that have remained unchanged your whole life thus far? Because those are apparently the things that continue on to the next adventure, as it were. And yet, this is supposedly a learning experience of some sort...
What it really highlights is that the will to live is dependent on personal perspective. There are plenty of great reasons to live, and plenty to not live. It just depends on what lens you ultimately choose to view from.
If you're feeling like you don't have the will, there is absolutely a way of reframing your thinking in such a way that you could find the will.
Also it just weirds me out, like I'll end up trapped in an eternal versin of animal crossing or something. Of course religious people don't think of it like that and it's all more sublime and full of unity with god and so on but it still doesn't sound great.
i don't know if this is just the hacky pop-culture reading of Buddhism but I've always liked the idea of Nirvana more than the kind of stories told by the Abrahamic religions.
because eternal life conceptually feels like a coping mechanism it honestly never appealed to me
It's strange but I used to be an agnostic and viewed the idea in pretty much a similar light to you, always dismissed it as wishful thinking, but three things always struck me: 1) The something from nothing paradox. 2) The fact that the universe looks like a data store. 3) The composeability of nature as almost a form of programming e.g chemistry, genetics, light/matter duality.
So I was always an uncomfortable Agnostic I always said that if I had to flip a coin, I would be 70% on heads that there is a design to all of this.
So with that, I kind of just meandered around philosophy and theology for a long time, not really liking religion for the people involved which kept me from really understanding the underlying philosophy trying to be conveyed in them.
As I have grown older and given my being OK with either outcome I have come to understand, if there is a architect intelligent life existing for a period of time and then extinguished seems to be the least logical option. Human knowledge transferred thru generations seems to be the most inefficient way to evolve it assuming knowledge is the only point and usually in nature we see the path of least resistance. So I generally assume we are not ants just here to build something and our lives are insignificant.
If that is the case then a transformed existence after this one seems logical (based on a bunch of faith and assumptions I will give you).
When you look at it in that light the philosophy of many religions has some good reasons, though the explanations may be dated, as to why things are the way they are.
Logical explanations about free will, why death would exist, why we seem to be abandoned to our own fate and a recognition that in our current state, eternal life would not be that great and how transformation is needed if we are to be eternal beings.
Now in saying all this in my flipping coins odds thinking I am less of a betting man on the concept that this is a science project that someone abandoned. That I am closer to 50-50 on.
Now please do not take this as a pitch for hey go find god. I believe every person according to their free will needs to live their life according to that free will. I am just telling you a story of how I got to from where you are, to where I am now. So anyways back to the 50-50 odds I came to the conclusion that we either are abandoned and if that is the case nothing really matters, not happiness, not love, not Hitler, not Stalin, not Gandhi, not Christ. While they all may matter in the temporal, in the grand scheme of things it all burns out and the Architect throws it in the trash bin. There will be no observer for any of it to ever matter.
I for obvious reasons don't like that line of thinking so I figure this Architect either left an manuscript to life or it did not. Either there are instructions or it figures we will learn what we need to learn in this existence.
So I started reading a lot of religious text and I saw a lot of similar themes. For example in Buddhism Nirvana is the final state of enlightenment where one has extinguished the 3 fires (greed, hate, ignorance). It is the destruction of desire. The Sikh's use a little different terminology in that it is the end of suffering. The Hindus see it in a similar light but see it as unity with Brahman.
Now I bring this up to directly contrast it with Abrahamic religions as I really don't see them as all that different I think what is different is the style in which the concept is conveyed. Whereas many eastern religions tend to get straight to the philosophy. Abrahamic philosophy tends to be woven into a tome that is part history, part parable, part philosophy which can make it harder to extract from the text but when one understand that, in my opinion the layers of the philosophy and theology tell a deeper story. Going back to Nirvana for a moment, this concept is played out in the fall of man, the inability of man to see their imperfection, the inability of man to accept devine authority, those that finally do see life for what it is "will see" (enlightenment) and finally according to one sect of Abrahamic religion will unify with creation (i.e the bride of christ). Again not a pitch for christianity or Buddhism or Hinduism. I just find it fascinating that there are many parallels in what they say the lesson is to learn.
Anyway a really long winded post to explain that I don't see an existence after this as wishful thinking anymore, I see the purpose, but only if there is any purpose at all.
Personally, now that I'm secular, I still fear death. But at least I understand that that fear only exists because of my built in neurobiological values, which are there because they helped my ancestors reproduce. That doesn't really change things much either, but at least it's a true explanation. Before there was always a cognitive dissonance: if things are going to be way way better after we die, why do we try so hard to avoid death?
Any religious faith is a faith, even though people like to suggest silly arguments that faith necessarily is blind or unbounded, but it is still a hope in something unseen.
There is a long history of spontaneous religious beliefs throughout history and around the world, which can be interpreted in more than one way.
I don't see it as a poor choice to live to those defined moral codes. The negative association with being religious is due to many people letting other people think for them now days. If one take the actions and words of a person over studying for oneself what the text say then that is exactly what one is doing. If one ascribes negative connotations to the underpinnings, without knowledge of whether those that claim knowledge yet may be ignorant of what the text says, then one acts in the same ignorance. Most of the religious texts, espouse universal love, non-judgment (by other people) and harmony. Most of the people that claim they understand them, have never event read the texts from end to end, much less any of the competing religions text to compare and contrasting one against the other.
For example let's take Abrahamic religions because they are fun to pick on, most Muslims, Jews and Christians (especially Christians) could not even tell you what Psalm 137:9 is, much less explain why someone would be happy to dash child against the rocks. Well deeper understanding would be that this is what the Israelites wanted, revenge for their dead children that were bludgeoned to death. But what happened was not revenge, but rather judgment and that is the lesson being conveyed, our hearts will seek revenge but what puts things in balance is not revenge but judgment. Point being, I have been hard pressed to find a single laymen from any of the 3 Abrahamic branches, that know the verse much less that could explain it (honestly Muslims where the most knowledgeable on the subject). Further most Christians don't even realize that Jesus was a devout pacifist, cavorted with mainly "sinners" and routinely spoke out about the pious.
As a side note Jeremiah 32:35 is another fun one. Why did it not enter his mind? Is he not all knowing and omnipotent?
While it may be a fairy tail, by all accounts Jesus and Buddha were pretty awesome dudes, I want to be like them, even if it's just for the time I am here.
As I'm sure you are aware, most atheists follow similar moral beliefs and, as far as I'm aware, there's little evidence that being religious helps you adhere to these rules any better.
Some of that choice may appear delusional, or may in fact be delusional, but does not make it any less real to the observer. Take for example the monks that claim enlightenment, they believe suffering is an illusion and that basically you just have to not believe in suffering to not suffer. This could be deluded thinking and sounds crazy on the surface, until you see one of them trance and ignore the most extreme pain. Their delusion manifests itself into reality just by their will.
There is similar delusional thinking that comes from Atheistic points of view and they have had real world manifestations. I am hesitant to name some of them due to the fact that it will look like I am claiming them atheism is not a moral choice. Which is not the intent.
How do you know which morals to cherry pick? That would be humanistic morals - you pick the ones that we follows. The ones that encourage being good to others and respect their wellbeing.
Religion provides no benefit or advantage over atheistic humanistic morals. It does provide benefits to the region - money, power, control and the ability to avoid responsibility.
Jesus encouraged people to devoid themselves of personal goods and family and follow him. Well at least in the Bible fables. More cherry-picking.
Your powers of rationalization are substantial.
On the matter of genocide, the texts are very clear that we all have to experience death, no one escapes it. In the text god does not see death as a tragedy. It is the expected outcome, this is exactly why I referenced Psalm 137:9 because most people do not know how to explain what is going on, because they have not read the full text much less many times to understand the context. Again I ask why would someone be happy to bash children against rocks. Did god command them to do it, did he condemn them for it? Jeremiah 32:35 get's to the heart of it. If there is a god and he is eternal and he views our lives as eternal then the death of this life is no more than telling a child to not touch a hot stove but it is clear throughout the text, that he exalts the innocent and the downtrodden. If one makes a habit of abusing these classes he tends to anger, there is no inconsistency here. In the old testament before the time of kings he was in direct commandment of his elect. He exacted judgment on several nations specifically due to the fact that they where sacrificing their children to Baal. While you may not agree with it, this is extremely consistent with the fact that from the outset humanity is to be judged by death.
On rape, I will forgo rehashing it, I would assume that wikipedia is a fairly well vetted war zone. It is fairly well accepted that the Torah condemns rape. Now we can certainly argue over our present day view against the remedies for said act as laid out in the Torah but to say that the book encourages it is not factually true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_Hebrew_Bible
As for slavery Matthew 19:1-9 and Mark 10:2-9 describe this very succinctly, and that is man is flawed, man enslaves man or more aptly put man's inhumanity to man. It is clearly laid out that slavery was not by design, but rather slavery is man's desire to be their own gods and subjugate other men. God recognizes that we are fallen but does not condone the practices that we do that are inhumane. The text do not advocate for slavery yet over and over repeat the lesson of exalting the meek. The Jews were slaves exalted out of Egypt. Joseph was of wealth and favor and sold into slavery by his brother. He was a loyal and faithful servant thru his suffering and was in the end redeemed. The text never says slavery = good. It says if you find yourself in that situation, do not lament your situation, be kind, be humble, be of service to people. If we contrast it with Jainism they teach a very similar concept of suffering is an illusion. None of this says slavery is good, rather the lesson to be learned is suffering is part of this life, no matter what you are presented with, try to make the best of it.
Your powers of rationalization are substantial
I find that most people have not taken the time to read all of the major religions texts a least a few times to understand them. So it is hard to argue rationalization when one does not fully comprehend the text. I know because I was one of those people that used to mock the religious but it came from a position of ignorance as I had only cursory reading and cherry picked evidence. When in fact most of the religious text (Pick your religion) are fairly logically consistent, especially when it comes to moral codes. That does not make them true, but it does mean that one does not have to rationalization them. They very well may be fairy tales, but where certainly written by smart men who where logically consistent. The problem is that the texts span thousands of years. Five minutes of reading the cliff notes will not suffice if one wants to truly understand the texts and not listen to what the Baptist or Dawkins have to say is in them, because the reality is they both are flat out wrong.
The funny part is I see the same thinking on both sides and it has been a real eye opener as to why so many sect of the Abrahamic religions can exist. Almost none that "believe" actually read the thing end to end, so they just take what their flavor tells them is the truth as the truth. On the other end, you get the majority of detractors who just parrot Dawkins and have never read the works to decide for themselves if it tells a rational and logical story, or they hear some text that seems really f'ed up and just go yep fruitcakes, or like me they were raised in it, never read it, were told what the text said at a young age, had no interest in reading it, and checked out before that interest could develop, due to other people saying what was in the text.
Jesus encouraged people to devoid themselves of personal goods and family and follow him. Well at least in the Bible fables.
Jesus said this world is temporary and the pursuits of it are trivial. None of that is untrue, it all goes away when you die. Even, if he was a crazy dude that thought he was the son of god, he is still right. None of it matters in the end. He advocated for a full and abundant life and said he was the example to follow to achieve that. It's not that crazy of a thought that the guy placed experiences and happiness about material pursuits, and saw that as the example of how to achieve happiness, as from all I have seen material pursuits are a trapping and we become slaves to our possessions. Meanwhile those that have not succumb to this material world seem to be much happier:
https://www.survivalinternational.org/not-primitive#:~:text=....
My motivation is that the odds of me actually existing in the first place are so long that I'd be a fool to waste my brief time in the universe.
Looked at through that point of view everything is amazing from a tree leaf to the latest giga image of Orion.
"Given enough time, Hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where its going." - Edward Robert Harrison.
Think of all the amount of time and events that had to take place for you to be able to contemplate the universe.
Spend some time looking at https://orion2020v5b.spaceforeverybody.com/ zoom in and realise that everyone of those white dots is a star, they where around for millions or billions of years before the statistically unlikely event that led you to be able to look at the dots, they'll largely be around for billion years after you are gone, to me that is the true meaning of awe - that I can sit here with a coffee and get to in a very small way comprehend a very small part of a vast universe.
I get to appreciate it because a million and a half years ago my ancestor took the left path and not the right, the one with the predator, I get to appreciate it because two thousand years ago my ancestor didn't drink from the strange smelling stream and because 40 years ago the cashier at the petrol station agreed to a date with the security guard doing the cash pickup, it's all random, there is no meaning but what we ascribe.
As Yoda would say, "there is no why" https://youtube.com/watch?v=TJ8KIzkCAto
This kind of thinking is bizarre to me, I genuinely want to understand this. I don't believe we all exist randomly or that our existence was an accident. I am a deeply religious person precisely because I don't believe all of this is random.
If all is random, why does every person who claims to believe this not live as if it were true. Almost all of these people plan out their lives and their retirements, etc. etc. and then claim that everything is random. Why do you say "I'd be a fool to waste your brief time in the universe" if your brief time here is an accident. It's a fluke and nothing you do during your time here matters at all because you yourself don't matter at all, so why pretend that doing good and spending your time wisely is important?
Sorry if I sound harsh, but I really wish to understand this kind of thought, and you just never can talk about this kind of stuff this way with people in real life.
> "I'd be a fool to waste your brief time in the universe"
To me that means the odds of me existing are so small that out of personal curiosity I want to appreciate it.
> It's a fluke and nothing you do during your time here matters at all because you yourself don't matter at all.
Yep - nothing I do one way or the other will meaningfully affect the universe or it's future, only the people/society around me that I care about.
Odds are 100 years from now I'll be utterly forgotten.
> so why pretend that doing good and spending your time wisely is important?
Treat others as you would treat yourself, I treat people well in the hope/expectation they'll do the same, I care about the environment because I don't want my step-son or other kids his age to grow up in a world worse than I did.
If you care to donate, go to https://gregaed.com. If you need help getting an AED for a location that should have one, there are discounts and in some cases funding available as well.
In any case, the quickest shortcut I know of is to take some psilocybin and think about death. With the proper set and setting, dying will feel normal, as it is, just another part of life. Yoga, meditation and breathing are also great ways to achieve that kind of consciousness state.
By the way, probably the biggest issue with dying is that in most western cultures it has become a huge taboo, which is kind of ridiculous given we all are going to die at some point. Death should be something that we accept and welcome, not something that we fear and reject. That doesn't mean we should seek death, just that it is one of the most natural things in life.
I don't love every part of "Midnight Gospel" - There's a lot of pseudoscience in it - But I liked episode 7 [1] when he interviewed Caitlin Doughty. [2]
"Caitlin Marie Doughty (born August 19, 1984) is an American mortician, author, blogger, and YouTube personality known for advocating death acceptance and the reform of Western funeral industry practices"
Without that capacity, we would lose the precious ability to imagine a better life.
Hope is the feeling that takes us out of absurdity. Hope that one day the nature of the universe will be understood.
On one side there's the union of opposites where without death there can be no life, without pain no pleasure, etc.
Then there's the scientist approach which just wants to reverse engineer life and increasing life span/quality.
I sympathize with both sides. I think someone like Kurzweil is doing too much and blinded by hope and that his idea of the future halfway sounds like hell but at the same time I think a lot could be gained by say doubling life expectancy and there's no need for any metaphysics.
Seeing death as an enemy might end up making you suffer a lot.
In a more western-mainstream note, we also have therapy, pain killers and anti-depressants, all tools that allow us to avoid pain and suffering. Maybe not forever, but definitely at least temporarily.
Which of the above do you consider fantasies?
To not have to suffer. The goal of Buddha was to end "suffering". What he found was that the/one way to do that is to become aware of feelings/emotions/sensations, to the point where we don't spontaneously react to them, but instead can consciously choose how to act when we encounter them. How you do that is by first fostering awareness and then by detaching yourself from your own reaction patterns. The idea is not to desensitize yourself, you still very much feel everything, but you can then choose what you do afterwards. Which means you still feel pain, love, bitterness and joy, but you don't need to suffer.
Why would you want to suffer?
- Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nh%E1%BA%A5t_H%E1%B...
In the unlikely event the Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't hold, then we can end death.
If you think the current amount of wealth inequality is bad, just wait until the young need to compete against generations of immortals who have accumulated hundreds of years of assets and interest.
That’s how I try and get over the depressing fact that all my loved ones and myself will be no more one day.
As a side note, I am not trying to be somber and I enjoy living, but living for eternity in this reality, based on what I have seen just in my lifetime, seems like a hell and not something I would strive for.
Given that reality, I still don't see the second part as solvable. Because at the root of it, what we would have to solve is man's inhumanity to man (greed, envy, hate). Because the reality is people you know and love are still going to die, maybe they live longer but there is still going to be death. At a certain point when you lose enough people it makes one tired in the soul. I am of the opinion that you have to eliminate all suffering for an eternal existence to be worth living and we as humans have been pondering that subject probably longer than any other human problem that has existed.
Now if we are talking about another form of reality say a simulation where none of that stuff ever exist and we upload our minds into it we are really no longer talking about eternal life in this existence. Rather we are talking about heaven, enlightenment whatever we want to call it just by a different name and the reality is, even though it may be a instantaneous upload, we still have to die to get there. If not we just exist in two realities one where we are immortal and a wholly different being and one we are still very mortal and still suffer from the imperfections of this existence.
I just don't see how it is solvable by making what we are now, live forever.
One argument against lies, is they undermine people's thoughtful engagement with the world. To an uncontrollable extent. Given the story, this paragraph on honesty for me has a flavor of "here is one root cause my life's difficulties... but I'm not yet ready to face that or change". Though he does emphasize the topic (eg, '"John, you with me?" I think I nodded. It was a lie.'), so maybe WIP?
I don't see why it's so fantastical to think that it's possible that eventually a sufficiently powerful computing system will be developed in the far future and we will all be recreated in simulation in it, from which in our own perspective it will seem and be for all practical purposes an afterlife.
In fact maybe the eschatological doctrines of many world religions throughout history is just to motivate mankind to reach such a technological state and then effective "revive the dead".
The obsession with life is to be viewed as a manifestation of excessive full-bloodedness, to remain in the terminology of the life-philosophy. Through the technical perfection of all comforts of life, the in every way increased security of life, the greater accessibility of all types of pleasure, and the vast and still lingering growth of material prosperity, society has got into a state which in the old pathology might have been called a “plethora.” We have been living in spiritual and material superabundance.
We are so preoccupied with life because it is made so easy for us. The ever-growing power of observation and the facility of intellectual communication have made life strong and bold. Till well into the middle of the nineteenth century even the well-to-do section of European society was in more more direct and constant contact with miseries of existence than we are today and think our due. Our own grandfathers were given only very limited possibilities of killing pain, healing wounds or fractures, shutting out cold, expelling darkness, communicating with others directly or indirectly, avoiding filth and stench.
On all sides man was continually made to feel the natural limitations of earthly well-being. The efficient ministering of the technical, hygienic and sanitary appliances with which man has surrounded himself is spoiling him. He is losing the good-humored resignation in the daily imperfections of human well-being which formed the disciple of earlier generations. But at the same time he runs the risk of losing the natural ability to take human happiness as it offers itself, as well.
Life is made too easy. Mankind’s moral fiber is giving way under the softening influence of luxury. In earlier civilizations, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or any other, there was always this in contrast: in principle the value of earthly happiness is deprecated relatively to celestial bliss or union with the All.
As all these religions, however, do recognize a relative worth of early pleasures, and consider them as God-given, denial of the value of life meant ingratitude. It was the very realization of the precariousness of every moment of human well-being which caused it to be appreciated at its true value.
In the present there is a contrast also, but it is a very different one. The increase of security, of comfort, and of the possibilities of want-gratification, in short the greater ease of living has had two results: On the one hand, it has prepared the soil for all forms of renunciation of life: philosophical denial of its value, purely emotive spleen or aversion from life; on the other, it has installed the belief in the right to happiness. It has made people expect things from life.
Related to this there is another contrast. The ambivalent attitude which wavers between the renunciation and the enjoyment of life is peculiar to the individual alone. The community, however, without hesitation and with more conviction than ever before, accepts earthly life as the object of all striving and action. It is indeed a true worship of life.
Now it is a question for serious consideration whether any advanced culture can survive without a certain measure of orientation to Death. The great civilizations of the past have all had it. There are signs that the philosophical thought of today is also coming to it. It seems only logical, more over, that a philosophy which rates “living” above “knowing” should also include the end of life in its vision.
it is only our language which separates them into seemingly contrasting opposites. language is not reality, it merely has the ability to mirror reality.
but I suppose I have also wound up believing that "everything" and "nothing" are more similar than one would initially guess. though not as similar as life and death.
but it's really about realizing and acknowledging a separation between what we are, our language, and the way in which the elements of language (symbols-vocabulary) are representations distinct from what they represent, with this, one can realize that life and death, while distinct concepts within language, are in fact aspects of a whole which cannot be logically fitted into languages such as ours.