(July 9, 2017 at 9:18 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: I read about a theory in psychology once called, "terror management theory." It more or less suggests that everything we, as conscious creatures, do in our lives, we do for the purpose of distracting ourselves from the knowledge of our own mortality. The reason we have careers, kids, play competitive sports, entertain, win awards, volunteer, ect.; it's all about making ourselves feel important and in control, so that we don't lose our minds and simply commit suicide in the face of inevitable oblivion. What a bizarre evolutionary advantage that requires we spend every waking moment of our existence trying not to think about it!
The source of most of the beauty in humanity, and also most of the misery, is our capacity to imagine. Imagining a new kind of building allows us to bring it into physical existence. Imagining various kinds of harm in the environment keeps us safer than someone who could only respond to what was for sure there, right now, trying to do harm.
I think choosing to imagine one's own mortality is the pinnacle of the latter-- imagining death is terrifying, and somehow the knowledge of it also makes the flowers a little brighter, the kids' laughter a little more precious, etc. Contrasting all the goodness in life to the idea of absolute annihilation of the self is a vivid contrast, indeed.
As for suicide-- well, that's a possibility, and it is very much related to the weight we give in our imagination to possibilities: the possibility of life sucking, always and unrelentlessly, is very real; so is hope-- the knowledge and experience that no matter how bad things are, there's always a new chapter around the corner, or at least a few more precious moments of goodness to savor. If someone can only imagine the bad, they may spiral all the way into the ground. I think that's too bad, but we know it happens sometimes.
