The Feeling of Nothing

[EnglishCrusader]

Same. Now I'm more concerned about the effects my death would have on my friends and family.

On a personal level I know I'm going to be gone someday and there's nothing I can do about it. No point in getting worked up over it prematurely.

Yup, that's like me. Death wouldn't bother me too much because I know that I'll die anyway, everyone does, but I'm more worried about the people that know me and how it will affect them rather than myself.

 

[katipunero]

Same. Now I'm more concerned about the effects my death would have on my friends and family.

On a personal level I know I'm going to be gone someday and there's nothing I can do about it. No point in getting worked up over it prematurely.

there's no time so premature as to begin worrying about death and the afterlife. as early as now, you should be planning for the distribution and administration of your estate, the structure of your assets and finances to avoid excessive amounts of estate taxes, and how your body is to be chopped up for organ transplantation.

seriously though, i voted no on the polls. i prefer complete void than some elaborate afterlife shindig when i finally kick the bucket.

nothingness is the best way to "not be" in my opinion.

on a related note....

time for some Shakespeare!


To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

 

[Birdjaguar]

But, is the captured fawn suffering because of attachment, or because there's a wolf pressing fangs into his neck?

The fawn is certainly experiencing some sort of pain and its instinct to live (attachment to life?) will keep it struggling as long as it can. The ability of our conscious minds to form attachments to people, places, things and even life it self are all related to how we suffer. The mother deer will suffer at the death of her fawn, but not in the exact same way you suffer at the loss of your loved ones. Our instincts and our genes support bonding and the forming of attachments through experience. It is the nature of the self to preserve itself and to bond with what is around it. the severing of those bonds is painful and we suffer.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The two build on each other. And there's a comfort to stability too.

If, and how, one separates love, consciousness and brain chemistry is an intellectual question and how one deals with those issues will determine who's on first, what's on second and if I don't know is on third.

 

[Souron]

Introspection serves the purpose of knowledge so the knowing is superior. I guess you can say that knowing through introspection is superior to other formes of knowledge.
What is vital then for you? In my wiew knowledge is vital as it leads to other even more important...

You seem to distinguish introspection and knowledge of your own affection, whereas I meant them as near synonyms. What's vital is the affection itself.

If, and how, one separates love, consciousness and brain chemistry is an intellectual question and how one deals with those issues will determine who's on first, what's on second and if I don't know is on third.

Cleverly put. Nomenclature often matters, but I agree there's no sense in splitting hairs in this discussion.

 

[Birdjaguar]

You seem to distinguish introspection and knowledge of your own affection, whereas I meant them as near synonyms. What's vital is the affection itself.

Cleverly put. Nomenclature often matters, but I agree there's no sense in splitting hairs in this discussion.

I wasn't sure if you would catch the reference. The confirmation research alone was fun.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

I suppose there can be different kind of "nothingness"; the folloving is a description of yogic experience of Nirvana from the book I was just reading:

It(Nirvana) threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world-only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. there was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above,-no abstraction,-it was positive, the only positive reality,-although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial. I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or rapturous in the experience, as it then came to me, .... but what it brought was inexpressible Peace, a stupendous Silence, an infinity of release and freedom.
I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Infinity remained always, with the world or all worlds only as continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.

 

[El_Machinae]

The fawn is certainly experiencing some sort of pain and its instinct to live (attachment to life?) will keep it struggling as long as it can.

My point was that the 'vibe' you seem to be putting forward is that suffering can be removed by some type of cognitive effort on our parts, that unwanted suffering can be excised through an act of will or introspection.

This doesn't seem to be true, because the fawn does not have a cognitive tool with which to detach itself from its suffering. It's in horrid pain until it dies. Now, fawns and people are different in many ways, but you seem to be suggesting that (for some reason) humans have this capability. Why would we think that? What is special about us such that we 'should' have this ability, when deer do not? It seems to be thinking the people are special in a spiritual way, in some type of threshold capacity.

Apologies if I've read too deeply into the philosophy, I know you get strawmanned quite a bit, and I don't mean to.

 

[Ran88dom99]

Fall asleep and the universe ends. You don't get get to see anything. Nothing happens after dieing. This is why I am a vegetarian.

Society currently spends about 0.5% of its income on medical research (gov't, charities, business, etc.).

Those in charge of money either don't need it, want it, or think it will work. By 'it' i mean longer, healthier, lives. AI research has similar implications.

 

[Takhisis]

A vegetarian? What does that have to do with anything?

 

[Linkman226]

Because (s)he understands that this is a one shot deal, so to deprive another feeling being of this experience is inhumane.

 

[Takhisis]

If cockroaches infest your house, don't deprive them of the experience.
Also, please don't wear any clothes made of leather or other animal products.

 

[Linkman226]

As to the first point- cockroaches don't experience the world in any meaningful way

As to the second point- I don't wear animal products, fyi

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Well, I'd say death is just a part of life, so I have no problem eating animals.

I also wouldn't cry moral fault on some hypothetical race of aliens who come here and eat solely humans. I'd fight to survive, but its not like anything can "blame" things higher in the food chain.

 

[Birdjaguar]

My point was that the 'vibe' you seem to be putting forward is that suffering can be removed by some type of cognitive effort on our parts, that unwanted suffering can be excised through an act of will or introspection.

This doesn't seem to be true, because the fawn does not have a cognitive tool with which to detach itself from its suffering. It's in horrid pain until it dies. Now, fawns and people are different in many ways, but you seem to be suggesting that (for some reason) humans have this capability. Why would we think that? What is special about us such that we 'should' have this ability, when deer do not? It seems to be thinking the people are special in a spiritual way, in some type of threshold capacity.

Apologies if I've read too deeply into the philosophy, I know you get strawmanned quite a bit, and I don't mean to.

The "vibe" as you put it, that suffering can be mitigated through cognitive effort is not far off my mark. But I would add that a creature needs to have the cognitive ability to do so. The easiest line to draw would be "humans yes, all others no", but I would not do so because I really don't think it is necessary. I would say that the ability of a creature to form attachments would determine the degree to which the creature can suffer. This leads to a discussion defining pain vs suffering. To avoid going there at the moment, I would say that people can reduce their attachments to people and things and not reduce the joy of living and be less prone to suffering, and they can do this by choice (ignoring any discussion about free will etc. )

To go back to the fawn for a moment. It endures pain (suffers pain?) just as any person caught in the jaws of a wild creature would. Few people can mitigate such stimulus to our brain and when it gets very bad we might just pass out unless death comes quickly. The pain/suffering ones feels at the death of family and friends is of an entirely different quality (as is the suffering from not having that big piece of chocolate dessert). We should not try and mix everything into a single situation when it is not so simple.

 

[Takhisis]

As to the first point- cockroaches don't experience the world in any meaningful way

As to the second point- I don't wear animal products, fyi

Who are you to decide what is 'meaningful'? If this is the only world and the only existence I can't be punished for exterminating everyone else alive.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Who are you to decide what is 'meaningful'? If this is the only world and the only existence I can't be punished for exterminating everyone else alive.

Cockroaches aren't intelligent enough to be even nearly as aware of their surroundings and life and living itself as we humans are.

 

[Ran88dom99]

I also wouldn't cry moral fault on some hypothetical race of aliens who come here and eat solely humans. I'd fight to survive, but its not like anything can "blame" things higher in the food chain.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2051 The t-rex is you.

Cockroaches aren't intelligent enough to be even nearly as aware of their surroundings and life and living itself as we humans are.

Yes but that adds up. Say the brain mass and efficiency to body weight ratio of a roach is 1:10 then the exterminator that killed 1,500 pounds of roach committed an immoral act equal to killing a person. This is worse with food animals because they were created to die and have no control over any part of their lives.

 

[Hitti-Litti]

Yes but that adds up.

It doesn't. A hundred cockroaches are just as dumb as one cockroach.

 

[Linkman226]

By that logic a dozen average people should have been able to come up with Einstein's theory of relativity just as well as him