Processing our mortality

[LastPoet]

In portugal we have a saying, roughly translated to "there is no rest for the wicked". I hope that remains true for all my life.

[Whateverist]

Due to my beliefs; I do think and believe that asking the self "why do I exist" question, is one thing so human.. asking the self about morality follows. Or is even parallel with the former.

Have to say I'm not feeling that one (my bolded) at all.  It can follow to ask about morality but I see no reason at all why it should.

I find most thinking about morality to be masturbatory.  Unless one struggles to stifle antisocial impulses why worry about it?  For theists there is the thought of currying the favor of their creator.  Getting a gold star for their existence.  But from a godless perspective and assuming one is dispositionally oriented in prosocial ways, I just don't see why anyone would spend so much time mapping out the relative moral worth of every conceivable action or justifying those choices.  That just seems like the intellect's attempt to gather to itself an experience which is intrinsically feeling based.

[*Deidre*]

This is an interesting thread, I think it was one of the main reasons, I never felt emotionally comfortable as an atheist. I believe in God (again) but even with belief, the idea of death and the how/when/why still causes me some angst. My ideas of who or what a god may be, doesn't take away the fear I have of death. When my grandmother died a few years ago, I was an atheist then and that's when I started struggling with it all. I think where I'm at with it now is, will we still feel something after we die? Like pain etc or will it just feel like the deepest sleep one can have? I think my struggle is in processing that we will likely not feel anything at all.

[Amarok]

Hell yes it's Freddy Mercury

Yeah, he's dead though.  That's probably not gonna be a great trade for you.

Yeah but you get to die as Freddy Mercury

[bennyboy]

Yeah, he's dead though.  That's probably not gonna be a great trade for you.

Yeah but you get to die as Freddy Mercury

I'd rather live as me, I think.

[c172]

(Wasn't sure if I should put this here or in the Atheism section.)

I think I am one of the few atheists here who still struggles with mortality, and with the concept of impermanence in general.  I've heard the analogies about parties and movies: 'you can still enjoy the [fill in the blank] even though you know it's going to end.'  And, I've heard Hitchens' bittersweet adaptation: 'the party is going to continue, but I have to leave.'  It's all about the experience.  But, I find no solace in these.  

They're decent analogies but they ultimately fail me, because when you leave a party you get to go home; you get to call your mom, watch Netflix, reminisce about it with your husband, and remember how much fun you had (or didn't have).  In these analogies there is still an experience after the experience.  There is still a frame of reference; an internal narrative.

Why should mortality bother me so much?  It seems like most of you guys here have adjusted fine to the idea.  Why can't I?  I think my existential crisis is this: The end of my conscious experience is completely indistinguishable from never having had that experience at all.  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?

I know, I know...once I'm dead I won't know or care about any of this so it's silly to perseverate on it now, but sometimes I feel  like I've been stuck in one of the five stages of grief for years, and I can't get past it.  

So, now you guys tell me to quit being a whiny, depressing, emo-baby and make some dick jokes so I can come back to my sense, okay?  [HEAVY BLACK HEART]️

This thread is already superlong, so, sorry I'm late. 

I do get kind of bummed about it. First and foremost, the death process could be quite painful. But then, maybe it won't be. We can't tell right now, and that's unsettling. Secondly, despite certain people in society making me want to tear out my hair, I find the Earthly journey pleasant and mysterious. I don't want it to end. 

However, if we were to live eternally (or even just a long time) here on earth, what kind of bodies would we be in in our later years? As well, I feel that not only would divorce shoot up to 100% after x amount of years, but so would disownment (and this may be a thread of its own, really). Could we really handle our current family life after, say, 10,000 years, beit our own marital nucleus or the nucleus we were born into?

I think you're being pretty sensical. 

But, we still die. Sucks to be us.

[henryp]

(Wasn't sure if I should put this here or in the Atheism section.)

I think I am one of the few atheists here who still struggles with mortality, and with the concept of impermanence in general.  I've heard the analogies about parties and movies: 'you can still enjoy the [fill in the blank] even though you know it's going to end.'  And, I've heard Hitchens' bittersweet adaptation: 'the party is going to continue, but I have to leave.'  It's all about the experience.  But, I find no solace in these.  

They're decent analogies but they ultimately fail me, because when you leave a party you get to go home; you get to call your mom, watch Netflix, reminisce about it with your husband, and remember how much fun you had (or didn't have).  In these analogies there is still an experience after the experience.  There is still a frame of reference; an internal narrative.

Why should mortality bother me so much?  It seems like most of you guys here have adjusted fine to the idea.  Why can't I?  I think my existential crisis is this: The end of my conscious experience is completely indistinguishable from never having had that experience at all.  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?

I know, I know...once I'm dead I won't know or care about any of this so it's silly to perseverate on it now, but sometimes I feel  like I've been stuck in one of the five stages of grief for years, and I can't get past it.  

So, now you guys tell me to quit being a whiny, depressing, emo-baby and make some dick jokes so I can come back to my sense, okay?  [HEAVY BLACK HEART]️

I'm with you.  Once you grow accustomed to a certain level of existence, it's hard to give that up.

I think there are all sorts of reasons for death to be bothersome.  The root in my mind, is that we aren't actually worried about the future, we're worried about our idea of the future.  How we imagine things will be, rather than the actual thing itself.  And the future in our minds exists now, and coexists with our consciousness.   So your brain can say "I like being alive.  I'm not alive in this future.  I don't like the idea of that now." 

The other tricky thing about death, is that society was built on ideas that we transcend death.  Work hard.  Leave a legacy.  Have some kids.  Better the world.  Go spend some time with God.  And on and on.  But that has the same problem as not caring about dying.  You know that a legacy doesn't matter to you when you are dead.  You know if the world explodes the day after you die, you'll never know.  That religion is a fairy tale.  So we're taught our whole life is supposed to be about creating this amazing resume of accomplishments and experiences and contributions, but if you think to hard about it, you know it'll mean nothing to you when you're dead.  There's no gold star or VIP room.  Just non-existence.

Personally, I've just accepted it.  I try to do what I want.  Avoid doing things I don't want.  Enjoy myself as much as I can.  

I just saw a great bit on a Netflix comedy show.  He was talking about how people tell him it's stupid to take a 2yo to Disney, because they wont' remember it.  And his response was that I guess I  should just shove her in a closet until she's 4 or so, since doing anything fun with her would just be a waste of time since she won't remember it.  

The reality is, that we exist in a moment.  And we can enjoy the moments while it's happening.  And that's enough.  And it has to be enough, because that's all there is.  Our life is a moment.  We're a two year old at Disney.  We're still shit our pants excited to see Mickey and Ariel.  That we won't remember it later doesn't have to take anything away from that experience.  And when it's time to die, we can just be terrified.  I plan on it.  And then it will be over.  It's a bad ending, but there's not a lot to do about that if you aren't willing to delude yourself.  Or who knows, maybe you'll get really old, and have had enough.  I hear that's a thing sometimes.

[LadyForCamus]

Personally, I think that life that -doesn't- possess consciousness, or possess relatively diminished consciousness got the cruel end of the evolutionary stick.  Ever notice that how poorly something goes between two creatures very often toes the line with which of them has greater mental faculties?  

There's a reason fish keep getting stuck on hooks.  A reason that the fastest deer keep getting shot.  

Perhaps, had they the ability to more thoroughly contemplate their own mortality (I'm pretty sure every sentient creature is familiar with the fear of death) they wouldn't end up being the victim of it with such alarming frequency.  In the meanwhile (as in, between now and whenever we all invariably bite that bullet), while our mental faculties do cause us anguish I feel that this feature (not a bug) of the system is vastly outweighed by the amount of joy the same apparatus brings us.  The idea of it's loss is, after all, what's causing you grief in this case.  If life and death were all doom and gloom we'd find ourselves rushing towards it headlong - but we don't.

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!

[bennyboy]

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.

[mordant]

In portugal we have a saying, roughly translated to "there is no rest for the wicked". I hope that remains true for all my life.

My mother (who was of Swedish ancestry) used that phrase also. Never heard it anywhere else until today (I live in the US). No idea where she picked it up, but her parents were immigrants so I assumed it was probably from the Old Country.