DEATH

I'm also re-reading "Infinite Jest" again so I'm all obsessed with that story and would love to chat. Reddit is probably the better place but it feels weird to me.

My opening post is clearly inspired by "The Good Place" if anyone has seen that. I would love to discuss anything "The Good Place," Michael Schur, "The Office," "Parks and Recreation," the film rights to "Infinite Jest."

It's pretty cool I am currently in one of those places where I don't have any fears it's just all love.

how does community and contributing is meaning in the phylosophical sense? you will perish, the people you contributed to will pernish the community will perish and there will be a time where all living things are dead, everything done forgotten, everything built destroyed, oblivion is inescapable.

On the other hand consciousness lasts us just an instant, so make the most of it and enjoy it, if helping others enjoy it makes you feel good, then by all means go ahead, funny thing that stoics and epicureans saw themselves as philosophical opponents but in reality their philosophies are complementary.

You can find meaning life through self-delusion, most people do. Whether it's believing in god, your country, community human rights and helping your fellow man or arbitrary causes like veganism (while remaining hypocritical and happily eating soy and wheat) you are believing in man-made constructs.



I actually had a thought - people expanded because of their aggression, and it was the same aggression that kept humanity in check. Through war and murder - they are a great thing from one perspective. Now because of nuclear weapons (and before then the increasingly higher residual impacts and cost due to industrialisation) we've lost that.

Same with diseases - the lowered child mortality and age expectancy and elimination of pandemics made population explode too fast. Continuing that trend and caring about your fellow man might be straight up evil from one perspective.

On September 18 2019 06:27 Baalim wrote: how does community and contributing is meaning in the phylosophical sense? you will perish, the people you contributed to will pernish the community will perish and there will be a time where all living things are dead, everything done forgotten, everything built destroyed, oblivion is inescapable. On the other hand consciousness lasts us just an instant, so make the most of it and enjoy it, if helping others enjoy it makes you feel good, then by all means go ahead, funny thing that stoics and epicureans saw themselves as philosophical opponents but in reality their philosophies are complementary.

Their philosophies are not compatible with one another. The Stoics, just as Aristotle later presented it, believed that "man is a political animal" and they taught that you could only live virtuously if you were engaged in civic life and helping your fellow men. The Epicureans withdrew from political life entirely because they saw it as too troubling and frustrating and that went against their ultimate aim of attaining tranquility through pleasure.

"Humans [are] living their death, dying their life" - Heraclitus.

Destruction and creation are complementary processes. Creation is just as inevitable as destruction is. Even though life will end on this planet, and life was improbable here, there is a good case to be made that it is also inevitable in the universe.

The only reason we can live is because we are constantly dying and regenerating ourselves, we are negentropic beings. We could live for a very long time as a species if our forms of social organization weren't so anti-life. Some people's contributions are not really perishable in the common sense-- they are contributions to a body of abstract knowledge and practices that are then passed down through the generations. This is what separates us from all of the other animals and allowed us to move beyond base Darwinian pressures. Humans are symbolic beings that are both the products and the creators of a culture that retroacts on them. They can leave something that's very much real behind them: information. And information is not matter or energy, it is only information, as Norbert Weiner said. It requires matter and energy but it is not reducible to it. Energy itself cannot be created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics).

Merleau-Ponty is the one who got it right when he said that humans are condemned to meaning. We are historico-cultural beings constantly constructing life, perception itself is a co-constructive process, not a representational one, as Maturana and Varela showed. We are not passively experiencing life through consciousness. We cannot separate meaning from our own active/co-creating consciousnesses and interests; we do not have access to some objective vantage point by which we can claim to speak disinterestedly, "in the name of the universe" and from where we come back with the realization that "it's all meaningless". I think those who constantly talk of meaninglessness do so more out of a motivation to rationalize their personal feelings of impotence or their unwillingness to live as adults engaged in the world than anything else.

On September 18 2019 06:27 Baalim wrote: how does community and contributing is meaning in the phylosophical sense? you will perish, the people you contributed to will pernish the community will perish and there will be a time where all living things are dead, everything done forgotten, everything built destroyed, oblivion is inescapable. .

Actually this very fact arguably is what connects humanity. That lives are longer just changes the time frame.
I'm just gonna quote a summary of laws of human nature.

I actually often visualise that I will die at the end of a tram ride, and it brings you closer to the moment, and closer to other people. That also live that absurd hypocritical meaningless existence when you really think deep about it.


But they share it together, and that's something beautiful to be embraced

On September 18 2019 03:12 RiKD wrote: I'm also re-reading "Infinite Jest" again so I'm all obsessed with that story and would love to chat. Reddit is probably the better place but it feels weird to me. My opening post is clearly inspired by "The Good Place" if anyone has seen that. I would love to discuss anything "The Good Place," Michael Schur, "The Office," "Parks and Recreation," the film rights to "Infinite Jest." It's pretty cool I am currently in one of those places where I don't have any fears it's just all love.

I also want to point out that I never really understood the actual thought behind buddhism until recently lol even though being in Zen, meditating constantly, reading books for 10+years
And of all books I got that simple thing I was getting wrong from Sapiens (the chapter on that was kinda random to be included honestly. Didn't expect it . )


Basically we all have varied states, emotions etc. I always assumed suffering = pain, fear, anxiety etc. and meditation helps you to let them go
That's not the case at all though in buddhism. Suffering is merely attaching yourself and seeking out certain states, while avoiding and suppressing others.

So the cool place wouldn't be to be in a state of love, but to understand how fleeting it is and feel it fully and then fully embrace the inevitable states of pain and fear. And live life full of them but devoid of suffering

btw it's pretty funny
I'm not trying to educate or anything I'm just talking to myself here
trying to streamline what I absorbed from the books I read recently :D


Same reason why just naturally stop reading Loco's posts, and why people don't read mine
If you really wanted knowledge, would you really ever do what I did and blurt out my opinions?

Fuck no, you would just ask questions, it's pretty cool to see when people like me or Loco make these statement posts it's coming from a place of uncertainty they want validated

Life is whatever you want it to mean. It's our personal experience here.


When your experience goes "bad", it's more +EV to think life is meaningless to shield the pain or the shift perspectives.

When your experience goes "great", it's -EV to think life is meaningless.

On September 18 2019 07:44 LemOn[5thF] wrote: btw it's pretty funny I'm not trying to educate or anything I'm just talking to myself here trying to streamline what I absorbed from the books I read recently :D Same reason why just naturally stop reading Loco's posts, and why people don't read mine If you really wanted knowledge, would you really ever do what I did and blurt out my opinions? Fuck no, you would just ask questions, it's pretty cool to see when people like me or Loco make these statement posts it's coming from a place of uncertainty they want validated

People rely on feedback from others to learn and want to be liked and validated? Big thought.

That has nothing to do with why you don't supposedly read my posts, and most importantly, why you think that's worth mentioning publicly. It's a passive aggressive thing to say, but I guess all those Zen books you expertly read over a decade haven't taught you what that is and why it's no way to communicate with people. You know what kind of person feels the need to be passive aggressive with others? Or tell them how much they have been "constantly meditating and reading over the last ten years"? People with low self-esteem. Attacking me through passive aggression by implying my posts are not worth reading is just an airing out of your own insecurities.

On September 18 2019 07:44 LemOn[5thF] wrote: btw it's pretty funny I'm not trying to educate or anything I'm just talking to myself here trying to streamline what I absorbed from the books I read recently :D Same reason why just naturally stop reading Loco's posts, and why people don't read mine If you really wanted knowledge, would you really ever do what I did and blurt out my opinions? Fuck no, you would just ask questions, it's pretty cool to see when people like me or Loco make these statement posts it's coming from a place of uncertainty they want validated

is not correct to equate ur posts with loco's. he actually puts research and thought into his posts, and links studies with them. Almost no one else does this on the site when they post. I've learnt a bit from his posts, more than from anyone else on the site. I don't know what you mean by your last statement. +1 to loco calling you out on this very clear passive aggressive attack.

"It is death, then, that seems to give our life shape. The fact that we die is what makes what we do and who we do it with matter."

- Todd May, "Death"

Is death bad? Is immortality bad? If life is good it seems to be a dilemma.

I think we've actually talked about aspects of this many times on LP. What would be ideal? Staying 28 physically until age 5,000 and dying in one's sleep? Unfortunately, none of us will be that lucky. (SENs vs. climate emergency).

The last portion of the book is entitled "Living with Death." Let's find out what's in store.

some cultures view death as a pretty good thing. Thracians about 2500 years ago for example celebrated when someone died and mourned when someone was born (because of all the suffering they would have to endure). I personally am pretty indifferent.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not just about death but the meaning of life.I have this quote that pretty much sums it up for me at this point.....

"“Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for self-expression. But that was probably a shaky theory, for some men who work the hardest have nothing to express. A hypothesis with rather more plausibility in it now suggests itself. It is that men work simply in order to escape the depressing agony of contemplating life – that their work, like their play, is a mumbo-jumbo that serves them by permitting them to escape from reality. Both work and play, ordinarily, are illusions. Neither serves any solid or permanent purpose. But life, stripped of such illusions, instantly becomes unbearable. Man cannot sit still, contemplating his destiny in this world, without going frantic. So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror. He works. He plays. He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property. He strives for the coy eyewink called fame. He founds a family, and spends his curse over others. All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself, to forget himself, to escape the tragic-comedy that is himself. Life, fundamentally, is not worth living. So he confects artificialities to make it so. So he erects a gaudy structure to conceal the fact that it is not so.”

you gotta keep your mind off the horror. Unless you are a buddhist monk, don't know how they do it

On September 18 2019 07:02 Loco wrote: [QUOTE]On September 18 2019 06:27 Baalim wrote: how does community and contributing is meaning in the phylosophical sense? you will perish, the people you contributed to will pernish the community will perish and there will be a time where all living things are dead, everything done forgotten, everything built destroyed, oblivion is inescapable. On the other hand consciousness lasts us just an instant, so make the most of it and enjoy it, if helping others enjoy it makes you feel good, then by all means go ahead, funny thing that stoics and epicureans saw themselves as philosophical opponents but in reality their philosophies are complementary.

Their philosophies are not compatible with one another. The Stoics, just as Aristotle later presented it, believed that "man is a political animal" and they taught that you could only live virtuously if you were engaged in civic life and helping your fellow men. The Epicureans withdrew from political life entirely because they saw it as too troubling and frustrating and that went against their ultimate aim of attaining tranquility through pleasure.

Couldn't they be compatible though? I am not Epicurean but I do see the value in simple pleasures. Avoiding cocaine traps. Taking out an alcoholic within their first month of sobriety to a lovely, local coffee shop to discuss sobriety rather than donating enough to an art museum so I can have my name included somewhere and drink champagne with fellow donors.

"Humans [are] living their death, dying their life" - Heraclitus. Destruction and creation are complementary processes. Creation is just as inevitable as destruction is. Even though life will end on this planet, and life was improbable here, there is a good case to be made that it is also inevitable in the universe. The only reason we can live is because we are constantly dying and regenerating ourselves, we are negentropic beings. We could live for a very long time as a species if our forms of social organization weren't so anti-life. Some people's contributions are not really perishable-- they are contributions to a body of abstract knowledge and practices that are then passed down through the generations. This is what separates us from all of the other animals and allowed us to move beyond base Darwinian pressures. Humans are symbolic beings that are both the products and the creators of a culture that retroacts on them. They can leave something that's very much real behind them: information. And information is not matter or energy, it is only information, as Norbert Weiner said. It requires matter and energy but it is not reducible to it. Energy itself cannot be created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics).

But, that information is not them. They will die or are dead already.

Merleau-Ponty is the one who got it right when he said that humans are condemned to meaning. We are historico-cultural beings constantly constructing life, perception itself is a co-constructive process, not a representational one, as Maturana and Varela showed. We are not passively experiencing life through consciousness. We cannot separate meaning from our own active/co-creating consciousnesses and interests; we do not have access to some objective vantage point by which we can claim to speak disinterestedly, "in the name of the universe" and from where we come back with the realization that "it's all meaningless". I think those who constantly talk of meaninglessness do so more out of a motivation to rationalize their personal feelings of impotence or their unwillingness to live as adults engaged in the world than anything else.

In the sharing the food in the sinking ship example. Maybe that lasts for an hour. We talk about our existence on this earth being ~85 years or in other terms a blip in existence. It's all relative. What we owe to each other is dignity.

I may love the novel "Infinite Jest' but David Foster Wallace is dead. What are you arguing that information actually is? Is David Foster Wallace alive through "Infinite Jest" ? or is just the information alive as energy? I could argue that "Infinite Jest" was simply a project that DFW completed at some point. However, it has touched me obviously which can not be overlooked. There is no Michael Schur if there is no DFW whose projects have also touched me. We are all touching and inspiring each other (sometimes literally). That is part of what makes us human. Mort formidable. Is formidable French or English (or both)? That is why we need ethics so we can treat each other with dignity because we will all die one day. Valor Morghulis.

On September 18 2019 21:07 dnagardi wrote: I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not just about death but the meaning of life.I have this quote that pretty much sums it up for me at this point..... "“Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for self-expression. But that was probably a shaky theory, for some men who work the hardest have nothing to express. A hypothesis with rather more plausibility in it now suggests itself. It is that men work simply in order to escape the depressing agony of contemplating life – that their work, like their play, is a mumbo-jumbo that serves them by permitting them to escape from reality. Both work and play, ordinarily, are illusions. Neither serves any solid or permanent purpose. But life, stripped of such illusions, instantly becomes unbearable. Man cannot sit still, contemplating his destiny in this world, without going frantic. So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror. He works. He plays. He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property. He strives for the coy eyewink called fame. He founds a family, and spends his curse over others. All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself, to forget himself, to escape the tragic-comedy that is himself. Life, fundamentally, is not worth living. So he confects artificialities to make it so. So he erects a gaudy structure to conceal the fact that it is not so.” you gotta keep your mind off the horror. Unless you are a buddhist monk, don't know how they do it

I disagree. Don't push it down. Don't buy a sports car and do cocaine and attempt some socialite life. Face it. Read Sartre and Camus. Read Death. Read Denial of Death. Existential Psychoanalysis. Death is formidable. It is both something to be respected and feared and also something wonderful. Our lives are played for higher stakes. We only have so much time to engage in projects, relationships, etc. and the stakes are higher because we only get this 1 life. Anywhere from 1 millisecond more to say maybe 70 more years.

On September 18 2019 21:07 dnagardi wrote: I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not just about death but the meaning of life.I have this quote that pretty much sums it up for me at this point..... "“Once I ventured the guess that men worked in response to a vague inner urge for self-expression. But that was probably a shaky theory, for some men who work the hardest have nothing to express. A hypothesis with rather more plausibility in it now suggests itself. It is that men work simply in order to escape the depressing agony of contemplating life – that their work, like their play, is a mumbo-jumbo that serves them by permitting them to escape from reality. Both work and play, ordinarily, are illusions. Neither serves any solid or permanent purpose. But life, stripped of such illusions, instantly becomes unbearable. Man cannot sit still, contemplating his destiny in this world, without going frantic. So he invents ways to take his mind off the horror. He works. He plays. He accumulates the preposterous nothing called property. He strives for the coy eyewink called fame. He founds a family, and spends his curse over others. All the while the thing that moves him is simply the yearning to lose himself, to forget himself, to escape the tragic-comedy that is himself. Life, fundamentally, is not worth living. So he confects artificialities to make it so. So he erects a gaudy structure to conceal the fact that it is not so.” you gotta keep your mind off the horror. Unless you are a buddhist monk, don't know how they do it

https://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-for...e,_Meaning_in_Meaninglessness.html#10

I posted that quote here in 2016. The analysis is valid but only insofar as you look at the current state of affairs. The main issue with Mencken there is that he goes too far in saying that life is fundamentally not worth living, because he universalizes or globalizes a problem while he (and everyone else) has only ever had a local experience of life. That experience of course is of living under capitalism and its oppressive structures, and it colors his value judgments. It's not life or even our individual finitude that's the biggest problem, its the constraints that those systems impose upon our existence. Mencken also imposes a negative value judgment on the conception of play itself, which is suspicious. Play can actually be a form of self-expression, a way to channel an inborn creative drive. I think, like Chomsky, that the rigid systems of domination that shape our life from a very young age stifle a natural curiosity and creativity. We tend to mistake the result of social structures and constructs that can be changed into something of an inevitability.

On September 18 2019 17:33 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On September 18 2019 07:44 LemOn[5thF] wrote: btw it's pretty funny I'm not trying to educate or anything I'm just talking to myself here trying to streamline what I absorbed from the books I read recently :D Same reason why just naturally stop reading Loco's posts, and why people don't read mine If you really wanted knowledge, would you really ever do what I did and blurt out my opinions? Fuck no, you would just ask questions, it's pretty cool to see when people like me or Loco make these statement posts it's coming from a place of uncertainty they want validated People rely on feedback from others to learn and want to be liked and validated? Big thought. That has nothing to do with why you don't supposedly read my posts, and most importantly, why you think that's worth mentioning publicly. It's a passive aggressive thing to say, but I guess all those Zen books you expertly read over a decade haven't taught you what that is and why it's no way to communicate with people. You know what kind of person feels the need to be passive aggressive with others? Or tell them how much they have been "constantly meditating and reading over the last ten years"? People with low self-esteem. Attacking me through passive aggression by implying my posts are not worth reading is just an airing out of your own insecurities.

I mean that's what's funny, not a virtue but my failing to understand the very basic of buddhism after doing so much shit for so long

And it wasn't obvious
I wondered why I just had the tendency to skip your posts
And come on it is pretty funny - it is because of the self-righteous tone that actually has very non-virtuous motivations you always seemed too full of yourself attacking Baal and stuff, talking in statement and disagreement instead of questions
I realized that after doing the very same thing in multiple posts

That's the beautiful absurdity of the human condition, we're in this together so much of what we do, especially arguing a certain point of view just makes little sense from a logical standpoint I find it amusing. And of course posting this is also me being amused by my insecurities, what value does it really have? Humanity itself is pretty bizzare


Now it feels right to end with another illogical passive aggressive statement, because it just feels good for some reason


and say sorry if I hurt your feelings!


lol

On September 18 2019 20:37 RiKD wrote: Is death bad? Is immortality bad? If life is good it seems to be a dilemma. I think we've actually talked about aspects of this many times on LP. What would be ideal? Staying 28 physically until age 5,000 and dying in one's sleep? Unfortunately, none of us will be that lucky. (SENs vs. climate emergency). The last portion of the book is entitled "Living with Death." Let's find out what's in store.

Would that be lucky at all though

Harari talked about this
There really might become a point with technology
Where the rich might achieve a de-facto immortality
Destroying the balance and one thing all people have in common

And if you don't die and presumably eventually don't age with cyborg bodies - what's the rush to do anything, or purpose?


I kindof like the certainty I will die
And the certain uncertainty of now knowing when