Processing our mortality

[Foxaèr]

So how does "no rest for the wicked" and "idle hands are the devil's workshop" even correlate?

One states that being busy means your wicked while the other states that you need to be busy to not be wicked.

People and their superstitious sayings.

[mordant]

The very moment "I" cease to exist, it will literally be as though "I" never existed in the first place.  From "my" POV it will be like time snapping backwards.  It's the ultimate dissolution.  So, why be bothered at all?

Well they clearly aren't the same thing. When I die, it will not be literally as though I never existed. I had two children, have three grandchildren, I wrote all sorts of software, published three books, edited a journal, wrote blog posts, posted here and on other fora, ate a bunch of food. No one else would have done it exactly the same way.

I realize that in some ways living is like splashing around in a bucket of water; once you take your hand out, no matter how long or vigorously you splashed, it's like you never had your hand in there. That metaphor is usually deployed to humble someone who thinks they're indispensable. But that's not literally true. Life and human knowledge does progress, however much fits and starts may be involved, and I've had a role in that.

When my son died at the age of 30, was it like he never lived at all? Nope, being his father changed me forever and I think about him and miss him every day. When my wife died, was it like she never lived at all? Nope. Same story there. Of course, when I die and my wife's mother and aunt die and all the people she went to school with or worked with or was a friend do have died, she will be forgotten apart from little fragments that might still be preserved like this very post. But she still impacted literally thousands of people, enough so that people who hadn't seen her in thirty-five years bothered to travel hundreds of miles to her funeral to pay their respects. Not out of obligation (I wouldn't have known about them, even, or how she impacted them, if they hadn't come). It was because she really made a difference for them, and they wanted to honor that.

When my Dad died, the son of the guy he worked for many decades prior, bothered to come to his funeral. I had forgotten about them, frankly, but they wanted my brothers and I to know that my Dad's life mattered. He had been a key part of their aircraft maintenance company and they couldn't have done it without him. Some time later I came upon my father's reference books about metallurgy and stress equations and techniques for riveting and a million other things that went right over my head and I realized that this man who was a grade school drop out was actually a frigging genius and autodidact who passed all sorts of certifications with a near-perfect score. My father took me to work with him as a child now and then, and one time took me up in a plane, and shut the engine off and opened the windows as we glided among the cumulus clouds. This gruff, undemonstrative man said, "I just want you to know that this is why I fly."

He died 15 years ago at the age of 87 and it is NOT as though he had never existed.

My guess is that all the people cited above seriously underestimated their own importance. Partly out of humility, sometimes out of perfectionism, but mainly because it's just hard to see when it's you and you're aware of goals you never reached.

Never think that the world will EVER be as if you never existed.

[ignoramus]

That saying is just as common here in Oz as "I'm as dry as a dead dingo's donger!"
Or
"Fair suck of the sauce bottle" as our ex prime minister mangled shamelessly.

[bennyboy]

He died 15 years ago at the age of 87 and it is NOT as though he had never existed.

From his point of view, it is. Or more like, the world never existed.

[Fireball]

The very moment "I" cease to exist, it will literally be as though "I" never existed in the first place.  From "my" POV it will be like time snapping backwards.  It's the ultimate dissolution.  So, why be bothered at all?

Well they clearly aren't the same thing. When I die, it will not be literally as though I never existed. I had two children, have three grandchildren, I wrote all sorts of software, published three books, edited a journal, wrote blog posts, posted here and on other fora, ate a bunch of food. No one else would have done it exactly the same way.

I realize that in some ways living is like splashing around in a bucket of water; once you take your hand out, no matter how long or vigorously you splashed, it's like you never had your hand in there. That metaphor is usually deployed to humble someone who thinks they're indispensable. But that's not literally true. Life and human knowledge does progress, however much fits and starts may be involved, and I've had a role in that.

When my son died at the age of 30, was it like he never lived at all? Nope, being his father changed me forever and I think about him and miss him every day. When my wife died, was it like she never lived at all? Nope. Same story there. Of course, when I die and my wife's mother and aunt die and all the people she went to school with or worked with or was a friend do have died, she will be forgotten apart from little fragments that might still be preserved like this very post. But she still impacted literally thousands of people, enough so that people who hadn't seen her in thirty-five years bothered to travel hundreds of miles to her funeral to pay their respects. Not out of obligation (I wouldn't have known about them, even, or how she impacted them, if they hadn't come). It was because she really made a difference for them, and they wanted to honor that.

When my Dad died, the son of the guy he worked for many decades prior, bothered to come to his funeral. I had forgotten about them, frankly, but they wanted my brothers and I to know that my Dad's life mattered. He had been a key part of their aircraft maintenance company and they couldn't have done it without him. Some time later I came upon my father's reference books about metallurgy and stress equations and techniques for riveting and a million other things that went right over my head and I realized that this man who was a grade school drop out was actually a frigging genius and autodidact who passed all sorts of certifications with a near-perfect score. My father took me to work with him as a child now and then, and one time took me up in a plane, and shut the engine off and opened the windows as we glided among the cumulus clouds. This gruff, undemonstrative man said, "I just want you to know that this is why I fly."

He died 15 years ago at the age of 87 and it is NOT as though he had never existed.

My guess is that all the people cited above seriously underestimated their own importance. Partly out of humility, sometimes out of perfectionism, but mainly because it's just hard to see when it's you and you're aware of goals you never reached.

Never think that the world will EVER be as if you never existed.

  You've a real way with words! People should heed what you say. Your dad was a hell of a guy, too, it would seem.

[LadyForCamus]

He died 15 years ago at the age of 87 and it is NOT as though he had never existed.

From his point of view, it is. Or more like, the world never existed.

Right. This is what I mean. From my POV as the deceased (so to speak) there is no discernible difference between having lived and died, and having never been born in the first place. I'm not talking about the difference I make in the world that continues to exist beyond my ending. I didn't mean to imply that people who have died no longer mean anything to those of us still living. Thanks for clarifying, Benny!

[bennyboy]

From his point of view, it is.  Or more like, the world never existed.

Right.  This is what I mean.  From my POV as the deceased (so to speak) there is no discernible difference between having lived and died, and having never been born in the first place.  I'm not talking about the difference I make in the world that continues to exist beyond my ending.  I didn't mean to imply that people who have died no longer mean anything to those of us still living.  Thanks for clarifying, Benny!

Given your name here, I'm not surprised that you see death as kind of a mockery of life.  The absurdity of mortality in the face of infinity was definitely a Camus thing.

That being said, I think almost EVERYTHING is absurd, from quantum mechanics to Big Bang or black hole singularities.  And yet, and I really think this is non-trivial: this morning, the birds are singing outside my window, the kids are laughing in the other room, and I have a few interesting things I could do today if I stepped away from the computer long enough.

[LadyForCamus]

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.

[bennyboy]

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.  

If there's something "out there," and it involves immortality, it's unlikely to involve our status in the well-meaning struggle of hairless monkeys. I cant imagine how sex would be reconciled-- you gonna show up in heaven and have Gramps at 20 years old, packing wood in his 1940's vogue golf pants? Is Tomb Raider-era Angelina Jolie going to be okay with me trying to rub baby oil on her 24/7?

Nah, you have to be 100% right on this. Whatever might be there, it's not what's here, and whoever that dude is, if it's human, it's not me. Soul or no soul, experience or no experience, bennyboy has to metamorphose into something radically different at best, or just disappear.

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.  

My view of the idea of sins is that they are the animal instincts gone too far for well-being-- gluttony, sex obsession, etc. They represent a loss of control of consciousness over the unconscious impulses. Suicide, unless it's done in a chemically-imbalanced depressive state, can't be that-- it is an overcoming of animal fear on a philosophical or social basis. Life and death, like almost anything else, look very different the more you zoom in or out on them, and even some of those moral issues with family and so on really look more and more like emotional reactions on the chimp-brain level than ration arguments for struggling on.

That being said, I'm a little worried when threads like this come up. I don't want to be an enabler for an actual act of suicide, because I believe for the most part those clever enough to seriously consider philosophical implications at that level are the kind of people I need to stick around for my own interest's sake, and are smart enough that their loss represents more than disappointment of a few family members, but potentially a net loss for humanity.

[LadyForCamus]

Right.  This is what I mean.  From my POV as the deceased (so to speak) there is no discernible difference between having lived and died, and having never been born in the first place.  I'm not talking about the difference I make in the world that continues to exist beyond my ending.  I didn't mean to imply that people who have died no longer mean anything to those of us still living.  Thanks for clarifying, Benny!

Given your name here, I'm not surprised that you see death as kind of a mockery of life.  The absurdity of mortality in the face of infinity was definitely a Camus thing.

That being said, I think almost EVERYTHING is absurd, from quantum mechanics to Big Bang or black hole singularities.  And yet, and I really think this is non-trivial: this morning, the birds are singing outside my window, the kids are laughing in the other room, and I have a few interesting things I could do today if I stepped away from the computer long enough.

Reading Camus was the first time I felt like there was a voice for the thoughts and feelings I was just starting to work through. His conclusion was, 'keep pushing that boulder up for as long as you possibly can, and don't be bothered to whine about it, because the alternative isn't any less absurd of an option.' So I thought, okay, I think I can do that. That's a workable plan.

Interesting piece of trivia about Camus for anyone who doesn't know: He had a well
documented fear of driving/riding in cars (understandable, considering they were no more than speeding death traps at the time), and was on record once stating that the most absurd way he could imagine his life ending would be via a car crash. He then died in a car crash.

It's like he was practically daring the living, within the context of his philosophy on life, to assign some kind of existential meaning or significance to the nature of his death.