From: john grigg (starman125@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 15:36:37 MST
... for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so:
<Hamlet 2:2>
Brent wrote:
I think this is blatantly and obviously BS. My Grandmother is dead! I miss
her horribly and feel huge amounts of pain because of this. She is the
creator of my parents and ultimately of me and has given me much of the
world I have. She deserves this world she gave to me much more than I do.
The fact that she is now dead is BAD! No thinking any being could possibly
do, whether emotional or purely abstract rational thinking like a computer
could do, make this anything other than BAD, and the fact that we are still
alive Good.
(end)
Brent, I am very sorry to learn of your grandmother's death and the pain it
has caused you. I miss my grandmother too, who used to be a professor at
Loyola many years ago. I do think your grandmother was as deserving of this
world as you or anyone and so I can understand at least partially your
frustration.
I agree that her death may have been simply entropy at work and from the
human perspective, a very bad thing. Sometimes I think people get a little
too philosophical about discussing the jarring and painful realities of
present-day life until they get slammed in the face by it as Mike Darwin
pointed out in his excellent post awhile back. That post warrants
re-reading by all list members.
Robert Bradbury wrote:
Why would you say such a thing? I understand that you care, but given the
gradual evolution of society, and the increase of knowledge, what you can
create, etc. I would rank people alive today as being more valuable than
people alive in yester-year.
(end)
It offends me to think that the people alive today are somehow more valuable
and important then people from the past. I think I realize that what you
are saying is that people today are part of an incredibly vital social and
technological wave of progress, but still I think humans from a past
generation which is gone or more importantly dying off from old-age is still
extremely important.
I do realize that in a somewhat cold-blooded but realistic take on things
that people do have varying levels of worth, period. This would be based on
what they can offer society (their fellow humans) in the forms of training,
talents and skills they have to offer. In this way intelligence, education,
health and personal ambition all play a part in achieving worth and in
response society tends to reward these people with more money, social
opportunities and resources (even sex partners).
Robert wrote:
There is no inherent BADness to death, you perceive the loss as bad because
you miss her. Unfortunately because this exists in the realm of your
experience, probably nothing I could say will change your mind. There are
exercises that I might be able to do with you to get youto see this, but it
is fundamentally a Zen "aha" experience, that people must arrive at on their
own.
(end)
Much of this does depend on the perspective one has. Another person might
say how happy they are grandma is in Heaven now, free of pain and with her
loved ones who went before. Or they might be glad to see she has entered a
sad but final stage to the life process, which for now is death. They would
think she had a good and fulfilling life so there is no real tragedy.
Of course, someone of an extropian bent could easily be outraged, since they
believe these previous memes I listed are 'cop-outs' and ways of
rationalizing the horrors of mortality, and that grandma should have had the
chance to become a near-immortal but from the random unfairness of life she
was born too early. But in the evolutionary view of things, our beloved
grandparents are vehicles for genes and fortunately they did their job of
reproduction before death overtook them. Nature does not care about them as
individuals and is a ruthless force, ultimately.
Robert wrote:
We *will* lose some of the people on this list. The best we can do is
cherish them, honor them and share their wisdom and insights with others. In
that way they are never really gone.
(end)
This sentiment has always bothered me somehow. I want the person to have
gone on to an afterlife and not simply be 'cherished memories' that in time
will be forgotten. I remember how as a schoolboy I had a teacher who said
this about a person who had died and I wanted to blurt out how either they
had an afterlife or they were screwed and we were being sentimental fools.
I was seeing things in my own way even back then.
With transhumanism and cryonics there is the view that we can actually
'break on through to the other side (thanks Jim!)' and see what life will be
like much down the road, should life-extending medicines not arrive in time
for us. I am surprised that some list members would talk to you about this
with a rather 'deathist' perspective but I could be accused of that also.
Again, I am very sorry about your grandmother. If it is any consolation I
do believe that in some way she still does exist as a personality. I
understand what you mean about wanting to know things for absolute certain,
and ending once and for all, the pain, suffering and death in this world.
sincerely,
John Grigg
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