It’s a nice sentiment, but every emotion is a physical process produced by physical processes, reducing us to a husk if you wish to go that far. I don’t see the magic in the being.

@Prishon

I subscribe to physicalism in that the consciousness is a coordinated result of a complex biological system working in order to preserve itself. Consciousness improves the chances of survival and thus that is why it was naturally selected.

@TheMadFool

Such a probe would have to be masterfully crafted, concise and elaborate, and very telling. It would be the opposite of a legacy, given that it goes back in time rather than forward or maybe I have misunderstood the task. I have no idea what I would offer in all honesty. Which is a severely lacking response, but I don’t know how to confirm such a gesture.


Speaking of limits and margins, there are some impossible questions that I often ponder. Why this specific existence, why not sooner, why not later? Why am I me of all things? What deterministic laws determine my emergence. I don’t care to know if there is a why (I suspect a lack of intention) but the how is deeply intriguing.

@theRiddler

Of course there permeates an eternal now but the human mind is divided into portions of time for the sake of its own sense of continuity. There is only change as a constant and time need not always be considered an appropriate axis.

Oddly, I have been present for three years and have long discarded a continuum as an actuality. But that is a conversation for another time.

@Tom Storm

Your remarks are words I myself have uttered. Humans feign an ignorance to death but they are delusional. The time before us is indeed akin to death and as an experience is an oxymoronic impossibility. Only life is known. Life is all that there is for the individual.

Thank you for your words.

@TheMadFool

Such a beautiful response and exactly the kind of contribution and feedback I am after!

I often denote this sequence of non existence, life and then non existence as 010.

I often identify that non existence transitions into life by birth (0 becomes 1) and via death returns to non existence (1 becomes 0). Given that 0 becomes 1 initially my mind often queries if the second 0 can in turn become 1 again via birth as has already occurred.

Of course I don’t subscribe to the magic or transference of reincarnation, but I do wonder if the wake of death permits life to broadcast a new transmission, thus enacting replacement.

Non existence 1 is beautiful because temporal motions are passed infinitely quickly and the timeline of one’s life commenced in utero or shortly after the waking consciousness perceives its reality. Perhaps then the second non existence is passed with a similar haste and life forms yet again.

I often have the notion that life is the only thing that can be experienced, for we know of nothing before us and will know of nothing after us. Life is all that can be known.

I appreciate and accept your definition of the second non existence as having an aspect of life before it. But what if non existence one has life before it? Life that was once experienced and discarded by its death? What if this cycle of absence then formation has been perpetual since the first consciousness to emerge in the universe? A thought worth considering?

@Bitter Crank

Of course once something is dead it stays dead, I do not contest this point. But life continues to emerge and replace what is lost to the void. So I guess I query if the transmission of a new experience is sequential and replaces an absence left by someone else, an absence that is universal and from which all life seems to surface.

@TheMadFool

I anticipated some disapproval of my redefining of death. We are so eager to subscribe to the individuality of our eventual termination. But death is indeed conscious non-existence and I maintain that the state before life and after one’s life meet the same requirement of being an absence of oneself.

If of course you’re arguing that non-existence and death are different, how is the state of death unique for the individual? Is not every death the same state as any other death and is thus enveloping and universal and not specific to the individual?

@Hermeticus

I suspect I can’t quote properly on my phone.

Even though I desire an eternal and unchanging death, I just don’t see that to be likely. Whilst death for the individual is permanent, I just can’t see that conscious non-existence can be anything but temporary. For example, when I die, this does not impede the motions of life in any way.

“Death is the end of you, but it is not the end of life.”

Coma is definitely a grey area, but brain death can be monitored, a person doesn’t become irretrievable until their brain dies. Even a vegetative state can be recovered from and thus the consciousness is still preserved.

Ah yes, I also favour that definition.

It is commonly perceived that the body upon death returns to the Earth as energy and material but it says nothing about the perpetuation of consciousness. Our access to reality is complex and so I find it hard to live vicariously through the perspective of a cell. It is undoubtedly alive and is a great contribution to the being, but conscious? Accessing reality in a self aware sense? No.

I do support the Buddhist sentiment. The time before birth must be akin to the time proceeding death. We cannot experience death for it is in essence non-being and thus impossible. Only life can be experienced as far as we know. And thus that is what I expect.

And yes agreed, no one will prove nor disprove my proposed cycle of absence then formation for memory it seems is a non-transferable asset. But given my definition of death I can observe the absence before me and call that death, from which I have emerged. And thus I can anticipate a similar reaction proceeding death.

I feel quite burdened by my belief for I do not wish it to be veracious but alas I have convinced myself of my convictions. One death for a man should be enough, but I empathise with the billions before me and the billions after me, of which life will experience and suffer. And what are we if not life?

As simply as the fallen leaves of autumn are replaced, everything alive right now will die and their experiences will be replaced by new ones. Nothing magical nor spiritual, just change.

@Wayfarer the essence, in the philosophical sense of the word.

Science commonly posits the inevitable end of the universe via an eternal and unchanging heat death. So I doubt the emergence of another Big Bang, abandoning the possibility of the recreation of your being.

@Hermeticus

I haven’t quite worked out how to quote and reference precisely yet… so apologies for that!

In reference to dreamless sleep, the consciousness may not be in a lucid state but the brain continues to function and maintain the body’s sub conscious operations and thus the consciousness, whilst dormant, is not absent from reality. The absence I refer to is of course brain death, in which case the consciousness cannot be retrieved or sustained.

In reference to the consciousness of beings, for the sake of my case I regard a conscious being to be a sentient organism (featuring a nervous system) that can compile and respond to memory stored in the brain. Of course less complex biotic factors could be conscious to a lesser extent, in that they have fewer senses and can still react to their environment, but to say they experience reality to the same extent that we do, would be false or maybe hopeful.

The cycle that I imply in my question is the supposed observation of absence then formation. It is perhaps possible that the absence proceeding death is similar in condition to the absence required before the formation of life.

It is true to say, given the timeline of the universe, that at some point life didn’t exist at all and in the end will be completely erased. In which case death is a universal condition from which all life has formed and will return to, any exchanges or transformations in the middle of these two events are what I’d like to explore.

Does life simply imply death or does death in fact imply life, if an absence precedes formation?