Albert Cipriani

Edward Teller, the Father of the Hydrogen bomb said it best: "Life would be intollerable if we did not know that there would be an end to it."

Your not too hidden assumption, Rainbow, is that life is worth living, that it is intrinsicly valuable. But I agree with Jesus that it would be better if some men had not been born.

The 999,999 sperm that lost the race to become me might be the lucky ones. Maybe I, the one-in-a-million longshot who won the race to become a member of the human race and thereby lost the prize of oblivion, am the real loser.

Fact is, life may only be considered a relative good. How we manage to live determines our life's relative value. Ergo, the eternal extension of a life that's being lived badly is relatively bad. That's the idea of hell, an extrapolation and exaggeration of what is already a lousy life.

In short, life is highly overrated. I don't value my life, but rather, I value what my life is related to, things like God or truths or people. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Primal

rainbow walking

rw: You've never seen a well preserved antique car on the road? Why must we accept the implausibility of life as opposed to death? Do you think accepting this implausibility has any negative effects on life? There's no more desperation in my pushing men to question this belief than my pushing men to question their belief in "might makes right". There's a direct correllary.

I really, truly...and I'm being honest as the day is long...don't understand why man has come to meekly accept death, especially when he labors in science and medicine to struggle against it, and has succeeded in pushing it back from 40 year lifespans to 75 or 80 year average lifespans. This doubling has had no major impact on man's value of life. We've defeated death at some points like small pox and it appears we've isolated SARS as well. A hundred years ago SARS would have likely wiped out half the population of China. We know there are other life forms that nature has encoded in such a way as to allow them to exist for hundreds (Giant sea turtle 7 to 8 hundred years) and even thousands (some trees in North America, 6 to 7 thousand years)...so it isn't like we don't have some precedent to say that it is possible naturally. I'm sorry folks...I just don't get it.

leyline

Rainbow walking

Sorry for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, ….. but then again maybe it was a different stick for poking at the same issue?

To move forward with purpose and beat the black hole of death……

Well first of all it does depend upon whether like sodium you see a human being as a glorified ferrari, and thus death is no more mysterious than a car accident or a rust bucket. Down comes the magnet and in you go to the crusher.

Personally I like many feel that there is just a bit more to us than the ‘stopped mechanically working’ perspective, but I philosophically respect those who feel like sodium even if I disagree with their oh so ‘grand’ narrative. Not only that but the postmodern multicultural perspective wouldn’t exclude that way of looking at life as revealing nothing about death anyway.

This recognition of the value of the multi perspective is fundamental to postmodernism of course, so in that context any philosophy of death is hardly going to be definitive. You seem to be asking for precisely the definitive, and so postmodernism is going to be a threat of course to your scheme, since it will immediately set about deconstructing the scheme itself. Though I suppose you could look upon postmodernism as another philosophical test, like analytical philosophy, that hones down the quest into a fit form. A doubting Thomas that won’t be satisfied until he sticks his finger in it.

“The first step is admitting we want to win and live. Then to admit we've been dancing around the issue. We've had too many unfruitful distractions...and hopes and faiths that are based on anything but winning. Our philosophies and layers of insulation afford us some illusion of freedom and we work furtively to extend those freedoms while pretending not to.”

The tendency for people and cultures to brush inconvenient truths, fears and embarrassing desires under the carpet is renowned. Eg. Present day international politics could easily be understood in those terms. I like your appeal to direct honesty and how the hard fact of death tends to promote the opposite. But I must admit that when I considered your plea “The first step is admitting we want to win and live.” I couldn’t help hearing the frenetic, stage shaking tones of the television evangelist grabbing your words ….

“Do you want ever lasting life?”
“YEEEES” shouts the audience.
“Are you tired of dancing around the issue?”
“YEEEESSS”
“Have we suffered too many distractions?”
“YEEEEEEESS”
“Do you want to win?”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS”
“I said Do you want to win?”
…..

and so on.

Now I am not ridiculing your perspective of course, far from it. I personally don’t swallow all that stuff. But how would you argue to those of the above belief.. “As it is now we just live in pretence and wonder why nothing has the power to give us the kind of meaning in our lives that completely satisfies.”?

rainbow walking

[b]Edward Teller, the Father of the Hydrogen bomb said it best: "Life would be intollerable if we did not know that there would be an end to it."

rw: I'm sure with that on his conscious he had good reason to say this.

Your not too hidden assumption, Rainbow, is that life is worth living, that it is intrinsicly valuable. But I agree with Jesus that it would be better if some men had not been born.

rw: Then your implied meaning is that life isn't worth living and extending? I don't feel that way about my life. I can't imagine anyone feeling that way unless they are in truly bad straits. And, of course, Jesus did not mean this in the way you are using it here. He was referring to specific behaviors committed.


The 999,999 sperm that lost the race to become me might be the lucky ones. Maybe I, the one-in-a-million longshot who won the race to become a member of the human race and thereby lost the prize of oblivion, am the real loser.

rw: Are you having a bad day Albert?

Fact is, life may only be considered a relative good. How we manage to live determines our life's relative value. Ergo, the eternal extension of a life that's being lived badly is relatively bad. That's the idea of hell, an extrapolation and exaggeration of what is already a lousy life.

rw: Yes, but Jesus also said the last enemy that would be conquered is death. Be that as it may, I personally think this heaven and hell stuff is just the sort of insulation that man has imagined to allow him to live in somewhat relative (to use your phrase) peace from the angst of a death sentence hanging over his head. It works, to some extent, but only as a stop gap. And it doesn't work for everyone.

In short, life is highly overrated. I don't value my life, but rather, I value what my life is related to, things like God or truths or people. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

rw: And there's nothing wrong with that but don't think I'm going to let your opinions of life stop me from pushing the truth and expressing what I observe about life. If I have to roll over a few insulators to get my point across I will. I happen to think it's high time for man to grow up and start facing the realities of his condition rather than sticking his head in the sand of make believe and wait in quiet desperation for the end to come.

rainbow walking

Sorry for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick, ….. but then again maybe it was a different stick for poking at the same issue?

rw: Well, why does the thought compell you to grab a stick and start poking?

To move forward with purpose and beat the black hole of death……

Well first of all it does depend upon whether like sodium you see a human being as a glorified ferrari, and thus death is no more mysterious than a car accident or a rust bucket. Down comes the magnet and in you go to the crusher.

rw: I don't think it depends on that at all. Back when the Wright brothers were preparing to make the first recorded human flight men were globally skeptical about flying. The religious had their reasons for being so and everyone else just couldn't see how it could be done. Suddenly it had been done and global skepticism was swept, along with all the various levels of objection, right out the window. Suddenly flying was a reality and man had no choice but to re-arrange his worldview to include it. Novel ideas have always been met by the majority with this sort of global skepticism, but someone somewhere pushed the envelope anyway. I don't imagine this idea will be any different.

The funny thing about religious resistance, especially from christians, is that they want eternal life on their terms...anywhere but here on earth. What they're really confessing is that they want an imaginary god to create the conditions of heavenly bliss where they can live forever without effort. And some of them seem inordinately infatuated with the thought of people roasting in hell.

Men seem totally mind blocked in thinking of life from an eternal perspective in this state of existence. They imagine all the worst. "Well, I wouldn't want to live forever. What about all the pain and suffering?"

What about it? If man did over-come death he would naturally have to over-come all the physical maladies, like aging. that cause so much of the pain and suffering. An immortal human body would have to be durable enough to resist aging and disease. I wouldn't mind living for a very long time in the healthy body of a 25 year old. An immortal man would pretty much just be concerned with relationships...the only possible source of pain and suffering that would be left would be mental anguish...and people get over those sorts of hurts fairly quickly. And immortality needn't be a forced compendium. Any man could still choose to pull the plug anytime he chose to.

Personally I like many feel that there is just a bit more to us than the ‘stopped mechanically working’ perspective, but I philosophically respect those who feel like sodium even if I disagree with their oh so ‘grand’ narrative. Not only that but the postmodern multicultural perspective wouldn’t exclude that way of looking at life as revealing nothing about death anyway.

rw: What's revealing to me, is how pervasive the idea of death is multiculturally. It's the true universal equal opportunity employer. Sometimes I almost get the impression men would rather fight to preserve death than to push it back. I often wonder at this resistance, the dogged refusal to allow ones mind to think and wander beyond the anticipated grave. It's definitely a mental wall that has been erected in man's mind that needs examining closely and philosophically.

This recognition of the value of the multi perspective is fundamental to postmodernism of course, so in that context any philosophy of death is hardly going to be definitive. You seem to be asking for precisely the definitive, and so postmodernism is going to be a threat of course to your scheme, since it will immediately set about deconstructing the scheme itself. Though I suppose you could look upon postmodernism as another philosophical test, like analytical philosophy, that hones down the quest into a fit form. A doubting Thomas that won’t be satisfied until he sticks his finger in it.

rw: I have no illusions that man will resist the idea till his death. Ever wonder what would happen if man embraced the idea? Does it seem that embracing such an idea would somehow violate some secret agreement men have made among themselves? Would embracing such an idea hasten man to his grave? Is there some sort of superstitious fear that challenging death might actually have the opposite effect? That it...whatever "it" is, will come sooner than later if man accepts the challenge directly, rather than doing it furtively as he now does?

The tendency for people and cultures to brush inconvenient truths, fears and embarrassing desires under the carpet is renowned. Eg. Present day international politics could easily be understood in those terms. I like your appeal to direct honesty and how the hard fact of death tends to promote the opposite. But I must admit that when I considered your plea “The first step is admitting we want to win and live.” I couldn’t help hearing the frenetic, stage shaking tones of the television evangelist grabbing your words ….

“Do you want ever lasting life?”
“YEEEES” shouts the audience.
“Are you tired of dancing around the issue?”
“YEEEESSS”
“Have we suffered too many distractions?”
“YEEEEEEESS”
“Do you want to win?”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSS”
“I said Do you want to win?”
…..

and so on.

rw: Well, sure...I suppose I do sound a bit hawkish...that's just a personality defect or a level of ignorance. But I've always noticed man also seems to be naturally inclined to cast the unthinkable in negative lights to ridicule and stomp it out of his mind by somehow convincing himself, and anyone listening, of the absurdity of it. It's almost like a defensive reflex. What we don't understand, or don't want to consider...must be defeated at any cost. Your post modern philosophy hasn't separated you from that tendency.

Now I am not ridiculing your perspective of course, far from it. I personally don’t swallow all that stuff. But how would you argue to those of the above belief.. “As it is now we just live in pretence and wonder why nothing has the power to give us the kind of meaning in our lives that completely satisfies.”?


rw: I would challenge them to think beyond the grave. Think of all the pros and cons and ask yourself how many of the cons would have to be eradicated anyway just to attain the goal. Think of the benefits to a mind capable of thinking for hundreds and thousands of years. Would we be able to accomplish this while trapped on this planet? Probably not. But the universe is a huge playground with literally billions of planets. There are practical issues that man will face anyway, whether he allows himself to face this possibility or not. Issues like over-population. These issues are going to arise. Man will have to contend with them. No matter what your worldview...you still have an imagination and problem solving skills.

I first want a strait definitive answer from anyone who cares to offer one, why man must never allow himself to entertain this idea. Why such resistance? Is it doubt, fear, incredulousness...what is it?

leyline

“I first want a strait definitive answer from anyone who cares to offer one, why man must never allow himself to entertain this idea. Why such resistance? Is it doubt, fear, incredulousness...what is it?”

well I believe it is to do with “a straight definitive answer”. To seek the definitive understanding of death and beat its fear such that everyone agreed with it would require some rather interesting qualities of it. First of all it would have to be pretty darn simple for everyone to get it. That we haven’t found a simple and positive understanding of death that we can all agree upon, might be reasonably considered to be good evidence that there isn’t one.

In fact you could turn the problem on its head and say that there are too many simplistic understandings of death. The problem then is not that we do not have positive understandings of death, ….. what we have is diversity of choice. In other words the fear of death is actually the fear of those who think and feel differently to us about it. Religious wars could easily be seen in this light. The only way to stop the possibility is to make sure that they do not even hear about each other. Thus the destructiveness inherent in death fear, is actually cultural intolerance.

Maybe when we were separated tribes, each ignorant of the others, we did not fear death at all because the cultural perspective was not challenged from the outside. Maybe even being selected for human sacrifice did not induce fear of death? Thus it is globalisation and diversity that causes the fear of death.

According to that perspective capitalist democracy is the greatest purveyor of the fear of death that there has ever been! It is too multi cultural. It undermines a certainty that we can all grasp.

Also it seems to me that you may be asking for a scientific response to pragmatically beating death, not a philosophical one at all? If so in what sense has post modernism helped at all?

rainbow walking

leylinewell I believe it is to do with “a straight definitive answer”. To seek the definitive understanding of death and beat its fear such that everyone agreed with it would require some rather interesting qualities of it. First of all it would have to be pretty darn simple for everyone to get it. That we haven’t found a simple and positive understanding of death that we can all agree upon, might be reasonably considered to be good evidence that there isn’t one.

rw: But we do understand the science of it. Not exhaustively but we do have a firm grasp of the many ways the human body wears out. We have a good classification of all the diseases that can destroy it but not a resolution to them...as yet.

leyline: In fact you could turn the problem on its head and say that there are too many simplistic understandings of death. The problem then is not that we do not have positive understandings of death, ….. what we have is diversity of choice. In other words the fear of death is actually the fear of those who think and feel differently to us about it. Religious wars could easily be seen in this light. The only way to stop the possibility is to make sure that they do not even hear about each other. Thus the destructiveness inherent in death fear, is actually cultural intolerance.

Maybe when we were separated tribes, each ignorant of the others, we did not fear death at all because the cultural perspective was not challenged from the outside. Maybe even being selected for human sacrifice did not induce fear of death? Thus it is globalisation and diversity that causes the fear of death.

According to that perspective capitalist democracy is the greatest purveyor of the fear of death that there has ever been! It is too multi cultural. It undermines a certainty that we can all grasp.

rw: You are still focusing on the fear and politicizing it. Maybe even romanticizing it.

leyline: Also it seems to me that you may be asking for a scientific response to pragmatically beating death, not a philosophical one at all? If so in what sense has post modernism helped at all?

rw: The philosophical issues permeate it from top to bottom. For instance...take the person with an atheistic worldview. They likely hold to some degree of naturalism and accept the theory of evolution as a viable explanation as to man's existence qua man. They would also likely agree that man's distinction is his ability to reshape his environment to suit his needs rather than being entirely contingent on the environment as is.

Now consider a person with this worldview should have no problem agreeing that if man is capable of effecting his survival by such means then he aught to be able to delve into the inherent properties of matter and re-arrange them such that the chemical reactions that occur biologically can be modified to his benefit. This shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination. We create chemical reactions all the time, split atoms to generate electricity, manufacture plastics and all manner of products that require a modification or unique chemical combination that likely wouldn't have occured naturally depending entirely on evolution.

So, philosophically, when I posit man as forcefully taking up the challenge against his own mortality men with a worldview based on naturalism shouldn't view this as something totally radical. If they do, they aren't being consistent to their worldview. Post modernism hasn't a word to say to this without taking a position that dilutes their philosophy. They either agree or resist and either one forces them out of the shadows. That is why I argue that a good philosophical addendum based on a direct assault against human mortality will take the issue beyond the quagmire of post modernism. Post modernism, as you observed in your first reply, is an admission that all of man's levels of insulation have failed to provide any meaning for his existence. I have proported a philosophical reason why and a way out. Post modernism gets thanked along the way and then brushed aside and relegated into the annals of philosophical history...where it belongs. Men either get on the bandwagon or get left behind. The post modernist either agrees or rejects and either one forces him back into the thesis/anti-thesis he so doggedly tries to resist. Synthesis is the way forward.

leyline

rainbow walking

whoa!

"Post modernism, as you observed in your first reply, is an admission that all of man's levels of insulation have failed to provide any meaning for his existence."

i did not mean that!! "man's levels of insulation" as you call them failed to give a 'definitive' meaning. I made it clear that postmodernism IMO does not reject the meanings given by science say, what it rejects is its total authority. Science offers no redemptive truths as Rorty puts it.

"....I argue that a good philosophical addendum based on a direct assault against human mortality will take the issue beyond the quagmire of post modernism. "

but your assault on mortality seems to be purely scientific in practice. The only role that philosophy seems to play is to encourage the endeavour. And what of philosophical dilemmas and conflicts in the meantime? Are you suggesting that this unifying goal will be enough to halt squabbles and wars while we try? I am all for confidence and its positive influence, similarly for the sense of a common goal, but this task is going to require many angles of scientific inquiry. This will be facilitated by doubts about some directions by some and not others. Once doubt itself becomes useful .... then there is the possibility of doubt about the whole project. Science runs on scepticism.

rainbow walking

To borrow a syntactic tool from Wyrdsmyth:

Socrates: rw, are you trying to capture the imagination of your audience?

RW: Not at all Socrates...to unshackle it.

Socrates: How so?

RW: Men aught to start thinking about these things...seriously, outside the dogmatism of religion.

Socrates: But men have...and do.

RW: Yes, and they are few and far between. All of man's levels of insulation follow the popular will of its constituency.

Socrates: Then how do you propose to influence the popular will, rw?

RW: The way it is always influenced, Socrates...by necessity.

Socrates: Necessity?

RW: It is the mother of invention...yes? A good philosopher creates or exposes a necessity and builds it into the will of the populace.

Socrates: But you are sure to generate opposition and resistance.

RW: Indeed, let us hope so, for without opposition and resistance necessity recedes into the unconscious memories of unpopular ideas and dies an ignoble death.

Socrates: And why do you imagine facing death is such a necessity?

RW: What are the alternatives Socrates...?

Socrates: Indeed.