BS: Mortality

Subject: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Sep 22 - 11:42 PM

Your Mortality
Mortality is a constant reality in our human fragility and is not merely a singular event of death.
Fate exists moment to moment and the universe does not care about your personal narrative.
I have not sought the meaning of life but instead, have explored the meaning in life. The meaning that's shared in our bonds and in our passionate seeking of discovery. Those that dispose of their life are often alienated, have lost their curiosity and can no longer justify their suffering and pain in existence.
The question of consciousness is fundamental and is largely unknown. My only radical departure from this status quo is that I believe we can communicate consciousness without language or by visible means. Particularly to immense future events that will be experienced by many. This quantum trick is only for the living. Ghosts only whisper from the past. I view our consciousness as massive as the Earth while our superficial conscious ego is the thin tenuous atmosphere.
In my late thirties's the temporal horizon of my life switched from birth to present, to present to death and changed my desires, career and quests. Surprisingly the number one fear is not of death but of public speaking or a loss of status or reputation. Obviously, the notion of life after death is chained to nonsense and only serves to ignore the issue, or is sold as a fictitious reward for theological control reasons.
The preferred death is a meaningful death and not a meaningless death. I don't think it really matters since you're not in control of the switch at the end. Nor do I think it can be done in your normal sleep since you are bound to be aroused by something going wrong. It would be the shortest-lasting memory, however.
So here is a toast to your death, sooner or later may it be a good one.

PS Regarding religious views of death and the functionality of religion beyond the propositional dogmas, there is wisdom to be gained in religious knowing. There are many kinds of knowing like a person with procedural knowledge who have dementia who can still sing or play an instrument flawlessly or a person with a salience of episodic memory of where they are and memory that serves so well to the exclusion of everything else irrelevant, as to be genius. There is also participating knowing like participating in having an insight occur and not forcing/creating an insight to be made.
Today myth means a falsehood but Mythos refers to long-lasting recurring truths. In a similar religious vein, magic mushrooms are remarkably helpful for anxious people who are frightened by aspects of their mortality because they powerfully aid one's contemplative and meditation states of mind unlike the loss of control with beer. Meanings become far more deeply fundamental in practical ways than in the usual state of consciousness. Some have called it wisdom. With beer it's called pissing oneself or getting pissed.
How psilocybin creates such openness, roughly speaking. is that certain regions of the brain start talking to one another while other regions stop talking. Relationships improve, transformative behaviors ensue, a sense of self improves and anxieties diminish without addictive or dependency problems. Having this pre-mindset is helpful but not required.
My point is that religion or mystical experience need not be cast in the lake of nonsense, evil outmoded teachings aside.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 22 - 04:46 AM

Live in the moment and stop worrying. Beats agonising about death, the one thing in life which you can't avoid anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 22 - 05:03 AM

By the way, if you'd like to see what's strengthened my philosophy even more, take a look at the declutter thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: robomatic
Date: 13 Sep 22 - 08:13 PM

You need a passenger side mirror: "Arguments may be shallower than they appear."

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Sep 22 - 08:18 PM

That reminds me 'sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug'.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Senoufou
Date: 14 Sep 22 - 02:56 AM

We've had several deaths lately in this village, mostly among the elderly, and each one has saddened me very much. Then of course the passing of HM The Queen.
However, death is indeed inevitable, and the best way forward in my view is to live life day by day, being thankful for the things we have (which sounds a bit smug, I know!), and being as kind as possible to all around us.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Neil D
Date: 14 Sep 22 - 10:10 PM

I don't want to talk about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 04:25 AM

It is something that causes us to love, revere and respect not the present, but the past. The people who have empathy will know this sting of grief.

Beyond personal memory and nostalgia is the ancient artifact. It is an object of lives lived not unlike a diary or an old camera but its story is mostly a mystery to us.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 06:59 AM

A lot of us here are getting older, and as time goes on there are far more deaths around us than weddings, etc. I've been to seven or eight funerals in the last couple of years. So what? That's life. Seize the day, carpe diem, live in the moment, enjoy what you can and stop musing about your coming death. If it bugs you, just make sure you'll be leaving everything in good order, eat healthily, get some exercise, forget it and book yourself a holiday. Or have a big ice cream.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: gillymor
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 08:59 AM

I not afraid of dying I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Not sure who Woody Allen got that frpm, maybe Groucho, but it hits home with me. The awareness of my impending doom has freed me up to spend my excess funds on family, friends, worthy causes and things that I've always coveted as well as travel to fishing destinations that I've always wanted to experience. What am I gonna do line my coffin with it or, in my case, have them chuck it on the funeral pyre? Knowing that there will be a final exit has improved my existence considerably.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 09:47 AM

My family are threatening to compost me. Go ahead, I told 'em. Just check that I'm properly dead first.

Knock knock

Who's there?

Grandad

STOP THE FUNERAL!

(Thanks to the peerless Barry Cryer for that one!)

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Sep 22 - 01:21 PM

Dead or not, composting is a good idea ;^/

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Sep 22 - 05:55 AM

I told my family to put me in the bin but they said that the council frown on that type of thing. Mrs G and I have set up funeral plans instead.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 22 - 06:19 AM

I hate funerals so much that I've decided that I won't be going to mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Sep 22 - 02:51 PM

If you aren't there, it is your memorial service...

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Sep 22 - 04:38 PM

What's the difference between an Irish wake and an Irish wedding?
One less drunk.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 22 - 05:32 PM

Fewer.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Sep 22 - 06:38 PM

Not so, Steve.

'Fewer' is for multiple discrete items. 'Less' is for mass nouns but also for a singular discrete item:-

"Less booze";
"Fewer drunks";
"One less drunk".

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Sep 22 - 07:50 PM

You're right, Doug. I was just testing. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 04:47 AM

As I have no children, and my husband no longer lives with me, I couldn't care less what happens to my body when I die. I shall be dead, so how will I know? I stopped paying Life Insurance a couple of years ago for this very reason.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 05:19 AM

Dead or not, composting is a good idea ;^/

Not that I am an expert, (cue our resident expert to pontificate - negatively), but I have read somewhere that planting trees over coffins is not good for the tree. Compostable coffin is assumed.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 06:43 AM

If you take the trouble to look things up, it doesn't make you an expert.

In the UK the top of the uppermost coffin in a grave should be a minimum of three feet below the surface. Three feet of earth is plenty to get a tree started in life, and as it gets bigger its root system would easily find its way around things such as large rocks or coffins. I planted apple trees in my garden 35 years ago in an area where there was less than six inches of topsoil on top of extremely rocky subsoil that it would take a digger to get through. They are all still thriving.

I also wondered why anyone would plant a tree right on top of a grave. Nothing stopping you in theory, as long as local rules allow it, But at least in a municipal cemetery it would seem an odd thing to do. In natural burial grounds, maybe, but I'm not an expert in these things.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 11:17 AM

I saw six blokes lugging a coffin round a cemetery on their shoulders for four hours. I thought, those guys have really lost the plot...

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Senoufou
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 12:07 PM

Hahahaaaaagh Steve! Excellent joke! :)

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 02:54 PM

Mortality is in all things. I suppose most people see mortality and think "My Mortality"
Sequoias and Joshua trees live 2,000 years?
Jellyfish are more or less immortal in their peculiar life cycle.
A neutron can stick around for billions of years and longer inside some of the atoms that make up matter in our universe. But when neutrons are free and floating alone outside of an atom, they start to decay into protons and other particles. Their lifetime is short, lasting only about 15 minutes.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Sep 22 - 04:01 PM

I suppose most people see mortality and think "My Mortality"


??

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 21 Sep 22 - 05:47 AM

Makes sense to me, Steve, like those "momento mori" skulls that were fashionable on scholars' desks not so many centuries ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 10:31 AM

I also wondered why anyone would plant a tree right on top of a grave.

there are cemeteries that offer that it's a fashion like a sidecar hearse, my choice would be our local funeral directors called "Ernest Cox". And FWIW anyone can set up a cemetery apparently, but you have to inform the council (which one wasn't specified, parish/county/unitary authority)

And the advice about planting a tree over a coffin was broadcast on "Gardners Question Time" BBC Sundays afternoon - my kind of expert to rely on reasons for being less that helpful to the tree were not given or weren't remembered.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Sep 22 - 07:06 PM

I would imagine that a funeral director called Ernest Cox would be specialising in coffins that were eight inches deeper than usual...

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Sep 22 - 11:30 AM

How to not die:
A best selling book by Mitch Album about Morrie Swartz called 'Tuesdays with Morrie' demonstrated how to live on like a penny in a piggybank that rattles around that the living can hear.
There is also the movie with Jack Lemon playing Morrie who said it was the favorite role of his life. Jack was simultaneously diagnosed with cancer.

"Don't hang on too long and don't give up too soon, find a balance", Morrie said.
It is a good book to read to the dieing.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: BobL
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 03:26 AM

"Good health is merely the slowest way to die" - Les Barker

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Senoufou
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 03:53 AM

There's a painting of a skeleton on the wall in Norwich cathedral (a memorial to Thomas Gooding). It has some words written underneath, something about, "All ye who do this place pass by, remember death for ye must die. As ye are now, even so was I". Rather depressing, but true nevertheless.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 04:17 AM

Live in the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 05:29 AM

There is a gravestone in a churchyard in Liverpool which, if my memory serves me correctly, reads:

"Weep not for me as you pass by
As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you will be
Stranger, do not weep for me"

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 05:57 AM

Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 05:59 AM

I was "educated" by Catholic priests, who were obsessed with scaring us all about death. The general idea was that you'd better make sure that you died with you soul nice and clean, you miserable wretches (cue massive appendix of sins in the back of the little book we had to buy), otherwise you'd burn in hell for eternity. Here are some notions we were regaled with (I kid you not):

The best time to die, e.g., by being run over by a bus, was as you walked out of church having just done your confession.

"Death comes unexpectedly, like a thief in the night..."

We spent many an RE lesson talking about how to have "a happy death."

Most of the many and tedious religious services we were subjected to ended with a special prayer "for the one amongst us who will be the first to die."

As I keep on saying, death can't as yet be avoided. So live for today (as sufficient for it is the evil thereof) and make sure the missus knows where all the policies are.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Rain Dog
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 06:18 AM

Make sure that your partner and/or family members, have your logon and passwords for your various accounts. So much is done online nowadays, leaving very little paper trails.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 06:27 AM

Y'mean, write 'em down on a big sheet of paper....? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 07:05 AM

Mixed unexpressed feelings seem to attend funerals .

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 11:17 AM

> Y'mean, write 'em down on a big sheet of paper....? ;-)

That's exactly what my brother's done with all of Dad's passwords: he (my father) was born before our late Queen, so they did this for safety, and as a legacy measure, some time ago. Whenever Dad has problems with his newer computers/laptops/whatever, he phones up my brother, and it usually turns out to be a forgotten password; but that's a useful side-effect.

A good example to follow; and I intend to, once the time comes.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Sep 22 - 09:44 PM

I'm not a phone guy.

You didn't exist long ago and you will not exist in the future.
Remains are probably not infinite. Hundreds of billions of years may be too short a time.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Sep 22 - 12:17 PM

Everything dies. In fact, there’s an infinite number of ways to make the universe finite. And there’s really only a couple ways to make it infinite.

Subject: RE: BS: Mortality
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Sep 22 - 06:19 PM

If I woke up to find its all been a joke
and I was deaf dumb and blind
and homeless and broke.
Time is not a crime.
Even dyin wouldn't
be that bad.