Death and Daily Strategies

[livi]

Calling for collective forum wisdom (again).

I feel I am heading for a turning point in my life, where I either will have to 'go religious' or find some other daily philosophical strategy for coping with the fact that death is inevitable. Some day - tomorrow or in fifty years - I will exist no more. I can´t seem to come to terms with or even comprehend my own death. Every individual is his is center of the Universe around whom everything and everybody else revolves. Taking myself ie my soul and consciousness out of the equation is as difficult to comprehend as it is terrifying to realize.

The hundred per cent certainty of death also has an impact on everyday living. I have a hard time fighting off a feeling of how meaningless my life and daily life acts are in the larger perspective. Nothing much feels overly important.

Hence, I have a creeping sensation of missing out on something - emotionally or otherwise - in everyday life. Everyday going by is another day wasted - and one day closer to death.

I need to find my "center", some philosophical standpoint as a 'daily strategy'. I want to reach a mental status of content. I want to wake up in the morning feeling I lead a happy, content and even meaningful life.

I know its all in my brain and personality - I just can´t find it.

And so, here I am (again), looking for words of wisdom - or perhaps at least recognition.

How do you reflect on your self and the world in order to feel this life is worth while.

Please note, I am not being suicidal but rather philosophical.

[LeRoux Strydom]

Livi,

you are asking very profound questions that are not easily answered. There are many glib answers, probably none of which will satisfy you at this stage.

I believe, however, that you have to start looking for your real purpose in life, at the end of which people would say that you have made a difference in your time here. What that purpose is, is for you to find out. There are many religious viewpoints (I share the protestant Christian viewpoint, btw.), but a very practical perspective is that you appear to be in a position to offer service to your fellow humans in a very unique way, being a paediatrician (and a gifted one, I can tell from your posts). Living your life in service of others who need it in whatever form, is in my opinion the most rewarding to yourself and to them. Only you can tell what and to whom that service should be. I know you have children. I also have three little curtain-hangers, and the greatest reward to me is to offer what I have (time, experience, wisdom, money etc.) to help them become better human beings with their own purposes in life. Their meaningful lives will perhaps be the only monuments that I will build for myself that will remain when I have departed this life.

May I offer another glib answer from a religious (Christian) perspective?
Rick Warren suggests that a person has 5 reasons to live:
Worship - i.e. acknowledge whomever/whatever (God, if you want?) made all this including you for whatever reason,
Fellowship - sharing your life with other people (if only your kids?),
Discipleship - continually becoming a better person yourself with higher moral standards, having some other person/deity as your moral example,
Ministry - teaching/serving other people (children) in your own beliefs or value systems,
Mission - (this is where the religion part really comes in.....) converting another soul for your chosen belief/value/system/religion.

Why can you not find this level of meaning in your career or with your kids? I know you are going through tough times in the marital/spousal department, all this must be heavy going for you at the moment. Do you have an outlet for all this stress?

Best of luck!

Le Roux

[RoninLB]

The timeless hole in thought. If we didn't think there wouldn't be any search for the mystical.

happy trails.

[notfarnow]

Heard an interview a year or so ago with Jon Kabat-Zinn. Thought about what he said, but pretty much forgot about it. Heard the same interview a month or two ago, and actually had to pull over and listen. He discussed much of what you are pondering here.

I bought his book "Wherever you go, there you are", and I can honestly say it's changed how I approach many things in my day to day life. I won't bother trying to summarize, but I do suggest you give him a shot.

FWIW, he is not some flakey new age granola eater.

EDIT:
Found the radio interview, it's 52 minutes long.

[legion]

Watch more Oprah, she has guests like this one every week.

Seriously, I have no good answers. Being a young punk, I put that off in my mind as something far off in the future, like retirement and ED.

[IROC]

Immortality is achieved by making the greatest impact you can (hopefully positive) on the people you meet in life. You will be gone one of these days, but your spirit will live on in the people you touch.

I do not believe that there is a heaven or hell or reincarnation, etc. The time we have here on Earth is all we have. We *must* make the most of that time. Be a good person. Be nice to other people. Love your children. Enjoy your family and friends.

Develop a philosophy on life that makes you comfortable. That may be religion, it may be humanism it may be something else. The challenge is to find what works for you.

That's what it's all about.

Mike

[Evans, Marv]

I totally agree with Mike. I'm not a religious person either. I have thought since I was a kid, that organized religion was the ultimate scam that never had to deliver on the ultimate promise of eternal life. I wonder how much of your feelings (or the intensity of them) result from your recent experiences. Plus, maybe you might also benefit from some counseling where you can talk these feelings over with an experienced person. I think, in the end, we all have to realize we are just a part of a continuum that progresses & builds upon the positive contributions of all of the small parts (us) and is setback occassionally by negative contributions of some. It's important for all of us little positive contributors to collectively overcome the negative contributions and in the end be happy we have done out part.

[nostatic]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author-exact=Pema%20Chodron&rank=-relevance%2C%2Bavailability%2C-daterank/104-8562821-8478316

[island911]

Life is as natural as death. (ponder that one for a while)





Or, study a bit of string theory. It suggest that there are 11 spacial dimensions (our bodies seem to be only capable of detecting 4 of those). Gravity is considered a weak force in our dimmensions, andthought to be strong-force in others. What then is our consious awareness? . . . part of another dimension(s) . .. perhaps 'windowing in" thru our bodies. WHo knows. But we do know, that we don't know . . and the more we know, the more we know that we don't know. No?

Now go back and ponder the first line.

[Nathans_Dad]

I've actually thought about this some in the past. The thing that really gets me is thinking about what it would be like if you simply ceased to exist.

That is a notion that is very worrisome to my little brain. The thought that I would simply not be anymore is troubling to say the least.

Of course then I consider that I "was not" for billions of years. I "was not" during the Revolutionary War, I "was not" during the Great Depression. I "was not" during the times of Jesus, or the Egyptians or the cro-magnons. It doesn't seem to bother me that I "was not" in the past, so why should it bother me to not be in the future?

Now, this is really just a philosophical argument for me because I am one of the "weakminded" ones that believe in a higher being and that we do not cease to exist when our earthly bodies die.

[island911]

Does there have to be a higher being (ie person type dictator) for there to be an "afterlife."

. . .and what if it happens to be a sideways life? .. . what if our essence are in contant flux between sets of various, overlapping spacial dimensions?

Nah, sorry . . my bad. Clearly a binary system must be the only reasonable answer.. . .on. .. off . . on . .. off . .. .on . ..

[LeRoux Strydom]

Another thought:

Think about what you would leave behind for others to remember you by, if you were to die today. Then, work on that "monument" tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.....

(and don't think leaving money behind is what its all about...)

[Nathans_Dad]

island I never said it was some sort of person type dictator nor did I say what the mechanism for the life might be. You put those words into my mouth.

Here's a thought for you, maybe God is the "string" in string theory...

[bigchillcar]

crisis of 'faith and reason'..hits us both at 40 eh, livi? forms the basis for a good existential crisis. being a christian does not mean that one doesn't struggle with these issues..accepting the notion of the existence of god does not unfortunately lead to immediate 'soothing' answers to this types of questions. the numbers of people who have tainted the notion of christianity through greead and an 'appeal to the masses' is an unfortunate consequence of our flawed characteristics of humanity. personally, coming from a natural sciences background, i've found it difficult to believe a good portion of the time. but when i consider the complexity of the human brain..and when i consider the vastness of the cosmos..and don't take the latter for granted - i have an agent in new york right now shopping my nearly 800-page novel that explores one of the major implications of quantum mechanical theory: the existence of parallel universes. i spent over three years rigorously researching and writing the novel, which by its end, also is forced to address these very same questions concerning the nature of reality and the timeless question of 'faith and reason'. the title of the book is 'all that is seen and unseen'. i hope that it makes its way to your grocery and book store shelves (mercenary me)..lol. this debate is and will remain timeless..nobody's ever died and returned to describe an 'afterlife'..except the christian belief in the words from the witnesses of the lives of christ. is it all wrong? we''ll either be 'pleasnatly surprised'...or we'll die, nothing will happen, and we'll never know. i suppose some comfort can be taken in that fact..better not to know if there's nothing more.
ryan

[bigchillcar]

livi...here's the 'preface' from my manuscript, 'all that is seen and unseen'. if you like it and think others here would find it interesting, i'll post it as a thread in ot.
ryan

Preface

This is an excursion through arguably the most absorbing and hotly debated topic in the sciences of fundamental physics and cosmology, beginning with the question of ‘why is there something, rather than nothing’? In the context of a story, which follows the lives of its characters, the reader will experience a fictional, yet fairly comprehensive examination of the boldest prediction in science today – the existence of parallel universes.
Why have so many of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries felt so compelled to reach the conclusion that we are in fact ‘not alone’? In an even more bizarre twist…‘we are the other people out there…’
The curiosity that this story generates brings us all to bear on the question of just what is the ‘nature of reality’ and how every single one of us must ultimately reconcile the even greater mystery between ‘faith and reason’. Do we simply exist by chance, as some would argue, or are we in fact the fortunate recipients of a loving, benevolent God with the omnipotent capacity to form infinitely satisfying and personal relationships with his creation? Whichever the case may be, one thing is certain…mankind thirsts for this answer.
Recorded history has traced our path on this journey for truth. Millenniums past, we stared towards the heavens and considered our position in the vast cosmos. For thousands of years, we believed that the Earth was the center of ‘all that is’ – the universe. Only in recent centuries has man evolved the tools to discover that this belief was, in fact, false. Other worlds were soon seen through the lens of Galileo’s mighty telescope, as it was quickly determined that perhaps it was in actuality the ‘Sun’ that should be the center of all things…at least until we saw deeper…
As humanity continued to probe the ‘world of the very large’, even more of these suns were discovered. This forced the unsettling conclusion that most all of the tiny ‘points of light’ in the night sky that we call ‘stars’…were simply other suns. It was uncovered that we live in a galaxy populated with literally billions of suns, which we call stars. Imagine the shock and disorientation when we discovered that not only was the sun, which we orbit not only as common as the ordinary sand grain, but in addition lacks any special prominence whatsoever in our own ‘spiral home’ that we call the Milky Way.
Our little solar system is nothing but a miniscule speck far out on a single spoke of a giant wheel. In the interim, as new tools and technology continued to grow, so did the apparent size and age of the visible universe. Its age today has been closely approximated to 13.8 billion years. Its size…? Well, we can see literally billions of galaxies, filled with billions of common little stars such as our own…
As our minds continued to whirl from these revelations, other men asked a completely different question. Now that we’d begun to conceptualize just ‘how big’ the universe is and how truly ‘insignificant’ we are…we began to wonder. In reality, just how ‘small’ can small be? When we begin to consider the limit of the macro scales of the world, by fascinating necessity we must ultimately consider the same limits at the micro scales of existence.
Arguably, the two greatest innovations in physics of our generation are the inventions of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. No two other theories explain so much of the nature of reality as we experience it. Combined, this pair of explanations describes the universe across a staggering 40 orders of magnitude. Interestingly, as things become infinitely small or infinitely large a new theoretical description is required. Unfortunately, these two theories don’t play well together…
Current revolutions in resolving this dilemma have suggested new approaches to solving this fundamental ‘behavior problem’ by changing the way in which we’ve traditionally viewed reality, in particular on the smallest scales. The language involved has required a continual evolution in the science of mathematics - traditionally the words, formulas and equations that most elegantly define the fundamental properties of the universe. Simpler notions of time and space are no longer adequate to the task as we begin to probe the fantastic worlds of ‘extra-dimensional geometry’ and ‘imaginary time’.
In an effort to combine the ideas contained within General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, new theories have emerged and been given names such as Supersymmetry, Super Gravity, String Theory, Superstring Theory, M-Theory and others. From these novel ways of explaining the nature of reality, one very startling implication borrowed from the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics continues to arise - parallel universes should exist…
For over two millennia, fundamental physics has been based on the ‘round ball’ concept - technically the geometric point particle. This idea and electromagnetism put Man on the moon, created computers and all of the other conveniences of modern technologies. But these same balls bounced us straight into a conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Heisenberg’s bizarre quantum uncertainty introduced a dumbfounding ‘fuzziness’ into physics. Contemporary theories, built currently through the often unpopular strategy of purely mathematical reasoning, seek to replace ‘point’ particles with ‘string’ particles in which every unique, different particle in nature corresponds to nothing more than simply different vibration frequencies.
By definition, the use of point particles as the basic building-block of matter, compresses everything down to an infinitely-small size, infinitely-hot temperature, which becomes an obstacle. The use of a string softens out the mathematically problematic ‘infinities’ into something finite…the resultant size and temperature is still unfathomably small and inconceivably hot, but not infinite.
Vibrating strings cause the whole of spacetime itself to become fuzzy. The combination of puzzling ‘relativistic and quantum effects’, which occur at both the macro and microscopic limits of reality, causes the strengths of the four fundamental forces of nature to suddenly vary. It does appear, however, that they should unify at some extremely high energy.
There are two ways to probe high energies. One of them is the original, primordial experiment - the birth of the universe – while the other is to increase the energies of particle accelerators. The Large Hadron Collider accelerator, which is scheduled to be completed in about five years, could provide hungrily-awaited experimental evidence…but will it be powerful enough? Where does the next frontier lie…?
In particular, in All That Is Seen And Unseen, two persons encounter a phenomenon, which causes a ‘transition effect’ to occur that transports them from their own familiar place and time to another ‘near parallel’ if somewhat anachronistic world. Faced with this frightening and ghostly ‘similar yet different’ reality, they begin to face the issues that a confrontation with such mystery would be expected to engender. Faced with no other alternative but to go forward with their lives, no choice remains but to attempt to cope…while they begin to ask questions and look for answers.
This manuscript assumes a reader’s above average interest or background in some of the most difficult to grasp and challenging aspects of the natural sciences. A large proportion of the writing has included integration of the broad history and foundations of modern physics. Every effort was made to remove specific references to mathematical formulae, with the exception of Newton’s historic gravitational inverse square law and Einstein’s famous equation, which states the equivalency of matter and energy as perhaps the sole exceptions.
The story, thus, is grounded in real science - not science fiction. However, to date there is no verifiable evidence available that can bear out real scenarios that could produce actual ‘communication’ with parallel universes; certainly no amount of thoughtful research on my part over the past three years was able to yield an exhaustive or satisfactory explanation for the passage of just such an event. So, ultimately, the following 140,000 words do indeed represent a work of fiction. I hope it makes you wonder…and I hope you enjoy the journey.
Ryan Vestal

[Nathans_Dad]

So maybe Heaven is simply a parallel universe that our 11 dimensional souls can finally access once relieved of our 4 dimensional body.

[bigchillcar]

rick..couldn't agree or disagree with you more..ain't mystery grand??
ryan

[john70t]

-Fear of the unknown and self-uncertainty has driven many people to develop patterns(sometimes irrational) and social structures to cope. Worrys sometimes create self-limiting problems that become worse than the original situation. A limited amount of "chaos" is stimulating but a lot is draining.

-Depravation of any new stimulus has also broken the will of the strongest prisoners as the mind has nothing to consume but itself.
A hundred years ago there was a lot more time to squeeze "big concept" thinking into daily life(while working on the farm), but now we have access to a multitude of temporary information which all has to be filtered.

It also seems as we get older, life goes by faster. Could this be because the fuffillment/expectations of goals take longer? Mabye the brain starts to sqeeze less preceptions into the same packets of time which is compacted into an "experience".

I dunno how to respond to your thought, though. Everything is temporary, but signifigant.

[bigchillcar]

interesting insights, john. nice post. would be interesting to know how future societies regard the impact of such a fast-moving information age had on we, the first real generation to try and keep pace with it. personally, i find the constantly-streaming, never-ending onslaught of information to be mind-numbing at best, frighteningly overwhelming at worst.
ryan

[notfarnow]

Originally posted by john70t


It also seems as we get older, life goes by faster. Could this be because the fuffillment/expectations of goals take longer? Mabye the brain starts to sqeeze less preceptions into the same packets of time which is compacted into an "experience".

Interesting stuff, and something I've been "chewing on" lately. It's astounding how you can seemingly slow down time by focusing on what you're doing at any given moment. So much of our daily routine has become so "automatic" that we don't even notice time going by. One theory is that by focusing on what we're doing, and finding wonder in it, the mind will spend more time processing it. The problem is, we spend a lot of our time doing crap stuff that we just want to get over with.

So is it a question of doing things that have value, or finding value in the things we do? Could someone please tell me the answer ASAP? I'm in a rush.