
Philosophy of Death - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/books/review/Holt-t.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all
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niels_olson
this really ought to be further up in the cue. Well above all the resubmit
crap.

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Allocator2008
While we are on the subject of philosophy, I find on something of a
philosophical note, the interesting ways and manners in which truth can unveil
itself. Of course "unveiling" has a distinct meaning in Heidegger, but I am
using this more generally, just to mean how the "deep truths of life" come to
us/emerge/unveil from unexpected sources. I am reminded, then, in this case of
a 'Charmed' episode where Prue Halliwell (Shannen Doherty) is trying to save
somebody from the Angel of Death. She ultimately is confronted by the Angel of
Death who tells her that he is not good or evil, but simply inevitable. She
has to let go of her hatred of Death and see him as simply part of the natural
course of things. Thus death from the point of view of hairless apes like us
or the point of view of galaxies or even the whole universe, is in fact
neither good nor bad, it simply is. Fearing it does not make it not so. Thus,
one way or another it must be accepted, it must be seen as an inevitable part
of the "rerum naturum". I really think on this subject the only way to sort of
deal with our own annihilation or the fear thereof is to say that as long as
we are fearing it, we have not encountered it. To fear, we must be alive.
Therefore we have not an object of fear to fear. What is it to fear without an
object? Anxiety. Undirected fear is anxiety. It is the antithesis of
rationality. As human beings we must seek to be rational. We must seek to free
ourselves from irrational fear. It is not rational to fear that which by
definition we can never experience. We cannot by definition "experience"
annihilation. We cannot experience annihilation, anymore than we really
"experience" falling asleep. One moment we are drifting off in bed. The next
moment the alarm clock goes off. Death is the same thing, except without the
alarm clock. Either way, there is no "experience", and therefore no object of
fear. Death is not bad. Death is not good. Death is inevitable, as Prue
Halliwell came to see. I take comfort in knowing though that as death is
inevitable so is birth. And perhaps even out of the ashes of the current
universe new big bangs could spring forth, as some theories hint at. And so
life (and death) goes on, ad infinitum.

We are, as Gregory Corso wrote in one of his poems, 'Homer', "alive, as
always, forever ignorant of that death you'll never know."

Fearing the inevitable which cannot be even experienced is just not rational.
The only thing to do is enjoy our moment in the sun. We all die, but spending
our time fearing this just means we are not ever really alive, and that is
just sad. Myself, I will leave eternity to the multiverse, and enjoy my brief
tenure as a gene-carrying robot for all it is worth! :-)

