The things you describe are not a bug in humanity they are a prominent feature and inherent in our species. Bless your heart but you want us to be something we never were and never can be. We can never be what is not inherent in us, history has proven that: from the time humans were dwelling in caves to becoming sedentary and then building entire civilizations what you describe: hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... have been part of the human condition. And all throughout it people have known mortality. This is nothing new. In many ways feudalism never ended, it has just been renamed with ever more colorful terms. There has never been a time in history where humans not waged war against one another, where they did not pillage and destroy and starve their neighbor's kids. Nothing has changed and nothing will change. Humans won't stop until they have burned it all - the planet and everything on it - to the ground. That is part of our programming, the rest is wishful thinking at best, denial at worst. And I get it, who wants to believe they are part of a species programmed to destroy, pillage, murder and set on fire everything it gets its hands on? Speak of accepting that which cannot be changed: accept that this is who we are. All we can do is be kind to ourselves, those around us and the creatures that walk this Earth with us. But the trajectory is the same for our species and the planet we are inhabiting no matter what. All we can do is make it a little less painful on an individual, micro scale but the outcome for us a species will always be the same.
This is a dark view, indeed, but not logical no matter what "evidence" is marshalled in support. We do many things and they are by definition "natural": that doesn't in any way imply mandated by genetics. Were the positive and beautiful not basic, we wouldn't be here by now.
Human beings are by nature whimsical, in my view: we love to laugh, dance, sing, draw, paint build, make music, share, enjoy. I have watched movies in an almost deserted theatre, but I can't say I actively enjoyed the experience. I have eaten meals alone and didn't enjoy that either. In the final analysis, the cruel mean, petty people are their own punishment, in my view; it is better to be on the receiving end than the perpetrator. Small comfort, but it is comfort.
I will always believe the system in general makes people what they are. You can change though, if you understand what is ruling you and why.
It is not a dark view, it is an inconvenient view but it is the reality of the human species. You have over 10,000 years as your evidence. Enjoying laughter, fun, good times, good company, creating art and music and beauty do not negate those realities. Being capable of doing good and seeing good has not been a defining feature of our 10,000+ year long history and civilization. Being good and doing good are things that have to be learned and require immense effort to enforce on a societal level. They are not our natural state. As they say, most people are 9 meals away from anarchy and for quite a few the only thing keeping them from going fully ballistic on their neighbor is the thin veneer of civilization.
If you think the future is going to look like what Roddenberry envisioned with Star Trek where humanity will have learned its lessons and finally created a just society based on the principles of economic and environmental justice then you will be disappointed. And the system you speak of does not exist in the abstract, it is made up of people, of human beings, they make the system.
The cruel mean, petty people are us, not some abstract entity "out there". And in that sense I guess yes, we are our own punishment. We are destroying our lives, our planet, plunging us into war, destitution, misery and bankruptcy. Bezos or Gates or Musk are not anomalies of humanity. If they went away, someone else would replace them. Just look at all the Musk sycophants who see the damage he is causing but are still enamored of him. Why? Cause they wanna be him. They look at him and they do not see a liability or a wreck of a human being, they see a great visionary and exemplary human being , the prime example of success, which they hope to be one day. And if not then aspire to so maybe their kids can be him.
I appreciate your perspective. After a lifetime of trying to understand, for today my conclusion is that every physical form passes away -- no exceptions -- and the means by which each form disintegrates and transforms is not evil, just part of the process. Human beings hate the cancer cells that facilitate the conclusion of our physical lives, but are the cancer cells evil? Years ago I was intrigued by the premise that perhaps Judas was honored to play a pivotal role in the death and resurrection of Jesus. I've experienced many deaths/rebirths over my lifetime: the deaths were inevitable and made possible the rebirth. So I'm not at all certain the rapacious greed and fear that drives so many and may bring about the death of the planet is evil either, any more than death itself is evil except in the minds of people who feel entitled to be gods who live forever.
"the cruel mean, petty people are their own punishment" - I bet they love it you take it that way. As they have no scruples doing what they're doing and they don't give a damn what you might be thinking of them.
Most importantly, their deeds do the damage for all whether one puts oneself above that or not.
Sorry, history has not proven even a little bit that those things are inherent to our species. What actually is inherent is that we are prone, when seduced and defrauded and conned and put into dread, of doing horrible, horrible things *at the orders of "superiors" and "authorities"*.
Hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... have been part of the human condition, but *only* because an infinitesimal fraction of humanity -- those who obsess about gaining "power" over other people -- have manipulated their peepstock, now, for thousands of years.
In order to argue that people would naturally, willingly opt for hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... *in the absence* of that manipulation would first require that you *find* people who are not obsessed with gaining "power" over other people, who were not seduced and defrauded and conned and put into dread, who were not ordered by "superiors" and "authorities" to do horrible, horrible things -- and nonetheless chose violence over peace, property over people, and hatred over love, and crimes against humanity over the good and welfare of all.
I sincerely doubt that you're even aware of such people, let alone have any evidence at all that they chose, all things being good and equal, to become violent and evil.
I appreciate you believe what you believe which is our human right, our human burden, and a major human limitation all at once. We have our deepest powers in our beliefs, our convictions, from which we then manifest the material rest of our human legacy for better or worse. However part of this insane power is that we can take control of it, on an individual level, when a belief no longer serves us and choose something better, although the 20th century is riddled with humans thinking science, money, nationalism, and ideology were improvements on religions and traditions, when they were just as messed up. Perhaps we were so naiively fixated on the new toy we didn't see what it was doing to "us" until the next historical verse of human atrocities were written in the wake. All of our beliefs are contracts, and when they don't serve us we can destroy them. So looking at the historical references you made, I would posit that most of history has been banal, and thus lost. Short of King Ashoka, the stories of political maneuvering appear to be the applied focus of belief of a human as living God, which is monarchism and aristocracy in a nutshell. Much like a billionaires significance is its being the manifest deprivation of millions of others of its hoarded status, royalty functions in a similar realm. If people took this part of themselves seriously and realized it was a common power we can access, perhaps we could stop rewriting the nightmare sequels of history. In the moment of grasping that power, myopia and solipsism are the norm leading to the delusions of the monarch. I hope we can figure out the way to dream better and believe in something a little closer to the source from which we emerged.
The state of the world is not ordained, not mystical, not unchangeable. As irrational as it is, it is the logical outcome of centuries of crazy thinking on gender and sexual norms, biases in relationships between peoples and nations, and trade policies taken as gospel with no regard for actual outcomes. We have been trained to admire violence, coercion, power and control over nature and people, and even passing it off as democracy. The perceived benefits were only short range and the accumulated harm rationalized and hidden from view. But it has become painfully obvious and undeniable. Maybe it can be reversed.
Hmm, well actually, our humanity should unite us. And does sometimes. Unfortunately humans are a tribal species. In my (humble) opinion efforts might best be directed at minimising this instinct to defend against those we perceive as outsiders. Instead, of course our "leaders" in the West try to emphasise and encourage this in us. (It's more profitable for the MIC).
I do have an issue with the apparently obvious assertion that "we're all going to die." Yes and no.
Your body dies. For sure. Once you reach a certain age you come to recognise this. However, fearing this is due to identification with your body. Saying you die is actually as much a delusion as saying you don't die.
Now I'm confusing you. It's not easy to explain this, especially to a cynical audience (such as it is). I'm not really an expert communicator. There's nothing airy-fairy or "spiritual" about this though.
Maybe the best I can do is ask you maybe to realise that although your conscious, thinking self is carried by and within your body it is not really actually your body. So you can say your body dies (and ages) but "you" don't.
So do I have this right? You conclude that mortal death is evidence that consciousness is immortal? And, furthermore, it’s cynical to view that as simply wishful thinking? Is this what passes for “enlightened?”
I’m an atheist, and I don’t think any part of anybody survives their corporeal end. Also, I don’t think anybody on this side of the terra firma is equipped to prove that my perspective is wrong. One thing that living in a land that is gauged to be over 80% “religious,” and where selling is the default activity of the transactional culture...there will be no shortage of purveyors of the ultimate truth. Hallelujah!
Ideology is a grand preoccupation of living humans. From the major religions and their numerous variants, to the hundreds of nationalist creeds, there are countless individuals who are willing to kill and willing to die over that which they cannot know.
That people try to hide behind all kinds of instruments to justify their deeds has nothing to do with those instruments. If I decide to jump off the bridge because somebody (or something) told me to - who's to blame, ultimately?
And if a bunch do jump, well, it's their decision still. Currently, it seems the majority is happy to. Full speed then.
"One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind."
—G.I. Gurdjieff – teacher of "inner work" on one's self, known as the Gurdjieff Work, intended to help people awaken and come to self-realization.
Gurdjieff asserted that people live in a state of "waking sleep" in a world of illusion. There is much truth to this. Most people prefer to ignore the Truth and choose to instead devote their time and attention to entertainment.
Life may well be "an intimate dance with death," but it is not a conscious dance, because people don't really live. They only imagine and dream that they are alive, all the while remaining unaware of what being fully alive really means.
Absolutely Superb. Made me think of Dicken's line in A Christmas Carol describing the Christmastide as being that all too brief time of the year when we remember that we are all just passengers on a voyage to the grave. Caitlin at her very best-Thank You.
My comment no way exonerates , cruel, mean petty people. But what they do is not remediable by law. So there is nothing you can do but avoid them and /or ignore them: retaliation in kind justifies them in some way. There is no point in coming down to their level, is there? I am no saint, but I try to refrain from personal remarks. I'm not always successful.
This is truly profound, Caitlin. I'm almost 70, and from this perspective, what you are describing sure rings true. When we lose someone who has been with us our whole life (parents, siblings, . . .) it sure alerts us to how much each loved one means to us and to our own sense of self. Even losing celebrities who were integrated into our culture (John Lennon), can stop our "rat race" perspective and help us clarify what is truly important to us and how fragile our existence is. Our best lives can be lived with this awareness as a constant. Thank you.
No truer statement: "A whole lot of perception management goes into keeping us from seeing clearly what's going on here, and what they're taking from us, and how much better this world could be."
As the old saying goes, "You're not getting out of this alive." We would do better if we kept that always in the forefront our minds as we treated our neighbors in the way we wished to be treated.
Although I don't look at death darkly through the lens of a fanatical materialist i.e. I do think there is a good chance death is just a kind of transition for consciousness, which leaves the body - like someone stepping out of a spacesuit; I also, like Caitlin here find it curious how so many go about their business with little care about their own mortality or the mortality of others. I guess the usual answer I've heard is, well there is nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it?
But that's just it - even though personally, I lean toward consciousness as something more fundamental to reality than just a random product of electrons and chemicals - and if that makes me "spiritual" then so be it. But do I or any of us really know, 100% know for certain? Maybe death really is the annihilation of who we are forever, in a cold, random reality, that we desperately attempt to make some kind of human meaning out of, but as Emerson once wrote - is just a collection of nested boxes - chinese boxes, and when one opens the last box, it is empty - as death and reality are empty in the end. Although it does seem to be the dominant intellectual paradigm these days i.e. rationalism, existentialism - and the strong belief that there is nothing more awaiting one except the final merciless splat after falling from the jet airline, as Caitlin writes - but even that is just a *belief* that remains pretty much unproven right now - that is, the mind/body problem does remain an open question in human philosophy and our sciences, despite what others might insist is the case.
But why the rush to that unknown? It seems remarkable to me that so many have already been willing to lose their lives in Ukraine. Apparently, from what I have heard, 10s of thousands have already died in a war that could have been easily diplomatically resolved - and still can be diplomatically resolved. So many people - willing to lose their lives - maybe some could care less, a kind of suicide - but if one loves life, or loves other people - why would one be in such a rush to lose the only life you got? It is puzzling to me. Caitlin is right - we keep our mortality at a distance, and perhaps this is a mistake.
Right spot on as always! I just happen to be at this very point in life having lost all of my family in the past 3 years and 2 of them just 2 months ago. Broken heart doesn't come close. I am very aware of the Reaper at the door!
Great! Mortality is definitely a key question when it comes to breaking through the illusions.
The propaganda and dog-training we get in modern education is all about getting us to forget what we actually are, or were. For some, it’s just a faint glimmer from childhood, of that love, and awe, and joy, not being afraid to experiment, or be curious.
Real education is about remembering, and having the experience of the “light turning on” in one’s head. How much effort has gone into suppressing that, and instead convincing people that “No, forget whatever was in your head, or what the deeper voice inside you says; this is what you need if you want to pass the test.”
Bukowksi now there was an entity who spouted poetry, sprouted brains per glass, per bottle and had the bottle to throttle stupidity by evisceration with a few slicing semantics not waiting for the romantics with their antics to arrive. I'm just reading fragments from the 12th Dynasty ancient Egypt and in one, how apt how modern, how indifferent people were when chaos overwhelmed them during invasions from the eastern hordes coming to pay a visit. This sage laments at the his incomprehensibility to understand them. Concludes if he could he would and blames himself because he can't but does in the end. Pulls his finger out as they say. Six thousand years later, what can one say. Good people are being misused by our politicians. Whom they suddenly accept that they re Covid Dictatorshit - ditto my neighbour: since when have politicians told the truth? Because they believed all that. Worse was trying lightheartedly to tell them its all crap and their eyes glazed over. Too much television. Not called the idiot box for nothing. Keep it up, keep ripping into stupidity, and we can pick over the metaphysical gore you favour us with.
Best line = "The whole game depends on everyone spending long expanses of time forgetting that none of us get out of this alive." This to me re-enforces the notion that self delusion is a natural act - the Propaganda machine knows this as well and uses our own "defenses" against us.
The things you describe are not a bug in humanity they are a prominent feature and inherent in our species. Bless your heart but you want us to be something we never were and never can be. We can never be what is not inherent in us, history has proven that: from the time humans were dwelling in caves to becoming sedentary and then building entire civilizations what you describe: hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... have been part of the human condition. And all throughout it people have known mortality. This is nothing new. In many ways feudalism never ended, it has just been renamed with ever more colorful terms. There has never been a time in history where humans not waged war against one another, where they did not pillage and destroy and starve their neighbor's kids. Nothing has changed and nothing will change. Humans won't stop until they have burned it all - the planet and everything on it - to the ground. That is part of our programming, the rest is wishful thinking at best, denial at worst. And I get it, who wants to believe they are part of a species programmed to destroy, pillage, murder and set on fire everything it gets its hands on? Speak of accepting that which cannot be changed: accept that this is who we are. All we can do is be kind to ourselves, those around us and the creatures that walk this Earth with us. But the trajectory is the same for our species and the planet we are inhabiting no matter what. All we can do is make it a little less painful on an individual, micro scale but the outcome for us a species will always be the same.
This is a dark view, indeed, but not logical no matter what "evidence" is marshalled in support. We do many things and they are by definition "natural": that doesn't in any way imply mandated by genetics. Were the positive and beautiful not basic, we wouldn't be here by now.
Human beings are by nature whimsical, in my view: we love to laugh, dance, sing, draw, paint build, make music, share, enjoy. I have watched movies in an almost deserted theatre, but I can't say I actively enjoyed the experience. I have eaten meals alone and didn't enjoy that either. In the final analysis, the cruel mean, petty people are their own punishment, in my view; it is better to be on the receiving end than the perpetrator. Small comfort, but it is comfort.
I will always believe the system in general makes people what they are. You can change though, if you understand what is ruling you and why.
It is not a dark view, it is an inconvenient view but it is the reality of the human species. You have over 10,000 years as your evidence. Enjoying laughter, fun, good times, good company, creating art and music and beauty do not negate those realities. Being capable of doing good and seeing good has not been a defining feature of our 10,000+ year long history and civilization. Being good and doing good are things that have to be learned and require immense effort to enforce on a societal level. They are not our natural state. As they say, most people are 9 meals away from anarchy and for quite a few the only thing keeping them from going fully ballistic on their neighbor is the thin veneer of civilization.
If you think the future is going to look like what Roddenberry envisioned with Star Trek where humanity will have learned its lessons and finally created a just society based on the principles of economic and environmental justice then you will be disappointed. And the system you speak of does not exist in the abstract, it is made up of people, of human beings, they make the system.
The cruel mean, petty people are us, not some abstract entity "out there". And in that sense I guess yes, we are our own punishment. We are destroying our lives, our planet, plunging us into war, destitution, misery and bankruptcy. Bezos or Gates or Musk are not anomalies of humanity. If they went away, someone else would replace them. Just look at all the Musk sycophants who see the damage he is causing but are still enamored of him. Why? Cause they wanna be him. They look at him and they do not see a liability or a wreck of a human being, they see a great visionary and exemplary human being , the prime example of success, which they hope to be one day. And if not then aspire to so maybe their kids can be him.
I appreciate your perspective. After a lifetime of trying to understand, for today my conclusion is that every physical form passes away -- no exceptions -- and the means by which each form disintegrates and transforms is not evil, just part of the process. Human beings hate the cancer cells that facilitate the conclusion of our physical lives, but are the cancer cells evil? Years ago I was intrigued by the premise that perhaps Judas was honored to play a pivotal role in the death and resurrection of Jesus. I've experienced many deaths/rebirths over my lifetime: the deaths were inevitable and made possible the rebirth. So I'm not at all certain the rapacious greed and fear that drives so many and may bring about the death of the planet is evil either, any more than death itself is evil except in the minds of people who feel entitled to be gods who live forever.
"the cruel mean, petty people are their own punishment" - I bet they love it you take it that way. As they have no scruples doing what they're doing and they don't give a damn what you might be thinking of them.
Most importantly, their deeds do the damage for all whether one puts oneself above that or not.
Sorry, history has not proven even a little bit that those things are inherent to our species. What actually is inherent is that we are prone, when seduced and defrauded and conned and put into dread, of doing horrible, horrible things *at the orders of "superiors" and "authorities"*.
Hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... have been part of the human condition, but *only* because an infinitesimal fraction of humanity -- those who obsess about gaining "power" over other people -- have manipulated their peepstock, now, for thousands of years.
In order to argue that people would naturally, willingly opt for hate, combativeness, killing one another over resources, land, food, water, wealth, vanity, power... *in the absence* of that manipulation would first require that you *find* people who are not obsessed with gaining "power" over other people, who were not seduced and defrauded and conned and put into dread, who were not ordered by "superiors" and "authorities" to do horrible, horrible things -- and nonetheless chose violence over peace, property over people, and hatred over love, and crimes against humanity over the good and welfare of all.
I sincerely doubt that you're even aware of such people, let alone have any evidence at all that they chose, all things being good and equal, to become violent and evil.
LOL. yes, it's just a few bad apples. You got it.
Where did i say that? Oh, I remember! Nowhere! 😂
If that's all you got out of what I wrote, oh well. Be well and prosper, anyway! 🖖
I appreciate you believe what you believe which is our human right, our human burden, and a major human limitation all at once. We have our deepest powers in our beliefs, our convictions, from which we then manifest the material rest of our human legacy for better or worse. However part of this insane power is that we can take control of it, on an individual level, when a belief no longer serves us and choose something better, although the 20th century is riddled with humans thinking science, money, nationalism, and ideology were improvements on religions and traditions, when they were just as messed up. Perhaps we were so naiively fixated on the new toy we didn't see what it was doing to "us" until the next historical verse of human atrocities were written in the wake. All of our beliefs are contracts, and when they don't serve us we can destroy them. So looking at the historical references you made, I would posit that most of history has been banal, and thus lost. Short of King Ashoka, the stories of political maneuvering appear to be the applied focus of belief of a human as living God, which is monarchism and aristocracy in a nutshell. Much like a billionaires significance is its being the manifest deprivation of millions of others of its hoarded status, royalty functions in a similar realm. If people took this part of themselves seriously and realized it was a common power we can access, perhaps we could stop rewriting the nightmare sequels of history. In the moment of grasping that power, myopia and solipsism are the norm leading to the delusions of the monarch. I hope we can figure out the way to dream better and believe in something a little closer to the source from which we emerged.
The state of the world is not ordained, not mystical, not unchangeable. As irrational as it is, it is the logical outcome of centuries of crazy thinking on gender and sexual norms, biases in relationships between peoples and nations, and trade policies taken as gospel with no regard for actual outcomes. We have been trained to admire violence, coercion, power and control over nature and people, and even passing it off as democracy. The perceived benefits were only short range and the accumulated harm rationalized and hidden from view. But it has become painfully obvious and undeniable. Maybe it can be reversed.
Hmm, well actually, our humanity should unite us. And does sometimes. Unfortunately humans are a tribal species. In my (humble) opinion efforts might best be directed at minimising this instinct to defend against those we perceive as outsiders. Instead, of course our "leaders" in the West try to emphasise and encourage this in us. (It's more profitable for the MIC).
I do have an issue with the apparently obvious assertion that "we're all going to die." Yes and no.
Your body dies. For sure. Once you reach a certain age you come to recognise this. However, fearing this is due to identification with your body. Saying you die is actually as much a delusion as saying you don't die.
Now I'm confusing you. It's not easy to explain this, especially to a cynical audience (such as it is). I'm not really an expert communicator. There's nothing airy-fairy or "spiritual" about this though.
Maybe the best I can do is ask you maybe to realise that although your conscious, thinking self is carried by and within your body it is not really actually your body. So you can say your body dies (and ages) but "you" don't.
So do I have this right? You conclude that mortal death is evidence that consciousness is immortal? And, furthermore, it’s cynical to view that as simply wishful thinking? Is this what passes for “enlightened?”
I’m an atheist, and I don’t think any part of anybody survives their corporeal end. Also, I don’t think anybody on this side of the terra firma is equipped to prove that my perspective is wrong. One thing that living in a land that is gauged to be over 80% “religious,” and where selling is the default activity of the transactional culture...there will be no shortage of purveyors of the ultimate truth. Hallelujah!
"I don't think anybody on this side of the terra firma is equipped to prove that my perspective is wrong" - nor anyone can prove it is right.
Ideology is a grand preoccupation of living humans. From the major religions and their numerous variants, to the hundreds of nationalist creeds, there are countless individuals who are willing to kill and willing to die over that which they cannot know.
That people try to hide behind all kinds of instruments to justify their deeds has nothing to do with those instruments. If I decide to jump off the bridge because somebody (or something) told me to - who's to blame, ultimately?
And if a bunch do jump, well, it's their decision still. Currently, it seems the majority is happy to. Full speed then.
This is powerful, Caitlin. Thank you.💕
"One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind."
—G.I. Gurdjieff – teacher of "inner work" on one's self, known as the Gurdjieff Work, intended to help people awaken and come to self-realization.
Gurdjieff asserted that people live in a state of "waking sleep" in a world of illusion. There is much truth to this. Most people prefer to ignore the Truth and choose to instead devote their time and attention to entertainment.
Life may well be "an intimate dance with death," but it is not a conscious dance, because people don't really live. They only imagine and dream that they are alive, all the while remaining unaware of what being fully alive really means.
Absolutely Superb. Made me think of Dicken's line in A Christmas Carol describing the Christmastide as being that all too brief time of the year when we remember that we are all just passengers on a voyage to the grave. Caitlin at her very best-Thank You.
My comment no way exonerates , cruel, mean petty people. But what they do is not remediable by law. So there is nothing you can do but avoid them and /or ignore them: retaliation in kind justifies them in some way. There is no point in coming down to their level, is there? I am no saint, but I try to refrain from personal remarks. I'm not always successful.
This is truly profound, Caitlin. I'm almost 70, and from this perspective, what you are describing sure rings true. When we lose someone who has been with us our whole life (parents, siblings, . . .) it sure alerts us to how much each loved one means to us and to our own sense of self. Even losing celebrities who were integrated into our culture (John Lennon), can stop our "rat race" perspective and help us clarify what is truly important to us and how fragile our existence is. Our best lives can be lived with this awareness as a constant. Thank you.
No truer statement: "A whole lot of perception management goes into keeping us from seeing clearly what's going on here, and what they're taking from us, and how much better this world could be."
As the old saying goes, "You're not getting out of this alive." We would do better if we kept that always in the forefront our minds as we treated our neighbors in the way we wished to be treated.
Brilliant, as always. My two cents: There is more to "this place" than we are generally aware of. Article speaks for itself: https://www.opednews.com/articles/Dropping-Out-the-Backdoor-by-Daniel-Geery-Biology_Conflict_Consciousness_Eternity-190418-424.html
Rough neighbourhood?
Although I don't look at death darkly through the lens of a fanatical materialist i.e. I do think there is a good chance death is just a kind of transition for consciousness, which leaves the body - like someone stepping out of a spacesuit; I also, like Caitlin here find it curious how so many go about their business with little care about their own mortality or the mortality of others. I guess the usual answer I've heard is, well there is nothing you can do about it, so why worry about it?
But that's just it - even though personally, I lean toward consciousness as something more fundamental to reality than just a random product of electrons and chemicals - and if that makes me "spiritual" then so be it. But do I or any of us really know, 100% know for certain? Maybe death really is the annihilation of who we are forever, in a cold, random reality, that we desperately attempt to make some kind of human meaning out of, but as Emerson once wrote - is just a collection of nested boxes - chinese boxes, and when one opens the last box, it is empty - as death and reality are empty in the end. Although it does seem to be the dominant intellectual paradigm these days i.e. rationalism, existentialism - and the strong belief that there is nothing more awaiting one except the final merciless splat after falling from the jet airline, as Caitlin writes - but even that is just a *belief* that remains pretty much unproven right now - that is, the mind/body problem does remain an open question in human philosophy and our sciences, despite what others might insist is the case.
But why the rush to that unknown? It seems remarkable to me that so many have already been willing to lose their lives in Ukraine. Apparently, from what I have heard, 10s of thousands have already died in a war that could have been easily diplomatically resolved - and still can be diplomatically resolved. So many people - willing to lose their lives - maybe some could care less, a kind of suicide - but if one loves life, or loves other people - why would one be in such a rush to lose the only life you got? It is puzzling to me. Caitlin is right - we keep our mortality at a distance, and perhaps this is a mistake.
Right spot on as always! I just happen to be at this very point in life having lost all of my family in the past 3 years and 2 of them just 2 months ago. Broken heart doesn't come close. I am very aware of the Reaper at the door!
Great! Mortality is definitely a key question when it comes to breaking through the illusions.
The propaganda and dog-training we get in modern education is all about getting us to forget what we actually are, or were. For some, it’s just a faint glimmer from childhood, of that love, and awe, and joy, not being afraid to experiment, or be curious.
Real education is about remembering, and having the experience of the “light turning on” in one’s head. How much effort has gone into suppressing that, and instead convincing people that “No, forget whatever was in your head, or what the deeper voice inside you says; this is what you need if you want to pass the test.”
Imagine what will be happening when there will be possibility of immortality?
It will be for just the 1% I guarantee.
Bukowksi now there was an entity who spouted poetry, sprouted brains per glass, per bottle and had the bottle to throttle stupidity by evisceration with a few slicing semantics not waiting for the romantics with their antics to arrive. I'm just reading fragments from the 12th Dynasty ancient Egypt and in one, how apt how modern, how indifferent people were when chaos overwhelmed them during invasions from the eastern hordes coming to pay a visit. This sage laments at the his incomprehensibility to understand them. Concludes if he could he would and blames himself because he can't but does in the end. Pulls his finger out as they say. Six thousand years later, what can one say. Good people are being misused by our politicians. Whom they suddenly accept that they re Covid Dictatorshit - ditto my neighbour: since when have politicians told the truth? Because they believed all that. Worse was trying lightheartedly to tell them its all crap and their eyes glazed over. Too much television. Not called the idiot box for nothing. Keep it up, keep ripping into stupidity, and we can pick over the metaphysical gore you favour us with.
Best line = "The whole game depends on everyone spending long expanses of time forgetting that none of us get out of this alive." This to me re-enforces the notion that self delusion is a natural act - the Propaganda machine knows this as well and uses our own "defenses" against us.