Why do you keep on beating?

[MilesGregarius]

Which 'non-being'? Pre-existence? Post-existence? They're rather different things and imply different moral onuses, especially if you use the word 'horror'

Melting.

 

[Akka]

Then, by this logic, I go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning someone else?

It's still yourself, but you're not exactly the same as the day before (if only because of the added memories and aging).

And generally :

All of the organisms that don't instinctively 'want' to live get selected out more rapidly than those who genetically transmit a 'will to survive'.

We're programmed by Evolution with a survival instinct. Yeah, it's actually an instinct. We post-hoc rationalize it, but it might not actually be rational. We're way, way biased to think that it is, regardless of the philosophical discussion.

This and /thread. It really sums it up.

 

[Disgustipated]

I thought this thread was going to be about masturbation.

I'm a little less interested now.

glad I'm not the only one who thought that.

What keeps me going? I have no idea. Logic almost dictates I should kill myself, but yet I plug on. I have hope. And as long as there's hope, there's life.

 

[gozpel]

This is why I love you people, I offer you finger-food and you create a 5-course meal.

I would indeed need a biology class or two, since I never did college and before that, I didn't do too well. Except in maths, workshop and sports.

I had some classes later and got A+ in maths, up to trigonometry stuff, still probably just college stuff.
I failed sport, was a talented soccer-player, but my knees failed me.
Workshop was left and it has been factory work since my early 20ies and I'm now a happy factory worker on the highest pay in the factory, same as supervisors. Ambidextrous skill-set helps!

So sometimes I wonder, how or what makes me do this all the time.

I don't think I would understand the "battery theory", even if you explained in layman terms. I never got involved with biology enough and now I'm too old to really care. I'm just a little bit curious.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I am my brain.

My body is a giant mech suit my brain uses to move itself around.

It contains a variety of built in tools to help it navigate the environment and survive, like eyes to provide vision, fingers to to touch and manipulate, lungs to breath the air, etc.

My job is to keep this mech suit running for as long as possible, as without it my brain, which is me, dies.

 

[gozpel]

I am my brain.

My body is a giant mech suit my brain uses to move itself around.

It contains a variety of built in tools to help it navigate the environment and survive, like eyes to provide vision, fingers to to touch and manipulate, lungs to breath the air, etc.

My job is to keep this mech suit running for as long as possible, as without it my brain, which is me, dies.

So the brain creates energy out what you put into yourself?

I think I believe that, but I don't understand how it works. That's the OP-question.

I will never become a rocket scientist, still I like to try to understand things. If I fail to understand certain things, I'm happy to yield to the power of science. If I happen to understand one thing, the better for me.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

When weighed against the horror of non-being, the torment of existence doesn't seem half bad.

Were you horrified before you were born?

Is there any way to distinguish between pre-existence and post-existence as experiences?

You'll either know when you're dead or it won't make any difference at all.

I don't think you ever cease to exist. That would contravene the law of conservation of something.

You do, though, I believe, cease to be aware of existing. I generally do that at least once a night. In preparation for the real long term thingy.

It's not at all horrifying, I have found; so far.

Your constituent atoms don't cease to exist. They change form and function, but they're still around.

Of course the bar of soap is gone though - it's no longer a bar of soap, it's something else. The bar of soap is gone.

Aw... and it doesn't even have hands with which to write and send a postcard!

It's simply not the same. Both the analogy and the soap.

Take last Tuesday, now. Where has that gone?

Take my 7 year-old self. Where's he?

And my year-older-than-I-am-now self. Where's he?

The soap, last Tuesday, your 7-year-old self, and your future self are all still there. The soap has changed its form and function and at least part of it is engaged in polluting whichever major body of water warpus' municipality is upriver from. For the rest, you just need a time machine and you can easily find them again.

 

[gozpel]

Valka D'Ur: "Your constituent atoms don't cease to exist. They change form and function, but they're still around."

I didn't think that far, I only was thinking about what makes me "tick". The energy.

Which is more important than the matter. Matter is all around, energy is too, but you have to be connected to it in some ways. When you lose either/or both, it goes back to the universe to build on.

That's what I was looking for, the universe is our God. When we die, the energy within is going back to create something new.

A God like this doesn't care about us, but the old one didn't so much either. So I keep this theory more practical: We are beings of energy.

It doesn't matter, until someone write a full study on how the body produces the energy for the body to live. If someone have that study/report, please link it.

And I will bend over, slightly unhappily.

 

[Borachio]

I am my brain.

My body is a giant mech suit my brain uses to move itself around.

It contains a variety of built in tools to help it navigate the environment and survive, like eyes to provide vision, fingers to to touch and manipulate, lungs to breath the air, etc.

My job is to keep this mech suit running for as long as possible, as without it my brain, which is me, dies.

This is the prevailing narrative, yes.

But it makes no more sense than a lot of other ones.

You could just as well say you are your gut.

The brain, and rest of your body, is just a complicated system designed to enable your gut to achieve throughput.

Alternatively, there's no reason to distinguish the brain from the rest of the body. There's scarcely a part of it which isn't permeated with nerve cells. And there's no reason to think that nerve cells are in any way distinguishable from the brain.

Alternatively, there's no reason to distinguish one human being from another. We're all just elements of the hive mind.

 

[Synobun]

Were you horrified before you were born?

This point has always confused me as it always seemed to have no point except to have a smug "ha!" moment for the person saying it. What happened before birth is irrelevant. We weren't alive, based on our memory, before birth. Nobody is attempting to claim that our time in eternal nothingness will be a fun-filled version of Hell with stretching racks and misery. The fear and misery comes from being able to possess consciousness and knowing that one day, assuming there is no afterlife or reincarnation, consciousness will cease. You will never feel, you will never think, you will never experience again. Forever. Sure, once you're dead, you don't feel it, but you are going to die. You are going to be met with nothingness no matter how much you value the ability to be alive. That's rather terrifying for those of us who don't even like sleeping because it's a period of not being conscious.

 

[timtofly]

This is the prevailing narrative, yes.

But it makes no more sense than a lot of other ones.

You could just as well say you are your gut.

The brain, and rest of your body, is just a complicated system designed to enable your gut to achieve throughput.

Alternatively, there's no reason to distinguish the brain from the rest of the body. There's scarcely a part of it which isn't permeated with nerve cells. And there's no reason to think that nerve cells are in any way distinguishable from the brain.

Alternatively, there's no reason to distinguish one human being from another. We're all just elements of the hive mind.

Yet your fingers did the will of the brain and posted here.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yet your fingers did the will of the brain and posted here.

+1

Indeed, let's not support antibrainial remarks and have 'somaticopolitically correct' humanbodyparts discussions :/

As we all know the brain is a part of the human body which can easily ruin everything for all of the body if only itself is damaged (even in a minor way). While the same applies for other vital organs (eg heart, all lungs and so on) you cannot replace a damaged brain, cause if the brain goes you are no longer there anyway, while if you have a mega-surgery and now contain donated organs you may still live and be (i suppose) virtually the same person mental-world-wise.

 

[Borachio]

That's seems to be true now. But there are moves to have brain implants performing the functions of damaged areas of the brain, aren't there? And what's a cochlea implant, and those thingy's in the brain that certain blind people learn to use?

It's not at all certain that the "self" is a real thing anyway.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

If we could, it would be interesting to try changing different parts of the brain until the subject was not himself anymore to see where exactly the "I" is hidden. The hardest part would be to find volunteers.

 

[El_Machinae]

We can selectively shut down portions of the brain temporarily. The sense of self seems to reside in a fairly large area of the outside of the brain. If you shut down certain regions, that sense doesn't fully disappear, but it becomes ... less. There's another area where the ability to articulate the concept of 'I' lies, but the sense of self is not there. Or, at least, there's a sense of self even when that area is shut down.

 

[Kyriakos]

We can selectively shut down portions of the brain temporarily. The sense of self seems to reside in a fairly large area of the outside of the brain. If you shut down certain regions, that sense doesn't fully disappear, but it becomes ... less. There's another area where the ability to articulate the concept of 'I' lies, but the sense of self is not there. Or, at least, there's a sense of self even when that area is shut down.

In one of the first centuries AD Gnostic theologies, it happens that the deity of "evil" is presented as split to two parts. One of those is the over-evil, which is termed as "the demiurge" and is argued to be animal-like and not sentient. The other part is the evil which resides in the human plane, and was termed as sentient, but subordinate to the over-evil it was tied to.

So the pattern may be of some use (like any other distinct pattern) in what you said, cause the "I" can be even just a shadow of a larger mental structure, while at the same time being in a way its equal in importance, but also a split from it. I suppose that- in the gnostic theology i alluded to -the over-evil could re-spawn its sentient part if it needed, but the opposite could never happen.

 

[warpus]

Hmm

The longer I live, the more interesting things I will see, the more interesting people I will meet, the more interesting conversations I will have, the more interesting experiences I will have, and so on..

Obviously it makes sense for me to want to live as long as possible - as I'm really enjoying living in this world and experiencing the things it has to offer. Bring it on, and keep it coming, there's still a lot left to explore and experience!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This point has always confused me as it always seemed to have no point except to have a smug "ha!" moment for the person saying it. What happened before birth is irrelevant. We weren't alive, based on our memory, before birth. Nobody is attempting to claim that our time in eternal nothingness will be a fun-filled version of Hell with stretching racks and misery. The fear and misery comes from being able to possess consciousness and knowing that one day, assuming there is no afterlife or reincarnation, consciousness will cease. You will never feel, you will never think, you will never experience again. Forever. Sure, once you're dead, you don't feel it, but you are going to die. You are going to be met with nothingness no matter how much you value the ability to be alive. That's rather terrifying for those of us who don't even like sleeping because it's a period of not being conscious.

I didn't mean that question in a smug way. I have no real memories prior to about age 2 or so, so I've no other perspective from which to consider the matter.

For what it's worth, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and I hate that. I'd rather have a bad dream than insomnia.

If we could, it would be interesting to try changing different parts of the brain until the subject was not himself anymore to see where exactly the "I" is hidden. The hardest part would be to find volunteers.

Go to any nursing facility with dementia and Alzheimers patients. If they could articulate what they feel and think at any given moment, you could find some answers. It's for sure that when my grandmother died, she was no longer her true self.

 

[Synobun]

I didn't mean that question in a smug way. I have no real memories prior to about age 2 or so, so I've no other perspective from which to consider the matter.

I imagine it really depends on what a person thinks happened before birth. From a personal standpoint, I've spent a fair amount of time considering the concept of reincarnation without memory of the prior life, which is something I'd be okay with. Ideally I'd like to be able to maintain my current personality and memories but the crux of the matter for me is simply the ability to be conscious and think. Realistically speaking though it's rather unlikely and there's probably nothing after death which is where the fear/anxiety comes from. What came before is simply a reminder of what will come... nothingness. Only this time around you can typically see it coming. Every day means you're a day closer to that fateful day that you finally lose grasp on the ability to remain alive.

In my position that's even more difficult because of my health. I've always been pretty uncomfortable with thinking about death, but my health has quickly turned that into an intense fear.