Processing our mortality
July 21, 2017 at 10:08 am
(This post was last modified: July 21, 2017 at 10:11 am by LadyForCamus.)
(July 10, 2017 at 1:00 am)bennyboy Wrote:(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.
I wonder sometimes if any religious folk out there harbor a secret fear of their promised-land. Trying to imagine what the experience of being with god is like must be as futile an exercise as trying to imagine non-existence. They, themselves, often purport that god's greatness is too powerful for our mere mortal brains to comprehend, so I have to think there must be at least some degree of anxiety attached to the notion that when you die, you're leaving what you know, and are familiar with, and crossing into the unknowable.
I think it's reasonably fair to assume that even if suicide wasn't a sin, most theists wouldn't be leaping off bridges left and right in their unbridled anticipation of heaven. Evolution via natural selection has grounded us all firmly here, philosophical positions notwithstanding.
Nay_Sayer: “Nothing is impossible if you dream big enough, or in this case, nothing is impossible if you use a barrel of KY Jelly and a miniature horse.”
Wiser words were never spoken.
Wiser words were never spoken.
