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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Is it, or is it on average the same amount of tragedy repeated a million times? It's worse, but I'm not sure it's exactly a million times worse.
I mean, if two of a parent's children die is it TWICE as worse as one dying? Doesn't one dying kind of reach the limit of tragedy for the parents anyway? I dunno...
EvF
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:11 pm
No... there is no limit to tragedy... the death of ten beloved children is 10 times more tragic than the death of one beloved child... to do say otherwise would be to devalue one's beloved child... 
That an evil was committed a thousand times before, does not devalue the thousand and first time... and each one of those million who died... was someone... and each death makes the tragedy one death worse...
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:18 pm
If the death of one lost child is infinitely horrible, I don't see how it being the same or thereabouts for two discredits the second one, the point is children dying feels as bad as it gets anyway, it's just that the less children die, the better, obviously. I don't see how it can get much worse in feeling than simply one dying. Each child individually, all things being equal, suffers the same amount. Less dying is better, but one dead child feels so horrific to a caring parent that I don't think the horror could really be multiplied so much, because it's so close to maximum horror anyway.
But I dunno, these subjects are hard for me to judge. Obviously this is a subjective matter of judging. But I mean, if I had a child who died, that would be so horrifying I don't think it could really be any worse if more died: Any number of children dying is about as bad as it would get for me I think. But then I can't really know because it's of course, never actually happened to me.
EvF
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:21 pm
EvF,
I'm with you; if a death affects you significantly then there is only so much you will be able to comprehend in one go. I would use the analogy of a towel, there is only so much water it can absorb and then it is saturated. Emotions are like that too. So, if a child you loved dies then you would be as broken as possible and having another die would not add 1 full unit of pain but maybe a little. If anything the more deaths, that were close enough to you to affect you, would mostly only increase the duration that you are saturated with grief.
At any rate I find it hard to quantify emotion and have found my moments of grief to be of a significantly different quality each and every time to even have a hope to compare the experiences.
Sae,
Emotions aren't mathematical. A broken mind can suddenly stop receiving input in any form and become completely numb or even giddily happy. Such is the nature of additive emotional distress.
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:24 pm
More than one death would feel worse I think, even though the first one is basically overload. But because the first one is overload of grief or so close to it, I don't see how the second one could be double that. Or that it necessarily would.
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:29 pm
(This post was last modified: September 28, 2009 at 5:32 pm by Violet.)
Infinitely horrible?! Everyone has a finite value... the value may be more than most countries are worth... but there still is a price...
Things are never so bad that they cannot get worse, EvF... nor so good that they cannot get better. Absolute pain and absolute pleasure are unattainable as more than an idea. People are not ideas though... they are tangible... losing them is a true loss...
One dead child feels horrific... but two is twice as potent a horror... because both of those children had value to you, possibly both of them meant the world to you... and in this case: you have lost your world twice. And it truly is twice as painful
Maximum horror is only an idea... there is no limit to how much pain you can feel... 
Everything is mathematical, Rhizo... the towel my be saturated so that it cannot absorb more water... but the same amount of water is passing through that towel with each new tragedy...
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 5:42 pm
(September 28, 2009 at 5:29 pm)Saerules Wrote: [...] Absolute pain and absolute pleasure are unattainable as more than an idea.
Saerules Wrote:Maximum horror is only an idea... there is no limit to how much pain you can feel...
(My bolding emphasis).
Contradiction there. I agree with the first one. We are finite beings. My point is that if the first loss is basically an overload then it's perhaps impossible to feel double that for the second loss. If you could feel double it then the first loss couldn't be overload or so close to it. I agree that absolute pain and pleasure are unattainable, and once they get overloaded so much that you go crazy or can't cope, it's hard to have double that. Sometimes perhaps it can be double, but sometimes I think it's too close to the limit to be double.
Indeed maximum horror is only an idea, and that's why the first loss can feel so limitless, seem so limitless and be overload that the 2nd loss perhaps can't be double that, because the first loss was so unimaginably big. However, despite the fact it seems to be infinite pain or horror, that it seems limitless, it indeed can't be.
So do you believe there is a limit to how much pain or pleasure you can feel or not?
In the first quote you say that absolute pain and pleasure are unattainable, but then in the second quote you say that there is no limit to pain.
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 6:05 pm
There is no limit to how much one can feel... absolute pleasure and pain are as unattainable as absolute good and evil... and this is because there IS no limit to pain, pleasure, good, evil, deliciousness, and many other things. Pure pain has no reflection... just as a perfect triangle has no reflection: these things can only exist in the mind.
For emphasis... there is no limit to how much pain you can feel... that some become insensitive to pain is not to make that pain less potent in itself... just as some people become tolerant to poisons does not make those poisons less potent in themselves.
The pain of losing two is twice the dosage of losing one... and some people have become tolerant to this pain... and this means they have undervalued the dosage. So the pain you CAN feel... is limitless. The pain you DO feel... that can be limited.
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 6:21 pm
To say that the pain we can feel is limitless, is to say that we have a limitless part of us. Even though our body and brain is finite and limited. Do you not believe that emotional overloads can happen, without it meaning the person does not care? People can have emotional breakdowns, whether internal or expressed externally too, or both.
And it doesn't have to reach the maximum, two losses can of course be worse than one. But there's not necessarily the room for double, when the first is so overwhelmingly intense IMO. But like I've said, how should I know? I've never experienced such horror. It's just an opinion.
I mean, dead nerve cells don't feel pain. I think that when the first loss is so incredibly horrible, it's not always possible for the second loss to be double[, it's pretty hard to have double the intensity of something when it's so overloadingly intense anyway.
So how can we feel limitless pain when we ourselves are not limitless? When neither our body or our brain that is held by the body, and also physical, are limitless? Pain is a limited feeling in a limited body, yes? However intense it can be...how can it be limitless when we are limited? Unless you believe in souls or something ????
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RE: The wounded and the dead
September 28, 2009 at 7:07 pm
There is definitly a limit to pleasure because at some point you begin to chaff.
Rhizo
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