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

theguardian.com

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

#111

Post by rawoke083600 »

jacobush wrote: post #78
rawoke083600 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'am always intrigue by these "range problems / statements" I guess there are no great insight other than most timelines(ranges) are subjective. My S.O is always complaining that we are spending too little time together( I really don't think so). I asked her once, so if we had to spend 23.5 hours together that will be obviously too much, and spending 0.1 hour together will be too little (we could both agree on the ex…

On the face of it, it sounds like you have a great bargaining chip here. For the extra hours you think are "too much", come up with an activity which involves you both, but you immensely enjoy. You might both grow!

Good tip :)

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

#112

Post by alexpetralia »

kossTKR wrote: post #81
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 have never been overly afraid of death but after deep diving into meditation, math and philosophy, i have come to the conclusion that a form of "idealism" or consciousness-first is much more likely than a materialist universe. This makes a lot of "scientism"(not scientists) people very angry , but personally my best guess is that "spacetime" will be seen as an evolutionary adaptation, or much more of a morphable cu…

Great points, thanks.

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

#113

Post by sitkack »

mrfredward wrote: post #104
felipemnoa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Death is monstrous. I'll be a contrarian and post this: >>No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, bu…

>>It clears out the old to make way for the new. Just imagine working for a boss who had been climbing the company ladder 200 years. Or trying to buy a house in a market where people had been accumulating capital for centuries. And lest we think it's just the the economic system, look at the average age of politicians. Or science, the researchers who hold the most prestige are likely past the point of embracing new i…

Same thing can be said for money, that money spent moving from the baker to the record store operator in days, is people money.

Money sitting in vault is rotting food and weekends not going to a rock show.

Inflation is a way to decay the power of money and make way for the new.

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

#114

Post by ryandvm »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #19
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.

> Death is monstrous. The one thing that softens the blow for me is knowing how many other people have been through it. It's an absolutely illogical attempt at rationalisation, but, you know, Einstein died, Beethoven died, my childhood cat died. Everything that has once ever lived but is not living right at this moment in time, has died. Death just IS. My stupid quip is: "Well, they survived it, so I guess I will too…

My reasoning is something like: I didn't really mind not existing for 14 billion years, why should I worry about not existing after I die.

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

#115

Post by snarfybarfy »

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.

Trump/Putin/Jong Un/... forever? Really? I think that would be monstrous.

No matter how unfair things are in life, in the end we are all food for the worms. Already better educated people live longer lives, but once science really 'cures' aging, who do you think will be the first to benefit. And probably the only ones as well?

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

#116

Post by aitchnyu »

Kliment wrote: post #64
bredren wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my cat can count to two. He only goes outside a leash, and we walk together 2-4 times a day. The harness has two plastic clips, and he will sit still until the second clip is secured. After that second sound, he will stand and walk to wait near the door.

Cats can count to much more than two. If there are treats on a shelf and our older cat knocks them down, she'll remember how many hit the floor (from the sound) and then not stop looking for them until she's found that many. I suspect being able to keep track of distinct objects is useful when hunting if multiple small prey animals disperse in order to confuse the predator.

I had a mother cat who failed to move one kitten from one nook to another. Is counting a common behaviour?

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

#117

Post by antepodius »

snarfybarfy wrote: post #115
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.

Trump/Putin/Jong Un/... forever? Really? I think that would be monstrous. No matter how unfair things are in life, in the end we are all food for the worms. Already better educated people live longer lives, but once science really 'cures' aging, who do you think will be the first to benefit. And probably the only ones as well?

Why the only ones? That hasn't been the general arc of tech-advancement. You think the rich and powerful are going to prevent companies from making money by selling life-extension to the poor by figuring out how to do it more cheaply?

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

#118

Post by antepodius »

Retric wrote: post #20
XorNot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions of additional years is quite some time to find a solution though.

You can’t find a solution to the actual laws of physics. Our understanding may be wrong, but that’s different.

There's a big difference between dying because the negentropy finally ran out, after billions of years in the height of life's power in thr universe, and being snuffed out by something as banal as biological malfunction after the blink of an eye.

If nothing else, if I got bored after x number of centuries, I'd want any useful/meaningful memories of mine to be indexed and saved on hyper-wikipedia rather than just be burned because a piece of meat rotted.

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

#119

Post by edjrage »

peterwwillis wrote: post #97
edjrage wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They say the Buddha was a very pragmatic man and the whole purpose of his practice was to find a way out of Samsara, the cycle of existence and suffering. I always wonder if he would have advocated for suicide if only he didn't believe in rebirth.

It always struck me as very weird that Buddhists want to escape suffering. That's just saying you want to escape life. Suffering is beautiful and one of the best parts of life (the only thing better is momentarily overcoming it). But having neither is just sitting around waiting to die.

Well, it depends on what you mean by suffering (and some say suffering isn't the right translation for what they really mean). For buddhists, pain, sadness and grief are not suffering, they are indeed an inescapable part of life and are to be fully embraced with awareness and compassion. Suffering is an unnecessary, clingy, ego-centric (hyphenated to emphasize the buddhist concept) reaction to them.

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

#120

Post by antepodius »

accountofme wrote: post #52
Retric wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ending death would require us to be perfect beings. We are not. Death is part of the solution to the problem of evolutionary adaptability. We are born, we mate, we die, the cycle continues with our children. If circumstances change, our genes can too but we cannot. As much as we want to stick around forever, I don't think our biology does...

Why should we care what our genes want?

Also, as tech advances, the need for slow recombination goes away, as people can alter their genes and body on the fly. Supersede natural evolution, rather than bowing to it.

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