Ongoing Lucidity

Right. You know as peculiar as it is, a huge amount of scientific "evidence" that has been compiled is in the form you described. Yet it bears no weight because it's not objective. However in some states a verbal testimony can send someone to the gas chamber. No point, just thinking out loud I guess.

David Bowden

Epicurus all the way!!!

And

I agree with babelfish: I don't fear the state of post-conscious non-existence, since I don't fear the prenatal or preconception state. Those states seem to amount to the same thing. It does seem best, as Epicurus advises, to prepare for death by accepting its inevitability, and then living fully without fretting about it.

Although I admit that it's sometimes like trying not to think about a pink elephant... but eventually the mind moves on to other things. I think John Page is right, too: a little fear for our lives gives us a survival edge and might keep us from getting bored - at least long enough to get something important accomplished, like reproduction or the achievement of some less purely, uh, biological goal.

-Wanderer

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

bob

Perhaps I made it sound like I was scared of dying with my post... not exactly. I am not scared of dying itself, but of not existing. If everything was to be like it was before I was born--meaning that I was never born and never died--that would be just as scary for me to think about.

What I have padded in my brain as 'my existance' is simply just my life--nothing more. Some may comfort themselves with saying "I dont fear death just as long as my life is good." No offense, but I view that as complete and utter bullshit.

Let me explain: you will be all nice and happy at your death bed because your life had spirts of happiness? You wont realize that the rest of the time of the world and on will be nothingness, you will not be able to think at all.

Those who say they dont fear death for the same reason they dont fear pre-birth: you never experienced pre-birth, how can you fear it? You are, in a sense, "already done with pre-birth", thus why would you fear it?

It's like being scared of having gone to a certain place... not going there, but having gone there. Obviously you wouldnt be scared of it because it is already done with. However, death is not done with... death has not set in.

When it comes down to it, we all end up not existing. What a big bowl of shit.

David Bowden

bob, I wish I could articulate for you exactly why I don't worry about nonexistence or death. I'm sure others here wish the same.

Maybe it's a survival matter: am I just censoring those worries, rationalizing around them? Perhaps. I certainly don't feel those concerns, characteristically. I did, once, for awhile after leaving the Christian faith, understanding as I did that I was giving up hope in an afterlife. There was something like vertigo that I felt back then. I was alone but conscious, in a reality that I was a long way from really understanding, with only a few decades at best to get a grip on things. And then the prospect of losing it all...

But I think it's not good to dwell on it; perhaps it's a seriously reflective phase we all go through as we leave the theistic worldview behind us?

Now for the best intellectual response I know how to give:

It can be argued that we will never experience being dead, so why feel anything towards it? It will be unknown to you, unfelt by you, irrelevant to everything that is "you" while you are a living, conscious, social being.

Point taken; but there is no reason I know of to believe that non-existence is somehow worse than existence - I suppose we are biased because we ourselves live and move and 'have being'. We should marvel at existence, but I don't know about despairing at nonexistence. There's literally nothing to despair about.

[and there goes St. Anselm's Ontological argument for the existence of God - whoops!! now back to our program...]

While we are here, we can live this life fully - or be death-obsessed or afterlife-obsessed; the latter alternatives are surely not as healthy, not as good for this life (the only reality we will ever know), as the first.

Maybe we can look at it this way: We're in "life" mode or "Existence" mode now; being in any other modes need not concern us because we're not capable of experiencing those modes.

It sometimes does seem that way. The nursery rhyme "Row Your Boat" is quite appropriate in a way: We live our lives ("row our boats") and try to do so as gently and as merrily as we can - but in the end, life is but a dream; it's over. Except that we don't wake up.

Actually we end up with our last conscious thought. Then we cease. I don't know of any way to guarantee that that last thought will be positive and I don't know that it's necessarily negative either; who knows what sensations the mind/brain goes through in its final lap?

Since there is no evidence that our existence can get any better than what goes on in this life, and since we don't seem to be able to control the momentary sensations of passing into permanent unconsciousness, it seems to me that we ought instead to focus on making the most of this life while we have it.

Voltaire said that we should "cultivate our gardens." I take that to mean that we make the best use of our bowl of shit, in the season we have, but not to have any illusions about the thus-fertilized "garden" being more than it is: a temporary, potentially beautiful, and easily productive thing.

All of this is no comfort, I suppose. I don't know if more comfort is possible, once we understand the facts of our situation. We have no one to bitch to, in any event - our parents are in the same boat we're in, rowing, rowing...- so even when I get in the dumps about it, I come around and realize that I just have to make the best of what's here, now.

Perhaps a future generation will lengthen the human lifespan considerably. Many in the 'transhumanist' camp anticipate a coming era where 'death' will cease to be a meaningful concept. Ray Kurzweil, in The Age of Spiritual Machines, writes that by the year 2100, life expectancy will no longer be "a viable term in relation to intelligent beings."

If so, it may be that our conscious, productive, enjoyable lifetimes can be coequal with that of the universe. Since the universe is not known to be eternal, life is still "but a dream" - though it may last quite a bit longer - long enough to be diverse and fulfilling well before our time's up, if one biological lifetime isn't adequate (and I doubt I'll accomplish all that I'd like to in 100 years).

Okay, enough windbagging by me. Corliss Lamont has written a couple of books that contain relevant material: The Philosophy of Humanism and a book examining ideas about the afterlife - I forget the title now. I don't possess either book, but I do recall him dealing with this and several related questions. If our postings don't satisfy, perhaps his material will.

bob, without any intention of being condescending, I think that you will eventually discover a way to resolve the matter for yourself, even though it might seem impossible now. The only support I have for that claim is that I and others have faced the same issue, and resolved it, if not perfectly, then at least to our own satisfaction.

Regards,
-Wanderer

[ March 17, 2002: Message edited by: wide-eyed wanderer ]</p>

Samhain

I'm glad Epicurus was brought up. It is right to assume that death does not concern us. It is inevitable, it is indifferent, and, if we are to believe what is being said here, we will no longer exist. Non-existence is the opposite of existence, therefore we cannot imagine what it would be like to not exist. Why is it fearful if you (1) will not even be able to experience or remember it when it happens and (2)cannot even comprehend it in life. It's like fearing a black hole in space; it's out there somewhere, you cannot see it, you do not know what it would be like to be sucked into it, there is a great possibility that you would not even know what you were experiencing even after you were sucked in, but yet you fear it anyway. It does not matter because you cannot know anything about it, so why worry? And even as much as we try to comprehend non existence, in the end we will not even be conscious of it when it comes. Sartre said "Human life begins on the other side of despair." Yes, you will despair at your meaningless existence, at the fact that absolutely nothing matters in your life, and when you die, that nothingness is only multiplied, but the sooner you comprehend the agony of life's meaninglessness, you will understand that as long as it has some kind of meaning for you, nothing else matters. Life life, make choices, and know, in the end none of it will matter, because the universe is at best malicious, and at worst, indifferent. But also know that life and existence is all that you will ever truly have, so you must hold onto it preciously.