Immortality

Guest on Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:23 pm

From my silly post in the science versus religion thread I've come to read this about Unamuno:
"Main themes in Unamuno's work are the conflict between life and thought, the tension between reason and Christian faith, and the tragedy of death in man's life, the horrendous void of non-being, in which reason offers no consolation. As a philosopher Unamuno did not create a systematic presentation of his thought. He objected strongly to academic philosophers and stressed that the deepest of all human desires is the hunger for personal immortality against all our rational knowledge of life."

I'm not sure if I'd like to be immortal. I don't know if we die and there's no afterlife but (I think) I have assimilated/accepted it (it has taken me really a lot of years since I started thinking about it). Somehow now, I even see the no after life as a blessing. But there's something about not-being that I find too difficult to even understand.

So what would cause you more horror
to have to live forever
or to stop being (forever)?

Guest on Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:29 pm

I am also thinking that we need goals in life (some people more than others). Even if you want to "enjoy" life while it lasts, if we know in the end we are not even going to remember what we've lived... isn't it a bit like taking away the goal? (Not that the goal should be in afterlife- no

) I feel like something's missing.

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:41 pm

In his book "The Myth of Sisyphus," Albert Camus proposes that the human condition (which you might summarize as "Life's a bitch, and then you die") is an absurd situation, and he poses the question "Why don't we just kill ourselves?"

His answer is that the "absurd man" is an incorrigible rebel, who refuses to accept his condition, even though he knows that there is no escape from it.

So, you live your life just out of stubborn, ornery cussedness.

And Sisyphus is happy with his rock, because it's his very own rock. cheers

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:46 pm

Vera Cruz wrote:I am also thinking that we need goals in life (some people more than others). Even if you want to "enjoy" life while it lasts, if we know in the end we are not even going to remember what we've lived... isn't it a bit like taking away the goal? (Not that the goal should be in afterlife- no ) I feel like something's missing.

Your goal could be to be satisfied with your life when it's at it's end. You will either be thinking "screwing all those poor people has profited me nothing," or you might be thinking "I'm a goner, but I done good."

Rulers in ancient times used to have great respect for the poets and historical chroniclers. Some rulers were terrified of them, because their only hope at the end of their lives was that good things might be written about them.

A cure for cancer, or some other brilliant invention benefitting mankind, would be a good thing to go out on.

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 6:51 pm

I'm not sure the poll has my response as one of the choices. I'd say "No, and it would be a horror ... maybe." geek

Guest on Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:09 pm

pinhedz wrote:In his book "The Myth of Sisyphus," Albert Camus proposes that the human condition (which you might summarize as "Life's a bitch, and then you die") is an absurd situation, and he poses the question "Why don't we just kill ourselves?"

His answer is that the "absurd man" is an incorrigible rebel, who refuses to accept his condition, even though he knows that there is no escape from it.

So, you live your life just out of stubborn, ornery cussedness.

And Sisyphus is happy with his rock, because it's his very own rock.

I'm reading the book begins with this by Pindaro:

"Not you eagerness, soul mine, by an immortal life, but worries the feasible resource"
(in Spanish - "No te afanes, alma mía, por una vida inmortal, pero agota el ámbito de lo posible")

I like that cat

Guest on Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:17 pm

"The myth of Sísifo

The title of the test comes from a afflicted personage of Greek Mythology . In him, Camus discusses to the question of the suicide and the value of the life, presenting/displaying the myth of Sísifo like metaphor of the useless and incessant effort of the modern man, who consumes his life in squalid and dehumanized factories and offices.

Of this form Philosophy of absurd raises, that maintains that our lives are insignificant and they do not have more value than than we created. Being the so trivial world, Camus it asks, alternative what is to Suicide ? The test begins: is but no a really serious philosophical problem: the suicide .

Sísifo, within Greek Mythology, like Prometheus, made get upset to the Gods by its extraordinary cleverness. Like punishment, it was condemned to lose the view and to push perpetually Rocky crag giant mountain arrives thus until the top, only so that it returned to fall rolling until the valley, and indefinitely.

Camus develops the idea of " man absurdo", or with one " sensitivity absurda". He is that one that is perpetually conscious of the complete uselessness of its life. This one, affirms, is the unique acceptable alternative to the unjustifiable jump of faith that forms the base of all the religions (and even of Existencialismo, that therefore Camus did not accept completely). Taking advantage numerous philosophical and literary sources, and particularly Dostoievski, Camus describe the historical progress of bring back to consciousness of the absurd one and conclude that Sísifo is definitive the absurd hero.

In its test, Camus affirms that Sísifo undergoes the freedom during a brief moment, when it has finished pushing the rocky crag and not yet it must begin again down. In that point, Camus felt that Sísifo, in spite of being blind, knew that the views of the landscape were there and must it have found edifying: " One must imagine happy to Sísifo", it declares, reason why it saves apparently it of his suicidal destiny.

The work closes with an appendix on the work of Franz Kafka, interpreted finally of similar way, in terms of a esteticismo, to its way, hopeful."
http://www.myetymology.com/encyclopedia/The_myth_of_S%C3%ADsifo.html

Is it, The Myth of Sisyphus, difficult to read, Pinhedz?
(They have it in the library)

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:23 pm

Part of it is difficult. For me, there was a stretch of about 8 pages, near the end, that I had to reread a number of times until I felt I'd understood it.

The key is to not continue until you've understood what you've read. scratch

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:26 pm

I'd say it's easier than Kant's Kritik of Pure Reason.

pinhedz on Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:37 pm

Vera Cruz wrote:"Not you eagerness, soul mine, by an immortal life, but worries the feasible resource"
(in Spanish - "No te afanes, alma mía, por una vida inmortal, pero agota el ámbito de lo posible")

Let's try that again ...

"It is not for you, my soul, to strive for eternal life, but rather to strive for that which is possible."

How's that...anywhere close? geek

Guest on Wed Jan 18, 2012 11:37 pm

Yes, pinhedz's English version is more understandable for me alien

now try it in Russian... confused

pinhedz on Thu Jan 19, 2012 12:01 am

I'll have to use latin letters:
Tebe, moya dusha, net stremlyat'sya k vechnoy zhizni, a stremlyat'sya k vozmozhnomu.

eddie on Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:45 am

pinhedz wrote:"No, and it would be a horror ... maybe."

The third book of Swift's Gulliver's Travels describes (amongst other strange encounters) a race of humanoids who do indeed live forever- and it is indeed a horror: no escape from all the infirmities of age and decay. From memory, I think the race in question are the Strublungs- or something like that.

Guest on Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:25 am

My mother is a bit strange, I think, because she believes in God and she also believes that death is the end (and it doesn't worry her). I ask her "why do you have a God then?". She answers that she likes to think there's someone helping us. She doesn't say anything about moral, I think, because she knows we don't need a God for that.

Andy on Thu Jan 19, 2012 12:48 pm

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The gay science" wrote:
341 The greatest weight.

—What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

Immortality

Would you like to be immortal?

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