fear of death

[Itay]

wowwww....

i just read the whole thread and it really blew me off!

like the duality thing,
that you can't have a prespective on something unless you see the opposite...
i never thought about it...

and as to death...

well maybe it will sound silly to you
but i believe that after we die we move on to next dimension
and we can also go there by astral projection

(i think i got this whole spiritual thing mixed-up... hehe)

i dunno...

about all this spiritual thing, i was really inspired by john frusciante, if you know him

hmm.. i dunno what i'm trying to say here =)

oh and other subjet that connected to that thing...

does anyone else here has read or heard about that in couple of years the whole world will move on to the 4th dimesnion?

heh i know i sound all spiritual and stuff, but i don't even believe in god... so yeah it's kinda weird

 

[Mikael is God]

4th dimension yes but the human race isnt ready for the change because we're on a low consiousness level

 

[dystopiate]

Mikael is God pointed me this way, and I'm glad he did, although I regret not listening to him sooner and getting in on this post at the ground floor.

The first thing I've noticed about many of the posts is that they deal in illogics. This isn't a flame or anything; I think we all do it from time to time and for good reason. What I see is statements that run along the lines of "change is constant", "opposites are the same", "duality can be confined to a given unit", etc. Now, I do agree with many of these statements, but feel that they're thrown out in a shorthand manner, without proper consideration for the depths of what's being said -- again, not a criticism, just pointing it out; I understand full well the need for shorthand when communicating.

I know I won't say all I want to in one post, so I'll just say a few things and see what discussions comes of it.

Given the general consensus that evolutionary thought is correct, how can anyone say that they fear pain and suffering, yet not death. The whole point of the evolutionary thought is that those who lack certain abilities, genes, etc. will be selected against and those abilities, genes, etc. that work in the world will survive to the next generation. Those who never feared death, be it consciously or otherwise (although I think we can all reason that it must have initially been unconscious), would have been selected against, leaving those who do fear death around to populate the world. Now, I'm not saying that specific thoughts are passed from parent to child, but I am saying that cues for death, LIKE THE GENETICS THAT HELP US FEEL PAIN, WILL be passed on to the next generation. Fear of pain and fear of death are synonymous on a deeper level, and argument that one fears pain but not death becomes a semantic illogic that breaks down at a more rigorous level. However, it brings up a fascinating point: people can fear and not fear something simultaneously via an arbitrary semantic differentiation. Derrida would be proud.

Satori brings up some very intriguing thoughts. Much of what you say, Satori, reminds me of Buddhism to an extent, but Sartre to a much greater extent... which, with a name like Satori shouldn't have surprised me, I suppose. However, I wanted to say a few things about self-negation. I was once a hardcore Sartrean, only to see the points at which the theories breakdown. The problems as I see them are that intelligence is spawned from self-awareness. This is fairly well documented in the "mirror tests" performed on a variety of animals, but most notably on the great apes. It seems that self-awareness is a requisite to higher-consciousness. Now, it could be argued that Satori is only talking about negating the mental aspect of being; however, I would argue that the mental and bodily aspects of being are inextricably linked. Intelligence is harnessed not in the brain, but throughout the body. The body is intelligent enough to repair itself, react, flinch, etc. without the brain in many instances. Witness the EMG tests performed on frogs that showed a reaction to flies in the tongue BEFORE reaction in the brain, or the tests on zen buddhist masters who could react to and shut off an alarm clock without showing any awareness of the object prior to reaction. Witness the phantom limb that an amputee can feel without its physically being there, but which pain can be trained away by placing the phantom in a box while moving the contralateral -- in this example, the body actually remaps the neural patterns located in the motor centers of the brain. So, I don't see how you could negate the mental without negating the physical as well -- I think the confusion over this comes of the semantic argument I mentioned previously.

A final thought before I check out:
Fear of death makes life worth living. I fear death, not as an abstract concept, but as something I've been through. I don't fear it at the moment it happens, and I don't even see how I could -- this is where I feel Sartre is exactly right: we are never present in the now moment; only upon reflection do we assign meaning and feeling to an object of consciousness. After the moment of near-death has passed, it's simple enough to laugh about it or assign it an unbashful emotion of complacency; yet, for us to even recall it happened, that we were there, etc. requires a level of self-recognition. But the main point: the recognition that I could die is what makes many of the things I do worth while. If I really didn't care about living or dying, I wouldn't swerve so hard when skiing at a tree. If I really didn't care, I wouldn't bother moving. Before someone makes the "instinct" argument, recall my argument about the means of evolution, semantics, and bodily intelligence. Eventually, we're all saying the same thing: "I fear death", "I fear pain", "I fear losing those I love", "I fear not being useful to others". The taste of life doesn't come without the taste of death. If someone were damaged in a way that made them unable to feel emotion (there are some unusual cases of this), I wonder if they could fear death or enjoy life fully? Any thoughts on this?

-Eric

 

[Russell]

Welcome to the board

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by Itay
wowwww....

i just read the whole thread and it really blew me off!

like the duality thing,
that you can't have a prespective on something unless you see the opposite...
i never thought about it...

Your first taste of zen/quantum physics! Pretty fucking wild eh? hehe, thanks man!

Satori

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by Mikael is God
4th dimension yes but the human race isnt ready for the change because we're on a low consiousness level

I think whoever is dreaming up this 4th dimension nonsense is a complete idiot cuz the 4th dimension is time and it always has been since it was labled as such over 100 years ago.

If some goof is out there coming up with illogical nonsense and they have such a limited education in physics and limited grasp of reality that they don't know that we are already in the 4th dimension (time) then how can anyone trust any of the crap that comes out of their mouths?

To me, the idea that the aliens are coming to return us to our alien home planet sounds like it has more credibility heheh

Satori

 

[Itay]

the 4th dimension is time and it always has been since it was labled as such over 100 years ago.

let me tell you what i know about dimensions...
maybe you know this too...

i read somewhere over the web... let me begin from the start:

imagine a 1-dimensional world.
in this world there is this dot, it can't move up & down, nor left & right, nor straight & backwards.

now let's move on.
imagine a 2-dimensional world.
in that world there is a line, and the dot can move on this line, but only forward and backward. it doesn't have a sense of height...
and if you put a hill beneth the line... somewhere in the middle of it... it will take the dot longer to get to the end of the line, but it won't see the hill... it's like -

a road.
you are in a car.
no windows.
only the bottom of the car is transpernt, and you can only see what's beneth you.
now you are driving this car and you know it will take 15 minutes to get from point A to point B.
somebody grow a mountain beneth where road, somewhere in the middle of it...
now it's taking you longer to get to point B. but because you can look only on on the road that's beneth you, you see no diffrenece in the road.

now back to the 2nd dimension world.
if you wanna perfrom a surgery on the 2-dimensional world, and you can move only forward, you have to dig in what's in front of you to get to his inside...

if you're moving it to a 3th-dimension world. you can now go beside it and walk pass it, and come from the side on perfrom the surgery without any cutting needing, because it's only 2-dimensional...

hmm it's hard for me to explain it in english, but i think i'm clear enough

only 3rd dimension people can see how limited is the 2nd dimension... because 2nd dimension people cannot understand what is height and depth and all that...

so it's the same about 4th dimension.
only 4th dimension people can see how limited is the 3rd dimension.

and that is the dimension theory...

you got my point?

 

[luke]

Some pretty well thought out shit there Eric.

I think the root of the fear of death actually lies in the fear of what is unknown. It is one of the most baxics of instincts to accompany concious thought. Dogs bark at strangers, and babies cry at unfamiliar noises. Seeing as death is possibly the greatest unknown, it is only natural to fear.
To truthfully state that one would not have the slightest fear of death would require amazing self control. To the point of being able to overcome the basest of instints.

Micheal, go and get Stephen Hawking's 'from the big bang to black holes' for some relatively easy to digest physics theorem. Don't believe everything some wacko is putting out on the net.

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by dystopiate
I wonder if they could fear death or enjoy life fully? Any thoughts on this?

Hey Eric, nice post!

Not everyone fears death, I know pehaps to you this seems odd, but not everyone is governed by the same logic as you and therefore it doesn't have to make sense to you in order to make sense to someone else. I can assure you that death doesn't scare me in the slightest cuz it is *nothingness*, while pain is indeed *something* highly unpleasant. Therefore, the 2 do not coorelate at all in my mind.

One can contort one's mind to overcome basic instincts. I wasn't born fearless of death, it's something I aspired to and eventually achieved through mental discipline.

Not all subjective view points are right for all people. I have a love and an affectation for death on a kind of "mythical" level too which makes no sense at all from a evolutionary perspective.

Thanks for your thoughts, I hope you will continue to entertain us,

Satori

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by Itay
and that is the dimension theory...

you got my point?

whose dimension theory? and why did you fail to define the 4th dimension as time after defining the first 3 so accurately?

Satori

 

[dune_666]

In science, any number of dimensions can exist, all you have to do is pick a parameter. Satori has accurately pointed out that time is the universally accepted 4th dimension. When quantifying the behavior of a system, any number of parameters can be used as a dimension. A polynomial of nth degree has n dimensions, we just lack a useful way of viewing it. So before anyone starts talking about dimensions in a sci-fi way, check the facts.

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by luke
I think the root of the fear of death actually lies in the fear of what is unknown. It is one of the most baxics of instincts to accompany concious thought. Dogs bark at strangers, and babies cry at unfamiliar noises. Seeing as death is possibly the greatest unknown, it is only natural to fear.

good point, but what I think Eric is saying is that fear of death exists also on a more *instinctual* level as well and so is much harder to reason away (and I agree with him on this, but I think it *can* be reasoned away and that's where I quite respectfully disagree with him). But of course, not all subjective ideas are valid for all people, so what is right for him doesn't necessarily have to apply to me, so no one is right or wrong cuz no one is (I think) making an illogical claim/assumption.

Indeed you are totally correct Luke in asserting that for most people who don't think at this level fear of death lies pretty much completely in fear of the unknown, or in more extreme cases, fear of hell or some similar illogical assumption. To me, death doesn't feel like an unknown, I feel like I've been there before (before I was conceived) and since I firmly don't believe in the existence of an afterlife (just my opinion) then death, to me, is a known (even though it is unknowable, but I'm sure you can see what I'm saying).

woohoo!

Satori

PS: it was fun fucking with each other about the whole china thing

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by dune_666
In science, any number of dimensions can exist, all you have to do is pick a parameter. Satori has accurately pointed out that time is the universally accepted 4th dimension. When quantifying the behavior of a system, any number of parameters can be used as a dimension. A polynomial of nth degree has n dimensions, we just lack a useful way of viewing it. So before anyone starts talking about dimensions in a sci-fi way, check the facts.

Yes indeed. "sci-fi way" hit the nail on the head! Anyone can theorize about whatever they want, but trying to back it up with logic/observation is where the real meat of the practicality lies (and to those like me, is it's only purpose other than verbal ejaculation).

Satori

 

[Itay]

whose dimension theory? and why did you fail to define the 4th dimension as time after defining the first 3 so accurately?

i read it before couple of months on the web, don't remember where...
but i did looked for it now and instead i found an intresting discussion that you might wanna read:

http://www.thetaint.org/wotbfa/57102.html

i didn't read the whole thread yet cuz i just found it and didn't have time, but anyway... blah

 

[Itay]

oh wait i found another thing,
that explains the theory i tried to describes earlier

click here


here is a quote from there:


What is the 4th dimension?

No, we are not talking about time here. Most of us have come to associate the 4th dimension with time from reading too much science fiction. That may be true, but the 4th dimension has a much more direct interpretation. Our world as many people know is 3 dimensional. That means that we have 3 perpendicular 'axes' of motion, in other words, we can move up and down, forwards and backwards, left and right. If we were to be only 2 dimensional beings, we would only be able to move forwards and backwards, left and right, or any combination of 2 of the three pairs of ranges of motion in 3 dimensions. If we were to be furthur limited to one dimension, then we would only have one range of motion.

Now, lets take a step forward. What about the 4th dimension? Well, for a start, we would have not 3 but 4 axes of motion. Imagine how much freedom we would have! But how is this possible? For us 3 dimensional beings, it is impossible to picture the 4th dimension because we have never been there, and even if we did our 3 dimensional minds would not be able to comprehend the 4 dimensional objects and 'see' them. In order to fully understand the 4th dimension in this section, analogies from the 2nd dimension to the 3rd dimension will be used. Using analogy, we will first try to get a 'feel' of 4-space, or 4 dimensional space.

 

[luke]

Originally posted by Satori


Yes indeed. hit the nail on the head! Anyone can back it up with the real meat (and to those like me, it's only purpose other than ejaculation).

Satori

Heheh, Now I'm really gonna have fun twisting your words around.

I`m off for a few days, and then I'll be back to bicker about some new issues. (maybe environment?)