John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future'

Post by grawprog » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

kgwxd wrote: post #4

grawprog wrote: post #2

>and it takes a long time, because they’re slow to trust, slow to really enter into communication with you – then you can probably imagine how they might philosophise.” >Gray believes that humans turned to philosophy principally out of anxiety, looking for some tranquillity in a chaotic and frightening world, telling themselves stories that might provide the illusion of calm. Cats, he suggests, wouldn’t recognise tha…

I was 1:50 into that before I figured out how the British accents fit into the joke on this Key and Peele skit.

Post by polishdude20 » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

koboll wrote: post #6

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #3

Live life for its own sake. The gift of life is life itself. What's the alternative? Twice in my life I've grasped the concept of death, and it made my heart race with an exhilarating feeling of suffocating claustrophobic for two reasons: 1. It's coming for me one day 2. Not just the lack of agency in the universe, but the lack of even the realisation of the lack of agency. All of this (wide sweeping hand gesture ack…

This is bitterly true but also profoundly, maddeningly, horrifically sad. Death is monstrous. We can do better. We have to do better. And it's tragic that we probably will but everyone alive today will probably miss that chance by a sliver. We happened to be born 99% of the way from the beginning of humankind to the end of death, but we just barely missed it.

Post by lccarrasco » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

polishdude20 wrote: post #13

koboll wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bitterly true but also profoundly, maddeningly, horrifically sad. Death is monstrous. We can do better. We have to do better. And it's tragic that we probably will but everyone alive today will probably miss that chance by a sliver. We happened to be born 99% of the way from the beginning of humankind to the end of death, but we just barely missed it.

I think death is at the heart of what makes life worth it and enjoyable. Imagine, at the extreme, we find a cure for death. What happens then? Overpopulation at the simplest. I can see how this can quickly lead to life being worse than death if played out to the extreme.

Post by XorNot » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #16

koboll wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bitterly true but also profoundly, maddeningly, horrifically sad. Death is monstrous. We can do better. We have to do better. And it's tragic that we probably will but everyone alive today will probably miss that chance by a sliver. We happened to be born 99% of the way from the beginning of humankind to the end of death, but we just barely missed it.

Lifespans many be dramatically extended, but it’s going to take a monumental change in our understanding of physics to actually end death. Second law of thermodynamics directly means the universe will eventually be completely devoid of life.

Post by BLKNSLVR » Wed, Oct 28, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

koboll wrote: post #6

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #3

Live life for its own sake. The gift of life is life itself. What's the alternative? Twice in my life I've grasped the concept of death, and it made my heart race with an exhilarating feeling of suffocating claustrophobic for two reasons: 1. It's coming for me one day 2. Not just the lack of agency in the universe, but the lack of even the realisation of the lack of agency. All of this (wide sweeping hand gesture ack…

This is bitterly true but also profoundly, maddeningly, horrifically sad. Death is monstrous. We can do better. We have to do better. And it's tragic that we probably will but everyone alive today will probably miss that chance by a sliver. We happened to be born 99% of the way from the beginning of humankind to the end of death, but we just barely missed it.