Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

keyvalues.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 175 posts

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#41

Post by sharkmerry »

yters wrote: post #36
m0zg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atheist myself, but I imagine this has to do with the lack of eternal life after death in that case. Religious people find the idea of life after death comforting, and it's easy to understand why: most people fear death and can't comprehend their consciousness ending at some point, for the same reasons why we can't comprehend things like the big bang or infinity. There is, by definition, no example that we could p…

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.

why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say.

Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#42

Post by m0zg »

yters wrote: post #36
m0zg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An atheist myself, but I imagine this has to do with the lack of eternal life after death in that case. Religious people find the idea of life after death comforting, and it's easy to understand why: most people fear death and can't comprehend their consciousness ending at some point, for the same reasons why we can't comprehend things like the big bang or infinity. There is, by definition, no example that we could p…

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.

You can't think "rationally" about death. It's literally incomprehensible to a human mind, when the object of death is that mind itself.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#43

Post by yters »

sharkmerry wrote: post #41
yters wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.

why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say. Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?

The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other.

Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#45

Post by topmonk »

yters wrote: post #20

When I step back and look at my life, I have to say it is pretty good. I get agitated when I lose perspective and magnify some particular bad thing. Also, as a Christian, this gives me the ultimate relief, because I can step back and say whatever unimaginably horrible thing is happening God is ultimately in control orchestrating things for maximal good, of which maximal good is also at some fundamental level in line…

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry?

"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder." - Homer Simpson

You've not considered this possibility, that there is an entity out there who would punish you for being Christian.

I'm not against religion but I wouldn't say there is some rational reason to believe one thing or another.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#46

Post by yters »

Spooky23 wrote: post #40
david-gpu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?

Significant trauma will shake any belief or philosophy.

To an extent I agree. But, a counter point, I've experienced significant depression (very first world problem), and reasoning about my situation objectively has actually helped me. I try to distance myself from my feelings and acknowledge what my real state in life is, and make choices accordingly. That has kept me out of some trouble, and also helps turn my feelings around.

The very act of choosing based on reason instead of feeling gives me a feeling of power, and depression tends to be accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. This seems to be the mechanism of how reason helps me with depression.

Of course, it is not a complete cure, and it would be trite to say so, but reasoning does help.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#49

Post by theli0nheart »

Scapeghost wrote: post #47

The secret to a happy life is ignorance. As in not caring about stuff. There's too much depressing shit in the world, too many injustices happening to other people and lifeforms, to truly be happy with that knowledge even if your own life is perfect.

Well, there are some things you really ought to care about (health, friendships, etc.), otherwise you won’t have much of a reason to live.

Re: A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life

#50

Post by Diederich »

retube wrote: post #28
Diederich wrote: post #23

I was raised by my grandparents. They were born in the 1910s, and grew up in the midwest during the dust bowl and great depression. My grandfather lost most of his buddies in Guadalcanal and Burma during World War II, and, in his own words, fully expected to become worm food himself. He said little, but one phrase he did repeat more than any other was simple: "Any day you're breathing is a good day." To him, every da…

Indeed. To select one data point: had you been born in Russia in 1923 you had only a 32% chance of making it to 1946. infant mortality, famine and then WW2 meant that 68% of the 1923 cohort died before they were 23.

Yup, it's good to point that sort of thing out. Most of the history that (I suspect) most of the readers of HN are exposed to will be quite western focused, and yes, a lot of things were fairly bad in the first half of the 20th century in the United States.

But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.

Post reply on HN