Death: Classic or Dud?

The inevitable end that faces all things living. A welcome conclusion, or an unavoidable evil? Your thoughts, please.

Classic: leaves going brown, dying and dropping off (and replaced by new leaves next season).

Dud: agonising diseases and other terminal illnesses, especially for conscious creatures.

(unless you believe in reincarnation etc., in which case)

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/Page_19.jpg

The thought of having to deal with this reincarnation bullshit for eternity is unbearably depressing.

Classic, obviously
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zguCFjHyVeM

lol, was just gonna say.. I thought this was an ILM thread.

Classic, it makes life meaningful.

Dud: i'm terrified of it and in the right frame of mind the thought of it will wake me from my sleep

Far more scared of people I care abt dying than myself, really

Dud: i'm terrified of it and in the right frame of mind the thought of it will wake me from my sleep

This has actually been happening to me loads recently. Really, really terrifying. The fact that you'll be snuffed out one day and no more you forever and ever. Also, I want to know what happens in the future.

Also, I want to know what happens in the future.

― Not the real Village People, Monday, December 13, 2010 11:52 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark

This is my main concern.

I look forward to death, honestly. I can't wait to see what's on the other side. But like Niles, I'm really terrified of people I care about dying... I guess for selfish reasons. The thought of being alone in this world is very scary to me.

The idea of just suddenly not existing terrifies me. Like, it could happen and I wouldn't even know. ZIP that's it. All of this? Gone. I try not to think about it because if I spend too long on it I'm a mess.

Not arsed about dying, there's nothing you can do about it. Would welcome reincarnation if you could remember what you did wrong last time.

as a child i would lie awake upset that i probably wouldn't live to see 2085 but having grown up and gotten to understand myself better it's like, realistically speaking, what would i have done with the future really. so now yeah i'm just selfishly concerned about the mortality of people i know, incl. old high school teachers, pop stars, and smart animals

huh?

I'm very terrified of people I love dying, but my fear of my own not-existing is quite different.

I think part of living in the Western world is that we're trained from a very young age to never accept death as inevitable. It comes through in our attitudes to doctor-assisted suicide, the idea of 'pulling the plug', the amount of medical treatment we give to people in terminal stages of illness. We want to exercise control over death to the extent that we want to avoid acknowledging that it will eventually come. I suspect that this attitude has not traditionally been the case in many Eastern cultures.

I don't think people in the East are any less afraid of dying

Nah they're all cool w it

I like Victorian memento mori figures and shit

http://www.madametalbot.com/pix/news/mementomorifigures.jpg

I like Los Caprichos

http://eeweems.com/goya/caprichos_77_300.jpg

I like Dia de los Meurtos figures

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Posada2.Catrina.jpeg

I think this means I like art or skeletons or somesuch, though, not death itself.

Far more scared of people I care abt dying than myself, really

― The reverse TARDIS of pasta (Niles Caulder), Monday, December 13, 2010 5:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yup. at least i won't care when i'm dead.

I don't think people in the East are any less afraid of dying

that wasn't my point. I'm talking about having a societal-level acceptance of its eventuality.

you haven't seen the people hanging outside of chinese hospitals who peddle cancer cures, have you

Yeah, I know about China, but I guess what I was getting at was that Judeo-Christian traditions have been a lot more explicit about creating ugly post-death scenarios that need to be studiously avoided, and the attitude has triggered an "avoid death at all costs"-type mentality, even when it completely defies practical concerns and simple human compassion. How else can you explain the Christian right's unwillingness to allow doctor-assisted suicide? I mean, shit, supposedly 'saved' people are going to go to heaven anyway.

I don't think my fear of death has much to do with judeo-christian traditions

no, not saying directly necessarily-- but those beliefs influence the underlying culture, which seeps into your attitudes.

anyway, i'm not talking about fear of death when I say that-- I'm talking about an inability of our society to let people die.

It's doing a terrible job at not letting them, tbh.

do you consider switzerland a judeo-christian country? I think our inability to let people die has more to do w/ the way our health care system is set up than our culture.

but regarding culture's impact of societal beliefs: here's an example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

A lot of people genuinely believe the US is better than other countries, more deserving of resources, more intelligent, etc, etc. If you read that page, you'll see that there are historical roots to this attitude, which a lot of people have (in my observation, it's a core belief of many Republicans). They may not have been explicitly taught this attitude, but it's a 'feeling' they have nonetheless, imparted by living in a culture that exemplifies the attitude even without stating outright. xp

do you consider switzerland a judeo-christian country? I think our inability to let people die has more to do w/ the way our health care system is set up than our culture.

i don't know much about Switzerland, but it would seem to me that if the problem is our health care, then countries with state-run health care should be more inclined to believe in prolonging life, since personal wealth doesn't really have to be eaten into to support someone's terminal illness.

Most other countries, OTOH, have the motto "we're #2."

(Sorry, I am being silly. I know what you're trying to say, res, I just have a compulsion to make shitty jokes.)

x[

xp I mean!

I was referring to switzerland's suicide clinics

Well, I would say that most of Europe has much more liberal attitudes towards things like doctor-assisted suicide, nudity, drugs, etc. because America was colonized by Puritans-- the most extreme practitioners of Christianity in England. Shit, these guys were so intolerant that they basically got kicked out of their home country for being extremist jerks (now translated rather generously to "being persecuted in their home country"). This has spilled over into the general puritanism of this country to this day, and it's obvious in many ways how this cultural history makes itself apparent.

Anyway: BACK TO THE DEATH PART OF THIS

This thread must have been started just for me. How could I resist a subject line like that?

As it happens, back in 1974 when I was 19 years old, I won 2nd prize in a philosophical essay contest sponsored by the liberal arts college I was then attending. The topic all the entries had to address was: What is the Meaning of Death? The funny thing is that, in the 36 years since then I haven't really changed my mind. thirdalternative summed it up succinctly, above:

Classic, it makes life meaningful.

In order to draw this out to sufficient length to qualify as an essay, I had to do some double backflips and some simple card tricks to dazzle the reader. Referenced the myth of Tithonis, etc. I won $25 btw. Behold my youthful wisdom and marvel!

$25 back then is like $5000 in today's dollars, right?

Isn't there something of a logical fallacy in the idea that dying makes living meanigful?

Yeah, why does it make life meaningful more than any other limited resource?

xp

Not particularly. Infinity as a concept has very little meaning that you can pin down or grasp. Something which is never completed can only maintain a very nebulous meaning, as you will never know the whole of it.

but you never know the whole of your life, because when it ends you're always in the middle of something, possibly infirm, and with no opportunity to reflect. not feeling hugely equanimous about my life being just there for others to pick over like carrion either. kudos for coming to terms with death, though!

I think part of living in the Western world is that we're trained from a very young age to never accept death as inevitable. It comes through in our attitudes to doctor-assisted suicide, the idea of 'pulling the plug', the amount of medical treatment we give to people in terminal stages of illness. We want to exercise control over death to the extent that we want to avoid acknowledging that it will eventually come. I suspect that this attitude has not traditionally been the case in many Eastern cultures.

― Lazarus Niles-Burnham (res), Monday, December 13, 2010 7:41 PM (3 hours ago)

ironically, my faith that modern medicine will someday extend our lifespans indefinitely is part of the reason why I'm so afraid of dying prematurely. in spite of my skepticism, every time I read a new article proclaiming that gene therapy (or whatever) will eliminate disease and aging by 2050 (or whenever), I get an overwhelming feeling of relief, which gives way to disappointment a minute later when I realize that I'll have to spend at least forty years fending off the usual demons of mortality until the technology finally arrives. and how utterly tragic — in a "cop getting gun down the day before he plans to retire" sense of the word — would it be if I were to die of cancer in 2049?

for someone whose peace of mind requires the laws of nature to be clear-cut and invariable, it's frustrating to think that medical treatment might (but only might) reverse or greatly postpone a process as seemingly certain as aging and death. on the one hand, I'd feel vastly less afraid for my future if I knew from the moment I was born that I would never die or at least never grow old, but on the other hand I think I'd feel slightly less afraid if I knew that no matter how well I took care of myself and no matter what astonishing medical breakthroughs took place, I would definitely die some time before my 123rd birthday. the waffly middle ground, in which I spend my whole life waiting and vaguely hoping for the unavoidable to become avoidable, is some serious psychological torture.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QWZV0H5TL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

This shit blew my mind at age nine, made me welcome mortality.

There is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this—to die soon.”

Now I'm imagining what kind of life-affirming piece of shit movie that could be made based on that starring Robin Williams or Jack Black.

I'm imagining what kind of life-affirming piece of shit movie that could be made based on that starring Robin Williams or Jack Black.

Hard for something that advocates dying to be life-affirming, but point taken.

oh honestly, what could be more life-affirming than for Robin Williams or Jack Black not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing?

I am annoyed not to be in that universe.

There's really no other point to life beyond dying.

(I mean aside from dying)

I feel like I, like most everyone I know, spend my life trying to minimize discomfort while I'm waiting out my inevitable death. That is pretty much the least purposeful existence I can think of.

Well, echoing comments above, I think death sort of makes all existence purposeful. Knowing there's a limit on it more or less imbues every experience with significance. Even, like, sitting on the couch eating nachos and watching football. That seems like a fine use of time to me. Can't do it when you're dead, might as well do it now.

But maybe you won't. Does Shakespeare just no longer exist? How about your grandparents? Even people that didn't know you directly will be affected by your life in one way or the other.

Fine, you won't be around to appreciate this maybe. But which would you rather be, you dying and realizing that all you enjoyed is now over or somebody like Secretariat who died without even knowing what kind of legacy he left behind?

― http://tinyurl.com/ccccccccccccccccc (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, December 14, 2010 11:42 AM (4 hours ago)

I don't believe death makes life more meaningful; it just gives the living a false sense of importance and a real sense of urgency. Khufu made sure he survivied to see his pyramid completed, because then he could spend his old age contemplating its gradeur and imagining that it would preserve his legacy forever. when, like him, you accomplish something great and memorable, you can gain a few extra ego points by envisioning a future where you continue to make a name for yourself and make the world a better place long after your demise. and who can really prove you wrong? as you grow old, your vanity projects grow more and more precious to you precisely because of the plausible deniability that allows you to say to your detractors (or to yourself, in moments of doubt), "no one knows for sure that I'll be forgotten in 500 years; my pyramid/artwork/loved ones will see to it that I'm never forgotten."

it's a huge comfort, but it's an empty, blindered sort of comfort, because it's based on the misconception that surviving in human memory for a timescale of centuries or millennia (which is about as far ahead as we can imagine) is enough to qualify yourself as immortal. if Khufu kept on living for thousands of years and more, he'd see his pyramid begin to crumble, his empire begint to collapse, and the details of his life begin to disappear from history. only then would he be forced to admit that all things worthy about his life and legacy were packed into a vanishingly small piece of time and space. by that point I'm sure he'd have no more use for petty ambitions like pyramid building.

with immortality comes (I assume) the power to reflect upon your life without a whit of self-delusion or ego inflation, and that's something we as mortals can't come close to achieving — not when we pretend, out of fear and pride, that our meager earthly legacies are important enough to compensate for an eternity of nonexistence. from a mortal point of view, a few minutes of living are more meaningful than an eternity of non-living, but that's the kind of value judgment that only works when you place yourself at the center of the universe, and it can hardly be said that anthropocentric, sentimental notions of "meaning" and "preciousness" can stand up to a reality in which even greats like Shakespeare and Khufu are dwarfed by the universe in all its cold and indifferent glory.

a mortal life of beating deadlines and clinging to the illusion of stability (like watching the hands of a clock in extreme slow motion and saying, "see, they never move!") may well be more satisfying than an immortal life of losing all sense of time and witnessing the birth and death of umpteen worlds and umpteen identities, but if that satisfaction is rooted in a hopelessly provincial worldview like our own, then it makes life less meaningful rather than moreso, in my opinion.

...but that's just my pessimism speaking.

There's a book called "Denial of Death" that is very much in keeping with what you just said:

The basic premise of The Denial of Death is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. Becker argues that a basic duality in human life exists between the physical world of objects and a symbolic world of human meaning. Thus, since man has a dualistic nature consisting of a physical self and a symbolic self, man is able to transcend the dilemma of mortality through heroism, a concept involving his symbolic half. By embarking on what Becker refers to as an "immortality project" (or causa sui), in which he creates or becomes part of something which he feels will last forever, man feels he has "become" heroic and, henceforth, part of something eternal; something that will never die, compared to his physical body that will die one day. This, in turn, gives man the feeling that his life has meaning; a purpose; significance in the grand scheme of things.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

Apparently Bill Clinton is a big fan of that book. (???)

I'm with the "more afraid of other folks dying than myself" crowd. I want all my loved ones and myself to die at the same time, like in an airplane crash when we're flying home after a Vegas vacation, still drunk enough to be happy and unafraid.

xpost - interesting; I definitely remember hearing the term "immortality project" someplace. the wiki entry makes it seem like the author is trying to trace all human ills and endeavors back to his thesis — which is an unpleasantly absolutist ploy no matter how otm the author is in other respects — but I know better than to judge a book by its wiki summary. I'll add that to the long list of books I've been meaning to read before I die.

I want all my loved ones and myself to die at the same time, like in an airplane crash when we're flying home after a Vegas vacation, still drunk enough to be happy and unafraid.

see, this is why your family has always discouraged you from getting your pilot's license ;-)

the wiki entry makes it seem like the author is trying to trace all human ills and endeavors back to his thesis — which is an unpleasantly absolutist ploy no matter how otm the author is in other respects

yes, I believe it is fairly absolutist. the book's entire agenda is to argue that knowledge of death is the basic motivation of human behavior (a concept fleshed out even further in a psychological theory called Terror Management).

I'll add that to the long list of books I've been meaning to read before I die.

It's quite dense, unfortunately. I did not find it a pleasant read, and the author refers a lot to psychoanalysis, which I've always found a bit sketchy. Nevertheless, I do think there's something to what he says, though I do wonder if maybe, like you say, it's a bit reductivist.

So is it better with foreknowledge or without? Possible advantages of knowing you're dying: able to say goodbye to people, make whatever final arrangements or plans need to be made. But it also tends to entail suffering, a lot of hospitalization, etc. Advantages of suddenness seem obvious -- no suffering, for one thing -- but it also often means dying younger, and you don't get all those goodbyes and so forth. I don't have a very strong preference at the moment, I don't think. (Though good palliative care and legal euthanasia might tip the balance toward foreknowledge.)

I think the Khufu analogy is a good one. Ego is really of massive importance in all this. Although to claim that "the power to reflect upon your life without a whit of self-delusion or ego inflation" is "something we as mortals can't come close to achieving" is maybe correct from a practical standpoint, I think it discounts the efforts of priests, saints, and mystics, the truly religious, men and women who yearned for immortality through selfless lives. It can be done - listen to Jesus, LOL i know, but SRSLY.

The Khufu analogy is good for bringing in scale too. Certainly if we take into account thousands of years rather than human generations, the importance of life and death and all material achievement shrink to nothingness.

Btw, I don't think Khufu built those pyramids solely for LOOK AT ME I BUILT THIS selfish reasons. No doubt they were built for religious & astrological importance at the very least.

Did you love living before?

Totally. But being confronted with the possibility of one's nonexistence really makes things clearer in that respect. And while I know once I'm actually dead I won't be capable of missing my life, the sadness of real mortality recognition is pretty intense.

Stumbled across this tonight, on Joan Didion, zen, and death. Seemed apropos to this thread:

http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=3021&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=0

death is the worst obvs, on the other hand its basically a universal constant rendering relative concepts like classic or dud irrelevant so

btw i didnt read any of the posts in this thread, not enough time

Stumbled across this tonight, on Joan Didion, zen, and death. Seemed apropos to this thread:

I read that book a couple years ago, and it is a reminder of the frailty of life. I recommend it, even though it forces you to confront some ugly and unsettling realities.

I love Didion (with some reservations -- she's one of my favorite writers, but I tend to argue with her as I'm reading her), but I've stayed away from that book because it seems sort of harrowing. But I think I should just read it.

classic

I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday

Classic, it makes life meaningful.

― thirdalternative, Monday, December 13, 2010 6:35 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

while recognizing the reality of death is super helpful as far as appreciating life the appropriate cliche were reaching for here is 'life and death are two sides of one coin' - death can only make life meaningful if there existis life w/o death - elves masturbating openly or whatever

Everyone wants to live forever
Thinkin that it'd be alot better

death can only make life meaningful if there existis life w/o death

If you believe in God/Christ, then there ya go.

oh i was talking abt real stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYOE_b4aYD0

oh i was talking abt real stuff

lol

see, this is why your family has always discouraged you from getting your pilot's license ;-)

Haha, now this reminds of Christopher Walken's scene in "Annie Hall"

Let me know what this real stuff is, sounds good.

oh i was talking abt real stuff

are you referring to a corporeal reality that exists outside of your sensory mechanisms, or are you referring strictly to phenomenological experiences?

http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/

Sorry for bombarding you with links, but this is the last one: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/i_hope_my_father_dies_soon/

All three articles probably sum up my argument in favour of death and assisted suicide.

Geez, Scott Adams makes

Darn, hit Submit Post accidentally -- I didn't really have a coherent post ready.

no idea where else to put this, but I've discovered I have a disturbing (to me at least) habit when I hear someone has died. in most all cases, it's someone I don't know. but I have this feeling, this need to find out the cause of death. it's not curiosity, it like actually bothers my brain to not know, and it's especially weird to me as it's for people I don't know.

when I find out, it just feels like a bad itch was scratched, doesn't provide any fulfillment. i don't know if it's an empathy trigger of sorts or if my brain just always needs closure.

when the dead body was found on my street last year, I spent weeks trying to find out who it was and what happened (and I succeeded). the truth didn't make me feel 'better' or anything, just that I at least understood.

is anybody else like this, and what could drive someone to "need" to know this?

(clarification - I *never* ask, because I respect privacy, but I try to dig for publicly available information on it).

I think that's pretty natural.

Isn't it always heart failure?

I like that Motörhead 'Killed by Death'... that sums it up

in the case of the person who died on my street, it was a drug overdose, though that was kind of what I suspected given she was found on the street.

I guess I mean that heart failure is always the case, since that's when you cease to exist - regardless of what leads up to it.

I found a body behind a nightclub in San Francisco several years ago, and called 911.. he had a blanket over his face. I asked the paramedic what the fellow died from and he basically just said "The streets.. exposure, drugs, hepatitis.. who knows." It was a pretty traumatic moment for me actually.

Definitely saw a guy who had just been shot and killed 60 seconds prior over the summer. It was...shitty.

Most of the death in my life has been from overdoses and suicides. It's a number that continues to creep up, of course, as the years pass. Most recently, an old friend with whom I kept in touch and saw occasionally died of septic shock. Terrible.

Neanderthal, I think the desire to know is fairly normal, but it sounds like it becomes an intrusive thought for you? As long as you're not hurting anyone directly related to the death, I think it's fine to find out.

I was questioning the other day whether I'd ever seen a dead body in person, and I don't think I have - I've been to a couple of funerals but I think open casket funerals might be a US thing? Or just a TV/movies thing? Not sure about this, but as far as I'm aware nobody even thought about displaying the body at the ones I've been to. I did hear a murder happen on my street, though (despite my dislike of police, I was about to call the police when a neighbour said they had already done so). That was fucking horrible.

Anyway, I'm not sure about death, but not existing is definitely Classic imo.

It feels like an intrusive thought only because I ask myself "why is it important? it's a moot point, they've passed" and my subconscious tells me my desire to look this information up and find it is morbid. even though I'm sure others are like me too.

I've definitely not seen a dead body in the wild and I would probably freak out. the one on my street was already covered by a sheet and even THAT spooked me, as you could see the shape of the person underneath the sheet. I did see my grandmother in hospice a half hour after she died and that remains the only time I've seen someone die without having been prepped by a funeral home. it wasn't as bad then as it was family, someone I knew, but even that image bothered me for a few days.

existing totally classic <3

one of my good friends died at 26 and there was an open casket funeral. it was really weird and unsettling. for one, he was wearing a tux, which is something he would never wear in real life. for two, there's something off about the face of a dead person...the pale skin, the dry lips, the wiry-looking hair...I really didn't want to see that. I got no pangs of recognition and no closure for getting to see my friend one last time. it wasn't him. it was some uncanny valley shit and I wish I hadn't seen it.

i saw lenin's embalmed body in moscow. he was wearing a modern suit -- not a 1920s-style suit. it seemed cheap, like it was made of polyester.

20 years in the healthcare business, and I've only seen about 5 dead bodies and seen two people die.

Neanderthal, there's an episode of Frasiet about this phenomenon.

Frasier

Not Frasiet