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May 31, 2011

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”................argues that the awareness of mortality on its own would have led evolution to a dead end.

And ”The despair would have interfered with our daily function, bringing the activities needed for survival to a stop.”

Not so sure I agree with this. We all see people dying around us, from friends to loved ones, to people we don’t know. We are aware that death awaits us and it seems to be that we are all going to get a chance at it, sooner or later. But our culture sees death as a taboo subject and don’t like talking about it and hence build up their own fear, belief around it.


If we look at someone who has been told they only have a few months to live, a lot of the time they end up enjoying life because they let go of wanting anything to be different and seem to have a deeper more profound relationship with themselves and people around them. The outcome of this seems to be happiness and acceptance.


I do agree that because we ‘see’ death, though maybe not understanding it or any real knowing about what comes next if anything, that despair has interfered with our daily function and becomes searching /seeking / beliefs V living but I don’t think that would have brought activities needed for survival to a stop. We all seem to have survival ‘wired’ into us.

Optimism in the typical sense ultimately means we expect the best possible outcome from any given moment.

Atheists and believers – one is focused on a bright future in this life, while the other is focused on a bright future on life after death. Future being the operative word.
Both still living in the future and not being present or living in the here and now – the only real thing that most of us seem to have.

”Optimism can blind our ability to discern reality as it is, rather than how we'd like it to be.

Like everything else, if it is taken seriously and held on to like ‘desires and beliefs’ without the balance of openness and honesty.


Optimism could be a way of feeling everything is alright and will always be all right – here and now, regarding the ‘bumps’ that come along. Being optimistic that things always will work out for the best, regarding what way we want them to be or without interfering or manipulating for them same reasons. Yes we may have preferences but we hold them lightly.

It doesn’t mean to be blind but to see what needs to be seen and appropriate action to be taken at the time.


Final Optimistic note;
Some love to love RS/BJ and others love to hate RS/BJ.
Both is LOVE ;) Happy Days.....

Marina


Once long time ago I've read a story about a man having a meaningful existence as a revolutionary. Each day he had important things to do and fights to win. Than one day he was arrested and condemned to death. His execution was going to happen in a day but someone made a mistake and he was set free when he was supposed to die. His live was saved but it lost all meaning. In the face of death every effort to liberate mankind was utterly meaningless he realized. So I guess for us to give a meaning to life we better not think about the utterly meaninglessness in death. (The story was by sartre).

Nietzsche,

"So I guess for us to give a meaning to life we better not think about the utterly meaninglessness in death."

--You make a very good point. This giving and not giving of meaning is worth examination.

How bad can being dead really be? To my way of thinking, it would be really bad if I somehow survived my death.

I can tell you truthfully that I definitely do not want to.

What really pisses me off is that I do not want life in general to be what it appears to be.

But that is none of your concern.

Yes Roger, is complicated but I feel I'm not making things clearer. But somehow meaning is like the fuel we need to run the honda of life while in the end the running of the car made no difference to the whole thing. Something like that. But nothing to worry about ;) I thought the story by Sartre was brilliant when I first read it. I think it was called 'le mur'.

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