Dan Glover <[email protected]> 11:32 PM (11 hours ago) to moq_discuss Nikolas,
On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 2:24 PM, Blodgett, Nikolas <[email protected]> wrote: > Life is the answer to life itself .... The meaning of life is truly reached > through epiphany. It happens when you let go of certain things, which seems > counter intuitive. The details of those things escape definition, and can > only be understood by following the signposts of those that have come > before and whom have acquired,for lack of a better word, enlightened > realizations. Anyone relate to this sentiment? I believe that anyone is > capable of even the simplest of such revelations. Dan: I am of the opinion that we are each on our own, especially when it comes to discovering if life is worthwhile or not. We can of course take advice from others. We can learn from those who have gone before us. But in the end, when you're lying awake in the middle of the night with no one else around, you are answerable only to yourself. Epiphanies? Sure... they come along once in a great while and if we're mindful we might even catch a glimpse of the 'real' us lurching beneath the surface of all this cultural crap. Still, I can imagine how epiphanies might well lead a person to think life isn't worth living. Maybe you've just been informed that you have a terminal illness, one that ends badly. Yes, all terminal illnesses end badly but some are far more painful that others. Perhaps you suddenly realize everything you have done and everything you will ever do is all for naught. Maybe you're just tired and you suddenly realize the pain is never going to end. To me, the answer lies in mindful awareness... where even in the face of our inevitable death we keep to the moment. Though we understand viscerally that everything we are, everything we do, everyone we know and love will all turn to dust and in a thousand years nothing at all will be left to mark our existence, we keep going anyway. It's sort of a fool's errand to be sure, but that's better than giving in to the despair. Thanks for your reply! NIK (1130am 12/23/2014) Its funny, these little coincidences I mentioned. Like the book I just wrote down, the answer you gave and the topics I noticed among the two. Here are the quotes I wrote down from the book. It is by John Greene and it is called The Fault in Our Stars. There are spoilers, just in case it was an actually concern of anyone's. ...... p. 12-12 - "I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. you could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us.l There will come a time when there arre no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be noone left to remember Aristotle of Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this" - I gestured encompassingly - "will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the enevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows thats what everyone else does." p.174 "You know that part in An Imperial Affliction when Anna's walking across the football field and she falls and goes face-first into the grass and thats when she knows that the cancer is back and in her nervous system and she can't get up and her face is like an inch from the football field grass and she's stuck there looking at this grass up close, noticing the way the light hits it and ... I don't remember the line but its something like Anna having the Witmanesque revelation that the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation or whatever. You know that part?" p.? - "We live in a Universe devoted to the creation, and eradication of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He dide after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim - as you will be - of the universes need to make and unmake all that is possible." (This fits the idea of the universe going from a onepoint infinite complexity to infinitely sized homogenized complexity. The movement will naturaly be compromised of everything that was, is, and ever will be.) p.281 - "Yeah," I said. We just sat there quiet for a long time, which was fine, and I was thinking about way back in the beginning in the Literal Heart of Jesus when Gus told us that he feared oblivion, and I told him that he was fearing something universal and inevitable, and how really, the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolute inhuman nihilism of suffering. I thought of my dad telling me that the universe wants to be noticed. But what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the Universe give a shit what happens to us - not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us, as individuals." p.305 - "I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before his recurrence that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up that you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again." p.307 - "Sometimes, I guess" But that wasn't what I was thinking. I was just trying to notice everything: the light on the ruined Ruins, this little kid who could barely walk discovering a stick at the corner of the playground, my indefatiguable mother zigzagging mustard across her turkey sandwich, my dad patting his handheld in his pocket and resisting the urge to check it, a guy throwing a frisbee that his dog kept running under and catching and returning to him. Who am I to say that these things might not be forever? Who is Peter Van Houten to assert as fact the conjecture that our labor is temporary? All I know of heaven is in this park: an elegant universe in ceasless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children" On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:02 AM, Dan Glover <[email protected]> wrote: > Ron, > > On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Ron Kulp <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > >> On Dec 22, 2014, at 2:18 AM, Dan Glover <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> The first paragraph caught my attention: > >> > >> "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is > >> suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to > >> answering the fundamental question of philosophy." > > > > Ron comments: > > Truly a great post Dan. > > Thank you, Ron. > > >Ron: > > I recently viewed the film "God is > > Not dead" in which the defining justification for the belief in God was > > That life wasn't worth living without > > The concept. > > Dan: > I haven't seen the film but yes, especially in Western culture, the > belief in a god is tantamount to a belief in a worthwhile life. These > strange holidays that we celebrate are in actuality old pagan rituals > deeply rooted in nature and taken over by the christians and made > their own.The celebration of the winter solstice becomes a god's > birthday. Easter was once a celebration of fertility and sex, the > blooming of a new world out of the depths of winter. > > Ron: > > Shakespeare answered > > That it is also the fear of death that makes it better to be than not to > be. > > Then we have Socrates that asks > > What it means to lead a Good life > > Dan: > What was his answer? And does leading a good life equate with knowing > that a life is worthwhile? > > Ron: > > And Aristotle that states wonder and the ecstasy of being, of life at > its best > > Is the reason for living, that knowing increases this feeling. > > Dan: > This brings to mind a book I read a while back called The Road, by > Cormac McCarthy. The book is about life at its worst. At first I > couldn't help but think the author must have been in a dark place to > have written it. Yet at the same time, I got the distinct impression > he was trying to show how life was worthwhile even in the most > terrible of circumstances, when the odds are all stacked against you, > when the only thing you know is that you'll be just as hungry, cold, > and tired tomorrow as you are today and there isn't a thing you can do > to change that. Still, you go on. Why? > > Ron: > > The Buddhists and the bushido say > > You do not fully live unless you are > > Constantly aware of your own death > > That transitory knowledge of being makes life more meaningful. > > Dan: > Absolutely. > > >Ron: > > That's why I like the idea of realizing > > The dynamic within the seemingly > > Rigid and static. > > > > If you call it God, it doesn't quite > > Ring, because what drives it is not > > Fear of death but the joy of being. > > > > With the joy of being there is no > > Fear of death no use for the concept > > Of God. > > > > Or so it seems to me. > > Dan: > I tend to agree with this. Keeping our inevitable death in mind > doesn't mean we are running scared. Rather, by living each moment as > fully as we might, by seeking out our inner destiny, and by taking > incremental steps towards implementing it Dynamically into a > culturally static world that does not care one way or another, we > become our self. > > > > > Thanks Dan > > You're welcome. Thank you too, Ron. > > http://www.danglover.com > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org/md/archives.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
