It offends me that we’re able sometimes to die without being aware that it’s happening, like it comes when we’re not looking.
What a sneaky, cowardly way for the darkness to eat us.
I want a chance to fight and at least wound the bastard. Rage, RAGE against the dying of the light.
Some say life is like a hard day’s work that we have to put in, with rest and a nice sleep at the end.
I utterly detest that notion. *shudders*”
Wow, seriously? Are you being ironic, Gene?
No irony is meant at all. I am outraged to think of death, the negation of existence, as any kind of rest, which implies we’re all gonna get back up. At death, we’re DONE, and that galls me no damned end.
“More, please.” — Oliver Twist. / “We want more.” — The replicants in BLADE RUNNER.
Then BELIEVE Gene. BELIEVE! the religionists would say.
Believe = pretend, and I’d rather know.
One heartening thing to look into is Roger Penrose’s work on nanotubules. We may, mentally, indeed physically survive bodily death, at least possibly. Not all of us, but some.
Which is really good news.
Unless death is eternal agony, of course. “Always look on the bright side of life…”
The Buddhist image of a lotus blossom floating on a serene lake for each and every soul is a lovely concept.
Beyond its elegant beauty, it gives him the shudders too.
I prefer Zen Buddhism, there is an austerity in it that appeals. No dogma or beliefs, only action or non-action. Existence is poise.
Science teaches us that first, we are symbionts, not one cohesive thing. So that illusion of “me” is nonsense, first off.
Secondly, we learn that reality is a solid. Once is always. If something exists, then it always did, and always will. That includes us.
Time passing is an illusion of viewpoint and perception, of filtering. The arrow of time is a function of entropy imperfectly seen.
So we can scientifically say that our reality is a mental construct projected on a far more complex and subtle dance of energy, which can never be destroyed, only changed.
All of which lets me elaborate a comforting, vague notion that all is well, and all will be well.
This is why death has no sting. It’s just part of the larger illusion and marks a change of either scenery or costume, perhaps both.
Be seeing you on the flip.
Maybe.
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