think tank forum

oh, and i have kinda adopted db's views on death on the basis that ORDER MATTERS.

i don't want to die. i think this means that i'm not satisfied with how i am living my life. but i don't think this necessarily follows. rather, there is so much i want to do and learn, i never want it to end. but i realize that infinite amounts of time would devalue everything, because you'll experience it all. but, no! π is proof! there is no pattern in the transcendental number! so, sure, every grouping of numbers will occur again, but it is never repeated. ORDER MATTERS. me getting coffee today is different from me getting coffee yesterday because i am a different person today! but that's the power of the moment, which should lead to death's triviality. but don't let this end! this life! it is not complete. will it ever be? bah! it just needs to be perfect in the moments! so much to learn, larz. once i finally fully appreciate existence (as the moment passes), i will truly reach exaltation. death wont matter.

me getting coffee today is different from me getting coffee yesterday because i am a different person today!

dp said:

it seems that there is instead an everythingness about existence and I'm not trying to be optimistic.

from xkcd #24 (the greatest xkcd of all time):

"There's too much. And so little feels important."

The human condition encompasses the totality of the experience of being human. As mortal entities, there are a series of biologically determined events that are common to most human lives, and some that are inevitable for all. The ongoing way in which humans react to or cope with these events is the human condition. However, understanding the precise nature and scope of what is meant by the human condition is itself a philosophical problem.

Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life.....The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worth while and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die.

The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina's life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus' ("You can't step twice into the same river") riverbed: the bowler hat was a bed through which each time Sabina saw another river flow, another semantic river: each time the same object would give rise to a new meaning, though all former meanings would resonate (like an echo, like a parade of echoes) together with the new one. Each new experience would resound, each time enriching the harmony.

Dread, sometimes called angst, anxiety or even anguish is a term that is common to many existentialist thinkers. Although its concrete properties may vary slightly, it is generally held to be the experience of our freedom and responsibility. The archetypal example is the example of the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that "nothing is holding me back," one senses the lack of anything that predetermines you to either throw yourself off or to stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom.

It is also claimed, most famously by Sartre, that dread is the fear of nothing (no thing). This relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions (related to the absurdity of the world), and to the fact that, in experiencing one's freedom, one also realises that one will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is no thing in you (your genes, for instance) that acts and that you can "blame" if something goes wrong. Of course, most of us only have short and shallow encounters with this kind of dread, as not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, our lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread), but that doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.

It is also worth noting that Søren Kierkegaard, in his The Concept of Dread, maintains that dread, when experienced by the young child in facing the possibility of responsibility for his actions, is one of the main forces in the child's individuation. As such, the very condition of freedom can be said to be a part of any individual's self.

so, db (and everyone), here are my current philosophical problems:
1. the nothingness (the vacuum that is our existence as humans). i hate it!
2. death.

If our lives were endless, like the lives of the gods in antiquity, the concept of episode would lose its meaning, for in infinity every event, no matter how trivial, would meet up with its consequences and unfold into a story.