Memento mori

Maybe it's just due to my app, but your apparent failure to improve it seems quite meta

Edit: yeah it works on the website, my app (materialistic) tends to gobble newlines in quotes

Huh, I always figured the Banks novel was named for a quote. Pardon my ignorance of the classics, but where’s it from?

Memento mori is just the ultimate reduction of the sentiment.

The whole stoic philosophy behind it is interesting. It's not just that you will die no matter how long you can put it off for. Once you are gone all that's left of you will be memories and descendants.

Even if you are remembered for a long time, like for example someone as famous as Marcus Aurelius, those memories aren't you they're just a reduction. You're gone forever.

You could extend that to consider the self you were 10 years ago. That you is also gone forever.

All in all it can be a freeing thing to contemplate. All you have is the right now so enjoy it or at the very least bare it.

If you enjoy independent films that mostly consist of people talking in very few different locations, I strongly recommend Coherence. It's pretty different but I think I enjoyed both of these for similar reasons.

mine too.

Indeed

I'll check that out- thank you!

Meh, I was worried I wouldn't have enough challenges in 2023. Thank you!

Thank you! Millions of folks are going through the same thing, I have to remind myself that I'm so so fortunate to live close to world class hospitals and have a job that provides health insurance.

Sure- it started with me throwing up in August of 2016. I figured it was food poisoning and just kinda shrugged it off and ignored it for a couple months. I started to feel more fatigued and went to my doctor in October. We ran blood tests and saw that I was profoundly anemic. Did a stool analysis and they saw blood in there so that was enough to get a referral to a GI specialist and I had a colonoscopy and they took some biopsies.

After the biopsy popped, they immediately sent me in for a CT scan and I believe in surgery to have the tumor removed that same week. It was a wild ride.

This metastasis in the lung isn't going to be easy, but I'll crush it non the less.

I'm really sorry for your loss. This is a "friendly" debate I've had with my brother and sister-in-law about the FIRE movement. I have all kinds of retirement funds and investments, but even before this cancer bs I've become increasingly YOLO. The past and future don't exist. Which is not to say that people shouldn't plan and make contingencies, but I agree that I think delaying all of your hopes and dreams to some future date is perilous.

Just FYI

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_Berg

Thanks I'll check this out!!

'Love of ones fate'. I interpret it as being more accepting and forgiving of yourself and your life. Sometimes we are our biggest critic. Yesterday there was a post on HN on ADHD and top comment on dealing with it was something like - 'You know you do not need to be a high-performing individual.' [1] I think that is an example of Amor Fati.

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33633512

Epictetus talks about both ideas in Enchiridion (http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html):

7. Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellfish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should be unable to come in time.

17. Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another's.

Yeah but with less regret that your life was wasted on social media and helping twitter and Meta make money

This is not all that surprising if you flip it around: Your father-in-law has a habit of frugality which led to accumulating far more than he can ever spend.

> He has more money than he can spend until he dies even if he raised his standard of living 10 times

For him the high standards of living is to look at the bank account and seeing his millions and thus feeling like a somebody in a hood of nonodies.

That’s the reasoning that propmts hoarders to hoard.

Me approaching the problem from a completely different angle I realized that if you live in Usa or Western Europe you are basically at the frontier of progress so if you are after a consequential jump in standard of living it will only come from society wide discoveries and inventions, not personal spending no matter how many millions you have. You’d be pushing on a string.

Maybe your father in law refuses to push on a string out of principle?

Your father in law sounds like a virtuous man. If he has earned his money, he must have provided goods and services for others. If he does not spend the money, that means he asked for nothing in return. Is that not virtuous?

The key thing, is he happy? I don't think how much he saved or spends matters that much. The thing is to have the things that give you satisfaction or comfort.

You can also do that while being young and save yourself the death bed regrets

> prior generations emphasized savings and prudence

Even though I'm a native English speaker, I discovered right now that I didn't know what prudence meant. I knew the word prude so I naturally assumed that prudence meant being concerned with morality and sexual behavior.

It turns out that the words are unrelated. Prudence means the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. So unlike prude, prudence is actually a positive trait.

Though I'll add that "in modern English, the word prudence has become increasingly synonymous with cautiousness; in this sense, prudence names a reluctance to take risks." (Wikipedia)

It is interesting. Boomers came of age in one of the most prosperous societies ever. And while we can't talk about all those tens of millions of people as one unit, there are major and obvious trends from that generation where they emphasized fear of crime and drugs and sex (just look at the politics), and focused on job and retirement security over most other aspects of life.

I'd have expected them to be a lot more decadent and care free. Maybe it has to do with being raised by a generation that could not be decadent or care free (by and large).

It's a variation – or misquotation – from a masonic ceremony. As for its uniqueness, I've no idea. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Text_Book_of_Freema...

Sounds like The Notorious B.I.G.'s album Life After Death. It was released 16 days after his murder. The name was chosen before his murder. His previous album was named Ready to Die.

The worst fear for me is both. You remain conscious forever even as your body dies and decays.

Some quotes from Seneca that made me think about death under a new light:

> Death either annihilates us or strips us bare. If we are then released, there remains the better part, after the burden has been withdrawn; if we are annihilated, nothing remains; good and bad are alike removed.

> What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death's hands.

> And I ask you, would you not say that one was the greatest of fools who believed that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than before it was lighted? We mortals also are lighted and extinguished; the period of suffering comes in between, but on either side there is a deep peace. For, unless I am very much mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death only follows, when in reality it has both preceded us and will in turn follow us. Whatever condition existed before our birth, is death. For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you leave off, inasmuch as the result of both these states is non-existence?

> we do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day. For every day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane. We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, and then our youth. Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death. It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.

> We must make ready for death before we make ready for life. Life is well enough furnished, but we are too greedy with regard to its furnishings; something always seems to us lacking, and will always seem lacking. To have lived long enough depends neither upon our years nor upon our days, but upon our minds.

> But we shall ask this question also: "Is the extremity of life the dregs, or is it the clearest and purest part of all, provided only that the mind is unimpaired, and the senses, still sound, give their support to the spirit, and the body is not worn out and dead before its time?" For it makes a great deal of difference whether a man is lengthening his life or his death.

> There are these three serious elements in every disease: fear of death, bodily pain, and interruption of pleasures. Concerning death enough has been said, and I shall add only a word: this fear is not a fear of disease, but a fear of nature. Disease has often postponed death, and a vision of dying has been many a man's salvation. You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, the same end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill-health, that you have escaped.

> But tell me, pray, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you? And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul. What benefit does this older man derive from the eighty years he has spent in idleness? A person like him has not lived; he has merely tarried awhile in life. Nor has he died late in life; he has simply been a long time dying. He has lived eighty years, has he? That depends upon the date from which you reckon his death! Your other friend, however, departed in the bloom of his manhood.

The motivation is this interesting story... ' After a major military victory, the triumphant military generals were paraded through the streets to the roars of the masses. The ceremonial procession could span the course of a day with the military leader riding in a chariot drawn by four horses. There was not a more coveted honor. The general was idolized, viewed as divine by his troops and the public alike. But riding in the same chariot, standing just behind the worshipped general, was a slave. The slave’s sole responsibility for the entirety of the procession was to whisper in the general’s ear continuously, “Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori!”

“Look behind. Remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die!”

The slave served to remind the victor at the peak of glory, this god-like adoration would soon end, while the truth of his mortality remained. '

That story is given here in the section titled "Romans": https://dailystoic.com/history-of-memento-mori/

Well-paid software developers from first world countries for some reason do like stoicism.