What is the purpose of your idea then? What does it aim to do? If it's just to inform us that existence keeps on existing, and other people will keep being born and feeling that they are an "I" just like we did, sure, but that's just trivially true.I'm not speaking 'historically'. I'm talking about a bare underlying idea that runs through some parts of these different philosophies. Like I said in another post, there are going to be many differences in the details, but I think there's something there that is worth considering, and makes sense to me. Going on about identity after death is a red herring as to what I'm talking about. It has nothing to do with it and that wasn't what I was referring to. Whether people had those anxieties or not has little to no bearing on my idea. — WhiskeyWhiskers
Like Socrates, I think it is better to hope in an afterlife - and hope is the most we can have in this life. We're going to die anyway, might as well die with hope and gladness in our hearts.
I owe a cock to the saviour Asclepius”
Is it possible that a man like him, who had lived cheerfully and like a soldier in the sight of everyone, should have been a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful mien while concealing all his life long his ultimate judgment, his inmost feeling. Socrates, Socrates suffered life! And then he still revenged himself – with this veiled, gruesome, pious, and blasphemous saying. Did a Socrates need such revenge? Did his overrich virtue lack an ounce of magnanimity? – Alas, my friends, we must overcome even the Greeks! (340)
Okay - but I find the idea that all these beings are the same, there is no difference between them, highly suspect. In what sense does a being change suit if it brings nothing with it into the next suit? If that's the case, this is pragmatically equivalent to there being just the suit with no being.If one imagines that when a being is reborn, the body of the baby they become is rather like a suit of clothes(a vehicle of incarnation). During the beings life they attach experiences to the suit like badges, or stylistic details. These badges are like the personality of the being shaped by experience and learning. When the being dies they leave behind the suit and get a new one and in the next life they attach new badges. The being has not changed, it is the same person, but wearing a different suit. All the suits are the same to begin with and all beings are the same, that is you, or me. It is only the badges of the personality where there is variation. — Punshhh
In other words: you die, and that's that >:OAt the risk of sounding less helpful, it's like perpetual reincarnation, except there is nothing carried over from one life to the next that could be considered that same person (because the person dies with the body). After you die, there's another in the succession of first person personal experiences. The same sort of experience as when you were born. After you die, other people are born. — WhiskeyWhiskers
I think of it as The Fall from God (or the universe, in the ancient Greek sense as per the Stoics, a thought I'm sure you can appreciate). "Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself" (Rust Cohle from True Detective, but pessimistic theory in general) and to get back to living in accordance with nature one has to lose their sense of self, thereby 'delimiting' it so that we become once again immanent with all creation - realising that The Real You is "something that the whole universe is doing in the same way a wave is something the whole ocean is doing". Otherwise you'll stay pretending that you're just a 'poor little me', as Watt's puts it. — WhiskeyWhiskers
The reincarnation one is more, or less comfortable to believe then? :PWeirdly enough the idea of "you die, and that's that" was quite comforting to believe, until my friend and Watts ruined that one for me :P — WhiskeyWhiskers
Watts would agree with you that it was the mask being worn by the I. I think he's even used that phraseology before to make a similar point. If you accept his idea, it does beg the question of what, exactly, it means to die at all. It would be like the universe closing one aperture through which it knows itself only to open another. — WhiskeyWhiskers
I was trying to tie together the idea of The Fall with the idea that God is equivalent to nature, meaning that, in returning to God in the Kingdom of Heaven, you also at the same time return to nature, hence 'in accordance' with it. I understand that The Fall means we are each born with original sin, but if you merge the two further you get a slightly different reading. Bear with me. — WhiskeyWhiskers
This for me ties in with a reading of Job, which is a vision of God/Life/Nature as unjust, unfair --and yet to be affirmed nevertheless. I like we can also link living in accordance with nature or universal to the notion of ordinary mind or creative play. If we get out of the way of our guts, we can take real pleasure and interest in the things of the world. Absorption obliterates the anguished knowledge/assertion of good and evil. We can live beyond such aggressive abstractions, at least at our higher moments.The Fall began in the Garden of Eden after we (collectively) obtained knowledge of good and evil and lost our obedience to 'God'. God, understood in Stoic terms, is nature, the logos, or universal reason. Stoic doctrine holds that, by living in accordance with nature, we are living according to universal reason. Part of my 'thesis' is that this knowledge of good and evil (in the Christian sense) that expelled us from the Garden/separated us from God (nature) is the mistaken view that good and evil exist in the external world, when in fact, they do not (the Stoic sense). "It is not things that trouble us, but our judgement about things". — WhiskeyWhiskers
Doesn't scare me. I have good hope and faith in the Divine. As Socrates said, either it's sleep, or it's a continuation. I hope it's a continuation, and I pray to die hoping so - for it is better to hope for the best and be deceived than to hope for nothing and be correct ;)Awareness if death only scares the traditionalist because it takes away the necessity of their way of life. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I would hope they maintain the order that is required for them to achieve fulfilment here on Earth. But as soon as I exit this world, I exit it - it doesn't concern me in a direct way.Awareness if death only scares the traditionalist because it takes away the necessity of their way of life. Future generations have a different identity to you. On going culture and tradition is ultimately in their hands. They may well choose to abandon the tradtion you love much. One's one identity ceases to be the master of the world. Other people continue, not your own identity. — TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree.The insistence otherwise is a selfish act-- where one covets their life so much, that they do not accept their end and the existence of other people. They try to say they aren't really dead, that they have been reincarnated within the lives of others. It's fear of death which has someone claiming the dreams of other people are their own. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.