Is Acceptance of Death Okay?

I don't know if you read my previous post, but the point I made, to introduce the Arab Spring into it, was this:

Sure, watching the Arab Spring unfold feels huge to us. And it is so. But if we had hundreds of years of life behind us, it would completely disappear into the static, so to speak. It simply wouldn't stand out. Had we been born in, say, 1000 AD, the entire history of the USSR would've been less than a tenth of our life - so it would've been big, but no bigger than the last two years were for you if you're 20 now.

If we had lived since the estimated time of birth of Jesus, the entire existence of the USSR - which was about 70 years - would've felt smaller than a year for someone who's 20. So if you're 20 now, the Arab Spring felt as big for you as the entire 69-year life of the USSR would've felt for someone who's lived since the estimated birth of Jesus.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Okay, but how does this make eternal life any less appealing? White noise is better than nothing.

I call for a new thread.

How is white noise better than non-existence? It's basically nothing, just a different shade of it, if you like. If you die, your perspective no longer exists, and that's just that. If you have no meaningful experience available to you, well, sure, your perspective exists, but there's nothing of substance in it.

I imagine that existence of meaningless white noise without connection to anything is the life of a coma patient with severe brain damage, the kind that, if you ask me, would've been luckier, had they had the presence of mind to sign the paper to pull the plug when they're done for in every way that counts for them.

I really don't see what room there is for another thread unless you make some pretty substantial axiomatic assumption that differ from the ones I've made, in which case I don't see if there's a discussion unless the new thread is about axiomatic assumption about the nature of reality.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Well, the first thing to remember is that this is all said with respect to a circumstance wherein eternal life is a possibility.

The first thing is that I'd rather have a perspective than none at all, simply due to inertia.*

That said, you could either consider inertia of the individual consciousness, or inertia of the natural sequence, so this one may be moot.

But I guess the core concept here is that I wouldn't really consider, on a philosophical, objective level, a long series of experiences that are perceived as trivial, to be any more or less meaningful than a single "life-changing" experience - the only meaning that they have is imagined. Your model of life as a line may still be applied; it's simply the case that I cannot recognise any objective difference in value between the "high-amplitude" and "low-amplitude" experiences (wherein, as you've said, amplitude is meaningfulness). There's no authority telling me that something must have meaning to have subjective value, and indeed, when the value that experiences have stems from individual perception (whatever it is that fuels this attribution of value: meaning or some other concept entirely), that very perception may well change, so as to turn "white noise" into something that is able to be valued by the individual.

An example may well be "the march of history" - it's observing something "greater than the self", not with respect to meaning, but merely scale. If an individual values such observation (meaningful or meaningless), being able to observe that will be better to them than not being able to observe it. Or if someone sets an arbitrary personal goal (for instance, to read a million books, or to learn one hundred languages, or to stack a million match-boxes) - these things may well be meaningless, but there's a quantifiable outcome that can be valued by the individual simply because they've achieved their goal.

Relevance to the thread? Well, it's tenuous at the moment, but we might say: "Acceptance of death is not only okay, but a necessity, as long as death itself is also a necessity."

I would never suggest a model in which objective value exists in anything, though I might introduce models where some things are considered objectively valuable out of convenience (saying that, say, human rights are objectively important is easier than saying that "in the upbringing of each individual, one of the goals should be that the person arrives at the conclusion that human rights are valuable to them." In practice, from the point of view of the society, it's exactly the same thing; because the society only sees the behaviour (including speech and writing) of the person.

Objective value cannot exists, because value is a judgement made by a consciousness, and consciousness aren't in any important way so distinct as to be able to impose on the world some kind of objectively true ideas that'll go on existing once there are no more minds holding them.

So when we look at the value of any endeavour or experience, what counts is whether or not the individual to whom that experience is occurring can find meaning in it. Meaningless experience holds no value (unless the person finds it meaningful, in which case it isn't meaningless!)

So if someone can enjoy life as a blur of white noise, then it's not in their interest to end it. My suggestion earlier was that one wouldn't be capable of caring about white noise or enjoying it, but of course I could be wrong, and there could be variety among individuals.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Immortality would be likely to result in jaded nihilism, yes. However, that would still be preferable to nonexistence.

@Best Of: I don't really get your idea of things seeming less important and becoming "smaller". I'm extremely sceptical that this would ever actually happen. From my experience, the more you know, the more interesting things become. It's fascinating to think how interesting and exciting the world would be if I had the time to inform myself of everything. Every tiniest event would take on a brand new meaning, because I'd be able to put into a detailed context. And I'm the sort of person who revels in detail, and not in novelty or in how "big" the experience looks in context.

Context enriches things, not diminishes them.

You see immortality as a life at eternal zoom-out (that's what I get from your talk of "blur"), and I see it as life at eternal zoom-in, that's why you find the idea of it boring while find the idea of it awesome and exciting.

Also, the above poster's claim that immortality would result in jaded nihilism doesn't make much sense to me either. Immortality would mean that you can always get more to the detail, this would make me (at least me) more excited, not more jaded.

Also, as a writer with a finite life, I have to accept that I will never have the time to write every story I want to write. The idea of being able to flesh out every story idea appeals to me very much. And no, it would never get old, because I don't care about size and novelty.

Also also also, I have to mention that I would prefer an infinite cycle of reincarnation with the ability to remember all of my past lives, because that would give me the ability to get very much into the detail, very much on location.

edited 27th Nov '11 4:20:10 AM by fanty

^ I just want to thank you for successfully making an argument that I've been trying to make for years. (I've gotten all side-tracked at times, trying to argue based off the idea that a dog or a cat wouldn't be bored with immortality—I've never tried to put in in terms of what's uniquely human.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Imagine you get a chocolate bar(assuming you love the stuff like everyone else). Is this a moment that you will remember forever? The greath moment of having chocolate? No, but it was the first time it happened. Same with ice cream or anything else.

Remember first day to school? How exciting it was? After 6 years, it's not so exiting anymore, is it? Your first job? List goes on and on.

Remember birth of the internet? First time you were allowed to surf it? How mundane it is now?

There are all examples how something, that once was great moment in life fade into background.

Now, let's assume you are immortal. You witness the French Revolution. How exiting! Next comes American revolution. It's still exiting, but not unique event. Colonialism comes and goes, imperiums rise and fall, democracies are formed and collapse.

Now, you have witnessed about 100 different declaratiosn of independence and stuff. Enter Finland. To those people, with their limited lifespan, it is fullfilment of generations of work, final moment when they break free from Russia and become independend and free nation. To you, it's "Small country breaks away part 85".

You live trough turmoils of WWI and WWII, withness Cold War, Vietnam war, Korean War, Afganishtan, fall of Soviet Union etc. Enter Arab Spring. Would it be "brave people rise to stand up for democracy" or would it be "been there, done that". After all, in the end, you saw it all back then when Soviet Union fell. You saw what happened during the civil rights movements.

These are no longer unique, great moments you have priviledge to life trough. These are simp,y thigns that you have seen happen before, just different people and place. Hamlet might be a good play, but in the end, it's the same play no amtter who performs it and where it is. It might be interesting, but after seeing 1 000 Hamlet plays, would you get bored and stop caring?

^ Novelty is irrelevant, the fun is in the detail. It doesn't matter how many times you've witnessed a small country breaking away, because the exact situation and the detail are always very different.

For the past week or so I've been listening to this lecture series called "Rome and the barbarians". It's basically Rome encountering and dealing with a group of barbarians after a group of barbarians after a group of barbarians after a group of barbarians. Are the lectures getting boring as I listen on? HELL NO! The more comparison I can draw, the more context I'm familiar with, the more detail I fish out, the more interesting it gets.

edited 27th Nov '11 5:47:10 AM by fanty

Well then, all I can say that you are a lucky one and wonder how long you can keep up that facination of details before details become irrelevant.